>>38477297the game gives you surf pretty early on and if you're willing to backtrack, it rewards you in pretty much every single area of the game you've been to
it also opens up the majority of the rest of the johto map in a single fell swoop
people who blast through the game and bitch about the level curve will find this the point where the game goes to shit for them, because they're playing it in a way that renders them oblivious to the fact this is where the game encourages you to
- level up the eevee bill gave you
- catch red gyarados
- catch lapras
- find a number of trainer battles for easy exp
- have access to pretty much the entirety of wild johto pokemon, with only ice path, dragons den, whirl islands, and the latter half of dark cave still inaccessible. this is when you start dropping pokemon from your party and replacing them with new catches. if you do that, you wont be overlevelled and your new mons will catch up with the rest of the game's level curve at pretty much par
