I ended up getting this in Target's buy 2 get 1 free sale a couple of weeks ago.
It's pretty good! My expectations were only moderate considering the series and the dev, so it's managed to impress me. Finally, everything is so streamlined and quick now, including some ideas I thought up a long time ago like a Mon being able to know all its moves and be able to "equip" four for battle. Battles are so much faster-paced now and are much less of a pain to breeze through for grinding or catching purposes, and they have a better sense of place in the world with things like not being swept away to a generic battle scene and the trainer(s) always on camera. I can only hope that the next mainline games at least copy or build on these mechanics even if they keep the old style of world design.
My main problems are the same as any Pokémon game: mediocre presentation and story. With that said, given all the complaints I've seen, I was actually expecting the graphics to be something worse than they are; I thought it was going to be something on the level of the wild areas from Sword and Shield, but fortunately it's much better than those. There is one gameplay issue with the graphics which is how the draw distance for objects and Monz isn't all that far out, making for some noticeable popup and an inability to see Monz and items that are located far off, but it isn't a big deal.
Overall, I'm glad this game was successful, and hope it means there's more big changes and ambition in store for the franchise.
That quest for the big Buizel is pretty mean to have as an early one! I dunno if it's a glitch or what but I actually got a 2'8" Buizel early on, but he still refused to take it despite him saying he wanted 2'8" and above. I had over a pasture full of Buizel and still no luck, eventually I got a 2'7" that I decided to try just to see and the guy ended up accepting that one! This guy right here, a real pain in my Buizel let me tell you...