I was checking out the news on Serebii.net and they have a pre-review of the game, being given the opportunity to play some of it and see how the real gameplay is. You can check out their article here:

https://www.serebii.net/scarletviolet/preview/

I'll admit--this has me a lot more curious than ambivalent about the game now. It seems that they took some learning cues from what was good about "Legends: Arceus", what was bad about Sword/Shield and actually tried to come to some kind of happy medium on what fans actually want. Maybe GameFreak is actually listening to fans for a change..........?

I'm sure it won't prevent the game from being buggy at the outset, with patches every week for months........I'm sure they'll develop ridiculously priced DLC add-on content..........I'm sure parts will be disappointing for the long-time fans. But it looks like GameFreak DID learn something from fans about how they felt on recent games and actually maybe TRIED to make something better.

I could still do without gimmicks. shrug

It was also interesting that they encountered the "world's first Shiny" in the game (beyond the developers)--AND THE FACT THAT SHINY POKEMON ARE VISIBLE IN THE OVERWORLD NOW. It's about time that truly happened--so, yes, now you can see a Shiny in the field..........and you won't wonder if your game is cursed on finding Shinies. XD