>>46987688The whole point of my original post
>>46987083 was that it's okay to have some stinker routes like Route 33 because the older games tended to have a bunch of areas between and around checkpoints. Like I've seen someone say Route 222 is bad, but it completely ignores that context between Snowpoint and Sunyshore where you have to do the Galactic Veilstone Building and the entirety of Mt. Coronet (and even the Distortion World in Platinum). It's not "just" Route 222, it's the area between checkpoints. In a lot of the later games, it's usually just one route between checkpoints and sometimes a side area, and most of the time you can't even scout ahead to grab new Pokémon and items, and the amount of optional areas is cut down.
Kalos would honestly feel a lot better if it had more optional areas but kept the same amount of Pokémon and just spread them out more, and added more types of encounter methods.
