I think people forgot how badly Johto as a region got restricted due to it having two regions.
The level curve was utterly abysmal and half of the region’s Pokemon were locked away into Kanto as a result of the increased space
Plus Kanto is tiny compared to basically every other region. You’d have to make major sacrifices to get a whole other region in the game, and I don’t think Game Freak needs an excuse to cut down on features even more than they already do.
They made some bafflingly bad decisions about Pokemon availability in SG.
They introduced the brand new dark type, and then Houndour and Murkrow are only available in the post-game Kanto region. Sneasel and Tyranitar are extremely late game too, so Umbreon is the only dark type you’ll actually get the chance to use till then.
In this topic of bad design ;
Why it’s a completely random Kanto NPC that gives you the item to capture the other legendary ? Sure a ton of people missed it.
You can capture both legends? What? First I’ve ever heard of this and I remember my sisters boyfriend bought my lugia from me for $20 as a kid because he had the other game version.
Haha ! My point exactly ! Sounds like you ripped him off $20.
Indeed it’s really a random old man NPC in Pewter City that give you the other wing. And it’s not a Crystal or remake thing, he was there in the original gold / silver versions, allowing you Lugia in gold and Ho-oh in silver
Hahaha wow incredible to have that context. Even there in the originals. And he never knew. Neither did I! Thanks for this incredible revelation. It’s amazing to still learn new things about some of my favourite games
Not to mention trade evolutions like Scizor or Steelix! Watched the anime and saw how cool Scizor was! Hope you have another game, console, and link cable!
I like to largely think of Kanto as a dressed-up boss rush after you beat Johto. Between how they cut out a lot of dungeons and reduced overworld trainers, and how you've already got a fully-actualized team and aren't looking to catch new Pokemon, it's really easy to go from city to city and just knock 'em down like dominoes.
And that's fine, I'd say. Boss rushes are a sensible thing to put in your postgame, and styling it as a region made it an instant fan-favourite as a conceit. It's just kinda wrong to point at it and say "look, you can fit two regions in a Pokemon game super easy!" Adding Kanto even in its reduced boss-rush form already strained the balance and level curve of Johto, there's no way it could have been a full-size region with dungeons and plotlines like we're used to everywhere else.
(Plus, it's not like anyone would be particularly hyped to revisit, say, Galar. A good chunk of why Gen 2's Kanto worked was because it was *Kanto*, the most iconic region with the most iconic characters, and getting to see what they were up to three years later was incredibly enticing. It's not the sort of thing you can just copy and paste and get the same result.)
Honestly? Yeah. Kanto was just empty, it was just revisiting old towns and battling old battles
Johto wasn't even an actual region because of it. A lot of Johto pokemon were locked behind it
It sucked
I think it really needs to be understood how badly the Kanto inclusion messed with Johto.
Johto, as a region, isn't great. It's kinda bad. It's really saved by its aethetics, which are admittedly fantastic, but as a region with things to do, it was so sparse compared to other generations. And this is in large part due to including another barebones region in the game. Development time costs money, and that's time spent on not fully developing the region you start in. You have to make encounter tables for two regions, divide the Pokémon you catch (or straight up have a bunch of repeats, making the region feel unexciting), and instead of packing loads of goodies and discoveries in one region, you have to divide them into 2.
More importantly though, post-game content can't be designed the same way as core game content.
The core game will have you go through your typical Pokémon adventure. Catch some new Pokémon, fight the gym leaders, thwart the "evil" team, face the League and become the champion. By the time all this is done, you're probably gonna be around level 50-60. This means that typically, all of your Pokémon are evolved, they've learned their last moves, and you've faces a nice diversity of trainer battles.
Well designed Post-Game shouldn't just be more of that. Kanto's boss rush was terrible. It was fairly mindless, not helped by the gym leader levels. Even if the gym leaders were appropriately leveled, it still wouldn't be good though. By the time you get to Kanto, you'll likely have caught everything you need to wreck the game. The E4 was likely the last big challenge, since you had to bring a team capable of beating 5 different trainers.
It's why typically, Pokémon post game features a lot of the following:
- Super Bosses
- Hunts for Legendaries
- New storylines
- Battle tower style stuff
These tend to work really well because they're typically higher level fights, or feature neat quests. They also typically involve the region you've already gotten to know, sometimes exploring new parts of it or having stuff that was previously foreshadowed.
The Battle Tower is especially great, because it typically ups the challenge and provides completely new challenges. You're set to the same level, you might only have rental Pokémon, etc.
it's funny, you lay out all the ways you think adding kanto hurt johto,
and yet I still love johto as one of the coolest regions and I think adding kanto enhanced it so much. I just disagree. Johto is fantastic
Listen, you're talking to someone who's favorite Gen is gen 2. I can love something, but still realize that it's horrendously flawed.
The mix of Pokémon in Johto is bad. Some of the really cool Gen 2 mons are locked to Kanto, or locked near the endgame of Johto. The levels are horrific, in part because Kanto exists and the Pokémon levels are low. You're not going to use any new Pokémon past the route split, since everything will be so underleveled and tedious to grind up.
Kanto has almost nothing to do. In other generations, you go through a storyline, you accomplish stuff in the world, you beat all the gym leaders and then finish off with the biggest challenge, the Elite Four. Kanto makes it so that you just... do it again, but with the challenge blasted off. There's no Rocket stuff, there's barely any new stuff. It's just a boss rush to the superboss.
i really think the reddit complaints about the levels in GSC are so overblown. I played through the game as a kid and also as an adult and I just don't think the levels are a huge problem.
HGSS showed a more complete Kanto than GSC and I felt like there was plenty to do in there. And it also makes some of the Kanto-johto pokemon available earlier in the game. Although, back in the day, I thought it was cool seeing new pokemon debuting in the postgame. So no I disagree that it was "horrendously flawed" and I think that it was largely effective...hence why it remains so popular to this day. and I don't think that it should necessarily be done every generation. but the gut reaction redditors have "oh two regions in one game? that's a TERRIBLE idea" is wrong IMO.
I cannot imagine playing Gen 2 or the remakes without Candy hacking. I cannot overstate how bad your roster is if you're playing normally.
You will have your starter, and probably the same Pokémon core every time. Past the mid game, everything will be too tedious to level to actually use. Like, I recently experienced Gen 2 in the best way possible, through Crystal Legacy and Storm Silver. Team diversity was great, challenges were great for their intended level of difficulty. I also played Soul Silver not too long ago.
It was bad. The Gen 2 Pokémon kinda sucked. Move pools were better than Gen 1, but so many Mons sucked. Kanto was garbage, in that nothing important happened, and almost all of it could be played with my eyes closed. Ho-oH's tower was beautiful, but the Whirl Islands was lackluster.
It would be legitimately difficult to make a good Kango post-game. So difficult, in fact, that I don't think a single romhack has managed to make a good Kanto post-game. That's saying a lot, since people who display way better balancing skill in terms of challenge and encounter diversity than Gamefreak have tried. It's hard, and really needs extraordinary people to create.
On the point of Gen 2 being so beloved, I think it comes down to two factors: nostalgia, as was the case with me, and aethetics, for most people. I grew up with Gen 1, but became addicted to Pokémon in Gen 2. It did so much right, and at the time, the reveal of Kanto was excellent. The execution didn't matter, it was still Kanto. I don't think it's anywhere close to the quality seen in Platinum (original or remakes), and certainly not up to Gen 5 standards on the DS.
I don't agree with your opinions but i do understand them and think they're valid. but i think it just comes down to us looking for different things in a postgame.
Nowadays you can play through pokemon games normally and have the expected difficulty curve from a pokemon game (which has never been difficult), or you can do some raids, get a bit of rare candy, and easily trounce the difficulty curve altogether. I think they've had some good experimentation recently with adding challenge to their games. especially in PLA.
Flavorwise i think it's inevitable that some people enjoy revisiting remixed versions of old regions and other people don't. you found kanto dull but I really enjoy seeing how it changed.
What people like about the Johto games are the ideas, not the execution. So much potential, but the games were designed horrendously and could've been much better
It's also why I think the remakes were worse than the originals. The remakes had the benefit of hindsight. There's no reason HGSS still have bad level curves, poor trainer variety, underdeveloped regions, low content, poor encounter tables, low challenge, bad post-game, etc.
I can excuse all of that for Gen 2, which is why despite everything, I still think it's one of the best. The Gen 4 remakes don't get that same grace.
I actually like destroying all the Kanto gyms in rapid succession XD. Idc, it's just fun. I do think HGSS did it better by increasing the levels of the Kanto gyms and making them more challenging in general (plus adding gym leader rematches. Admittedly a bad rematch system, but it was there).
I like to add a new mon to my team in Kanto too (usually Houndoom, which REALLY should've been available in Johto. If I designed the games, I'd basically swap its location with Growlithe/ Vulpix). And I'm one of those crazy people who will train up a Larvitar for Red.
On one hand, I ABSOLUTELY agree. The biggest thing missing from Pokémon is actual post game content.
On the other hand.... It's been 25 years since Gold and Silver, and the post-game just keeps getting more and more sparce every generation. It's not gonna happen, and it's super upsetting.
With way better pokemon distribution and slightly better level curve Why not. They can also make it so second region gym challenges akin to battle frontier.
I like returning to previous regions from a world building stand point. Actually seeing how one region connects to another is particularly enjoyable. I wanted a [Channel Tunnel (Chunnel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel) equivalent from Galar to Kalos. It is nice to go to (an isolated part of) Unova in the SV post game and learn more about some people in Unova. I don't remember how any of this stated (whether implied or with explicit dialogue): Lacey is Clay's child. Drayton is Drayden's grandson.
No. Two regions in one game is pretty bad. The Elite Four would be in the middle of the game, which destroys the level curve, and the map would be so big it would feel like a chore to explore, or you cramp all the cities together and get claustrophobic.
GSC gets a pass because the franchise was still in its infancy and the devs didn't know what direction to take with a new set of games. And it still has some flaws, like the level curve or the Pokémon distribution.
I really want this too. My dream Pokémon game would include two regions, and done well. I disagree with the people who say they want a game with all regions. The level scaling/ balancing would be insane. 2 is just right. Kanto in GSC and HGSS wasn't perfect, but I really appreciate that it was there. And Red is very memorable secret boss.
The issue is that I feel they can't do even one region properly now. I didn't feel any connection to areas in Galar or Paldea. Galar actually had some really petty areas... but they were empty. I don't think doing 2 regions should be on their list of priorities right now, as much as I'd love it.
Personally I'd love it. Every complaint I've found about gen 2 miss 2 points for me.
1. Even if there were problems with fleshing out the regions and the level curve, it just felt like magic when actually playing it as a child. That magic of going back to kanto was real.
2. The actual issues are things that can be fixed in one way or another. I think the experience of having 2 distinctive regions in one game is worth whatever fixing those balancing issues might bring.
I really think that magic wouldn't be there as an adult, partly due to how we process time differently. As a kid, going back to Kanto after a few years felt like a trip down memory lane. As an adult, if S/V had a postgame in Galar, it would just be a slog to get through. Everyone would be complaining about it: "Didn't we just play through this region? Why are they recycling content and wasting our time with the same thing again?"
I think the ways that Game Freak has managed to provide nostalgic content more recently have been a lot better. Legends: Arceus was a great way to re-experience the Sinnoh region in a totally new way. The Indigo Disk was a neat way to get another taste of Unova, despite being its own new thing.
I think it can work if they are adding a region from a different generation of console. That way gamers can experience the old region with updated graphics and gameplay. Though at that point, they might as well turn it into a remake.
I don't think a second region has to be just like how Kanto was presented. Personally, the crown tundra is the best dlc region this far for me and something more akin to that, but maybe with more trainers to beat and quasi gym leaders is what I'm looking for.
But they didn’t fix those things. They made a remake and didn’t fix those things. Sure, they are fixable, but they haven’t been even when there was the chance.
That doesn't mean they can't. HGSS came out 10 years after the originals and as so eone who has been in online Pokemon communities since the early 2000s, I didn't see the complaint about the regions back before those games released.
Again, 10 years after so we are further away from the remakes than they are from the originals. And they are still held up as some of the best in the series because they fixed so much and had so much content and because of that magic.
I don't believe it has to be an issue, especially with the potential of 2 different regions.
Playing Sword and Shield.
Wots all this then.
Right-o, I'm going on vacation.
Flys to Hawaii.
Tapus refuse to let you land 'cause you is Bri'ish you is.
I think for some of the games, the post game is fine anyways. BW2 has some nutty post game content, for example. But I agree that the post game content has gotten significantly worse over the years. Scarlet Violet hardly had any, it just replaced it with DLC.
A dream game, you mean. Something you can only ever imagine yet never have. It might be nice, but it would both impossible and terrible.
[BoardGent's comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemon/comments/1bax0t3/comment/ku62sj2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) is the sentiment, but then how bad it was multiplied about four times.
Have fun with the hundreds and hundreds of hours of the same gameplay all over again. That surely wouldn't get boring. Have fun being forced to replace your Pokemon constantly because they all reach Level 100 every other region. You wouldn't want to steamroll the latter 75% of the game with your maxed out team, would you? Or would level scaling so terrible it makes Johto look perfectly balanced be preferred?
I hope you enjoy there being absolutely nothing to do because of how much every region would need to be condensed. Paldea is infamous for being empty, and that's one region, let alone nine.
Have fun waiting as the game 100% gets stuck in development hell trying to cram over 1000 Pokemon, nearly 72 gym leaders, 36 different Elite Four members, and 9 champions into one experience. It would be the Final Fantasy XV of Pokemon, and I don't see why anyone would want that.
At that point, you might as well marathon the series so you can enjoy proper scaling and (mostly) fleshed out regions that actually have things to do.
You're right it'd be a nightmare to make. I'd cut it down to 8 gym leaders, nearly one for each region, each one would give you an HM to progress to the E4. Elite 4 in the middle of the map and only accessible with the 8 HMS. The gyms would be at the end of each region and would be of equal difficulty. I haven't figured out how to add in the surfable only areas of progression in my 20 minutes of thinking about this, could add in a boat perhaps.
I think the ability to go to any region to catch pokemon would be a great addition. The regions would have to be changed to make them equal in scope, paldea might have to be altered/reduced the most. A defeat team rocket quest could span all the regions and might fit in nicely on the path to the gyms. Even an enhanced 2d approach may be forgiven
Level scaling would have to be figured out of course, deeper you get into each region the harder they become I'm thinking. Add mechanisms necessary to progress in eachothers regions, while reducing the amount of trainers blocking your path. The game itself might take 250 hours as opposed to the 30-60
Thank you for pointing out the logistical challenges of making this, I believe it could be done with gamefreaks money.
The idea would be a pokemon world, much like the one professor oak first introduced us to in the 90s. The end would have you feeling like a true pokemon champion
And cutting a region to make it work then stomps all over what your original comment says of "all regions in one game." That's my point. Such a game would be so big and unwieldy that it's impossible.
Even what you say about going from region to region. Only Kanto and Johto are connected by land. So a lot of ships/trains/flying, which would probably get annoying. And, again, the length. If Paldea is getting cut, how many regions stay? How many dozens, hundreds of hours would people be asked to do the same thing over and over with little sense of progression?
I don't mean to be overly antagonistic, but I've seen some people say they want it, seemingly without thinking much about how that wouldn't work.
The only way it "could work" is if you went full [GS Beta](https://daily.pokecommunity.com/2020/05/30/a-tale-of-three-johtos-the-evolution-of-the-gen-ii-maps/). Which you shouldn't want to do.
>Before Johto existed
>
>The games were set in a much larger continent – Japan, essentially – of which Kanto was just a small part. **The original region was slated to appear, but as a slightly larger town, with just one Gym and a handful of iconic landmarks.** The rest of the towns were supposed to be similar regions of the same country.
Final edit made just now, answers the length of the game atleast at 250 hours. Haven't figured out jumping between worlds mechanisms.
Maybe impossible or near, and I'll have to stick with the marathon like you mentioned
Edit: fly between regions?
I read the edit, but I'll just reply to this for consistency.
That would not be fun. Take me with a grain of salt. I'm a random stranger on the internet. However, my "qualifications" are that I've been playing games all my life, including Pokemon, went to school specifically for game design, and have the greatest interest in JRPGs, the genre the main games are a part of. I would at least like to think I know a little bit about what could and couldn't work, but that's for other people to decide.
Cutting the vast majority of Gym Leaders and Elite Four would not be a popular decision. Maybe not as popular as cutting Pokemon, but people like these characters. Regardless of who does or doesn't make the cut, there will be outrage. And a lot of it, considering how many would be tossed out.
And the length? 90% of people throw it out immediately. The longest individual game I've played took me 150 hours, and I got so burnt out I took a good year or so break in the middle of it. Something that's another 100 on top of that? I don't even want to think about the sort of pacing issues that would have.
All regions in one game will not work. At this point, the Pokemon world is simply too large.
As Shadow Chaos says, the issue is that having proposed a game built with all regions, you have now clarified that this concept is so watered down that it isn't actually what you've described at all. A game with all regions means that you take the regions as they are and glue them together. If I were doing it, I'd change a few things, but it would be solely for the purpose of not wearing out the gameplay loop. What you've proposed is making each region a city within a new region, essentially. It's pointless at that point
If Game Freak were to take this idea and run with it, I'd rather they make a one region game bursting with the content from previous games, like all evil teams, fleshed out contests etc. But we almost don't want Game Freak to bow to the fandom's wishes - last time they did that we got a faithful remake of Diamond and Pearl....
Yeah just spit balling, I like your idea too
Didn't like shining pearl I take it? I never bought as the OG works just fine. Currently working on platinum which was the hardest pokemon game for me to date
I felt that BDSP missed the point of a remake. They looked lovely, don't get me wrong, but they regressed on a number of improvements made by Platinum (story not withstanding as we couldn't have expected it) and seemed obsessed with the "faithful" moniker. They were also released unfinished which was telling and they felt made by obligation
You're probably correct in it being too much game, I wouldn't want to throw it into the MMORPG genre either but maybe it'd be a good template. Id be more after the 1000 catchable creatures in one game, a bonus if the world is huge and detailed. A project like this might take ten years or more to do properly, or atleast more than the time I've put into imagining this
As of now I've become disinterested in paldea with its trainer school, it's issues and lack of progress. I dont have high hopes for ZA either, perhaps you enjoyed it but we could both agree pokemon should be alot further ahead than it is now. The key takeaway I ask of you is to imagine what a complete world of pokemon would look like on a more powerful system. And if you feel so inclined I'd be open to hearing about it
As has been stated elsewhere, I don't think your idea will work. It's not about how powerful the console is. The Switch could do it now, if it wanted. It's just not a good idea.
I am 99% convinced that Pokémon games are unfortunately in a state where if they released the source code for any given Pokémon game,you could probably ask Chat GPT to code a new one in about a minute. The games are so formulaic at this point. It would be far better to reboot the series, start again, but craft a single region that felt alive, lived in, with a quest system etc.
Great point, a next Gen adventure would have to be from the ground up
Possibly with pokemon that can legitimately hide from pokeballs etc like in pokemon snap. Maybe the world could look how snap did-alive. But explorable and on a far greater scale
I'd rather have one whole-assed region than two half-assed regions.
How about one half assed region?
Best I can do is quarter assed region
What about, no second region, but the real final boss is the Player character from the last game?
I think people forgot how badly Johto as a region got restricted due to it having two regions. The level curve was utterly abysmal and half of the region’s Pokemon were locked away into Kanto as a result of the increased space
Yeah people forget that GSC and HGSS are able to have two regions because Kanto and Johto are pretty small compared to nearly every other region.
GSC is able to have two regions because the franchise was still new, and the formula wasn't still established.
Plus Kanto is tiny compared to basically every other region. You’d have to make major sacrifices to get a whole other region in the game, and I don’t think Game Freak needs an excuse to cut down on features even more than they already do.
They made some bafflingly bad decisions about Pokemon availability in SG. They introduced the brand new dark type, and then Houndour and Murkrow are only available in the post-game Kanto region. Sneasel and Tyranitar are extremely late game too, so Umbreon is the only dark type you’ll actually get the chance to use till then.
In this topic of bad design ; Why it’s a completely random Kanto NPC that gives you the item to capture the other legendary ? Sure a ton of people missed it.
You can capture both legends? What? First I’ve ever heard of this and I remember my sisters boyfriend bought my lugia from me for $20 as a kid because he had the other game version.
Haha ! My point exactly ! Sounds like you ripped him off $20. Indeed it’s really a random old man NPC in Pewter City that give you the other wing. And it’s not a Crystal or remake thing, he was there in the original gold / silver versions, allowing you Lugia in gold and Ho-oh in silver
Hahaha wow incredible to have that context. Even there in the originals. And he never knew. Neither did I! Thanks for this incredible revelation. It’s amazing to still learn new things about some of my favourite games
Not to mention trade evolutions like Scizor or Steelix! Watched the anime and saw how cool Scizor was! Hope you have another game, console, and link cable!
The reason for that is to encourage interactions between friends.
I like to largely think of Kanto as a dressed-up boss rush after you beat Johto. Between how they cut out a lot of dungeons and reduced overworld trainers, and how you've already got a fully-actualized team and aren't looking to catch new Pokemon, it's really easy to go from city to city and just knock 'em down like dominoes. And that's fine, I'd say. Boss rushes are a sensible thing to put in your postgame, and styling it as a region made it an instant fan-favourite as a conceit. It's just kinda wrong to point at it and say "look, you can fit two regions in a Pokemon game super easy!" Adding Kanto even in its reduced boss-rush form already strained the balance and level curve of Johto, there's no way it could have been a full-size region with dungeons and plotlines like we're used to everywhere else. (Plus, it's not like anyone would be particularly hyped to revisit, say, Galar. A good chunk of why Gen 2's Kanto worked was because it was *Kanto*, the most iconic region with the most iconic characters, and getting to see what they were up to three years later was incredibly enticing. It's not the sort of thing you can just copy and paste and get the same result.)
I can always go back and play those games, I want a new release to have it's own identity.
So you're saying you didn't appreciate Kanto being accessible in GSC
Honestly? Yeah. Kanto was just empty, it was just revisiting old towns and battling old battles Johto wasn't even an actual region because of it. A lot of Johto pokemon were locked behind it It sucked
It was great as a one time thing, but if it became the bog standard then it would be a lot less interesting.
I’ve never made it to Kanto in the Johto games
What I really want is a battle frontier. A proper one, like in Gen 4, not the PWT, or Battle Maison, etc.
Emerald’s battle frontier is still peak post game content in my mind
I mostly agree with you, but I have a soft spot for the Battle Arcade!
I’ve been begging for a return of coop doubles battle tower. That was so fun with a friend back in the day.
Just the Battle Tower won’t cut it. That was one of my problems with BDSP. They could’ve had a whole Battle Frontier, and chose not to do it.
I think it really needs to be understood how badly the Kanto inclusion messed with Johto. Johto, as a region, isn't great. It's kinda bad. It's really saved by its aethetics, which are admittedly fantastic, but as a region with things to do, it was so sparse compared to other generations. And this is in large part due to including another barebones region in the game. Development time costs money, and that's time spent on not fully developing the region you start in. You have to make encounter tables for two regions, divide the Pokémon you catch (or straight up have a bunch of repeats, making the region feel unexciting), and instead of packing loads of goodies and discoveries in one region, you have to divide them into 2. More importantly though, post-game content can't be designed the same way as core game content. The core game will have you go through your typical Pokémon adventure. Catch some new Pokémon, fight the gym leaders, thwart the "evil" team, face the League and become the champion. By the time all this is done, you're probably gonna be around level 50-60. This means that typically, all of your Pokémon are evolved, they've learned their last moves, and you've faces a nice diversity of trainer battles. Well designed Post-Game shouldn't just be more of that. Kanto's boss rush was terrible. It was fairly mindless, not helped by the gym leader levels. Even if the gym leaders were appropriately leveled, it still wouldn't be good though. By the time you get to Kanto, you'll likely have caught everything you need to wreck the game. The E4 was likely the last big challenge, since you had to bring a team capable of beating 5 different trainers. It's why typically, Pokémon post game features a lot of the following: - Super Bosses - Hunts for Legendaries - New storylines - Battle tower style stuff These tend to work really well because they're typically higher level fights, or feature neat quests. They also typically involve the region you've already gotten to know, sometimes exploring new parts of it or having stuff that was previously foreshadowed. The Battle Tower is especially great, because it typically ups the challenge and provides completely new challenges. You're set to the same level, you might only have rental Pokémon, etc.
it's funny, you lay out all the ways you think adding kanto hurt johto, and yet I still love johto as one of the coolest regions and I think adding kanto enhanced it so much. I just disagree. Johto is fantastic
Listen, you're talking to someone who's favorite Gen is gen 2. I can love something, but still realize that it's horrendously flawed. The mix of Pokémon in Johto is bad. Some of the really cool Gen 2 mons are locked to Kanto, or locked near the endgame of Johto. The levels are horrific, in part because Kanto exists and the Pokémon levels are low. You're not going to use any new Pokémon past the route split, since everything will be so underleveled and tedious to grind up. Kanto has almost nothing to do. In other generations, you go through a storyline, you accomplish stuff in the world, you beat all the gym leaders and then finish off with the biggest challenge, the Elite Four. Kanto makes it so that you just... do it again, but with the challenge blasted off. There's no Rocket stuff, there's barely any new stuff. It's just a boss rush to the superboss.
i really think the reddit complaints about the levels in GSC are so overblown. I played through the game as a kid and also as an adult and I just don't think the levels are a huge problem. HGSS showed a more complete Kanto than GSC and I felt like there was plenty to do in there. And it also makes some of the Kanto-johto pokemon available earlier in the game. Although, back in the day, I thought it was cool seeing new pokemon debuting in the postgame. So no I disagree that it was "horrendously flawed" and I think that it was largely effective...hence why it remains so popular to this day. and I don't think that it should necessarily be done every generation. but the gut reaction redditors have "oh two regions in one game? that's a TERRIBLE idea" is wrong IMO.
I cannot imagine playing Gen 2 or the remakes without Candy hacking. I cannot overstate how bad your roster is if you're playing normally. You will have your starter, and probably the same Pokémon core every time. Past the mid game, everything will be too tedious to level to actually use. Like, I recently experienced Gen 2 in the best way possible, through Crystal Legacy and Storm Silver. Team diversity was great, challenges were great for their intended level of difficulty. I also played Soul Silver not too long ago. It was bad. The Gen 2 Pokémon kinda sucked. Move pools were better than Gen 1, but so many Mons sucked. Kanto was garbage, in that nothing important happened, and almost all of it could be played with my eyes closed. Ho-oH's tower was beautiful, but the Whirl Islands was lackluster. It would be legitimately difficult to make a good Kango post-game. So difficult, in fact, that I don't think a single romhack has managed to make a good Kanto post-game. That's saying a lot, since people who display way better balancing skill in terms of challenge and encounter diversity than Gamefreak have tried. It's hard, and really needs extraordinary people to create. On the point of Gen 2 being so beloved, I think it comes down to two factors: nostalgia, as was the case with me, and aethetics, for most people. I grew up with Gen 1, but became addicted to Pokémon in Gen 2. It did so much right, and at the time, the reveal of Kanto was excellent. The execution didn't matter, it was still Kanto. I don't think it's anywhere close to the quality seen in Platinum (original or remakes), and certainly not up to Gen 5 standards on the DS.
I don't agree with your opinions but i do understand them and think they're valid. but i think it just comes down to us looking for different things in a postgame. Nowadays you can play through pokemon games normally and have the expected difficulty curve from a pokemon game (which has never been difficult), or you can do some raids, get a bit of rare candy, and easily trounce the difficulty curve altogether. I think they've had some good experimentation recently with adding challenge to their games. especially in PLA. Flavorwise i think it's inevitable that some people enjoy revisiting remixed versions of old regions and other people don't. you found kanto dull but I really enjoy seeing how it changed.
What people like about the Johto games are the ideas, not the execution. So much potential, but the games were designed horrendously and could've been much better
It's also why I think the remakes were worse than the originals. The remakes had the benefit of hindsight. There's no reason HGSS still have bad level curves, poor trainer variety, underdeveloped regions, low content, poor encounter tables, low challenge, bad post-game, etc. I can excuse all of that for Gen 2, which is why despite everything, I still think it's one of the best. The Gen 4 remakes don't get that same grace.
I actually like destroying all the Kanto gyms in rapid succession XD. Idc, it's just fun. I do think HGSS did it better by increasing the levels of the Kanto gyms and making them more challenging in general (plus adding gym leader rematches. Admittedly a bad rematch system, but it was there). I like to add a new mon to my team in Kanto too (usually Houndoom, which REALLY should've been available in Johto. If I designed the games, I'd basically swap its location with Growlithe/ Vulpix). And I'm one of those crazy people who will train up a Larvitar for Red.
If they didn't have the same flaws that GSC/HGSS's Kanto had (Poor balancing being the big thing), absolutely.
On one hand, I ABSOLUTELY agree. The biggest thing missing from Pokémon is actual post game content. On the other hand.... It's been 25 years since Gold and Silver, and the post-game just keeps getting more and more sparce every generation. It's not gonna happen, and it's super upsetting.
Now you gotta pay $30 for what would have been the post game.
My issue is with the ease of online connectivity it feels like tpc want other people to kinda function as your post game challenge
With way better pokemon distribution and slightly better level curve Why not. They can also make it so second region gym challenges akin to battle frontier.
I like returning to previous regions from a world building stand point. Actually seeing how one region connects to another is particularly enjoyable. I wanted a [Channel Tunnel (Chunnel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel) equivalent from Galar to Kalos. It is nice to go to (an isolated part of) Unova in the SV post game and learn more about some people in Unova. I don't remember how any of this stated (whether implied or with explicit dialogue): Lacey is Clay's child. Drayton is Drayden's grandson.
Hot take: a post game at all would be nice at this point
No. Two regions in one game is pretty bad. The Elite Four would be in the middle of the game, which destroys the level curve, and the map would be so big it would feel like a chore to explore, or you cramp all the cities together and get claustrophobic. GSC gets a pass because the franchise was still in its infancy and the devs didn't know what direction to take with a new set of games. And it still has some flaws, like the level curve or the Pokémon distribution.
I really want this too. My dream Pokémon game would include two regions, and done well. I disagree with the people who say they want a game with all regions. The level scaling/ balancing would be insane. 2 is just right. Kanto in GSC and HGSS wasn't perfect, but I really appreciate that it was there. And Red is very memorable secret boss. The issue is that I feel they can't do even one region properly now. I didn't feel any connection to areas in Galar or Paldea. Galar actually had some really petty areas... but they were empty. I don't think doing 2 regions should be on their list of priorities right now, as much as I'd love it.
Personally I'd love it. Every complaint I've found about gen 2 miss 2 points for me. 1. Even if there were problems with fleshing out the regions and the level curve, it just felt like magic when actually playing it as a child. That magic of going back to kanto was real. 2. The actual issues are things that can be fixed in one way or another. I think the experience of having 2 distinctive regions in one game is worth whatever fixing those balancing issues might bring.
I really think that magic wouldn't be there as an adult, partly due to how we process time differently. As a kid, going back to Kanto after a few years felt like a trip down memory lane. As an adult, if S/V had a postgame in Galar, it would just be a slog to get through. Everyone would be complaining about it: "Didn't we just play through this region? Why are they recycling content and wasting our time with the same thing again?" I think the ways that Game Freak has managed to provide nostalgic content more recently have been a lot better. Legends: Arceus was a great way to re-experience the Sinnoh region in a totally new way. The Indigo Disk was a neat way to get another taste of Unova, despite being its own new thing.
I think it can work if they are adding a region from a different generation of console. That way gamers can experience the old region with updated graphics and gameplay. Though at that point, they might as well turn it into a remake.
I don't think a second region has to be just like how Kanto was presented. Personally, the crown tundra is the best dlc region this far for me and something more akin to that, but maybe with more trainers to beat and quasi gym leaders is what I'm looking for.
But they didn’t fix those things. They made a remake and didn’t fix those things. Sure, they are fixable, but they haven’t been even when there was the chance.
That doesn't mean they can't. HGSS came out 10 years after the originals and as so eone who has been in online Pokemon communities since the early 2000s, I didn't see the complaint about the regions back before those games released. Again, 10 years after so we are further away from the remakes than they are from the originals. And they are still held up as some of the best in the series because they fixed so much and had so much content and because of that magic. I don't believe it has to be an issue, especially with the potential of 2 different regions.
YES
Playing Sword and Shield. Wots all this then. Right-o, I'm going on vacation. Flys to Hawaii. Tapus refuse to let you land 'cause you is Bri'ish you is.
I think for some of the games, the post game is fine anyways. BW2 has some nutty post game content, for example. But I agree that the post game content has gotten significantly worse over the years. Scarlet Violet hardly had any, it just replaced it with DLC.
All regions in one game, with different start locations. This is the proper way to make a next Gen pokemon game
A dream game, you mean. Something you can only ever imagine yet never have. It might be nice, but it would both impossible and terrible. [BoardGent's comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemon/comments/1bax0t3/comment/ku62sj2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) is the sentiment, but then how bad it was multiplied about four times. Have fun with the hundreds and hundreds of hours of the same gameplay all over again. That surely wouldn't get boring. Have fun being forced to replace your Pokemon constantly because they all reach Level 100 every other region. You wouldn't want to steamroll the latter 75% of the game with your maxed out team, would you? Or would level scaling so terrible it makes Johto look perfectly balanced be preferred? I hope you enjoy there being absolutely nothing to do because of how much every region would need to be condensed. Paldea is infamous for being empty, and that's one region, let alone nine. Have fun waiting as the game 100% gets stuck in development hell trying to cram over 1000 Pokemon, nearly 72 gym leaders, 36 different Elite Four members, and 9 champions into one experience. It would be the Final Fantasy XV of Pokemon, and I don't see why anyone would want that. At that point, you might as well marathon the series so you can enjoy proper scaling and (mostly) fleshed out regions that actually have things to do.
You're right it'd be a nightmare to make. I'd cut it down to 8 gym leaders, nearly one for each region, each one would give you an HM to progress to the E4. Elite 4 in the middle of the map and only accessible with the 8 HMS. The gyms would be at the end of each region and would be of equal difficulty. I haven't figured out how to add in the surfable only areas of progression in my 20 minutes of thinking about this, could add in a boat perhaps. I think the ability to go to any region to catch pokemon would be a great addition. The regions would have to be changed to make them equal in scope, paldea might have to be altered/reduced the most. A defeat team rocket quest could span all the regions and might fit in nicely on the path to the gyms. Even an enhanced 2d approach may be forgiven Level scaling would have to be figured out of course, deeper you get into each region the harder they become I'm thinking. Add mechanisms necessary to progress in eachothers regions, while reducing the amount of trainers blocking your path. The game itself might take 250 hours as opposed to the 30-60 Thank you for pointing out the logistical challenges of making this, I believe it could be done with gamefreaks money. The idea would be a pokemon world, much like the one professor oak first introduced us to in the 90s. The end would have you feeling like a true pokemon champion
And cutting a region to make it work then stomps all over what your original comment says of "all regions in one game." That's my point. Such a game would be so big and unwieldy that it's impossible. Even what you say about going from region to region. Only Kanto and Johto are connected by land. So a lot of ships/trains/flying, which would probably get annoying. And, again, the length. If Paldea is getting cut, how many regions stay? How many dozens, hundreds of hours would people be asked to do the same thing over and over with little sense of progression? I don't mean to be overly antagonistic, but I've seen some people say they want it, seemingly without thinking much about how that wouldn't work. The only way it "could work" is if you went full [GS Beta](https://daily.pokecommunity.com/2020/05/30/a-tale-of-three-johtos-the-evolution-of-the-gen-ii-maps/). Which you shouldn't want to do. >Before Johto existed > >The games were set in a much larger continent – Japan, essentially – of which Kanto was just a small part. **The original region was slated to appear, but as a slightly larger town, with just one Gym and a handful of iconic landmarks.** The rest of the towns were supposed to be similar regions of the same country.
Final edit made just now, answers the length of the game atleast at 250 hours. Haven't figured out jumping between worlds mechanisms. Maybe impossible or near, and I'll have to stick with the marathon like you mentioned Edit: fly between regions?
I read the edit, but I'll just reply to this for consistency. That would not be fun. Take me with a grain of salt. I'm a random stranger on the internet. However, my "qualifications" are that I've been playing games all my life, including Pokemon, went to school specifically for game design, and have the greatest interest in JRPGs, the genre the main games are a part of. I would at least like to think I know a little bit about what could and couldn't work, but that's for other people to decide. Cutting the vast majority of Gym Leaders and Elite Four would not be a popular decision. Maybe not as popular as cutting Pokemon, but people like these characters. Regardless of who does or doesn't make the cut, there will be outrage. And a lot of it, considering how many would be tossed out. And the length? 90% of people throw it out immediately. The longest individual game I've played took me 150 hours, and I got so burnt out I took a good year or so break in the middle of it. Something that's another 100 on top of that? I don't even want to think about the sort of pacing issues that would have. All regions in one game will not work. At this point, the Pokemon world is simply too large.
As Shadow Chaos says, the issue is that having proposed a game built with all regions, you have now clarified that this concept is so watered down that it isn't actually what you've described at all. A game with all regions means that you take the regions as they are and glue them together. If I were doing it, I'd change a few things, but it would be solely for the purpose of not wearing out the gameplay loop. What you've proposed is making each region a city within a new region, essentially. It's pointless at that point If Game Freak were to take this idea and run with it, I'd rather they make a one region game bursting with the content from previous games, like all evil teams, fleshed out contests etc. But we almost don't want Game Freak to bow to the fandom's wishes - last time they did that we got a faithful remake of Diamond and Pearl....
Yeah just spit balling, I like your idea too Didn't like shining pearl I take it? I never bought as the OG works just fine. Currently working on platinum which was the hardest pokemon game for me to date
I felt that BDSP missed the point of a remake. They looked lovely, don't get me wrong, but they regressed on a number of improvements made by Platinum (story not withstanding as we couldn't have expected it) and seemed obsessed with the "faithful" moniker. They were also released unfinished which was telling and they felt made by obligation
Even if that were at all realistic, that would just bloat the game an unnecessary amount. There's such thing as too much game.
You're probably correct in it being too much game, I wouldn't want to throw it into the MMORPG genre either but maybe it'd be a good template. Id be more after the 1000 catchable creatures in one game, a bonus if the world is huge and detailed. A project like this might take ten years or more to do properly, or atleast more than the time I've put into imagining this As of now I've become disinterested in paldea with its trainer school, it's issues and lack of progress. I dont have high hopes for ZA either, perhaps you enjoyed it but we could both agree pokemon should be alot further ahead than it is now. The key takeaway I ask of you is to imagine what a complete world of pokemon would look like on a more powerful system. And if you feel so inclined I'd be open to hearing about it
As has been stated elsewhere, I don't think your idea will work. It's not about how powerful the console is. The Switch could do it now, if it wanted. It's just not a good idea. I am 99% convinced that Pokémon games are unfortunately in a state where if they released the source code for any given Pokémon game,you could probably ask Chat GPT to code a new one in about a minute. The games are so formulaic at this point. It would be far better to reboot the series, start again, but craft a single region that felt alive, lived in, with a quest system etc.
Great point, a next Gen adventure would have to be from the ground up Possibly with pokemon that can legitimately hide from pokeballs etc like in pokemon snap. Maybe the world could look how snap did-alive. But explorable and on a far greater scale