Season 1 was significantly better than 3, season 2 had better individual episodes than anything in the first 8 of season 3 so far. Admittedly, season 2 had more story problems overall, but season 3 has a lot of logical head scratchers too, some of which I pointed out before in this BBS universe.
The nostalgia latched onto by some of these media reviewers and self-interested YT click baiters (I know very few of them but I know they're out there) is exactly the sort of thing I'd expect to see by people who care more about familiarity than expanding and energizing the franchise.
S2 did more to cheapen the universe, than expand it.
You'll find more positive reactions to all the decisions that undo many of the controversial S1/S2 elements.
And I can't agree that S1 was better than S3, not even close. Characters like Raffi, Soji, Jurati, Elnor, British Romulan, all had very mixed reactions. Especially their silly trauma plots. Every character had an over-the-top traumatic backstory, it was cheesy and sadly most of these characters ended up being written off the series because they were so poorly handled.
They even managed to ruin Rios by S2, which was the one new character that people wanted to like...despite also getting that silly traumatic backstory involving his Captain (which really added nothing).
The Synth plotline was braindead. The Romulan cult of witches that hates technology and ripped their skin off... S1 was just a bunch of disparate ideas that never coalesced into anything meaningful.
Golum Picard was an incredibly controversial choice... and until this season, they really didn't do anything interesting with it.
"The Measure of a Man" was such a meaningful episode with a lot of deeper discourse. I can't say S1 really did anything worthwhile with it. If anything, it just played out Guinan's worst case scenario of an Android slave race.