>>41889766It isn't but its not a good thing if you need the encounters to boost the hours. The game should have more to do than just walk through route get gym badge fight "rival" walk through new route and repeat. Even then, there are barely any routes, with there only being 10. There are no places to backtrack on to discover a new area or even any backtracking at all. HMs should have been reincorporated into something like bike features. They did it with surf, except the only places to use it are route 10, a tiny segment of the slumbering weald, and the wild area. They could have made a mountain bike for rock climb, for example. They could have done some really stupid stuff like how they explained surf for both whirlpool and waterfall. They shouldnt have given you fly for free; it works much better to allow you to appreciate the scale of the world by letting you walk everywhere first and then getting the teleport function. What they did in SM was a great solution to the HM problem except they didn't exactly use them enough and the ride Pokemon were too clunky. The removal of HMs and the failure to properly revamp them was the worst thing that could have happened to Pokemon.
