>>37091788I'm starting to come up with a theory on why the last few pokemon games seemed to suck with their locations
A pokemon town is ridiculously small, you have like a dozen houses and a few roads in the entire area
Because of this, you can't really have some massive or in depth area, you gotta stick to some identity/theme and portray it into the entire city(and possibly surrounding areas too)(bonus points for tying it to gameplay too, like a gym or legendary pokemon or dungeon/area).
At the same time, you can't try to make a place be ridiculously niche or unique, because if every place is ridiculously niche and unique, none of them are. This is why XY and SM tend to have not many memorable places, they try to make them based on some fancy landmark that isn't important or have a gimmick, like being an Old West town, Japanese style town, and taken over thug town, and in the end not standing out from the rest of the towns in the region
Imo, Unova mastered this the best, it's got by far the most memorable and stand out places in a pokemon game
Lacunosa is a pretty looking but creepy northern town
Nacrene is a peaceful town with a library
Castelia is a massive sprawling urban city
Nimbasa has a fancy walkway, ferris wheel, and theatre
Icirrus is tied to nature and weather, and feels like a festival
Even the ones I don't particularly love I still remember and like like Mistralton, Driftveil, Lentimas, and Opelucid city
They all have a theme and identity without feeling gimmicky or forced
