"Galar lacks ‘towns’"

I started in Pokemon Sapphire way back when. I remember towns like Fallarbor, Verdanturf, Lilycove, Slateport—all of which had no gyms, but which had house to go into, people to talk to, minigames (who else spent hours collecting soot?), shopping places, pokemon contests. Galar doesn’t have towns like these.Maybe we can say Hoenn is different because of the contests. So let’s look at Sinnoh: Jublife, Floaroma, Solaceon, Celestic.... towns without gyms that breathed some life into the region. Floaroma had the driftloon event right nearby and introduced honey trees; Solaceon was the daycare and the Unown cave; Celestic had lore and played a role in the plot.I actually had to pull up a map of Galar to confirm this: aside from the tutorial towns (your home and the pokemon lab), there are only eight towns, all of which have gyms.I think that’s why SwSh feels so artificial to me. We all know that the routes are uninteresting and feel like hallways, and I think Id be willing to forgive that if the region were more fleshed out and memorable. But the hallway routes lead directly from one gym hub to the next with no worldbuilding in between to give us a break. The game just pushes us through the pipeline.It makes me miss Sinnoh, for example. The psyduck were in the way of the route to Celestic town, so I knew I had to go do something else and then backtrack. I had to revisit places Id already been (wild, I know) because the games didnt feel like a one-off tour of the region.Did anyone else notice this? via /r/pokemon https://ift.tt/2XNVIQ2