>>56231080I don't feel any particular way about a small regional dex vs a large one but
>The 'generic Sinnoh team' meme is a major part of its identityThis isn't because Sinnoh has a "small" regional dex, the generic sinnoh team meme is due to the fact that the Pokedex distribution is the worst in the series, there are plenty of Pokemon to catch early game, but the overwhelming majority of them are Kanto dexfiller Pokemon like Geodude, Machop, Psyduck, etc, so everyone just sticks with the first few new Pokemon (Starly, Shinx) they see, and the dex is so bad, you don't start getting new options until after Floraroma town.
The majority of new Pokemon are either some form of Postgame locked, gimmick locked via honey trees/marsh or are only available more than halfway through the game, while a lot of routes have encounter tables like pic related.
I can definitely get what you're trying to argue, but I would never use Sinnoh as an example of what counts as a cohesive regional dex, I think Hoenn did that significantly better, with amazing dex variety and a good balance of common and rare Pokemon that you could build a good, powerful team of entirely Gen 3 before you even get to the third gym, and still have enough variation that multiple people would only have maybe one Pokemon in common minus the starter, which is downright impossible to say for Gen 4, since it takes getting out of Eterna Forest for your options to really open up.
