>>53168585> as with everything, balance is key. doing one thing and one thing only gets boring really, really fast. exploring, battling, story, minigames, puzzles etc. paced right, now you have some flavor in the soupDamn, like, I really really agree with what you’re sayin here, that’s why I dislike competitive even, but disagree with your conclusion. I agree that battling alone is only one pillar of pokemons gameplay, and works best in tandem with other stuff. A good Pokémon game will have a mix of battling, exploring, collecting, resource management etc as well as some side activities for downtime.
HOWEVER
Battling is the core facet, above all of these. You explore to find items and Pokémon, and you find items and Pokémon so you can use them in battles. I get that’s simplifying the appeal, obviously exploring is fun for immersion and adventurous reasons as well, but mechanically it all feeds into battling.
And that’s why I don’t get the hate for the BF, all that stuff that was just mentioned is still largely present even if it lacks the context of an adventure. You still collect Pokémon in the post game to use in the frontier, you still need to team build for the frontier, you still need to manage your resources at the frontier to purchase certain useful items and TMs. The pike also incorporates like puzzle elements and the pyramid even has some exploration to it, albeit not really as appealing. There can only be so many uniquely designed areas after all.
It’s worth noting I’ve never beaten the frontier since I’m too lazy to put together a good enough team, but the fact that I’m able to have so much fun with it even with my in-game team says so much I think,
