"Analyzing Alola’s Route/Dungeon Length"

Just a preface before I start this post: This will probably be pretty long. With that being said, I’m writing this post to address one of the issues that bugged me when I was playing the gen 7 games (both SM and USUM). To me, the routes and dungeons just felt a lot smaller than prior installments. When I think back to my memories playing earlier games (my first was FRLG), I remember going through long stretches of routes without towns in between. Mh Pokémon would be on the brink of death and I had to push forward for one more battle because flying back to heal meant having to walk all the way back to where I was. It felt like a real test of endurance. However, I realize I’ve definitely improved a lot as a player since then and that this perception could just be a result of nostalgia, so I wanted to see whether my claims were true or not. As a metric for route “length”, I decided to look at the number of trainers in each route in Alola and compare it to previous gens. I decided to include the optional route kahunas in my analysis even though many may skip them just for the sake of being thorough. I also didn’t include fights with rival characters since I don’t consider them part of the route per se.So with that being said, first let’s look at Alola’s routes. I used USUM data since it is considered the “definitive” version of Alola. Route 8 has the most trainers with 9 trainers (including 1 kahuna). However, some routes are chained together at a stretch without fly points or Pokecenters in between. The longest such chain is Route 11/12, with 11 trainers in total. To me, this is actually a staggeringly low total, but without context to prior gens, it’s meaningless. With respect to older regions, I’m most familiar with Kanto and Sinnoh so I looked at those regions for comparison. By far the longest chain of Kanto routes occurs from routes 13-15, with a staggering 32 trainers total. When it comes to Sinnoh, the chain of 216/217 has 18 trainers, the path from Solaceon to Veilstone has 17 trainers and the northern part of route 210 alone (the foggy area) has 13 trainers. All of these numbers are far greater than Alola’s longest stretch of continuous routes, and I’m sure even looking at Hoenn’s path from Mauville to Fortree (maybe not so much Johto) would show similar results. (I’ll get back to Kalos and Unova later).So what do these results mean? Well, it shows how the pacing of routes really has changed drastically from older regions to now. It doesn’t necessarily mean Alola has less trainers as a whole, but rather that the marathon stretches of continuous trainers without breaks have been removed and Pokecenters/fly spots have been evenly spread out between the trainers. Is this good or bad? That’s up to you. On one level, it eliminates a sense of tedium; having to walk all the way back to where you were in the route after healing is a waste of time, so extra Pokecenters and fly spots add convenience. However, for people like me, it also takes away a bit from the experience. To me, it makes the region seem much smaller and make routes feel less like trials of perseverance. It lacks that feeling of pushing through battle after battle when half your team is dead. Granted, in prior gens, you could still go back and heal, but the tedium of going all the way back to do so pushed me forward.Now, back to Kalos and Unova. While I think still a little longer than Alola’s routes, I noticed that routes in these regions really had a lot less trainers than previous regions. However, what they did have going for them is lots of dungeons. In Black and White, you have the Desert Resort with 10 trainers, the Relic Castle with 10 trainers, Chargestone Cave with 16 trainers, Twist Mountain with 12 trainers and Victory Road with 8 trainers. B2W2 removes some of these but adds Reversal Mountain and Seaward Cave. Kalos has Reflection Cave with 10 trainers, Frost Cavern with 11 trainers inside, a few other minor caves and Victory Road with a whopping 22 trainers. These dungeons are large. Even Rock Tunnel in Kanto had 15 trainers. In Alola, however, dungeons are far and few and not paced well. Diglett’s Cave (which is hardly a dungeon- it’s just a straight path without multiple floors) only has 5 trainers in USUM. And while Vast Poni Canyon and Mount Lanakila are good dungeons (16 and 13 trainers respectively), they are both placed right at the end of the game. This makes for horrible dungeon pacing, as rather than spreading them out like in other regions, you go from no dungeons to two back to back at the end of the game. And even if spread out properly, having only 2 real dungeons in a Pokémon region seems rather little.However, I’m sure there are some of you who found dungeons annoying and really liked how Alola did it, which is perfectly valid. I’m just trying to share how the pacing of routes and dungeons in Alola really is different than other gens, and why this is probably one of the reasons these games are divisive. While I still enjoyed the games, I can point to this change in structure as one of my main problems with the games. On the other hand, others may love the game for the very same reason because it eliminates some tedium. Regardless of which side of the spectrum you are on, I just wanted to discuss my findings and see what you guys thought.TLDR: Routes in Alola are definitely paced differently than early gens, with there being less stretches of continuous trainers and more stopping points in between. In addition, dungeons are pushed towards the end of the game and there are less dungeons/dungeon trainers than previous regions. These changes are probably part of the reason why some people love gen 7 a lot and others find it to be one of the worst generations. via /r/pokemon https://ift.tt/2vW8jmt