>>37857765>one of the elements that define Pokemon as a seriesYou're fucking retarded bro.
The concept of Pokemon = a kid travels the world to catch creatures and train them for the league.
Nothing in that dictates random encounters, you're confusing concept and execution.
Random encounters are just an outdated trick for back when hardware didn't permit a large overworld with wild pokemon dwelling in it.
I bet before Pokemon went 3D, you also defended simplistic 2D maps in top-down view with 5 houses per city as "one of the elements that define Pokemon as a series".
