>>57925619I think the countryside is actually the perfect choice for the game.
There's a very overt theme about the passage of time in Gold and Silver - from the return of Team Rocket desperately clinging on to their glory days, to returning to Kanto itself and obviously Celebi being some kind of time faerie - and this theme obviously extends to the player as well.
You spend your youth - that is, Red and Blue - in the hustle and bustle of the city, but now you're older and you want to settle down, so you move on down to a more rural area.
Maybe after a while you do go back to that city you once spent all your time getting in trouble in, but it's not really the same - the places you used to go to are all closed, you aren't anybody's regular anymore, your favorite spots have become abandoned and decroded.
It's a bittersweet feeling knowing that you are physically where your youth took place and even then you can't relive it.
As much as Gold and Silver is its own thing it's also posited very strongly as a reflection on Red and Blue, one that makes you think about what Pokemon means to you and whether or not it might be time to let it go now that your best years with it are behind you.
Maybe this is me romanticizing the text of the game a little bit, who can say, but it's always been the feeling I got from playing these games.
Or ever since I became old enough to understand those feelings at any rate.
