The game looks like shit and it's clear that they do not care, but the gameplay is very fun and has a lot of new mechanics that help make leveling up way less tedious. There are ton of Pokemon to catch, the different story paths are all cute, and the general experience was very satisfying.

If they had made leveling up just adjust around an average or you Pokemon or any kind of similar equation so you could truly go in any order you chose, I might even have given it a 4.5 despite how shitty it looks, but the game is still relatively linear just masquerading as open world.