>>50702763I prefer that to snow, fog, marsh, needing to haul around Bibarel and Tropius at all times as HM slaves, etc. You can use repel for Water routes. There's no way to avoid getting stuck all the time in Sinnoh.
Even the optional postgame caves like Stark Mountain and the part of Victory Road that leads to Route 224 has Stat Trainers like Marley and Buck whom you're forced to chauffer. They prevent you from freely traversing the cave since you can't use HMs when someone is following you and there's literally only one path whcih doesn't require the use of an HM.
Sure, SM had Lillie constantly interrupting you to artificially make the game more linear, but at least she played a role in the plot. Marley plays no role in the plot and neither does Mira. Buck plays a minimal role, which is basically just returning the Magma stone which he himself stole.
Sinnoh is just a fucking mess of game design and it feels like they wanted to shove every possible gimmick in the games to make it harder to complete the Dex. Honey Trees and Munchlax Factor, Feebas autism (this one is Hoenn's fault, but Sinnoh is even worse since its repeating the mistake of its predecessor), Pokeradar exclusive Pokemon, Daily Swarm exclusives, Great Marsh rotations Pokemon, 6 Pokemon per day limit on PalPark, FIVE roamers in Platinum (Kanto Birds, Cresselia, Mesprit), etc.
