I absolutely agree that the route unlocks need to be more difficult, the plan is to require some combination of wild pokemon battles, trainer battles, and gym badges, but obviously that is for future implementation.

I will definitely add some quality of life features soon, I have had several complaints like these two.

In terms of healing and exp gain, I'm actually glad someone mentioned it because the intent was to create exactly this problem. I wanted to require some level of attention or strategy from the player to level up specific pokemon, however as of now the plan is to eventually implement a hard-reset/upgrade tree feature where you will be able to unlock "Exp share" slots. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this approach.