>>36075947I can't deny that it's frustratingly boring to fight Team Rocket's level 17 Pokémon when your team are in their early 30s. But we have to remember that the poor level curve is a compromise that they took in order to make the game less linear.
Once you reach Ecruteak City, the world opens up a little as you can either head through Route 38 and 39 into Olivine city and the lighthouse, clearing all the trainers there. However you can also ignore the western parts of Johto and try to beat Morty right away to unlock Surf. If you do that you'll be in Mahogany town and can clear out the Lake of Rage, Rocket HQ and gym before even stepping foot in Route 38.
Game Freak didn't want to make the levels on either path so high that it would give people trouble for going there. So their solution was the make both sides of Ecruteak the levels as if they were the first paths chosen by the player upon arriving there. It's not ideal, but if that's what it takes to make the games less linear, I'm okay with it.
>>36075961People say this a lot but I still don't understand what the problem is. The vast majority of Gen 2 Pokémon are in Johto. Some of them are rare, obscure, or otherwise hard to find in some sense. I like it that way because finding a new Pokémon feels special and exciting then. They reward exploration with Pokémon like Natu and Tyrogue. If most of your wild encounters in regular, easily accessible grass weren't Pidgey and Rattata then finding something new wouldn't be exciting, I think.
And I don't think it makes sense to be so hung up on having a small selection of new Pokémon available after becoming champion, if there were no new Pokémon in Kanto whatsoever I think people would just have complained about having zero incentive to enter the grass or stop using max repels in the second region. It would especially be pretty bad if the final dungeon in the game, unlocked after 16 badges and exploring two regions, had no interesting Pokémon in it.
