>>53926831>you can just breeze right through 3/4 of it without even tryingif that's really how you feel then it sounds like you're only proving my initial statement correct. no shit the map doesn't seem interesting if you purposefully ignore the side content
>And any hidden object or whatever is on a slightly different path like 2 feet awaydefinitely not
haina hesert, hau'oli cemetery, ten carat hill, optional surfing locations like melemele sea and kala'e bay are more than just "a slightly different path like 2 feet away"
>the vast ocean routes in HoennHoenn's water routes can be summed up as "you can just breeze right through 3/4 of it without even trying" so i'm not sure why you're acting like this is any better. anything west of pacifidlog can be outright ingored as well as most of the trainers between lilycove, mossdeep, and sootopolis. the water routes are just big open open spaces and are only made more complex with the currents west of pacifidlog and the dive sections were are all optional minus the cave where you fight team magma/aqua. hoenn's water routes are not at all hard to traverse if you only take into account what is mandatory
>Just think back to how you could challenge certain gyms in Kanto in different ordersbeing able to do gyms out of order isn't the only thing that qualifies as exploration
also, kanto has many routes that can either be outright skipped entirely or you could "just breeze right through 3/4 of it without even trying" because there are indeed a lot of trainers that can just be skipped, especially between fuschia and ;avender town and i know tis because i went back and played Red recently. traversing kanto is not hard
>in SM, there's really only one direction to go most of the time, and that is forward. The player has very little agency or decision making here and it's sort of boring.again, only if you purposefully purposefully ignore the optional content
