>>53245133>Why do people split it like this?OP's way of splitting it seems largely accurate, at least if your point of contention is specifically Gens 3/4 being included.
Stuff in the top portion like backtracking to get to the League is more specific to Gen 1/2, certainly, but Gen 3 has you backtracking to get to the 5th Gym. Gen 4 has you criss-crossing and backtracking a lot, where the 6th gym is near your hometown and the league is past the route near the 4th gym.
Gen 1's only one-way route is pretty much just Route 3/4, where you can't get back after going through Mt. Moon. Gen 2 does it with Route 45 and Dark Cave, while Hoenn does it with Route 123, and Route 132-134. Those are after you get Fly though and are also largely optional. Sinnoh doesn't have a one-way route from what I can recall though.
All four have plenty of dungeons peppered about, and plenty of those are optional.
Unless of course you're arguing that splitting it between the concepts of 'sprawling' versus 'linear' itself is somehow an incorrect way to categorize things, but I think the similarities are pretty evident at a glance.
