Pokemon players slam decreased game difficulty as exploring towns is pointless
The Pokemon CompanyPokemon Scarlet & Violet players are frustrated with how the changes in difficulty have made the towns in the game feel pointless.
In the older Pokemon games, towns were important, as they contained the Pokemon Centers you needed for healing, the shops for buying restorative items, and the Gyms you needed to conquer to be allowed to face the Elite Four and the Champion.
The towns also added some much-needed character to the Pokemon regions. These are the places where you’d find TMs, information about Pokemon you may not have found yet, battles with the villainous team, or just get to hang out with the people who live their day-to-day lives in the Utopian Pokemon world.
Pokemon Scarlet & Violet took a different approach to the towns. While the Academy the protagonist attends is fleshed out, the towns aren’t as important, with the Pokemon Center and Mart often placed outside, so you don’t even need to enter any buildings except for the Pokemon Gym.
The Pokemon CompanyPokemon Scarlet & Violet’s lower difficulty makes towns feel pointless to fans
A user on the Pokemon Reddit created a thread outlining why they think the towns in the Switch-era Pokemon games are pointless, coming to a head in Pokemon Scarlet & Violet, where there’s almost no reason to enter them. Other users quickly agreed, discussing their problems with the changes to towns.
“This is true,” one user wrote, “Towns used to be, if you were your character, the equivalent of stumbling out of the woods out of breath, going to the Pokemon center, and takin’ a damn break after your Pokemon got healed. Then you would explore the city you were in before taking on the badge.”
“It would help the issue a lot if the towns in Scarlet and Violet weren’t just cardboard cutouts with like 1 useful NPC per town on average,” another user agreed, “Let me go inside the god damn buildings PLEASE. Have someone give me something or say something interesting PLEASE.”
“In Emerald, I was hardstuck on Juan,” a user wrote, “So I ended up exploring the rest of the region trying to find better Pokemon or TMs, and that’s where I found Pacifidlog Town and the Abandoned Ship.”
“If I hadn’t died to Juan’s Kingdra 20 times in a row I would have missed all of that, so I totally get what you mean. Although I think this also stems from a lack of optional content in general.”
Pokemon Scarlet & Violet’s open-world approach is another reason for the change to towns, as players don’t have to follow a specific route through the story. This is likely why they don’t have such a big role and have been made disposable, even if it means something fun about the world is lost in the process.
