Quoted By:
here are the regions with good maps:
>Kanto
>Unova (BW2)
>Kalos
and that is it
early johto suffers from the inconveniently placed dungeons surrounding azalea. this makes backtracking from azalea and especially goldenrod a pain, and you will be backtracking a lot for rematches. it isn't until you get rid of sudowoodo that the area opens up. and Azalea is still blocked off! it makes getting apricorn balls more painful than it needs to be.
after morty, the region splits in two and no matter what path you choose to do first, you have to double back after you're done. doing chuck first helps because you get fly and can fight jasmine on your way back, but creates the unfortunate consequence of the radio tower dragging the player over to goldenrod and then sending them right back to mahogany.
you basically need to ignore half of hoenn's map to say it's the best and even still it has problems. that ledge blocking lavaridge pisses me the fuck off, and it has the same detour problem as johto. you finish mt. pyre, then have to go to slateport, then have to go to lilycove, which was already right next to mt. pyre. emerald makes this worse by adding in the magma hideout as well.
sinnoh's is almost great. the midgame opens up very nicely and it never feels like too far a walk to get somewhere. but then canalave and snowpoint are off in their own little corners and it feels like you're just going around checking off all the areas you haven't been to yet, which is really unsatisfying.
Unova (BW) needs no elaboration. neither does anything from Alola onwards.
