>>37071949But anon, by the time you reach Cerulean City then, one's mon can pretty much single-move OH/2HKO all wild encounters if they backtracked. It didn't get "easier" per se, but it just meant that traveling through those areas again are now less inconvenient and time-consuming.
Assuming one isn't backtracking to areas they are already over-leveled in: Seeing a Golbat, Graveler, or a Fearow every 10-20 seconds by the time you reach Victory Road with a full team of decent mons isn't a challenge of difficulty, but an opportunity to grind for more levels. And I think overworld encounters turn that into a choice you can make for yourself rather than up to chance.
>>37071770I think the majority of one's time spent traveling in the games is just grinding for levels, turning that into a choice a player can decide to do is a convenience to some extent. Especially before one gets Fly, you can now decide to just speedrun some small tasks versus grinding when running through areas where crossing grass is a requirement.
I really hope they revamp it again in the coming Gen 8 game, LGPE's encounters have a lot of issues with spacing or making their presence in the overworld unique or interesting. Dungeons need to be overhauled with more unique features and encounters catered to the location rather than random mons wondering around. Though I think this will be fixed in the next game since LGPE is just a straight-up adaptation of Yellow. A fault of the design of the source material rather than anything original.
Overall: I think overworld encounters can be a step-up for the series but with LGPE it felt like a side-step. There's a lot more that can be done to make it into something great.
