>>39527847With this kind of usage, you would miss absolute fuckton of items, trainers, shortcuts and some optional locations. Just look at this for example, there is shitton of content hidden everywhere in the game like this. I have yet to find a person who skips all this shit and only uses HMs for required purposes.
Meanwhile in Johto, it's absolutely okay to skip Rock Smash and Whirlpool. The latter is used mainly for Lugia and Dragon's Den (+one single TM IIRC). I don't even remember former being used outside of Burnt Tower to be honest. Maybe near Ruins of Alph for a single item.
The number of times you use HMs is what is important, not the number of them.
