>>15745128Probably because there was more to do in those games than just mash through gyms.
Pokemon games are naturally linear, but they just made it blatant with Kalos. Perhaps it's also an illusion because the tiny in-game models in the previous gens made the world seem so massive and less linear that it was.
But really, why did they make such a simple route map compared to what we had in previous gens? Gen 3 is the only one I have atm, but even Gen 1 was nice just because of how we're snaking around Sabrina's city (I seriously forgot the name) for the majority of the game.
