>>54502258Adding onto this point, even outside of the dogshit encounter design, the map design itself is fucking awful. Kanto had simplistic routes, but the game was still exciting because of the non-linearity of the whole game and the interesting puzzles in the more complex indoor maps. Hoenn was more linear, but the game was still exciting because many of the maps have completely unique gimmicks and puzzles. Platinum is the worst of both worlds. It's even more linear than Hoenn, yet the route design is incredibly simplistic, having virtually no puzzles even in the indoor areas, and practically all the maps have no gameplay except "click A in front of HM obstacle". The region is themed around snow and ice yet the only ice based p uzzle in the ENTIRE game is the small one in Regigigas' temple, which isn't even relevant unless you bought RSE. Again, Mount Coronet is eight floors, why do NONE of those floors have any engaging puzzles or any gameplay outside of walking and clicking A in front of boulders? Gen 1 already did this correctly with the Seafoam Islands, by having a unique multifloored puzzle, by filling it with unique encounters so you don't feel the need to constantly spam Repels, and not pointlessly padding it out with empty floors with no gameplay except walking. The maps are far too reliant on HMs only for none of the HMs to be engaging to use. Dive, which added another layer of exploration in the previous generation which led to completely unique maps with new Pokemon, is replaced with Defog, which is just Flash but more obnoxious by causing battles to slow down even harder if you don't use it, THEN THEY KEPT FLASH IN THE GAME ANYWAY, resulting in the game effectively having N I N E HMs. And they do virtually nothing interesting with these HMs the entire game.
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