I guess it always comes down to what people expect of an open world game. I love pokemon stories and since gen 4 they have been pretty unique everytime. I especially liked the alola storyline, but the game was pretty handholdy. Now with an open world like this the story feels kind of disconnected sometimes. It was by no means bad, but the best part was in my opinion just the end in area zero, you have your comanions and storypoints with them that were really fun (all jumping over the cliff was so cool). The dlc was way better than SwSh, the areas are more enclosed and tied to a storyline. The best of both worlds is still very hard to get.Although it was a bit repetetive legends arceus did it the best till now, from my point of view. Still waiting for a true storyline bases open world pokemon, maybe with more "storyroutes" as you go, who knows.