>>36969269>only Kanto offers any method of straying off the path and doing Gyms out of orderThat is entirely untrue. This is only a valid complaint for gen 5 and above. Johto wasn't linear, Hoenn wasn't linear, Sinnoh barely was
> the official Doubles formats' notoriously consistent cookie cutter setups in any year other than 2014 This is bound to happen in a 20 year old franchise that power creeps. Just look at the state of Yugioh
>It's not exactly untrue that you can just level grind any low tier garbage monster to a level advanatage and solo the game Because it still needs to be beatable by 10 year olds. Go out your 100 caterpie in the battle frontier and see how well it does.
>Pokemon is a game that sets you on a single general path with enforced grinding via Trainers and enforced progression of "boss NPCs".Except that's how you play the games. The real objective of Pokemon is to "catch them all". In the Kanto games, becoming champion wasn't even mentioned until Lavender Town.
Even if the later games are linear, the point of the games is more about the character's journey. Not necessarily about "beating the game"
