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An RPG needs optional areas with substantial rewards to encourage exploration. It allows for areas to be more memorable. Alola just doesn't have exploration, anything that could be called exploration is more or less just backtracking to push strength rocks to get some crap TM, because it was walled off in some tiny area. That's not going to be memorable at all. Aside from that, the only true optional areas are
>desert (walled off until after ghost trial for no reason, ends in a dead end until postgame)
>resolution cave (walled off until postgame, is a hallway, and doesn't even count as optional if you do the lackluster Looker quest.)
Not only does Alola have very little to actually explore, but the sheer amount of roadblocks and trial gates actively discourage exploration to the point where you'll give up on trying to explore altogether and just follow the objective marker because you've been taught that doing anything else will end in a dead end.
