I just played up to the third gym so here are my impressions so far. Honestly, I like this game more than I thought I would. There was an honest to god effort in trying to make this a fun, but casualized experience. It's not the best pokemon game out there, but it's enjoyable and I can an audience who likes this game. The best way I can describe it is that you don't play this game for a super hard challenge. You play this game to relax from a super hard challenge and maybe hang out with a friend.
That being said here's the good so far:
The game looks really good. I feel if Su/Mo were on the Switch it would fair much better honestly, but here is this weird crossbreed between Su/Mo and X and Y. It's a bit odd, but I like it. It looks polished and honestly, if you play this game, play it on a tv. It looks way better that way. The expressions and models for the characters are also infinitely better than SuMo. No more awkward pauses and our trainer actually expresses wonder. Just wonder. This is what I was missing from Alola. Our trainer just acting like a human being in a new world. It really does make me remember being a kid again. And also thankfully, those long cuts in SuMo are gone too. Everything flows much faster and smoother. I didn't experience a frame drop once.
The animations are pretty okay for being reused/redone. It's more remastered than anything, but acceptable. I will say though that some of them look hilariously awkward in capture mode, but outside in the real world it's pretty good. I will say though that the spawning does piss me off sometimes as I could be walking all of a sudden and then 10 pokemon appear on screen causing me to go into capture mode. Though it is much easier to navigate without a RE every 5 minutes.
The game system is great. Everything works really nicely, the UI is alright, but a bit small for my taste, and the options menu is great too. You can skip cut scenes now (THANK GOD), and pretty much optimize everything from how high and low you want the pokemon's voices. The pokedex isn't a cluttered mess like in Su/Mo too. However, the bag is really meh. Like having a box for everything is good, but not having a box for spare items really justs bothers me. Like, let me make spare pouches.
Battle go by pretty quickly in this game. I like that because I hate dealing with joke characters with 6 magikarp or 4 annoying pokemon to take down unless they are a special trainer. I also liked how they optimized the pokeball system. You WILL FAIL at catching pokemon in this game, but thankfully you gain experience for your captures (even more than battling I'd argue). And each trainer battle does give you pokeballs, so you do have an incentive to beat trainers in this game at least. Also, gym leaders are pretty cool too. A very nice homage and to give them credit, they do try to flesh them out a little bit. Not B/W, but something is better than nothing. The motion controls are functional and work fine, but it is a little weird at first.
The bad:
Taking out abilities I can deal with, but keeping in natures is dumb as hell. Natures are even more complicated to deal with than abilities and I think it really goes against the nature (haha) of this game to make it so instead of everyone on a level playing field, when one pokemon is objectively better than the other. At least with abilities, pokemon have a chance. It's just really dumb.
This game is very simplified and is clearly for a casual audience. This can be a bit alienating at some points. It doesn't bother me a lot, but I can definitely understand people who wouldn't like that. If you're looking for a challenging pokemon game, this won't be it. Though it's probably not trying to be to begin with.
Character customization is a joke for the player character. Your starter is cool and you get a bunch of stuff for them, but your trainer is utterly screwed. How does it get worse with each gen? By gen 8 we're just gonna have regular trainer assets again.
That being said, for technical advancements, I honestly wished this would be in the next gen, not the motion controls really, but the optimization and the organization parts of this game. I really like them, but we probably aren't going to see them again. *sigh* watch gen 8 have a no "skip the movie" option. lol
Overall, enjoyable and fun. Nothing too cringeworthy.
Also, Co-op is fun. Not a fan of the dogpiling, but my brother and I really had fun with it. It was a smart idea to split your team according to the second player, but I understand them not wanting to pull an XD and make every trainer a potential double battle.