[8 / 1 / 1]
Quoted By: >>57241954 >>57241999 >>57242271 >>57242418
I've been playing HeartGold (just beat the Blackthorn City gym) and while I've enjoyed the game a lot so far, I have had some problems with it.
One of the main things I play the game for is the feel and design of the region. I tend to take my sweet time just wandering around the region talking to NPCs, enjoying the vibe of the locations, walking into grass and doing everything the towns have to offer. This might get me called an autist but iirc I finished Platinum with 75-80 hours on the clock and Emerald with 120, while my HeartGold save file only has about 50 hours on it.
Which brings me to my point- Johto just feels rather.... small and the locations aren't as interesting as with other regions like Sinnoh and Hoenn. There isn't much variation in the natural landscape and terrain (Hoenn in particular does this beautifully imo with volcanic plains, sweeping oceans and lush rainforests) and some of the routes feel really small (look at routes 35, 36 and 37 at the intersection of Ecruteak, Violet and Goldenrod cities in the north-central part of the region). The way the map opened up after Ecruteak was a cool idea, but in practice having three gym leaders and 5 routes of trainers and pokemon at roughly at the same levels, combined with some rather poor level up movesets and a limited selection of pokemon made it feel like a rapid succession of events rather than a sizeable chunk of an adventure during which me and my pokemon made a bunch of progress.
Maybe I'm being a dumbass making this judgement now since I still have the league to finish and a huge postgame left to play, but right now I feel like the game kind of stole Johto's thunder as a region in its own light, possibly to make room on limited hardware for the inclusion of Kanto.
One of the main things I play the game for is the feel and design of the region. I tend to take my sweet time just wandering around the region talking to NPCs, enjoying the vibe of the locations, walking into grass and doing everything the towns have to offer. This might get me called an autist but iirc I finished Platinum with 75-80 hours on the clock and Emerald with 120, while my HeartGold save file only has about 50 hours on it.
Which brings me to my point- Johto just feels rather.... small and the locations aren't as interesting as with other regions like Sinnoh and Hoenn. There isn't much variation in the natural landscape and terrain (Hoenn in particular does this beautifully imo with volcanic plains, sweeping oceans and lush rainforests) and some of the routes feel really small (look at routes 35, 36 and 37 at the intersection of Ecruteak, Violet and Goldenrod cities in the north-central part of the region). The way the map opened up after Ecruteak was a cool idea, but in practice having three gym leaders and 5 routes of trainers and pokemon at roughly at the same levels, combined with some rather poor level up movesets and a limited selection of pokemon made it feel like a rapid succession of events rather than a sizeable chunk of an adventure during which me and my pokemon made a bunch of progress.
Maybe I'm being a dumbass making this judgement now since I still have the league to finish and a huge postgame left to play, but right now I feel like the game kind of stole Johto's thunder as a region in its own light, possibly to make room on limited hardware for the inclusion of Kanto.
