Would being annoyed by a whole region still count as a "little thing"? Well, sure hope it does, because that's the topic of today's ramble. I'm not sure if this is a very common sentiment, but I've come to really dislike Alola as a region. I'm not talking about the gameplay, Pokemon, story, or cutscenes of (Ultra) Sun/Moon, but the region itself.
I can't help but wonder if we would hear as many complaints about the handholding/railroading if Alola had more to explore, places off the beaten path that you could go if you wanted a break from the main storyline. The problem is that not only is the region tiny, but the only places I can think of that aren't part of the "story corridor" are Haina Desert and Blush Mountain. Blush Mountain is admittedly fairly interesting (especially for someone like me who's a sucker for engineering stuff), but can be fully "explored" in under a minute, while Haina Desert doesn't feel fun to go through, instead a tedious maze that you have to solve to get the Psychium Z and Tapu Bulu.
Alola feels tiny due to a lack of optional areas for sure, but another factor is that the routes themselves feel not only cramped, but also too well established. Route 2 is my favourite example of this - it's a straight path with houses, a Pokemon center, and even a paved road. How sure are we, really, that it's a Route and not just an extension of Hau'oli City? Now, I recognize that these are all things that we have seen in past games; the difference here is that routes in past regions (yes, even Unova) had areas you had to work to get to and reasons to go there, be it trainers, items, or entrances to other areas. With Alola? Not so much. For the most part, there's no reason to go off the beaten path. There's often no "off the beaten path" at all.
I also feel like splitting the region into 4 of what are essentially sub-regions was a really poor choice, even if it works from a flavour perspective, because it severely limits the player's ability to naturally backtrack. As an example: Who remembers, in Hoenn, going north of Slateport City and then west of the Trick House, and then suddenly hearing the Route music from way back at the beginning of the game? That blew my mind when I was a kid playing through Sapphire for the first time! And then I learned that once I got Surf, I could have a nice shortcut back to the starting area! Other instances of this are returning to Mauville from Lilycove via Route 123 and Route 115 no longer being one-way (and having that massive secret area) once you have Surf. Not a fan of Hoenn? Well, Cinnabar Island looping back around to Pallet Town, being able to return to Violet City once you beat Sudowoodo, and the point where Lumiose City opens up are all standouts from other regions. A side effect of this linearity is that, apart from Aether Paradise, once you finish with an area, you never have any reason to return to it. There's no opportunities to go back to an earlier area and have more business to do, making Alola altogether a very forgettable region. Unova had this same problem, of course, but I feel like it got better to a degree in BW2 while being even worse in Alola.
Kanto had the Seafoam Islands, Power Plant, and Cerulean Cave, each one a large, optional dungeon with a Legendary at the end. Johto had... well, all of Kanto, as well as Lugia's and Ho-oh's dungeons, as well as a ton of hidden areas on normal routes. Hoenn had the area of Pacifidlog Town, which you'll probably skip altogether on a normal playthrough of Ruby/Sapphire, but that is home to Sky Pillar, the Sealed Chamber, and Mirage Island. Sinnoh had I think the best postgame areas we've seen to date, as well as some very intricate route designs that took a long time to fully explore. Unova is the point where the games started to get more linear, but it still had Mistralton Cave as well as tons of optional areas in its storyline dungeons, with even more in BW2. Kalos had Terminus Cave, all of Lumiose, and again wide-open routes with a lot of things being easy to miss. All of the past regions have had places to explore that didn't have to do with the main story, as well as routes that felt worth it to explore, two things that Alola quite badly lacks.
As usual, this post got to be a lot more long-winded than I expected, so to recap: the Alola region annoys me because it has very few non-plot-centric areas; its routes are cramped, straightforward, and often little more than roads with tall grass to the sides; and it is linearity rivals that of BW Unova, which didn't have the previous two issues.
Alola annoys me for other reasons as well, but those will have to go in a future post, since I've rambled too much in this one already.
EDIT: Somehow, I completely forgot that there are actual optional locations in Alola, namely Ten Carat Hill, the cemeteries, and Kala'e Bay. And yeah, they're pretty cool! 10K hill in particular is the only place to catch Rockruff, so it definitely scores points, as do the cemeteries for providing early-game Murkrow and Misdreavus, two of my favourite Pokemon. The only issue, and it's a small one, is that you have to backtrack a fair bit to get to most of them, which is tough in a game where the plot is constantly pushing you forwards.
