early pkmn's biggest fault (aside from having only 1 ghost type line) is having routes that are just 20 trainers in a line and calling that a "route" LMFAO, if i could bring back anything it'd be this kind of design philosophy for the overworld, they've really held back since gen 6

a lot of pokemon's decisions really make sense under this traditional RPG lens, like HMs, move pools being very limited, gimmicky pokemon like abra, backtracking, optional areas, they really wanted you to explore and swap out pokemon to adjust to new challenges as you progressed, it's really cool