looks like a pretty nice layout at first glance.
I like a lot of things I'm seeing here, like:
a) the sand path placement, very curvy and natural looking without being overly and needlessly twisty
b) grass placement, you force the player to go through it on the going but on the return trip there's the ledges. That's GameFreak etiquette for early routes
c) the cave entrance across the gym pond. I really hope that entrance plays a key role in solving some of the puzzles in the caves, since it's well hidden and not visible unless you surf across the pond
d) some unique blocks that I haven't seen made before with nintendo tiles, like the very slight curve on the path near the big house on the hill of the starting town, or the tree that is covered a bit by the ground wall in the second town, and the double-colored mountain. Those are sweet touches
e) overall, your attention to detail. The tree shades were placed correctly, and the tile of the top edge between the river and the grass was placed 100% correctly
and a few things that tipped me off:
a) the first thing I noticed is that you haven't always considered the borders of the map. The player can see 7 blocks left/right (not 6 like I stated in one of my previous posts), which would result in border errors near the left fence just as you're leaving the home town - if there is no connection to the left side of the home town map, the player will be able to see the ground walls crash into your border (which I assume is trees). Same thing will happen if you stand in front of the door of the big house at the foot of the home town's hill. Same thing will happen with the ground walls of the mountain just north of the first town.
Is there a connection to the south side of the home town map? Because if the player stands on the flowers next to the water at the opposite side of the door to the laboratory, he can see the border if there is no connection (since the player can see 5 blocks up/down iirc, and you only have 4 blocks of water there)
If you're not sure what I'm talking about, try playing through the game and going to the spots I mentioned
Have you considered what maps connect to the maps you're showing in the water section? As it stands now, if you surf on the water on the east side of the map, you can go right, up and down, since no rocks block your way in the water. That's quite a lot of connections, and a lot of maps - if you haven't thought about those, you should, and if you have, you're one step ahead of me!
In any case, watch out for your borders. They're important.
b) the rocks in the middle of the river that leads to the starting town block the entire river - it would be nicer to be able to surf down the river into your hometown imo without them blocking your way. They don't seem to serve a purpose there
c) lack of free space for plain grass, although I think that's a subjective thing since I didn't prefer to leave much free space when I started mapping either
nitpicks:
a) from the way you've placed the maps, the player can see a bit of route 1's grass from where I assume is the safari-like area, since the grass on the first route is the fifth tile away from the player, and thus visible. I'd prefer to imagine there's forest above me if I was in that spot
b) on the left side of the fence just as you're leaving the home town you can see grass patches that are always inaccessible as they're behind the fence (this also happens a bit later on near the tree to your left side as well). Since grass patches are meant to be walked on, if you wanted to go full nintendo mapping style don't put any of them out of the player's reach and just use another tile to illustrate what you wanted to put there
have you thought of using tiles that aren't nintendo's? your mapping may improve
showing off my map now:
Credits: Kyledove, WesleyFG, Alistair, Zein, Zeikku, Zeo, EVoLiNa, Phyromatical, Dewitty, Magiscarf, PeekyChew (I think that's all, hopefully I didn't forget anyone)
Map Name: Pinleaf Town
Hack: ???
Notes: I designed this to be a blend of route + town. You can both find trainers (who will ask you y/no if you want to battle) and wild Pokemon in the tall green grass (and corn if you have surf). A script for the player to jump across the rocks in the river is in the works. Also added some Golden Sun-esque puzzle in the southern part of the town where you can climb up a vine, jump from roof to roof, walk on a rope like an acrobat and then do some more jumping before you land on the big green field where you can probably find a cool reward like an item or a specific Pokemon event.
* The big green field is blocked from the bridge at the top side by a truck, which is an overworld sprite (and not visible upon this map picture)
* You can walk "out of bounds" with surf in the north part of the river; the map has a connection to the upper-right side into another map of the countryside so everything is fine.
* I hacked emerald for this - its massive secondary tileset/blockset space allowed me to insert a bunch of cool tiles like the houses, all the farm-like tiles and the giant trees - couldn't have done all of this in FR