>>56173277>>56173288It's really amazing how the fairly well paced game (despite a hiccup on the second island) is fucking murdered by the constant cutscenes interrupting you. It's so easy to be put off by them, and is basically the only complaint I hear about the game despite there being other problems because they all pale in comparison to this big clear obvious one. And the worst part is most of the time the cutscenes do fucking nothing. There's only a handful of memorable moments among all of them which means that most of them do not make economic use of the time to tell you anything useful. When the older games interrupt you it's usually for a gameplay thing or is otherwise fairly short. When BW interrupts you in Nimbassa you get an important character moment for Bianca that slowly changes her perspective over the rest of the course of the game. When SM or USUM or whatever interrupts you at the ass end of the first island for Team Skull shenanigans you see the worst directed run I've seen in a fucking video game; running, slowly turning, then running again. Holy shit it's so fucking garbage.
>>56173329Honestly, most of the game isn't even that bad for exploration. The first island has a ton of optional areas you can come back to, the third one has a couple good areas you can go to during the main game and after it finishes, and the fourth island is designed well for both the climax and post-game. On the other hand the second island is just all the worst things about the game in playable form, and as one of the longer segments of the game it really drags the experience down. It's not like the map design makes up for the linearity like RSE's segment between routes 118 and 121, it's maps that are extremely linear or side areas that don't add much of interest to the map. If it weren't for the cutscenes it would be just a low point, but unfortunately the way they constantly interrupt you at almost every step of that journey it makes it feel even worse.
