>>58267270Doing the bare minimum in every area in RS usually means you're only there for like 5 minutes tops. Johto has you do a few trips back and forth before you can get to Violet city where you'll be there for quite a while before heading down to Azalea, running in circles there then finally getting to Goldenrod
In Hoenn you just zoom passed Oldale, can't fuck around in Petalburg for long so you do your catching tutorial and leave immediately, then go into Petalburg Woods which itself isn't particularly interesting before you finally made it to Rustburo. If you compare the games this is what it looks like to get to the first Gym in each game
>Kanto: Pallet->Viridian->Pewter>Johto: New Bark->Cherrygrove->Violet (with lots of running around in circles between these cities due to "plot" reasons)>Hoenn: Littleroot->Oldale->Petalburg->RustburoThe pace speeds up for all 3 games by having the second Gym be in the immediate next town you visit but then tanks for Hoenn by having a shitton of filler in-between Gyms 3 and 4. Granted, this filler is fun, but Kanto's already opened up by this point as a whole and you should have access to everywhere but the ocean by now while Johto is second place offering you its fake opportunities for open exploration when really you need the first 7 Gym Badges anyway to explore the rest of Johto. It's almost good, but doesn't quite offer the same effortless experience as Kanto. Hoenn, meanwhile, is definitely the first example of the games becoming a linear theme park because you're not exploring anything, you're just zooming by until the game spirals inward into Lavaridge where you're FINALLY given some ability to explore, only for progression to still be a linear straight line all the way to Lilycove anyway
