>>58777550
Why are they even called "routes"? It's fucking water.

>>58777571
>he can't walk on water
ngmi

>>58777550
they weren't thinking

>>58777550
Okay idea, god awful execution. Traveling across islands could be fun but being forced to carry a water type HM slave on your team is annoying. Every fucking tile stepped on is a wild encounter. How the fuck do people like gen 3 honestly?

>>58777571
In the Japanese games they're specifically called Sea Routes, which was also true in English RBY.

>>58777746
>use repels
>surf on the same lvl 3 zigzagoon that already knows cut and rock smash
Problem?

>>58777981
but what if i want to dive or waterfall

>>58777989
Bro, your Spheal from Shoal Cave who can use all the moves you'll realistically be using at that point in the game?

>>58777746
Doesn't help 90% of the encounters are Tentacool or wingull/pelipper. gen 3 and 4 had a lot of boring repetitive encounter rates. Im so sick of seeing geodude and zubats everywhere

>>58777994
So in other words, two of my slots are gonna be eaten up by two shitmon that will have the exact same moveset on every playthrough. This is the worst generation

>>58777550
IGN was always right

>>58777550
While I like the concept of a region divided in half between land and water the execution completely flops. Narratively you don’t need to deal with the ocean parts of Hoenn until the last quarter of the game and compared to the land routes there’s almost no variation in the ocean routes that isn’t repeated. Land Routes have stuff like the high grass jungle of Route 119, the desert of Route 111, the soot covered Route 113, etc. Yeah land routes have their generic grassy forest routes but they’re either made distinct through features or visuals or broken up from one another physically.

I can see the potential for greater variety of ocean Routes in east Hoenn with stuff like the mangroves, Pacifidlog corals (narratively) and the high currents but in case of the former two they should’ve been more present (the mangroves could’ve been a new way of including Cut for optional areas in the late game) and the latter should’ve been more focused on a single route. I think stuff like the Sea Mauville, Mt Pyre, Sky Pillar and Sealed Chamber could’ve done more to help as well. Like imagine a Route that’s a ship graveyard where treasure hunters go diving for old riches, or the Route around Sky Pillar had evidence of an ancient city dotted across the islands with some sunk into the ocean (later contextualised as Draconid in ORAS).


So I think those are the big two issues for Hoenn’s ocean, it becomes narratively important too late in-game and the routes aren’t interesting enough especially when they’re meant to be contrasted to the land routes.

Hoenn mightn’t be the best region for that sort of thing an archipelago region like Sevii or Alola would be fitting although there’s also the issue that giving Surf that early could make problems for challenge, could balance it by having few important trainers with weaknesses to Water (a problem given Team Magma) and just making the Water types early game not very good (a problem given Mudkip).

>>58777550
the only major problem are the encounter tables. the routes are well designed, distinct, have interesting puzzles, and are mostly optional. but goddamn, is it tedious running into the same 4 pokemon over and over, in an area where every single tile can trigger an encounter. they needed more diverse encounter tables, or a tall grass equivalent on the water so there was some relief from encounters. there's a reason land routes don't have grass on every single tile.

>>58777550
Filtered. The only bad sea routes were the ones east of Pacifidlog and south of Seafloor Cavern.

>>58778203
>While I like the concept of a region divided in half between land and water the execution completely flops. Narratively you don’t need to deal with the ocean parts of Hoenn until the last quarter of the game and compared to the land routes there’s almost no variation in the ocean routes that isn’t repeated. Land Routes have stuff like the high grass jungle of Route 119, the desert of Route 111, the soot covered Route 113, etc. Yeah land routes have their generic grassy forest routes but they’re either made distinct through features or visuals or broken up from one another physically.
This was gamefreak's subtle way of letting the players know who their favorite box legend was

>>58778203
>Land Routes have stuff like the high grass jungle of Route 119, the desert of Route 111, the soot covered Route 113, etc.
so overall still more variety than all the games that came after, go it

GF could so easily solve their water route problem if they just made them work exactly like land routes with patches where you can encounter Pokemon and normal water where you can't

>>58777550
They were thinking
>what if we made half the game optional

>>58777550
Everything south of Ever Grande is optional.

>>58778149
Swap out your zigzagoon. People who say they need 2 HM slaves don’t play the games, you never need more than 4 HMs at a time. In the absolute MOST extreme cases you might need 5 if you include optional ones like flash, but that includes surf which is a good move you probably want on an actual team member. You never need more than 1 HM dedicated Mon.

>>58777550
The worst thing about this is the wild Pokémon variety

Half of the game being tentacools and willguns isn't exactly enthralling