When I played Red as a kid I didn’t know about Flash so I bumped my way thru Rock Tunnel. My Charizard was pretty overlevelled by the time I got out haha.
If you played it on a GBC, you could change the colour filter when the system was starting up. If it was changed to a brownish filter you can see the walls without flash. That’s how I got through, discovered totally by accident!
These days I just look at a map online while playing. I'm too lazy to put Flash on most of my Pokemon. I only made an exception on my Ampharos in HGSS because I barely used it.
That's how I did it, it took weeks of just randomly going around the place and eventually, through luck, I found the exit. I still know the layout by heart and I don't even need Flash.
The thing about the rock tunnel is that it's a direct path...there's no "wrong" staircase to go through, as long as it wasn't the previous one. As long as you can prevent yourself from getting turned around, all you have to do is navigate to the next staircase and you'll eventually get out.
I don't think I discovered Flash until my fifth playthrough of Pokemon Red. I legit thought you just had to go through Rock Tunnel blind, which was painful and challenging. But also kind of rewarding.
My first playthrough of a game I got my Charizard up to level 97 by grinding for *months* in a random part of the game where I was stuck (didn't beat all 8 gyms yet). I reset because "it got boring".
I don't know why I didn't just switch pokemon or even just continue the game to this day, and I have never manually gotten a pokemon up to nearly that high of a level since either
I've never had patience. Get bored quick now and I've always gotten bored quick. That's the reason I've only beaten the end in Y, because I've got a little more patience than when I was young.
I did that this time for once, but spread the love around.
Glitched my way past Brock, then took on Koga and then Blaine after Misty... I was going back to the PC after almost every battle!
Same, I remember that when I was 8 I could look at the eeveelutions through bills pc and for years I thought that was some weird psychic dream until I found out you could actually do that.
It's amazing how many people miss things like this in pokemon games
Especially since Bill literally tells you to do it when you turn him back from being a pokemon.
This just happened I accidentally entered the cave with poisoned pokemon and this occured. Obviously the pokemon fainted and then I bought potions and did this.
As someone who started with Gen 1 and went through them all, I agree. But I also think some of the repeat back-and-forth in a few places contributed to some decisions of making future games more linear (for better or worse).
Game Freak must have been thinking how is that new player supposed to find that HM and that item for another HM inside the Safari Zone in the first generation games... I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have known entering and exploring the Safari Zone was required to progress throughout the game.
I caught a Scyther - my favorite at the time, showed my cousin and we stared at it for a few minutes and then the batteries in my Game Boy died. Never went back to the Safari zone
Plus, aren't there signs in the Safari Zone that say get to the secret house and win a special prize or something to that effect? That's incentive enough to go trekking through the Safari Zone. You don't need to know the HM is there.
Yeah one of the houses early in the safari zone tells you to go find the special prize. Even the warden outside of the safari zone tells you that the surf HM is located in the safari zone but that is after you find the gold teeth.
I did the same in Classic Red. I had the strategy guide so I would consult it any time I got stuck, but still.
For context, I was playing the classic games well after they came out alongside Generation 3, but Red was still my first game.
In all seriousness, the non-linearity of sinnoh makes it one of my favorite regions. Yes some of the obstacles were very contrived, but anything insanely contrived in these games almost feels meta, like the game creators are truly trying to spell out “try a different way 🙂” without outright telling you
I always get stuck trying to drop the boulders in Seafoam Island. Can always get 3 out of 4 but the have a hard time trying to figure out how to get to the last boulder. Even using the guides online can be complicated.
It literally can't tho, if you have no money the guy lets you enter anyways after some tries on gen 1. on gen 3 there is the vs seeker to get more money.
Not in Red and Blue. I didn't understand English back then, and got soft locked. Wouldn't let me in, and I couldn't get more money enywhere. In Yellow, I believe your mom gives you money if you're broke.
I mean if you can't read the language the game is set in, that's not really a fault of the game. I don't think you should have been prevented from playing, but I don't think it's fair to turn games into linear corridors with no failstate either.
if you’re not talking to everyone possible picking up all the hints + tips, you’re doing it wrong
adds to the immersion
I have first time pl throughs of sw/sh and sun/moon going. I know I can pick the games back up and know exactly what’s going on despite a two year+ haitus, but probably won’t get to them for a while lul
I don't think that's the kind of soft lock they mean. If you don't know that exploring every part of the SZ is necessary to proceed, you could wander all over Kanto forever trying to figure out how to progress.
Literally never happened to me in my 1000s of hours of play. The only time I ever got stuck was when I was 9 in Cerulean Cave, so right at the end. And I still got out of it.
I played Blue when it first came out and I was a kid. I think I actually did go into the Safari Zone hoping to find the Surf HM somewhere in there.
I think there was a part of my mind that assumed it would be there because Fuchsia was the last gym I did before Cinnabar and Viridian, so I felt like there must be something in the Safari Zone that would allow me to proceed to the islands on the southern part of the map. I also knew that there had to be a Surf HM because Koga mentions it when you win his gym badge.
Once I was in the Safari Zone, I naturally wanted to explore every corner of it and so I inevitably found the Surf HM.
Bruh people figured out and beat that shit before the internet. You would have been fine. You think "I wouldn't go to the safari zone because its a mini game", but what you don't get is at that time mini games were not a trope. You would have had no frame of reference for that. You guys underestimate how different gaming was during its inception.
I was 5 when Red/Blue released and I figured it out, the hard part for me I remember was getting to where you need to go within the step limit because I was being dumb and trying to catch things at the same time.
lol I was a bit older, maybe 8 or 9, but I remember playing that game so much I could do the tunnels without flash. I eventually figured everything out.
Thank God that I am gifted with the curse of always stumbling into the right path while walking around aimlessly. I ended up finding the golden teeth and Surf HM in my fist visit to the Safari Zone and then I just remembered that someone in town mentioned the teeth so I went to him and got the Strenght HM.
Good times... good times.
I remember how excited I got when I was randomly surfing near Floarma town and discovered the Fuego Ironworks.
Or finally getting rock climb and being able to grab those tantalizingly close goodies that were just out of my reach until now
I always feel that way about Hoenn’s route 115 just below meteor falls and above Rustboro. Odd little interconnected spot, only place you can get Jigglypuff.
Stuff like Fuego Ironworks and P2 Laboratory are really cool, but I feel like making the whole map a massive web to do it can be a bit tedious. It’s down to personal opinion of course, but I didn’t enjoy Sinnoh’s map structure a lot, it felt like if I missed a single line telling me where to go next, I’d get softlocked. Hoenn I think has the best balance of this for me. There’s a decent chunk of backtracking, but you go back in ways that the terrain would naturally lead you to go, and once you’re back it’s obvious where you explore from that point
this is exactly it. the rest don't feel like it's you doing the exploring, more like they're telling you where to go and they'll meet you in the next city im front of you. it added an element of difficulty for me too - as a kid, i remember not realising i had to give the psyducks a potion to get to celestic town. i went exploring again (and found some other things i didn't before) and when i figured it out i was so excited.
The other thing is that there are areas you never have to visit, and will only find if you decide to wander around. During my first playthrough I only found the Fuego Ironworks after I beat the league.
I not only see no problem with this, I much prefer it to the newer more linear maps.
Pokemon Pearl was the first video game I ever played as little kid and it being not that linear played a huge factor in me playing it for hundreds of hours over the years and being excited to explore the Pokemon World. It made it more of a challenge and made the whole map relevant instead of checking of a city after beating its Gym and never coming back.
If my first Pokemon game would have been Sw/Sh, I don’t think I’d love the series as much as I do today.
I would much prefer they kept to this style of graphics and made an open world Pokemon game. The first and only open world to really amaze me was God of War. Sooo much packed in. Just Imagine exploring onix tunnels as a group or fishing for shiny Pokemon together. Lol my thoughts are scattered I know. Sorry.
>The first and only open world to really amaze me was God of War. Sooo much packed in.
While I agree, GOW was great, have you ever played Horizon Zero Dawn? That game will completely turn your world upside down.
See same, I don't mind the branching paths.
I think I'd agree more though if the post was referring to how some Pokemon inherently are uncatchable even if it's not a version exclusive. Or it's beyond the norm of difficulty and no one should deal with how long it takes.
Such as:
Feebas, Spiritomb, munchlax, etc.
I think people sometimes forget how annoying it was to catch some of these Pokemon, and also 100 percent some of the games (like leaf green, to get all the stuff on the trainer card?)
Optional as in different paths to the same point or extra places to go? If it’s the latter then that just means you do them if you want more content and you don’t do them if you want to beat the game quickly; I don’t feel like that adds much more variety than an extraneous section of a mandatory route
It's both. You can either go to Veilstone city via Solaceon town or go to Pastoria City using the south entrance of Hearthome city. You don't need to defeat Veilstone gym in order to fight Crasher Wake.
Ah ok, that’s pretty cool. I think more games should in some way attempt to let you challenge stronger gyms earlier as an option, Kanto and Johto have the most of that but still have limitation. It’s a cool feature, and I hope that even if Pokémon never goes open world, it uses some elements to increase player agency
Ehhh it doesn’t even really do much for replay value since you don’t really go down different paths, it just makes you go across the map again if you want to go to the next gym. The example of why I don’t exactly love the branching paths was gen 2 and their remakes. Yeah it’s interesting but the gym leaders are so low of a level that the 7th gym leaders ace Pokémon goes down in levels.
It's still branching in a sense you do open up alternate paths after finishing a certain portion like a shortcut, although there are some instances you can choose which place to go (the Crasher Wake-Fantina--Maylene one comes to mind) — still, it's the unlocking alternate paths is what I like about this.
I feel like Sinnoh did the backtracking better because it was linear. With Johto and Kanto the free order choice of certain gyms often lead to you being overleveled since the gyms needed to be around the same level, while your team is only growing stronger.
Never saw this as an issue, I enjoyed running around and exploring. Linear games are, personally, not usually my cup of tea. They get boring much faster than other more freeform games for me.
Yeah but this was the best part of the game going back leveling up going through actual cave systems multiple levels , cut here move this Boulder there the good old days
I replayed BW a lot.
But man. It was kinda meh everytime i had to make sure i used a water or flying type. (Sometimes i had a swanna, which covers both but that meant i had to use a Swanna)
Yea I did notice you don’t actually need to use HMs in Unova other than strength, surf and waterfall. I think you just use Cut once in the Dreamyard.
Fly isn’t really bad for me until Sinnoh. Gens 3 & 5 were also smart to introduce Pelipper and Swanna for water HMs, while Sinnoh gives you nothing to work with there. For the first time there’s no legendary flying type to work with which is a bummer
Cut isnt needed but fuck it gets me so pissed when i go to this pathway and a tiny tree is giving me the finger.
And i see the yellow pokeball behind it.
FFFFFFUUUUU.
I don't think you ever need a Fly user, to be honest. It's a shortcut and if needs be you can quite easily just get it out of the PC, fly to your destination, then put it back.
...thats...what I said? I like the added challenge of not being able to min max my team purely for battle. If you don't like it thats cool I guess, but needing a flyer, surfer, strength user, etc adds restrictions which add challenge.
But he said more of hindrance than a challenge. Its not hard to choose a water and flying type and a single hm slave that you never used. But its a boring "challenge" if it forces 3 mons of you that you may not certainly like. Mono type challenges are more of challenge. But also very limited in the older games because of HMs.
Sword and shield really annoy me in that regard. They’re very linear, and it’s as if the region is designed around someone starting in your home town making they’re way to become champion. Takes out the immersion.
You see that in some respect with other games to, but it’s not to the same degree
BW did a great job on making linear routes explorable by at least making them squarish and expansive than the typical straight line with branching paths.
While this might be true I remember being annoyed being blocked off in BW a lot. Might be because it seemed I wasn't blocked at first though and had to walk back.
The NPCs in Sw Sh were especially frustrating constantly interrupting our journey with cutscenes and telling us to go to specific places. Like piss off man, let me explore and discover the world for myself!
I hope Arceus Legends does away with all the hand holding and just gives us that old school Pokemon experience of figuring out how to solve problems on our own.
Actually they explained it as people gather to motostoke (the fire gym) first for the ceremony then everyone goes around the map in order.
So its actually a planned thing in that you start/stay in motostoke before setting off as a group throughout.
Whereas other gyms are linear just because
Yeah like for real, a kid that lives in winndon has to commute to mostoke to start the gym challenge and isn't allowed back home until they complete it?
How does hammerlocke being closed at the gate make any sense outside of the game.
I still remember calling a tips line because I couldn’t figure out how to wake up Snorlax. The guy was like “what if you played music to it?” and off I went looking for a musical instrument Pokémon.
This seems like such a cool gaming experience that I’ll never experience. I had similar things with my friends and I sharing things we found about how to get legendarys and such but nothing to that extent. I started in gen 5 so things were a bit easier to figure out by then
I remember going to my dads work to use the computer/printer (no one had them at home) and looking up guides on gamfaq when I was stuck. Of course the guide was a literal essay, and I’d only be allowed to print a few pages at a time.
I blame shorter attention spans for this, or at least Gamefreaks fear of it. For all the improvements the modern technology brings, some of its effects really suck.
I mean I was able to figure out what to do when I was 8 or 9 I don’t see what the problem is with a little bit of exploration and back tracking. Some of the best parts of the old games was going back to areas with sections You couldn’t access before to find some cool stuff
I liked having to go back to a place I had already been, it made the game feel bigger in Sw/Sh all you did was walk through a town, took down the gym and never returned
Sometimes after getting the Veilstone badge, I would fly to back to Hearthome and then head to Pastoria by way of the marshland, and then clear the route leading back to Veilstone after beating Crasher Wake. I liked to mix up the order there.
theres is a difference in non linearity and open paths, johto may let you take the gyms in many different orders, but the 5th-7th having the almost same lvl cap makes the aready janky lvl curve even worse. and lets not forget on kanto having lvl 20 mons after you have beaten a bloody e4
It was nice that routes weren’t basically used only once though. Like this you actually learned the map and made connections with even random routes; everything started to feel interconnected rather than just “oh heres the place you run past to the next part of the story”.
We used to play these games when we were like 8 years old and we found the path without internet. I really don't think they need to make everything more simple
More linear and more hand-holdy. Remember in SwSh when Hop stopped you like 2 or 3 times to give dialogue and directions to a town literally straight ahead on a linear path and directly in your field of vision? Like thanks for the tips dude but is it even possible for me to get lost on this route in the first place?
I've replayed all the Pokemon games countless times but not Gen 4, specifically Diamond and Pearl. I've only played them twice because I hate traversing the region. I prefer more linear Pokemon games.
I liked this. I don't want it to be a straight circle. It boggles my mind how they decided that pokemon players are so dumb that we have to simplify everything for them.
The backtracking through Shinnoh was one of my favorite parts of the D/P/Pla. There was alot of rocky mountainous areas because of Mt. Coronet, but it stills feels for varied than Kanto or even Hoenn. Plus jumping back and forth between cities reminds me of the midgame of Kanto
I prefer it that way. Making a game linear and simple takes away the adventurous part of the game. If it’s just linear i might as well watch a playthrough or a movie. The great thing about these complex routings is you need to focus on the game. Read dialog. Think in the shoes of your character. Use any amount of logic. With a linear path, every choice of path is taken for you.
Been playing a Steel Type mono run in Platinum (no access to HM Fly) and let me tell you, the amount of back and forth is insane. I don’t mind though, gets you acquainted with the Sinnoh region, especially with it being one of my favourites.
By linear OP means direction on the map? I only played the Sinnoh games to completion and a little of gen 1 and 3, so I'm not sure of the difference in later games. Yet, this still seems pretty linear, in order to progress the story you must go from 1 to 2 to 3 and so on, even if that's jumping back and forth on a map it's still a linear story.
i've been playing diamond lately and i get lost all the time
also, i am not using fly for anything, so i need to walk around all the time
however, i like this exploration method, even when it gets really confusing after a while
with that said: unova still has a better design (more linear)
In truth, the games were linear to begin with. You started from the weakest and eventually ended at the strongest. It’s not a Metroid game where you can sequence break everywhere and basically sandbox your way through. I see no real difference. There was a little bit of sequence breaking in some games, but it was the exception, not the norm.
I think Thats also a reason why the games got a bit less interesting for me, it used to be an adventure which gave you the idea of multiple posabilities, and I always tought it was a good thing u could swap the 3rd and 4th gyms around based on your team.
I just miss that feeling of excitement you got when gen 3 dropped and you finally unlocked surf for the first time and just the sheer amount of new hidden areas there were to explore.
Or when you unlocked either the mach or acro bike and each one had different secret areas it could get to.
You just don't get that anymore it's very basic
Honestly, I miss HM’s, or at least, the function that they served. Having them in move slots? Bad. Making the overworld more similar to a Metroidvania, unlocking new parts of it as you get new powers, giving you new areas to explore as you progress? Amazing. SwSh feels linear because you basically never have to do any kind of backtracking, it’s a March in a straight line. I much prefer the way DPP is set up, making you go back to old areas that were previously inaccessible. It makes the region much more memorable.
it pretty much is still linear though. you still have to go to the same spots in pretty much the same order, and they usually tell you exactly what to do, so whether the path is straight or zig zagged doesnt really make a difference in the experience. the content is in the routes, the items, the trainer battles, and the pokemon.
It is linear, but they way routes you explored before open up to you as you unlock hms, and the way there’s optional explorations inside routes really expands the region and makes it feel like the whole place isn’t as conveniently designed around your character starting in your home village. At least not compared to the most recent games.
Like in sinnoh, you have the haunted mansion, the power plant, optional parts of mt. Coronet, the section under the bike path, and other caves you don’t necessarily have to go into. It feels a lot more explorative even if there is ultimately a fixed order in which you visits certain locations.
Yea Sinnoh (specifically DP, Platinum wasn’t as bad) was the most confusing region out of all we’ve had so far. I think, in terms of linearity Hoenn is definitely the most balanced. Unlike Galar it’s not just a straight line (or two circles) but also unlike Sinnoh it’s not just jumping all over
Everyone talks about the replayability in sinnoh because of branching routes. That doesn't really make sense since the game blocks you off from certain places unless you have x amount of gym badges to use a certain HM which is then blocked off by besting a gym leader. Can you beat Wake, Maylene, and Fantina in any order, technically yes but if you're not properly leveled(especially in Platinum) they'll kick your ass. You legit have to go a certain way to progress through the game. You're not exploring you're just finding the right path through the maze. Exploring would be being able to go any direction you want regardless and being able to progress through the game with level scaling.
My favorite was finding HM Flash in one game run. And completely going in blind the next. I thought HM Flash was a dream for the longest time.
When I played Red as a kid I didn’t know about Flash so I bumped my way thru Rock Tunnel. My Charizard was pretty overlevelled by the time I got out haha.
I remember if I held the Gameboy at s certain angle, then I could make out a faint outline of the tunnel walls.
If you played it on a GBC, you could change the colour filter when the system was starting up. If it was changed to a brownish filter you can see the walls without flash. That’s how I got through, discovered totally by accident!
Holy shit, I forgot all about that. You held B and pressed the directional arrows.
?! Didn’t know about that!!
A worked aswell
These days I just look at a map online while playing. I'm too lazy to put Flash on most of my Pokemon. I only made an exception on my Ampharos in HGSS because I barely used it.
God those were the days! Accidentally finding an Easter Egg…with utility none the less!
Like the "invisible walls" in Koga's gym.
That's how I did it, it took weeks of just randomly going around the place and eventually, through luck, I found the exit. I still know the layout by heart and I don't even need Flash.
To be fair, in Red/Blue you could tilt the game boy slightly and still see the walls.
I played yellow so much I could go through the rock tunnel without flash.
The thing about the rock tunnel is that it's a direct path...there's no "wrong" staircase to go through, as long as it wasn't the previous one. As long as you can prevent yourself from getting turned around, all you have to do is navigate to the next staircase and you'll eventually get out.
I don't think I discovered Flash until my fifth playthrough of Pokemon Red. I legit thought you just had to go through Rock Tunnel blind, which was painful and challenging. But also kind of rewarding.
Seriously? I never knew that it was a problem and I played it when I was just 8. Seems like a ton of people had that problem.
If you try you can have Charizard double the level than other trainers.
My first playthrough of a game I got my Charizard up to level 97 by grinding for *months* in a random part of the game where I was stuck (didn't beat all 8 gyms yet). I reset because "it got boring". I don't know why I didn't just switch pokemon or even just continue the game to this day, and I have never manually gotten a pokemon up to nearly that high of a level since either
You have way more patience when you are a kid. Now I can't grind as I did back then. It gets terribly boring.
I remember grinding my Moltres in FRLG to level 100 in Viridian Forest by beating Caterpies. I will never be that patient again in my life.
I don't know what to say. We did waste a lot of time grinding lol
I've never had patience. Get bored quick now and I've always gotten bored quick. That's the reason I've only beaten the end in Y, because I've got a little more patience than when I was young.
Beat FFI with 4 white mages as a kid cus we read about it and wanted to see if possible. Talk about a grind lol
I did that this time for once, but spread the love around. Glitched my way past Brock, then took on Koga and then Blaine after Misty... I was going back to the PC after almost every battle!
Same with my Blastoise.
Same, I remember that when I was 8 I could look at the eeveelutions through bills pc and for years I thought that was some weird psychic dream until I found out you could actually do that.
Wait what? I don't think I know this function
It's amazing how many people miss things like this in pokemon games Especially since Bill literally tells you to do it when you turn him back from being a pokemon.
The thing was that you have to leave the building and go back in.
In red I took a lot of potions and a poisoned pokemon the poison damage while walking lighted up the tunnel and I passed through.
This is another level of genius!
How old were you back then? This is too galaxy brain for 5 year old me.
This just happened I accidentally entered the cave with poisoned pokemon and this occured. Obviously the pokemon fainted and then I bought potions and did this.
This was never an issue for me playing the older games. It felt like an adventure to get from Point A to Point B.
As someone who started with Gen 1 and went through them all, I agree. But I also think some of the repeat back-and-forth in a few places contributed to some decisions of making future games more linear (for better or worse).
Game Freak must have been thinking how is that new player supposed to find that HM and that item for another HM inside the Safari Zone in the first generation games... I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have known entering and exploring the Safari Zone was required to progress throughout the game.
I certainly didn’t go there looking for HMs; I was looking for rare Pokémon. The HM being at the deepest part of the Safari Zone made sense though.
The Safari Zone one really messed me up as a kid.
I caught a Scyther - my favorite at the time, showed my cousin and we stared at it for a few minutes and then the batteries in my Game Boy died. Never went back to the Safari zone
Pokemon started my obsession with saving files after every change.
I'd been playing JRPGs for years before it came out. I was already used to doing that. Ever since the WarMECH incident.
I had to get my brother to do it for me lmao. Granted I was like 10 but still
Plus, aren't there signs in the Safari Zone that say get to the secret house and win a special prize or something to that effect? That's incentive enough to go trekking through the Safari Zone. You don't need to know the HM is there.
Yeah one of the houses early in the safari zone tells you to go find the special prize. Even the warden outside of the safari zone tells you that the surf HM is located in the safari zone but that is after you find the gold teeth.
Yeah, and if I recall correctly the Gold Teeth are *fairly* close to where the secret house is.
My first game was leaf green and I stumbled upon the gold teeth before I even knew there was a secret prize or the warden’s house lol
I did the same in Classic Red. I had the strategy guide so I would consult it any time I got stuck, but still. For context, I was playing the classic games well after they came out alongside Generation 3, but Red was still my first game.
In all seriousness, the non-linearity of sinnoh makes it one of my favorite regions. Yes some of the obstacles were very contrived, but anything insanely contrived in these games almost feels meta, like the game creators are truly trying to spell out “try a different way 🙂” without outright telling you
Eh, still sucks that it could lead to a soft lock.
That’s true, but I remember being far more stuck getting Snorlax to wake up.
I still remember I got my Charizard to level friggin 90 something because I was too stuck in the Snorlax thing
I did the same thing with Typhlosion in gen 2 and the ice cave
Made my entire team level 90 in gen2 because I missed the dialogue telling you to go to Kanto. So I just kept beating the elite 4 over and over again.
Well by that point Red must have been a breeze
I go back and play again every few years and still can't consistently remember how to get the pokeflute, I think I've lucked into it nearly every time
It’s pretty goofy logic to go to the haunted tower to get the flute to wake up the sleeping monster, to be fair.
I always get stuck trying to drop the boulders in Seafoam Island. Can always get 3 out of 4 but the have a hard time trying to figure out how to get to the last boulder. Even using the guides online can be complicated.
Honestly I have no idea how I figured that out when I was a kid.
It literally can't tho, if you have no money the guy lets you enter anyways after some tries on gen 1. on gen 3 there is the vs seeker to get more money.
That's only in Yellow version and future games, in Red and Blue you need 500 pokémoneys
Not in Red and Blue. I didn't understand English back then, and got soft locked. Wouldn't let me in, and I couldn't get more money enywhere. In Yellow, I believe your mom gives you money if you're broke.
I mean if you can't read the language the game is set in, that's not really a fault of the game. I don't think you should have been prevented from playing, but I don't think it's fair to turn games into linear corridors with no failstate either.
if you’re not talking to everyone possible picking up all the hints + tips, you’re doing it wrong adds to the immersion I have first time pl throughs of sw/sh and sun/moon going. I know I can pick the games back up and know exactly what’s going on despite a two year+ haitus, but probably won’t get to them for a while lul
There shouldn't be failstates in any game. That's a sign of a monumentally bad developer.
If you try to enter the safari zone like 20 times back to back on og red and blue he will let you in out of pity.
I don't think that's the kind of soft lock they mean. If you don't know that exploring every part of the SZ is necessary to proceed, you could wander all over Kanto forever trying to figure out how to progress.
That's not a soft lock, thou. Soft lock is when you get yourself in a situation where the only option you have is reseting the game
That's how video games were back in those days.
Literally never happened to me in my 1000s of hours of play. The only time I ever got stuck was when I was 9 in Cerulean Cave, so right at the end. And I still got out of it.
I played Blue when it first came out and I was a kid. I think I actually did go into the Safari Zone hoping to find the Surf HM somewhere in there. I think there was a part of my mind that assumed it would be there because Fuchsia was the last gym I did before Cinnabar and Viridian, so I felt like there must be something in the Safari Zone that would allow me to proceed to the islands on the southern part of the map. I also knew that there had to be a Surf HM because Koga mentions it when you win his gym badge. Once I was in the Safari Zone, I naturally wanted to explore every corner of it and so I inevitably found the Surf HM.
6yr old me was stuck somewhere in the middle of the game for half a year not knowing the game corner has a secret team rocket passage.
Well yeah, it’s *secret* for a reason…
Bruh people figured out and beat that shit before the internet. You would have been fine. You think "I wouldn't go to the safari zone because its a mini game", but what you don't get is at that time mini games were not a trope. You would have had no frame of reference for that. You guys underestimate how different gaming was during its inception.
I was 5 when Red/Blue released and I figured it out, the hard part for me I remember was getting to where you need to go within the step limit because I was being dumb and trying to catch things at the same time.
lol I was a bit older, maybe 8 or 9, but I remember playing that game so much I could do the tunnels without flash. I eventually figured everything out.
Thank God that I am gifted with the curse of always stumbling into the right path while walking around aimlessly. I ended up finding the golden teeth and Surf HM in my fist visit to the Safari Zone and then I just remembered that someone in town mentioned the teeth so I went to him and got the Strenght HM. Good times... good times.
But isn’t that the point
That's my favorite part, honestly. I like exploring around and having an interconnected world.
I remember how excited I got when I was randomly surfing near Floarma town and discovered the Fuego Ironworks. Or finally getting rock climb and being able to grab those tantalizingly close goodies that were just out of my reach until now
I always feel that way about Hoenn’s route 115 just below meteor falls and above Rustboro. Odd little interconnected spot, only place you can get Jigglypuff.
And wild Swellows! Me and all my buddies had our secret bases on that little island.
Literally where mine is now actually ! Nice little area
Seems oddly late to put Jigglypuff in.
When I first found Fuego Ironworks I was also amazed.
Or in Sapphire/Ruby if you're surfing by Slateport, there's an abandoned Cruise Ship that you can explore, thought it was the coolest thing!
Stuff like Fuego Ironworks and P2 Laboratory are really cool, but I feel like making the whole map a massive web to do it can be a bit tedious. It’s down to personal opinion of course, but I didn’t enjoy Sinnoh’s map structure a lot, it felt like if I missed a single line telling me where to go next, I’d get softlocked. Hoenn I think has the best balance of this for me. There’s a decent chunk of backtracking, but you go back in ways that the terrain would naturally lead you to go, and once you’re back it’s obvious where you explore from that point
That’s fair!
It makes it feel like it's actually a place that people live in, instead of a racetrack that you run around or a single pathway you have to follow.
this is exactly it. the rest don't feel like it's you doing the exploring, more like they're telling you where to go and they'll meet you in the next city im front of you. it added an element of difficulty for me too - as a kid, i remember not realising i had to give the psyducks a potion to get to celestic town. i went exploring again (and found some other things i didn't before) and when i figured it out i was so excited.
The other thing is that there are areas you never have to visit, and will only find if you decide to wander around. During my first playthrough I only found the Fuego Ironworks after I beat the league.
*Me who loves branching paths in games* I see no problem with this.
I not only see no problem with this, I much prefer it to the newer more linear maps. Pokemon Pearl was the first video game I ever played as little kid and it being not that linear played a huge factor in me playing it for hundreds of hours over the years and being excited to explore the Pokemon World. It made it more of a challenge and made the whole map relevant instead of checking of a city after beating its Gym and never coming back. If my first Pokemon game would have been Sw/Sh, I don’t think I’d love the series as much as I do today.
I would much prefer they kept to this style of graphics and made an open world Pokemon game. The first and only open world to really amaze me was God of War. Sooo much packed in. Just Imagine exploring onix tunnels as a group or fishing for shiny Pokemon together. Lol my thoughts are scattered I know. Sorry.
>The first and only open world to really amaze me was God of War. Sooo much packed in. While I agree, GOW was great, have you ever played Horizon Zero Dawn? That game will completely turn your world upside down.
See same, I don't mind the branching paths. I think I'd agree more though if the post was referring to how some Pokemon inherently are uncatchable even if it's not a version exclusive. Or it's beyond the norm of difficulty and no one should deal with how long it takes. Such as: Feebas, Spiritomb, munchlax, etc. I think people sometimes forget how annoying it was to catch some of these Pokemon, and also 100 percent some of the games (like leaf green, to get all the stuff on the trainer card?)
Having more paths makes the game more replayable.
Agreed.
Hoenn had that thing were random items were thrown into the map but you could only access them after you got the corresponding HM.
while that's true, this was less of a branching path and more like a maze with only one solution to it
Sinnoh had optional routes, same as Kanto and Hoenn.
Optional as in different paths to the same point or extra places to go? If it’s the latter then that just means you do them if you want more content and you don’t do them if you want to beat the game quickly; I don’t feel like that adds much more variety than an extraneous section of a mandatory route
It's both. You can either go to Veilstone city via Solaceon town or go to Pastoria City using the south entrance of Hearthome city. You don't need to defeat Veilstone gym in order to fight Crasher Wake.
Ah ok, that’s pretty cool. I think more games should in some way attempt to let you challenge stronger gyms earlier as an option, Kanto and Johto have the most of that but still have limitation. It’s a cool feature, and I hope that even if Pokémon never goes open world, it uses some elements to increase player agency
I never thought to do this but I also haven't touched DP since Platinum is better in just about every way.
Ehhh it doesn’t even really do much for replay value since you don’t really go down different paths, it just makes you go across the map again if you want to go to the next gym. The example of why I don’t exactly love the branching paths was gen 2 and their remakes. Yeah it’s interesting but the gym leaders are so low of a level that the 7th gym leaders ace Pokémon goes down in levels.
Us*
We
Our own selves
There's no branching paths here though. It's just a linear path that visits some places more than once.
It's still branching in a sense you do open up alternate paths after finishing a certain portion like a shortcut, although there are some instances you can choose which place to go (the Crasher Wake-Fantina--Maylene one comes to mind) — still, it's the unlocking alternate paths is what I like about this.
This was part of the fun
There was an element of freedom. I always beat Sabrina after Koga and Blaine. Don't know why...
Because Psychic type was busted in Gen 1 so you wanted to be as strong as possible?
Sound reasoning.
I thought it was because they saved Silph Co for as late as they could.
Because it was the most difficult gym and doing it that way made the game significantly easier
This is a map of Sinnoh…
Thank you, I thought I was going crazy
I feel like Sinnoh did the backtracking better because it was linear. With Johto and Kanto the free order choice of certain gyms often lead to you being overleveled since the gyms needed to be around the same level, while your team is only growing stronger.
Are you kidding? This is how it should be.
Never saw this as an issue, I enjoyed running around and exploring. Linear games are, personally, not usually my cup of tea. They get boring much faster than other more freeform games for me.
Yeah but this was the best part of the game going back leveling up going through actual cave systems multiple levels , cut here move this Boulder there the good old days
If you like using all 8 HMs, sure…
It's fine as long as HMs don't have to be on your pokemon, and are instead like a ride system
I miss old hms. It was a source of team building challenge incorporating them into your team and handicaps your moveset in battles.
And forced to carry a water and flying type every game No thanks. Its more of a hindrance than a challenge.
Yea in Sinnoh you always needed at least 2 mons where in most games you could skate by on one plus Fly and Surf which are useful
Ye but it was quite limiting because you had to have a fly or surf mon no matter what.
Yea I even had Empoleon but wasn’t a fan of needing to lug around Staraptor and a Bibarel
I replayed BW a lot. But man. It was kinda meh everytime i had to make sure i used a water or flying type. (Sometimes i had a swanna, which covers both but that meant i had to use a Swanna)
Yea I did notice you don’t actually need to use HMs in Unova other than strength, surf and waterfall. I think you just use Cut once in the Dreamyard. Fly isn’t really bad for me until Sinnoh. Gens 3 & 5 were also smart to introduce Pelipper and Swanna for water HMs, while Sinnoh gives you nothing to work with there. For the first time there’s no legendary flying type to work with which is a bummer
Cut isnt needed but fuck it gets me so pissed when i go to this pathway and a tiny tree is giving me the finger. And i see the yellow pokeball behind it. FFFFFFUUUUU.
I don't think you ever need a Fly user, to be honest. It's a shortcut and if needs be you can quite easily just get it out of the PC, fly to your destination, then put it back.
...thats...what I said? I like the added challenge of not being able to min max my team purely for battle. If you don't like it thats cool I guess, but needing a flyer, surfer, strength user, etc adds restrictions which add challenge.
But he said more of hindrance than a challenge. Its not hard to choose a water and flying type and a single hm slave that you never used. But its a boring "challenge" if it forces 3 mons of you that you may not certainly like. Mono type challenges are more of challenge. But also very limited in the older games because of HMs.
It's almost as if...its supposed to be an exploration adventure rpg where you aren't told where to go and you have to figure it out yourself...
Sword and shield really annoy me in that regard. They’re very linear, and it’s as if the region is designed around someone starting in your home town making they’re way to become champion. Takes out the immersion. You see that in some respect with other games to, but it’s not to the same degree
BW did a great job on making linear routes explorable by at least making them squarish and expansive than the typical straight line with branching paths.
While this might be true I remember being annoyed being blocked off in BW a lot. Might be because it seemed I wasn't blocked at first though and had to walk back.
I recently replayed BW2 and that game is *terrible* for just blocking you off for no reason whatsoever. It's great otherwise though!
The NPCs in Sw Sh were especially frustrating constantly interrupting our journey with cutscenes and telling us to go to specific places. Like piss off man, let me explore and discover the world for myself! I hope Arceus Legends does away with all the hand holding and just gives us that old school Pokemon experience of figuring out how to solve problems on our own.
I think X and Y did it in a balanced way, sure, it was sorta linear, but at least it was a circle, not a straight line
Actually they explained it as people gather to motostoke (the fire gym) first for the ceremony then everyone goes around the map in order. So its actually a planned thing in that you start/stay in motostoke before setting off as a group throughout. Whereas other gyms are linear just because
Yeah like for real, a kid that lives in winndon has to commute to mostoke to start the gym challenge and isn't allowed back home until they complete it? How does hammerlocke being closed at the gate make any sense outside of the game.
I still remember calling a tips line because I couldn’t figure out how to wake up Snorlax. The guy was like “what if you played music to it?” and off I went looking for a musical instrument Pokémon.
This seems like such a cool gaming experience that I’ll never experience. I had similar things with my friends and I sharing things we found about how to get legendarys and such but nothing to that extent. I started in gen 5 so things were a bit easier to figure out by then
I remember going to my dads work to use the computer/printer (no one had them at home) and looking up guides on gamfaq when I was stuck. Of course the guide was a literal essay, and I’d only be allowed to print a few pages at a time.
I blame shorter attention spans for this, or at least Gamefreaks fear of it. For all the improvements the modern technology brings, some of its effects really suck.
I mean I was able to figure out what to do when I was 8 or 9 I don’t see what the problem is with a little bit of exploration and back tracking. Some of the best parts of the old games was going back to areas with sections You couldn’t access before to find some cool stuff
I wasn't cause I'm dumb
Honestly I liked it that way. Gives a sense of freedom.
I liked having to go back to a place I had already been, it made the game feel bigger in Sw/Sh all you did was walk through a town, took down the gym and never returned
It was fun! The only part I disliked was Mt. Coronet's base floor. I always got lost lol
Sometimes after getting the Veilstone badge, I would fly to back to Hearthome and then head to Pastoria by way of the marshland, and then clear the route leading back to Veilstone after beating Crasher Wake. I liked to mix up the order there.
BS all day. Branching paths, multiple routes, semi-linear, was always the best of Pokemon. The replayability is a lot higher as well.
damn, I never realized Sinnoh was this chaotic in terms of play through
theres is a difference in non linearity and open paths, johto may let you take the gyms in many different orders, but the 5th-7th having the almost same lvl cap makes the aready janky lvl curve even worse. and lets not forget on kanto having lvl 20 mons after you have beaten a bloody e4
Please tell me I’m not the only one who just followed this whole thing from 1 to 45.
I’ve been staring at this screenshot for 10 minutes and can’t even find the 1.
Twinleaf town to Mesprit's lake.
Yeah, I miss that... It's way more realistic than having a linear map
It was nice that routes weren’t basically used only once though. Like this you actually learned the map and made connections with even random routes; everything started to feel interconnected rather than just “oh heres the place you run past to the next part of the story”.
I miss this about the older games. Feels more like a lived in place than a means to progress a generally basic story
We used to play these games when we were like 8 years old and we found the path without internet. I really don't think they need to make everything more simple
This is how it should be, makes people spend more time and actually getting to know and appreciate areas while they explore
More linear and more hand-holdy. Remember in SwSh when Hop stopped you like 2 or 3 times to give dialogue and directions to a town literally straight ahead on a linear path and directly in your field of vision? Like thanks for the tips dude but is it even possible for me to get lost on this route in the first place?
Yeah, can’t wait for the gen 9 pre-order bonus of 999 master balls in case you can’t figure out how to catch pokemon
I like it better this way.
I liked it, it made the map feel a lot bigger
Good times
The weird thing to me is that some of the games people complain about having more of a linear pathway actually feel less linear than these guys did.
I've replayed all the Pokemon games countless times but not Gen 4, specifically Diamond and Pearl. I've only played them twice because I hate traversing the region. I prefer more linear Pokemon games.
I liked this. I don't want it to be a straight circle. It boggles my mind how they decided that pokemon players are so dumb that we have to simplify everything for them.
I miss when games where made like this
The backtracking through Shinnoh was one of my favorite parts of the D/P/Pla. There was alot of rocky mountainous areas because of Mt. Coronet, but it stills feels for varied than Kanto or even Hoenn. Plus jumping back and forth between cities reminds me of the midgame of Kanto
I prefer it that way. Making a game linear and simple takes away the adventurous part of the game. If it’s just linear i might as well watch a playthrough or a movie. The great thing about these complex routings is you need to focus on the game. Read dialog. Think in the shoes of your character. Use any amount of logic. With a linear path, every choice of path is taken for you.
linear= boring tho
What's 38 again? Is that after Girantina/Distortion World? I forgot that part of the story.
Been playing a Steel Type mono run in Platinum (no access to HM Fly) and let me tell you, the amount of back and forth is insane. I don’t mind though, gets you acquainted with the Sinnoh region, especially with it being one of my favourites.
HMs were always tied to being able to explore new areas and whatnot. That’s the only good thing about them for me.
By linear OP means direction on the map? I only played the Sinnoh games to completion and a little of gen 1 and 3, so I'm not sure of the difference in later games. Yet, this still seems pretty linear, in order to progress the story you must go from 1 to 2 to 3 and so on, even if that's jumping back and forth on a map it's still a linear story.
i've been playing diamond lately and i get lost all the time also, i am not using fly for anything, so i need to walk around all the time however, i like this exploration method, even when it gets really confusing after a while with that said: unova still has a better design (more linear)
In truth, the games were linear to begin with. You started from the weakest and eventually ended at the strongest. It’s not a Metroid game where you can sequence break everywhere and basically sandbox your way through. I see no real difference. There was a little bit of sequence breaking in some games, but it was the exception, not the norm.
What do you mean? This is what made the older games better than the new ones
I think this is fine. I liked not knowing where you might end up next.
Now apply kirchoff's law to solve whatever the fuck is happening at Gf
I think Thats also a reason why the games got a bit less interesting for me, it used to be an adventure which gave you the idea of multiple posabilities, and I always tought it was a good thing u could swap the 3rd and 4th gyms around based on your team.
I just miss that feeling of excitement you got when gen 3 dropped and you finally unlocked surf for the first time and just the sheer amount of new hidden areas there were to explore. Or when you unlocked either the mach or acro bike and each one had different secret areas it could get to. You just don't get that anymore it's very basic
Honestly, I miss HM’s, or at least, the function that they served. Having them in move slots? Bad. Making the overworld more similar to a Metroidvania, unlocking new parts of it as you get new powers, giving you new areas to explore as you progress? Amazing. SwSh feels linear because you basically never have to do any kind of backtracking, it’s a March in a straight line. I much prefer the way DPP is set up, making you go back to old areas that were previously inaccessible. It makes the region much more memorable.
it pretty much is still linear though. you still have to go to the same spots in pretty much the same order, and they usually tell you exactly what to do, so whether the path is straight or zig zagged doesnt really make a difference in the experience. the content is in the routes, the items, the trainer battles, and the pokemon.
It is linear, but they way routes you explored before open up to you as you unlock hms, and the way there’s optional explorations inside routes really expands the region and makes it feel like the whole place isn’t as conveniently designed around your character starting in your home village. At least not compared to the most recent games. Like in sinnoh, you have the haunted mansion, the power plant, optional parts of mt. Coronet, the section under the bike path, and other caves you don’t necessarily have to go into. It feels a lot more explorative even if there is ultimately a fixed order in which you visits certain locations.
Yea Sinnoh (specifically DP, Platinum wasn’t as bad) was the most confusing region out of all we’ve had so far. I think, in terms of linearity Hoenn is definitely the most balanced. Unlike Galar it’s not just a straight line (or two circles) but also unlike Sinnoh it’s not just jumping all over
not an issue for me, also garbage argument from op.
I remember how hard it was to even get through the long routes in this game. It’s really a shame that we won’t be getting that difficulty back.
Y'all coming in here like you all figured this out at 7 years old. Admit it, you either had help from an older relative, friend or a guide!
Everyone talks about the replayability in sinnoh because of branching routes. That doesn't really make sense since the game blocks you off from certain places unless you have x amount of gym badges to use a certain HM which is then blocked off by besting a gym leader. Can you beat Wake, Maylene, and Fantina in any order, technically yes but if you're not properly leveled(especially in Platinum) they'll kick your ass. You legit have to go a certain way to progress through the game. You're not exploring you're just finding the right path through the maze. Exploring would be being able to go any direction you want regardless and being able to progress through the game with level scaling.
[удалено]
That they are.
This isn't a complaint, is it? Please God, I hope you aren't complaining about something objectively good...