>>46314190>Pokemon is not designed to be nonlinearYou've got it wrong. Pokemon was never designed to NOT be nonlinear.
Every game up to Platinum was designed with some sort of semblance of the world "opening up" past a certain point. Pokemon as a series only got popular because kids were encouraged and ALLOWED to have different experiences with the same game.
My guess is, you have never played a game that came before SM and are under the assumption that Pokemon has always been the way that the Alola and Galar games portray it.
The fact you can do nothing but deflect with buzzwords instead of providing any semblance of an argument is further proof of this. Pokemon is conceptually sound with open world elements. You don't have to like it, but it's true. The series is at its best when the player is given enough agency to choose their battles.
