>>42006085Agreed, but whether it's fleshing out contests or bringing back trials and totems, there should still be a nudge towards progression with a clear end goal. Even if you want to earn all the contest ribbons, getting more ribbons should unlock new areas, and getting all of them should get you more than a handful of paintings in a museum.
Even with that though, there still isn't a need for a massive overarching save the world plot. If anything, choosing our own path works better if the evil team is relatively low stakes and is just causing problems from town to town that you have the option to deal with.
