>>47148059I agree with all this. Hoenn had this great balance between fantasy settings and real nature, stuff like the ash routes or the tree town. The nature theme of the story feels extremely intertwined with the locales and even with the concept of exploring and finding new animal species, it’s a degree of thematic cohesion you dont really see anywhere else in the series. Maybe GSC with its historic themes, but it still doesnt come together near as well as Hoenn.
None of this has anything to do with actual level or game design, but it’s still an important point and why I think Hoenn is so fondly remembered.
Lack of day/night is indeed a shame, have they ever said why it was absent? Time constraints?
The water encounters are indeed abysmal, I can very readily own up to that. It would’ve been fine to fill them with water pokemon from past gens just for variety’s sake.
>I'll always love Hoenn for the fact you can pretty much run around the entire map with next to no Gates/Transitions blocking your way.Yeah this is major. What’s even better is zigzagoon is probably the single best hm slave in the whole series, he can learn pretty much everything you need and his ability means carrying him nets you free items. Having surf may not be enough to make him good in battle, but it’s at least enough that he’s not fucking worthless during the campaign like most HM slaves.
I know there are gates besides just HM requirements, but the handling of that still helped a lot.
