>>47920016I played Emerald and then Platinum back to back this year and I agree, Sinnoh is pretty much a 100% downgrade compared to Hoenn.
What makes Hoenn great are the variety in the themes of the areas and how almost every new route has at least 2 new Pokemon to find. You have grassland, beaches, rainforests, deserts, volcanic ashy areas, cliffs filled with meteor craters, vast oceans, changing tides, ice sliding, rapid currents, underwater diving. Meanwhile all of Sinnoh’s maps are incredibly samey (except the snow ones), have no interesting mechanics beyond shit that only exists to annoy the player like slowing movement down, and repeat too many of the same encounters. Most of the new Pokemon are frontloaded to the first 2 gyms so the rest of the game is uninteresting.
Hoenn also rewards exploration far more, with there being tons of interesting optional areas like Abandoned Ship/Sea Mauville, New Mauville, Shoal Cave, the desert area, the Regi ruins, and a large chunk of Meteor Falls while Sinnoh has virtually nothing except the Old Chateau and Wayward Cave, and Fuego Ironworks. Hoenn has a much better puzzle and exploration element for finding new Pokemon while Sinnoh does nothing interesting with its maps and resorts to just spamming HMs on routes you need to backtrack to unlock for a single useless item.
