Well, it has the worst main story of a mainline Pokemon game, the worst execution of said story, and the post-game scenario has two of the most worthless and annoying characters in the series. In spite of that, there are some things I liked, including the towns, the fashion, the generic NPC trainers, the gym leaders, and some of the supporting characters and their personal storylines (Marnie, Vyers, Bede, and Sonia, in particular). Some cool locales with cool Pokemon in them, too.

Admittedly, some of these things I appreciate more in hindsight after SV, but still...

My favorite track in the game is Sonia's theme by far, it's so nice. There's a lot of nice character themes and battle themes, too. On the other hand the gym battle starts out good but then the crowd starts chanting and it becomes much less enjoyable.

The Wild Area and Gigantamax were just okay, I could have done without the Wild Area and would've been fine with just a linear experience. I was weirdly annoyed at how all the non-special Fighting-types were pure Fighting type. Also, Shield rates a tiny bit lower than Sword purely because Zamazenta is just that much less useful than his sis Zacian. Like seriously, who thought to introduce Body Press this gen and not give it to him until the next?