So I just finished up the post game of Pokémon Diamond, with the exception of re-battling my rival which I will do on Friday.
But as I was exploring Battle Island it really highlight why I found Kalos to be a meh region with it feeling more of Game Freak testing the 3D engine.
And the reason for that is that Game Freak gave a logical reasoning to Battle Island design.
For starter Battle Island has a massive Volcano so the region was mountainous and on route 228 the game map actually gave a reason so why the route was bombarded by sand storm and it was because of the wind from the sea blowing up the sand, thus giving a logical reasoning behind that design.
Now compare that to Route 13 in Kalos, it's a desert route that exist because...well the game never exactly explains how the desert was form, which is odd as Hoenn, Sinnoh and Unova and Alola both gave reasoning to how their desert route were formed.
But it just doesn't just the Kalos desert Route that feels off, it's also the rest of Kalos route where their theme just doesn't flow as well as past region and Kalos successor.
True, I recently found paper documents from Gen 4 and 5 when I was planing my teams and the Pokémon had their Japanese name, since the game had just released in Japan.
I should also point out that with some Pokémon I have given them nicknames based on their Japanese name as my nickname theme is that I take a part of their name but in some case I dip into their Japanese name if I feel that the English naming doesn't lend itself to a decent nickname.
For example my Charizard is nicknamed Char but my Blastoise on my Yellow team is nicknamed Zeni, which is taken from "Zenigame", Squirtle Japanese name.
Same, ever since I started nicknaming my Pokémon I end up feeling more of a bond with them, thus making them feel less like data.
The beauty of Pokémon is that you can pretty much end it where ever you want to end it, so if you want to stop after defeating Blue you can do so.
I myself stop after defeating Blue in my Silver and Soul Silver version and only fight Red in my Crystal version.
Man, Moltres looks like a rubber chicken.
Not just that, Sinnoh itself is a cold region and gets more wintery as you go up north. The only reason the postgame areas are warm is because of Heatran. Justifies why things are the way they are even more.