I voiced my opinion about skill bloat in several threads already but, really, in my opinion a new skill or a skill specialisation should only exist when it brings something to a game, in most cases. I mean, sure, there are probably some cases when midwifery, pole vaulting or stilt walking are useful (…I guess… yeah, probably it's possible to make them relevant to a game…
) but how much would that bring to most regular games compared to applying a skill modifier to a medicine or athletic games skill? Similarly, breaking knowledge expertise and survival
of a given kind of "zone" (region/climate combination) into Region Lore (a Survival category skill that gives you knowledge in a given region…), Hostile Environment (…because knowledge of a region doesn't give you the skills to survive in it, despite it being a Survival skill and not an Academic skill…), Foraging (…because the Hostile Environment survival skills don't apparently include finding food and water…), not even mentioning both the Fauna and Flora lore (…because knowing a zone, being able to survive in its hostile environment, and being able to find food and water don't give you any knowledge of its fauna and flora…) may have some kind of balance or realistic logic but… are all of them meaningful, not to mention breaking them in as many combination of region/climate there are? I mean, it's like saying that, sure, realistically, one should break the gambling skill into poker, blackjack, tarot, belote and any gambling games, or break a computer programming skill into every and each programming language because expertise in one doesn't imply expertise in any other, but does it serve any purpose? Why do you think that, about the latter, any movie about a developer expert would gloss over it and merely have the protagonists look for an expert developer and hacker without worrying about the exact language, OS, network protocol and all? Because it doesn't bring anything to the plot!
In addition to that, skills in RM2 also suffer from not working the same way
at all: some need a roll where one adds to it the skill rank bonus, the stat bonus, the profession bonus and any additional bonus, whereas others would only add the skill rank bonus, others only the number of skill ranks, others would force a RR vs. the number of skill ranks, others would force an opposing roll vs. a skill roll, and others would have the skill rank bonus offset a penalty… and I'm probably forgetting some special cases!