I will undoubtedly be picking Scarlet/Violet regardless of quality. Yes, multiple past entries have not been quite up to par. I do believe that Archeus is nearly the pinnacle of the franchise, but Scarlet and Violet seem to be using just enough of the open world Archeus implemented for me to be interested in it.
A follow-up: I got the game on Switch but have only put about a dozen hours into it. It is definitely fun, if overly safe, and I would be happy to add guildies to my Switch friends so we can hunt together. I think the next multiplayer game of mine will be Splatoon 3, if anyone here is interested in that one.