I found Hoenn to be a big bore-fest once I left Lilycove. Reason: TOO MUCH WATER! It was okay up to that point (even if they did try to cram too many different environments into one region). But traversing route after route of water, swimmers, and Tentacool started to really grate on my nerves and is the main reason Hoenn stands as my least favorite region. That final watery stretch is just too much of a monotonous hassle for me to want to play through it again.
I thought the water routes in Ruby (the version I played) was much more interesting than the VERY boring water routes in Kanto and Johto. They were only transport routes, get from this island to that island, while the R/S/E waters to the east... no, all the waters actually, made me want to explore a bit~
The sea to the east of Hoenn wasn't just a route, it was a sea where I actually got lost more than a few times XD I admit I was annoyed, but it made the game feel big.
Although, Tentacools deserve to die painful deaths in pokéhell for irritating surfers over all these years.
Nah, I wouldn't really agree with that. Although it was much more diverse and was a step up from G/S/C, to me it still had one fatal flaw distinguishing it from the GSC: The lack of more playability after the Elite Four. I know it may sound stupid, but think about it. After you beat the Johto League, you could then play through the Kanto region, which to me seemed pretty cool. R/S/E doesn't do this, besides having the legendaries appear. Although the Battle Frontier did make up for this in Emerald.
Oh? I thought Ruby was fun even after Elite 4. I mean, many trainers wanted to fight you AGAIN (in Emerald, don't the gym leaders re-fight yo too?) and you could easily train your pokémon and make new teams, venture further into safari zone, catch Bagon, catch Latios...
I finally restarted my game when I wanted to do it from the start again, though I had already pretended to start over (traveling the whole of Hoenn from Littleroot with a newly hatched pokémon) several times, but of course it wasn't the same without the story going.
... I don't really want to admit it, since the pokémon of the 3rd gen are my least favs as a whole, but Hoenn might be my favourite region. Unofficially. The games where the most fun, anyways (I haven't played D/P/P much).
Officially, Johto's mystique has me hooked and faved ;)