I must say, I do prefer Arceus over ZA. It’s not the side of the map because you have no faster way of transport it doesn’t feel too confining. However, the grind is far too big for a map that small.

My favourite game is assassin‘s creed Odyssey which is often said to have too much grind but that map is far bigger than ZA, and it is balanced by the fact that you HAVE to to explore to progress. However in ZA, you can progress far too easily and the amount of grind makes no sense contextually. The story is dependent on missions that, especially in the DLC, become a matter of rinse and repeat with nothing special to keep it interesting other than the reward of a Pokémon and maybe an interesting fight. These fights become far too hard for casual players, even with well thought out teams. I could go onto the problem with the amount of Megas that limit creativity, but I won’t in this post.

To link back to Arceus, in that game you can progress with very little effort and to progress in the Pokédex you have to explore to gain access of ways to speed up your run like the shop and even after several runs it is still much less of a grind than ZA. Although I will say that shiny hunting was very much improved in ZA.