"It's a poor town so it's meant to be empty!" is such a pathetic excuse. We've had similar towns before and they manage to have something worthwhile about them even without a gym, with that being next to an important location, having story relevance or an event in the town itself.
There is absolutely nothing going on in Spikemuth besides the gym, you have literally zero reason to EVER go back there once you finish the story. It could have been a cool location with something to uncover but instead it's just a hallway and a cutscene despite being one of the most plot relevant towns due to being the home of your rival.
>>41742528The same reason why hallway routes are bad, in the past you would be rewarded for sniffing around areas and talking to NPCs with things like items, trade requests or just tiny little things to do, for example the guard right outside of Goldenrod would ask you to take his Spearow named Kenya to some fat dude sleeping on one of the first routes. You could either do the quest and get the Dream Eater TM or you could keep the Spearow which was like 2 levels away from evolving. SWSH is missing anything like this and replaces it with nothing.
If I have to explain why optional content that you get from exploring locations is a bad thing you might just be retarded.
