My thoughts on this are lengthy, complicated, and probably a little bit self-contradictory, but I think some of the accusations of "gimmicks" are a tad overblown. But also a tad not overblown?

"Valles Marineris" - A pretty standard Trek episode IMO, albeit one with time travel and a twist.

"The Griffin Incident" - A horror episode, but not really a gimmicky one. Star Trek does those all the time.

"Human Best Friend" - Definitely pulling from a specific comedy genre, YMMV.

"A Case of Chiaroscuro" - I won't argue with accusations of "gimmick" here, but I thought its use of the genre was in service of a pretty damn good Star Trek story. And DS9 in particular went to the noir well a few times over the years.

"Level Five Transporter Accident" - perfectly normal, nothing to see here.

"Off-Hour" - Pretty standard Trek.

But they definitely do a lot of genre play, and recent interviews with the showrunners indicate that it's completely intentional, and unlikely to change any time soon.

I've been reconciling it by focusing on each episode as its own thing, independent of the others, and hot damn, it's surprising how hard that's become for me.