>>51463055I love HGSS but it is extremely obnoxious with its interruptions and forced shit. GSC is specifically unique as the most "sandbox" Pokemon game ever made. It really lets you loose and allows you to fail and miss things, and I think that's extremely valuable. You can literally miss HM Flash for the entire game by not doing Sprout Tower and then get stuck in Mt Silver in the postgame, you can miss the fucking Town Map. It respects player agency far more than any other Pokemon game, and HGSS did remove a lot of its soul by forcefully rooting all that out.
I'm actually currently learning event scripting, which is a bitch in the DS games, just so I can make a rom hack/patch to remove most or all of those interruptions and blockages. I'm only up to Violet City but I managed to completely delete Lyra/Ethan out of the early game, make your mom give you the Pokegear at the start (bypassing the stupid "go back to your mom" interruption), I fucking made the running shoes/town card old man tutorial optional so you can literally miss the run button, and I made sprout tower optional. No ETA and I might hit some roadblock and give up, but it's incredible how much better it already feels to me at the start.
Starting the game, being able to get your starter and fuck off immediately is wonderful.
