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Complaints: Too many encounters, Too much dialogue, especially in regards to "Sequoia telling you to continue on" and "Meeting gym leaders outside of their gyms"
Counter arguments: it's early game, how else will we introduce the story with out some amount of dialogue?
For sequoia, I thought it helped the flow of the story for you to be given a reason to continue on instead of possibly backtracking to home town agian. As for leaders, lots of people like foster being the "you should take the gym challenge" guy, and for Stella, I didn't think she'd be the type to stand around while mooks robbed from her. Also, having her involved in the fight explains why you don't face the Eronz admin in your initial encounter.
I suppose the Stella/Eronz event could be moved to after you defeat her in the gym, but I thought it'd be a nice excuse for pre gym grinding.
