@DarthNocturnal The first and the second games opened up a bit after the third gym. There were some things you could do out of order. Gen 1 compensated for that with difficult gym battles, gen 2 did the opposite. Not sure what people are talking about when they say gen 6 is more open than the other games.
@DarthNocturnal : Gens I and II had Snorlax, Sudowoodo and HM barriers. Other than that, the maps were free for exploration (with only few exceptions), at least after the first gym (in Gen I) or the third gym (in Gen II). My memory of subsequent gens isn't great so I can't vouch for them, but I seem to recall Gen III being quite similar to the first two in terms of one's freedom to progress.
The barriers in the latest games are even more ridiculous because the world appears to be free for exploring, but virtually every route is blocked in sequence so that there is only one way to progress through the game.
@sillygostly There was that one drunk dude in Viridian City.
In gen 3 you have to beat the first gym to progress, but you can skip the second gym. You need the third badge for Rock Smash. At this point you need Surf if you want to progress any further. That requires the fifth badge, but in order to challenge the fifth gym, you need the the first four badges, so you need to beat the second and fourth gym. You can skip the sixth gym. But the seventh gym is mandatory if you want to challenge the last gym.
@sillygostly I remember in R/B/Y you also couldn't get into Saffron City early on because the guards wanted a drink or something. These barriers have existed in all games.
I never noticed much difference in the linearity of any gen.
1st-4th gens actually did give you some choices on how to progress. 5th gen was when they started cracking down, forcing you to visit every gym in a particular order, and adding tons of NPC barriers to block your progress. Still nowhere near where I'd want it to be, but I'd take 1st-4th gen over 5th-7th gen any day.
Alola was pretty simple to traverse. You just progressed through each island, I don't remember any fourth wall-breaking walls.
In general though, hypersensitivity to any kind of gating is just asking for the video game part to end and Farm Simulator to begin. Unlocking new characters/abilities, progressing to new areas, customizing, and upgrading are what keep games from feeling the damn same from beginning to end. Open world games with no progression outside of player power are way more one-note than those that have more intricacies. Change is necessary.
It's not hypersensitivity. SuMo is filled with literal gates that prevent you from progressing. In past gens, you'd have maybe a third the number of gates, allowing you a lot more choice in what order you wanted to deal with objectives, and they tended to be less disruptive where they existed. Like, I don't think anyone has a problem with SuMo gating moving between islands to defeating the Kahuna, or when they gated off the diglett pass until you defeated the first three trials. But you can't even explore the entire first city you land on on the second island, as they gate off everything after the entrance... for no apparent reason?
tldr; there are gates that are appropriate and gates that aren't, and recent games have too many of the latter.
The Diglett cave was like a dungeon which then let out into the town that sets up the third island's story. First off, gating dungeons off only makes sense. But secondly, there's a particular way that you see this town if it's how you're traveling to the next big location. Plenty of Sun and Moon was shallow, but it's a very well-paced game and certain walls are a part of that.
Also, there's gating with something that feels natural to the world (like Snorlax, Sudowoodo or Strength boulders) and there's gating with random NPCs. The second feels terribly arbitrary, whatever issues these characters might have just solve themselves after you do some entirely unrelated stuff.
@Haru17 I said that gating of the diglett cave made sense, that was one of my examples of good gating
But to add in, gating things with stuff that's completely random and solves itself with no input from you, and doesn't build on the background story is definitely the worst. If something's gated as "under construction" until it's ready, that's fine. If someone blocks you until you can find them a fresh drink that's fine. If a river blocks your way until you can figure out how to get a pokemon to cross it that's fine. But If someone refuses to let you pass because they're looking for footprints or items (and yes that's a GSC reference) it's incredibly annoying. Why not let natural barriers be a thing again? With Pokerides, there's no reason not to let that happen.
I definitely agree that openness / non-linearity is the way to go - even something as open as Kanto would be quite satisfying to me. I'm often the first to defend linear games, but to me Pokemon will always be a series that benefits from a little bit of freedom. There's just something about being able to do gyms in any order, and being able to push that little further to explore for new Pokemon before doing the next gym. SuMo really took things to ridiculous levels with its linearity and story-telling - you have absolutely no choice as to what order you do things - even as to which routes you take. This really dampened the experience for me, and it seems for many others. . It felt like I was just running from A to B with no personal desire to push things forward, as I'd expect it to just lead me to another lengthy cutscene.
@Buizel I agree to a degree - I actually liked the story in SuMo but I agree it was far too restrictive and felt much too like later Final Fantasy games which were effectively movies with battles you could take part in. Games over the years have advanced to the point where you can have story AND openness.. you can have parts of a story spread around a world which work towards a plot as you collect the fragments. Heck, just have characters move to towns you're exploring as you go... as long as the "big event" is in a fixed place. why does it matter here the person telling you about it is?
As for action vs. turn based battles... NOONE has ever asked for turn based battles to disappear, this is something that studios have done on their own & then TOLD us we wanted. Square Enix genuinely thought that Bravely Default would be a huge failure because they'd told themselves that turn-based RPGs were dead.
It's much like good cartoons that go bad when a CEO demands that they add an annoying "kid character" for the audience to relate too... when all the kids want to do is pretend to be the adults. Businesses do stupid things because stupid people run them.
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I mean the level design is the biggest thing keeping Pokemon from being more open-world-2015-GOTY-omegalul-twitch-sub-cancer. The games are composed of routes which aren't tremendously well-made
compared to the other endangered linear games. In a sense the series is still working around the technical limitations of a Gameboy.
I'm not that familiar with the Pokémon games, though I played Red on GB and Silver on GBC back in the day, but I'm actually looking forward to Pokémon on Switch.
One thing that always bothered me in those early games were HMs and how they restricted you from creating the team you want. Say for instance I wished to create a team of 6 bug Pokémon, I was out of luck because I wouldn't be able to traverse the world that way.
I heard they changed this in Sun and Moon, is that correct? Is it possible in those games to create a team of say 6 water-based Pokémon and complete the game that way? Because if so, and this mechanic gets used in the next games as well, I'm definitely going to buy them.
@Yookatonic : In the Gen VII games, HMs have essentially been replaced with "rider" Pokémon that can be summoned in an instant at will. Tauros replaces both Rock Smash and the bicycle, Stoutland replaces the Item Finder (and can also be seen as a bicycle replacement), Lapras replaces Surf, Sharpedo is a faster surfer that is available later in the game and can smash boulders on water (but scares away fish in fishing spots), Charizard replaces Fly, Mudsdale allows you to traverse rocky terrain and Machamp replaces Strength.
HMs weren't really a problem in the first two generations because the pool of moves was relatively miniscule. Now, HMs are far too much of a burden and I'm glad that they're gone.
@Octane Being forced to carry around a water Pokémon is exactly what I was talking about that bothered me.
@sillygostly Thank you for the confirmation. That's exactly what I wanted. Hopefully this system will be carried over to the next generation of Pokémon games.
@Yookatonic But it does make sense doesn't it? If you want to cross a body of water, and all you have is six bug Pokemon, that would be impossible, wouldn't it?
I dunno, the games are already dumbed down enough as they are. I don't mind mind them bringing back some of the older features.
The one thing I found annoying about HMs was actually alleviated in Generation 5, and mostly Black and White 1 at that.
In Generation 5, both pairs of games (And I dont know why they changed this back in Gen 6), HMs were NOT tied to Badges. As soon as you had a HM move, go nuts with it. And at that, Waterfall and Dive were never mandatory, in fact in BW you had to go very out of your way to even find Waterfall, which meant the only mandatory ones in BW2 were Cut, Strength, and Surf.
But to add to that, in BW1, the ONLY ever time you ABSOLUTELY had to use a HM...was the use of Cut to enter the Dreamyard. Any use after that? Completely optional.
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