i'll admit that i'm not in every pokemon community out there, but in the ones i'm in, gen 6 is easily considered the worst. it's far from being a "gaf thing". so much that i agree with you on your point that Sun/Moon got better reception - but gen 6 is still pretty despised pretty much everywhere else.
This is news to me. Admittedly I stopped reading most pokemon related things after being so disappointed in SuMo but I always thought XY were fantastic and until now I had never seen much to the contrary. During Gen 6 people were generally fairly high on it largely for the amount of gameplay improvements. Between the 3D models, the PSS, the Gen 6 designs and the sheer variety of pokemon available it was being heralded as one of the best. ORAS fumbled with the lack of real extra content but the Dexnav was another huge improvement, and having the post-game island where you could hatch eggs easier than ever before was great.
I mean.... The percentage of people who play pokemon for the
deep narrative is probably in the single digits and so giving XY crap for its story... deserved though it may be, is a weak complaint compared to all the good it did. I don't even agree that B/W has the 'best story' since it's really just a basic story with a 'mature' coat of paint. On top of that it's incorporated into the game incredibly poorly imo. A story that has to completely derail itself just to go through Set Piece #5 is a poorly told story.
I would without reservation say that XY is the perfect entry point for new players, at the very least from a game design perspective. It does a really good job of introducing all the mechanics and on top of that is just a much better looking game (assuming you aren't offended by the more chibi character models)
SuMo on the other hand.... it's
different? I guess that's a bonus if you like things that are different for the sake of being different. I probably couldn't say anything that hasn't already been said a dozen times but SuMo is far more divisive than I remember XY ever being.
Also that Lycanroc form is better than either of the other two forms. But as a "New Form" it's uninspiring.