For me, Sun and Moon, well Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon were the last Pokémon I actually enjoyed, despite being pretty handholdy in the first few hours. Trailer for Winds and Waves is honestly the first time I've felt positive about a mainline Pokémon game since Legends Arceus.

U S/M are good games with many content. But as a old generation player, the map feels very restricted and slow walking, and almost all Pokémon games later follow the same design. I miss huge cities with no loading times and many characters to interact with and many of them having something to offer to the experience. Now Pokémon cities feels empty.

They were the last good games

Ok, some people didn’t like the gameplay, setting etc… due to personal preference, but the games were undeniably good from a technical standpoint (regarding the 3ds hardware they ran on)