Its just bad,
The game was and is still a laggy mess, The overworld is mostly empty and really gives you no incentive to explore, the terra forms are not really useful in most situations, and I personally ended up not using them much due to the waste of time that is the tera animation.
The "Open World" aspect of the game is pretty pointless as even if you decide to go to a higher level area, you either have to avoid every combat, or grind to be able to deal with the gym/trainers making the lower level areas a joke. Talking about trainers, where are they? You basically have to search for them due to how little there are, and unlike older games they won't fight you until you talk to them.
Overall, the game could have been great, but was clearly rushed and needed either a smaller map, or more content.