Can someone explain why theme park game design is inherently bad? I get that it is immersion-breaking but pokemon always relied on abstractions (town/cities).Sinnoh routes may have a good lay-out but the routes look samey and contain a lot of the same pokemon. Areas like the Desert Resort look and play unique. The quicksand mechanic and different encounter list are all positives.
North america has deserts and snowy areas. Unova is mostly based on NY but that doesnt mean it cant take inspiraton from the rest of the country. Some pokemon in the dex are even based on south america. Why is it problem that Unova is an abstraction of north america as a whole? Do you consider locations like valor lakefront or fortree city to be immersion-breaking?