You know how pokemon cities and towns feel much less significant and more barren than they used to, despite ultimately being the same size? I think I know why now.
See, in old pokemon games you'd arrive at a new area and usually you'd immediately have a list of things you can do. For example, when you arrive in violet city in gen 2 you immediately have 3 main options
>Challenge the sprout tower
>Challenge the gym
>Explore the ruins of alph
These things can be done in any order, and what order you do them in will differ from person to person. Team weak to flying? Try challenging sprout tower first, you'll even get flash out of it. Not in the mood for battling? Go check out the local ruins and discover the unown, unlocking a whole side story (admittedly only really in crystal and HGSS). Just wanna move on? Go beat the gym.
And this is a very small example, in places like goldenrod and ecruteak in johto, or, my personal favorite example, mauville in hoenn, you're often presented with 5+ different things you can go do. Like, here's what you can do as soon as you get to mauville
>Battle the trainers on the beach to the east
>Battle the winstrates to the north
>Fight wally in front of the gym
>Go and visit wally in verdanturf, assuming you chose to battle him first. This also takes you through route 117, giving you your first access to
>breeding and
>Contests (which is like 2 minigames with pokeblock making and the contests themselves
>Get a bike and take cycling road back to slateport where you can get the harbor mail which allows you to then
>get the coin case and check out the game corner, where you can play the slots or roulette
>And FINALLY you can challenge the gym at any point during all of this
That's like 8 things, you can do in just about any order, and I'm not even counting the nearby optional trickhouse. In new pokemon there's pretty much JUST the next cutscene at any given time, and it really sucks the soul out of the entire experience. Is this just me?