>>55526954the collapse of region design, the first 4 used real world places as a template, but still largely created their own place. Real-world was used as a loose backdrop. Alola went the opposite direction by doubling down hard on real world influence while blending it with Pokemon, and it does work, but the others? They're pretty boring regions that consist of copying some iconic place from the real world and then making whatever they want around it little cohesion.
Picrel shows how the real world locations they drew inspiration from for the Japanese regions were pretty small, yet now they condense entire countries into regions with a quarter of the depth.
