POKEMON – INCREASING LINEARITY WITH EVERY GAME SINCE DIAMOND AND PEARL
Pokemon’s mainline series suffers from no shortage of issues right now, and a disappointing lack of challenge and extremely linear design are definitely in that list as well. Pokemon Diamond and Pearl were the peak of world and level design in the series. Sinnoh was by no means massive, but it was complex, layered, and excellently designed, and with branching and winding paths, optional areas and dungeons, and more, it made exploration a key pillar of the experience. But Pokemon is a franchise that targets, first and foremost, a younger audience, figuring that that sort of complexity wouldn’t gel with them, The Pokemon Company and Game Freak decided to streamline the experience. Each new game in the series since then has been increasingly more linear, to the point of being excessively and painfully simplistic, and that dumbing down has gone hand-in-hand with an ever-increasing lack of challenge, with Sword and Shield being the absolute nadir of the series. Thankfully, with the upcoming Pokemon Legends: Arceus, it does look like the franchise is willing to grow and change, so here’s hoping these issues will become a thing of the past not long from now.
