"What happened to exploring?"

I've recently been diving into a few different rom hacks for the first time and....WOW. Game freak could seriously take some pointers from the fans who are making these games.I've played every single pokemon game, despite Sword being a bit of a disappointment to me - I still played through and finished because I'm a huge fan of the franchise.That being said...wtf happened to exploring? Does anyone remember being completely and totally lost on their way to catch Heatran? Going into every single house and talking to every NPC hoping you can find a decent TM or even maybe a trade? The puzzles on your way to catch Articuno? Shit, even getting the water pale to unblock sudowoodo in Gen 2 took me ages to figure out. Sword just feels so...empty. Which is wild to me considering just how big the wild area is!How many times have you seen an area while playing this game and thought "that looks awesome!" only to be walled off by an invisible barrier...sorry cant catch anything in there.Am I alone in wanting a step back from graphics and maybe, just maybe focus more on exploration? Some of the routes in recent games have just felt so boring.My ultimate dream is a huge region with tons of caves and dungeons....all in the art style of the new links awakening game. Anyone else with any new game wishes? I'll play these games until I'm dead. But man, I would throw money at a pokemon game that was less stream lining town to town and some more options to go off on my own and explore. Sorry for the rant, and if you're in my boat I can't recommend pokemon Prism and blazed glazed enough! via /r/pokemon https://ift.tt/2GeONdS