>>41825093Yes, like four times.
The games go starting town, filler second town, striaton town with a gym and a little dreamyard exploration, railway m town with a gym, forest to Manhattan with villains, manhattan town with a gym, desert route, carnival town with a gym, bridge crossing, driftveil town with a gym and some villain battles, then a route to manage electric cave, airport town with a gym and some exploration to a tower, back through that route into twist mountain, iccirus town with a gym. Only after the seventh badge do you even remotely need to backtrack and explore places you missed. Until then it's a linear adventure on the straight path.
Gens 1 and 2 broke linearity by allowing the player to explore and get certain badges on their own pace. Gens 3 and 4 forced backtracking multiple times in the main story to explore old areas with new HMs. Gen 5 required zero backtracking until the story began to reach climax.
