Yeah, Sword and Shield had some good ideas, and at times it's even pretty; but it is SO formulaic/by the numbers, and feels essentially like they ran out of time developing it, and half the content got shelved. It really does nothing much that new, and it's a shame as there was potential there and some charm, the core pokemon experience (as you've discovered) is still fun, but realistically it's not giving you a much improved experience over older titles which is part of the reason it's got so much flak, it's really not the step forward it should or could have been, and feels lazy. It was the first generation ground-up designed to be run on a hybrid portable/TV console (Let's Go doesn't count as it was a remake), with the much increased power over older systems, and it doesn't really do that much with it; at least not compared to what people wanted and hoped for. Although let's not even get started on the Diamond/Pearl remakes; which basically appear to have been done on the cheap lol
Arguably, Arceus is closer to the experience people expected/felt they would get with the move to home consoles with Sword and Shield, but didn't deliver on.
That said if you've not experienced any others; I'd genuinely recommend picking up Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee, as its a revamped remaster essentially of the original Red/Blue, with some Pokemon Go-esque elements fused in to cater to the how mentally popular Pokemon GO was ~5 years ago, and some tweaks to the story, character you play as etc. Very very charming, the original music reorchestrated is still fantastic, and if you're enjoying SW/SH, you'll probably like it; especially as you could argue it's a more 'pure' experience being based on Gen 1; also with some enjoyable tweaks like seeing your partner walking with you, and also seeing wild pokemon in the field, rather than just in limited areas ala Sw/Sh. Given the fact it's a decent few years old now; I'd expect it'd be possible to find a copy at a pretty reasonable price.
Arceus is barebones in places; and the visuals are lacking a lot of polish (although the art style etc itself is fine), but it's genuinely a much more open game, introduces new crafting ideas/components, the 'areas' are pretty large; albeit without the Gyms/multiple towns we're used to etc etc, and really brings back the feeling of being in an unknown 'pokemon world'.
Arguably it's a prototype of where things should go though with the core games though gameplay-wise, with more work on adding things that are missing, such as multiple towns/fully fleshed out regions etc, and moving ever closer to a true open world.
Realistically at this point; if GameFreak had invested in larger teams, longer turnarounds and more quality; we've realistically got enough regions and area to have a genuine open-world, "Pokemon World" game, but I'm not expecting anything so grandiose any time soon; as it is Arceus feels like the first real step they've taken towards such an open world concept in years.
Hell, freaking Pokemon Gold/Silver, 20 YEARS ago, featured 2 complete regions; a new specific region to that title, and a tweaked version of the original region you could revisit after you passed a late game story point!
