>>43345437It could work, but I think Crystal Clear illustrated some of the problems that would need to be addressed. In particular, it's way too easy to go to a higher level area, catch a strong Pokemon, and steamroll the next chunk of the game. Due to the way the Pokemon battle system works, it's not even really a matter of "high risk, high reward"; it's honestly pretty easy to pull off.
You could solve this with level scaling the wild Pokemon, but I've never liked that solution. It takes me right out of the world, where I think immersion is especially important for a series like this. It makes sense with Gym Leaders, who I can easily buy as having different teams for challengers of different skill levels, but it makes no sense to only encounter wild Pokemon roughly equal to your own level.
What I think would work better is if they expanded on the design philosophy of Gens 1 and 2, where the world sort of opened up to the player in chunks. So you can do the first three Gyms in any order (scaled appropriately), then the next three would become available with maybe the remaining two able to be unlocked early if you really go out of your way to explore. Optional or hidden areas could contain higher level Pokemon to grind on so that the game could still have a satisfying level curve, which was a stumbling block in Gen 2.
The only other thing is that the games do need some sort of villain to break up the monotony. That was another problem with CC. It really made me aware that, while story in Pokemon should be kept simple, I do still expect it to be there.
