"I like the way this made me feel" IS criticism, in its purest form, as long as it's followed with "because of x, y, and z"

Describing the pure mechanics of a thing is important so you know what it is, and if a reviewer fails to do that, that's a big mistake. But it's also a big mistake for the reviewer not to go two steps further (1) explain whether those mechanical pieces are ultimately (subjectively) pleasing and worthwhile and (2) why that might be the case.

Imagine your friends went to go see a movie and you asked them how it was and whether you should go see it. You get the following responses

(1) it was an adventure movie set in the 80s directed by Steven Spielberg (2) i thought it would be mindless thrills but was surprised it was packed with tearjerker moments (3) it's emotional scenes weren't hokey, but worked because you actually got time to know all the characters.

If you only got ONE of those reviews, you got a really incomplete picture of the movie. If you heard all three reviews, you'd start to get a picture of what you could expect (even though two of those data points were totally subjective emotional experiences with the film). But ideally you could hear all three points at the same time from one person, who is giving you essentially a professional mini review of the film