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The level/map design of Alola is the worst of any region yet. Besides the region being small, it is heavily streamlined and has very little aptitude for exploration, while the places that you do get to explore are often either small and boring (e.g Ten Carat Hill, which is one straight hallway and an open, empty field) or possibly slightly frustrating because of uninituitive or annoying mechanics (Haina Desert).
Things like the Exeggutor Express, Mt. Lanakila's Elevators or the cave entrance in Wela Volcano Park that takes you straight to the top of the mountain are lazy ways for Game Freak to avoid spending time designing maps and rob the player of exploration. Inaccessible but clearly visible places like the golf course, power plant, cave entrances in places like Brooklet Hill and Poni Meadow, or the lighthouse and pagoda tower that you can't enter all add up to make for terrible and disappointing level design. Oh yeah, and remember how Ultra Space was literally one room?
Vast Poni Canyon is the only actual dungeon in this game. Even then it isn't that great because Lillie keeps interrupting you the first time with her asinine dialogue and heals your team to make it not challenging, but everything else is Rusturf Tunnel tier simplicity. Sun and Moon dropped the grid system and at first I thought that the level design would suffer for it, but Vast Poni Canyon is proof that Game Freak can *potentially* make good maps despite the change, even if it's only a single locale, hurt by the presence of Lillie and still rather lacking when it comes to complexity.
