If this is the thread to talk about good route design, route 23 is not it. A good route isn't just "a lot of stuff"; a good route's main attributes are flow, atmosphere/visuals, and options. You might think the OP image has lots of options and that makes it good, but more or less options is not the meter by which good route options are measured. In fact, too many options in the wrong route can ruin the flow and atmosphere that the route demands. The problem with route 23 is that it just feels utterly tedious where it exists in the game, right between the Great Chasm and Victory Road. It's needlessly mazelike, and optional paths that would ordinarily make you excited to explore on an earlier route feel more like fuck yous and things you strongly consider skipping rather than exploring off the beaten path. On top of this you have a huge amount of trainers, a strength puzzle that will need resetting, a cut maze and double digit unskippable grass patches between everything. It might look "cool" in an overhead picture here that it has "so much stuff", but the reality is that a route like this demonstrates only a lack of restraint and elegance. If the idea is that route 23 is a good route because it's "hard", then that's a whole different discussion on what is "hard" when it comes to mainline Pokémon games (and for the record, route 23 is not it either). On top of all of this, the forested semi-mountain visuals are simply bland, uninteresting, and adds to the cluttered looking design in an unflattering way.
tldr- route 23 is not a good route, and even the simplest of Hoenn routes can be chosen to illustrate better design.
