viewtiful_dru
Member
Yeah I meant to post about this here sooner but it is kind of crazy how much the game opens up after Rock Tunnel.
Yes, you do have to at least complete Lavender Tower to get the Poke Flute first but you can approach it however you want. You can go to the Rocket Hideout and get the Silph Scope or you can use the PokeDoll exploit (which doesn't work in the remakes). Or you can fight Erika first and then get the Silph Scope, go back to Lavender Town (on foot or if you know where Fly is grab that and fly back). Or you can save fighting Erika for later (for whatever reason) get a ton of extra EXP via fighting trainers on the way to Fuchsia (sp?).
Or you can go to Saffron City after clearing Lavender Tower and go straight for the Dojo. So on and so on.
You can literally fight all the last three gyms out of order (Viridian's always gotta be last). And the only reason you'd want to do that is to change up a playthrough.
The other games have it laid out where the gym you need to beat just so happens to block you from using a certain HM which you need to progress to the next area. In these games, there is some of that but having most of the areas you traverse not require any HMs to move forward prevents the player from being blocked from exploring the region out of the intended order.
Another way the newer games block progress is by certain events having to be triggered to allow you to move forward. For instance, in Gen 1 games the moment you clear the Game Corner hideout and Lavender Tower you can go and do Silph Co. because there's nothing telling the game that you can't -- there's no other requirements for it to be triggered.
Whereas in later games, you might need a certain number of badges to trigger an event like that. Perfect example of such is in Gen 2 when you trigger the Radio Tower Team Rocket takeover -- this can only take place after completing the hideout with Lance in Mahogony (sp?) and then beating the gym. You won't trigger the event otherwise.
It's really neat. You don't discover this until sometime after you've played Gen 1, though. Unfortunately, the first time you play these games you're kind of indirectly told to do things in the intended order. You don't actually know that you can do the gyms out of order or that you can do certain events before completing gyms.
They didn't start tying gym progress to events that happen in the world more until Gen 2 and then things started to get more and more linear around Gen 4.
Yeah I really love that about this game; I wanted to get Fly and Surf (and the badges needed) as soon as possible, so after I cleared Rock Tunnel, I went straight to Celadon, got the Fly HM, Poke Doll and the Fresh Water (thus skipping the Silph Scope quest, though I'll go back and do it anyway), had a hard ass fight with Koga (somehow I beat him with a level 24 Lapras), then went straight to Cinnabar so I could get Meowth (Persian) through the glitch (I'm playing Red btw).
Now I'm going back to Celadon to finish the Game Corner and Erika.