People complain about how the cities in Galar feel small, but have you all considered that the world is viewed from the protagonist’s perspective?

All the puzzles, historical ruins, and accessible landmarks in previous games are intractable and visitable since the previous protagonists take active interest in them. You didn’t get to see to discover and fight the Regis in Ruby/Sapphire because *you* wanted to, it’s because Brendan did.

Meanwhile, Victor and Gloria are shown to only care about one thing; Pokemon battles as a professional sports career. They don’t care about the royal palace in Wyndon, or exploring the ruins around Stow-on-Side or the ones on the route to Circhester. Their overwhelming admiration of Leon has essentially rotten their brains to be just like him, thus cursing them with the disinterest of other hobbies besides cooking and camping.

Or, that’s at least how I view it. There’s clearly so much more to the cities, and they’re obviously much bigger and expansive in lore, but we’re only shown what the protagonist cares about.