Ah... The nostalgia...
I remember watching a playthrough stream of it on release day, it looked awesome. Especially how much content there was between Gyms 1 and 2, the free Kanto starter, the early Snorlax, huge variety of catchable Pokemon, the interesting and unique for their time Rhyhorn riding and Glittering Cave layout, the fossil mons... It kept getting better, Geosenge, Reflection Cave, being given out a Lucario and a Lapras. Fun with Skiddo, Coumarine "2 cities". After a while of annoying (Badlands, Lumiose) and a little spooky, the Laverre music was stunning! Dendemille looked beautiful, so did Anistar... The Team plot was "eh" with the exception of the Geosenge twist. Couriway looked awesome too. Victory Road was interesting...
Interest died down for a bit, I did not like postgame much compared to the cramped BW2 with 6 postgame towns. Competitive in Pokemon Showdown revitalised my interest the gen, I really liked Gale Wings Talonflame and Protean Greninja and the weather nerf... That was it pretty much until ORAS.
I did eventually get a 2DS and X later, and played through it all. It felt... easier. It is easier when you know where to find all the important bits. Still awesome graphics.
The games still LOOK nice 10 years later, although they might not be my favorite... If the Zygarde sidequest was in them and led to something cool, they would have been so much better.
When BDSP was released, I remember some saying that the games look better than Platinum which was 15 years old, but may not actually BE so in terms of content. This is how I feel about XY in retrospect : it was an awesome experience at first, but looking back at it... Something was lacking compared to my more favorite old games like Platinum, or Black 2, and some later ones like Alpha Sapphire and Sun. Yet it made up for it with Kalos being truly beautiful.
PS: I despise Lumiose with a burning passion (do not get me started on save glitch), so unfortunately most of character customization that was locked behind style there too. It also unfortunately made me not appreciate the Looker and Emma/Essentia part as much. The taxi is the worst thing about the city, do not make it so complicated you gotta pay money to find stuff 
