Southeast Kanto in Pokémon Red and Blue was a Mistake
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 มิ.ย. 2024
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What is the point of Pokemon's Southeast Kanto other than to waste my time?
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I think the devs didn’t see this area as being optional, rather as a choice the player could make if they did not get the bike in Cerulean. Only now with speedruns and such now is it seen as "optional".
to see the glass half full this kinda shows the non linearity of kanto, which i think is its main strength
@@Faulheit And I famously dislike Gen 1, but if anything I think this is the one thing it does well.
@@TriteHexagon I mean... Considering it had nothing to go off of, no shit the other gens are supposed to be better. Might as well tell me gen 4 has better graphics than gen 1 too lmao.
I think non-linearity is probably the most compelling point people have raised thus far, you do actually get options for how to complete the game, even if that's not how it's played now. Thanks for the comment!
South East Kanto is actually as optional as the bike road, you have to traverse one of them to finish the game, but not necessarily both.
On an ordinary playthrough, the level jump up to Koga and Sabrina from Erika feels quite significant, at least in my experience. The developers seemingly expected people to do Koga first, so to help players make up the gap without too much grinding against wild Pokemon, they put 2 paths to Fuchsia and densely populated both with trainers. The idea being that basically, if you reach Fuchsia and aren't leveled highly enough, you can go back through the route you didn't take previously to catch up.
I'd say it makes sense! South Eastern Kanto is very annoying in my opinion, but I do honestly think that function it serves is a valid one, even if it could've been designed to be of more substance
My thoughts are this as well. It was meant to be an EXP haul/battle gauntlet.
grinding exp is a purpose, definitely, but also agree that yeah it could more interesting
Remembering early development had Viridian as a low level tutorial first gym and Sabrina would be the last leader.
Which matches overlaying the game map on Kantoh region of Japan and seeing Saffron as Tokyo.
I think i did Saffron Gym last (before Viridian). It's possible, right?
@@GM_. not only it is possible, it's one of the intended ways.
If a player couldn't find surf before tutorials and maps were common, odds were they would circle back and eventually find about the drink machine =)
I would say that SE Kanto is best for training. Especially when you are training a full team of pokemon and not what we do nowadays with single pokemon runs.
I can accept this as a reason (even if I'd rather grind elsewhere)
@@tortoisecity Where else are you going to grind? Wild pokemon don't give much XP. There's no VS Seeker in gen 1.
@@Scott89878he has no responce
Yeah, Erica to Koga and the rest of the game is a big boost in levels. Cycling road is the quicker way but it leaves you underleveled.
@@Scott89878 I mean, you can do the grinding earlier in the game, rocket hideout and sylph co. But, that's something that solo runs do moreso than an intended run.
i think when analysing the gen 1 games as adults some decisions seem to make no sense when viewing the games 'logically' - ie. some decisions were made primarily with the experience of a kid in mind
the example i think of is onix - it's a Really bad pokemon to actually use, but its main purpose is to be an intimidating challenge for kids facing brock. then later on when you find onix in rock tunnel and have the opportunity to use it (and find it's bad), the takeaway is the feeling of having gotten much stronger since fighting brock
likewise, i think a main reason for SE kanto being what it is is to give kids the feeling of exploration and discovery, even though both roads ultimately end at fuschia. and then past the experience of actually making it to fuschia, kids on the playground get to talk about how some of them went down a crazy steep hill (exciting!) and others found an entire fence maze and got the super rod (exciting!)
(i do think the super rod is a very important reason to at least go a little down route 12 - no pokemon in r/b are exclusive to SE kanto but plenty require the super rod all over the region, again prompting more exploration and discovery)
from a more practical perspective, i think packing routes 12-15 with so many trainers was an attempt to address the weird level curve in the mid-late game - they're monotonous but provide loads of exp to both train up your existing team and train up new pokemon to try out, so that ultimately if kids are feeling stuck on a gym there's trainers to fight before they're forced to grind wild encounters
they also give out a decent amount of money - if kids want to grind money for vitamins, TMs, game corner etc., they can do it here
(on a separate note, in yellow farfetch'd is exclusively found here (routes 12-13 iirc) which gives it more value, which you could take as an acknowledgement that they knew the wild pokemon here sucked ass)
i do agree the final product is a long and boring slog to fuschia, but ultimately i think it really adds to the non-linear feel of kanto and overall it has a useful purpose :)
non-linearity is a valid point to make, and certainly kanto can use something to break it up a bit more, though I feel with the amount of exp on offer here, it would be easy to over-level and ruin the later boss fights given the possibility of a boss rush. Thank you for your thoughtful comment!
Couldn't have phrased it better. Thank you from saving me from typing a worse essay :D
All this plus the fact that the Bike is easily missable. If the player doesn't have the bike and Cycling road is the only way to progress then it'd be a massive road block.
While Gen 1 had a ton of issues, the leveling curve was not one of them IMO
I'll be honest, Cycling Road is usually the path I ignore when heading to Fuchsia City, Fly is basically the only reason to go to the West of Celadon City, plus you get cool encounters at the end, more interesting looking routes, and the trainers are a bit more interesting than Koffing, Grimer and Machop. And as a kid I used to remember that being the more interesting way to go because of the battle it was to try to get through the routes without going back to heal. Getting to the end with no PP on some moves, and no PP on some Pokémon entirely, it was like the gauntlet path, but very rewarding for XP
I'm the opposite, I always go down cycling road first & if I need more levels then I fly to Lavender & then go through the gauntlet of Routes 12-15.
I can see it both ways, and I certainly don't want anyone to think that I was trying to say cycling road is good, especially since there are much more interesting renditions of it in later games
@@tortoisecity Better versions in later games doesn't mean Kanto's sucks...
I think both are good and depends on your perspective...
I do a loop usually. The entire map full of defeated trainers. I never miss a single battle.
@@princesspikachu3915 Same, I maximize the XP I get by defeating ALL of the trainers.
I like that it has lots of trainers. It helps me train my newly caught Venonat and Staryu
staryu is pretty sick!
It is a pretty good representation of what that part of Chiba prefecture is like in real life. It really isn't interesting in the slightest.
I wish the video shed some light on its real world counterpart, bc that context seems interesting in a “translating geography to 2D plane” way
That just means you've never been to Chiba. It's a beautiful region.
Of course, it's hard to compare it to Tokyo, but calling it uninteresting just shows a lack of knowledge
@@nilsteegen33 I have, most of it is very very flat. Compared to almost all other prefectures I have been to 17 of them, Chiba was geographically the least interesting. It has good aspects like Soy Sauce Factories, Beaches, and Narita Airport. But besides that, much of the Prefecture is Suburbs and Farmland
@@linuxman7777No Farmland No Foodland
@dee7352 that would be super interesting, and I'd be kind of surprised if someone hadn't done that already in some form
To me, the purpose of this area is having a lot of trainers and helping you train your pokémon for the Fuchsia City gym. I always try to fight every trainer in the game in order to get exp, so this area is a good place for that.
Yeah, that is my rule, fight every trainer. I try not to grind in the long grass.
@@shorewall Yeah. I don't like grinding in the tall grass either. At least with trainers I feel I'm accomplishing something as you can fight them only once, while wild pokémon are infinite.
fighting trainers is definitely better than encounters, and this area does have a lot of trainers
Both Fuchsia and Saffron Gyms in this case. I like how Let's Go gave you a reason to go to Fuchsia first and then back to Saffron later. Something the original games failed to do.
@@GenX6887the first games had enough reason that people got stuck out of saffron not knowing how to get in 😅
Bulbapedia wasn't a thing in 1999 when it hit western markets and home internet wasn't even the norm in 1996 when it released in Japan.
My first thought is that, for many, this area was likely required to progress, as they never bothered learning how to get the bike, at least their first time. And I think when viewed as "a path that can be avoided with knowledge of the game" instead of "optional" it takes a new role. This is the Gauntlet of the game. This is the only real point on the game where i can see myself whiting out. Not because it forces you to do it all at ince, but because backtracking it takes so long. Runming out of PP on your typical moves is not only possible but probable. Your pokemon getting chipped at slowly across the routes makes you ask "did I make sure to bring healing? I dont want to walk all the way back, I'm so close, maybe i can just scrape by with whats left."
This area is a slog, and thats really its best trait. It is a type of area that the game severely lacks, outside of maybe Victory Road itself, and maybe Viridian if your Poison Sting luck is bad like mine. It is the only part in the game where backtracking to the Pokemon Center is at its most punishing, and where the game pushes you to do it the hardest. Its the prep check, the gauntlet, the struggle bus, whatever you want to call it. It is where you are forced to push your limits, even if its in a rather mundane setting.
this is a fair point, though if you picked up fly (which is also optional) then it would not be so tough since you can just fly away. But certainly it is toiling, no denying that.
@@tortoisecity you can fly away to vermillion or lavender town, but you still gotta walk all the way to the "snorlax sleep spot", then down past the boardwalks, past the fence maze and finally the last stretch with the ledge at the top, and every time you fly to safety the walk back will be slightly longer. not to mention that fly is optional and some people might have missed it, like the bike which is required to take the other path
Silph co is also a massive gaublet if You dont find the medic quickly enough, and it's easy to get lost
@@tortoisecity saying fly is an "option" is weird though, it's way more of a secret since it's tucked away in a hidden location. I doubt many casual players stumble upon it, similar to the bike. The devs fully anticipated many players only walking/surfing their way through the game using teleport (if they caught/bought an abra)/dig/escape ropes.
@@weirdboo Fly being HM2 will at least tip you off to its existence ones you got surfe(3), strength (4) and flash(5) along side obviously Cut(1). If Fly would be 5 and flash was 2 would it be far easier to miss.
The practical point (possibly also the intention of developers) is to punish you for failing to complete the optional bike voucher sub quest.
it's not clear to me that the rational was punishment per se rather reward for getting the bike voucher, but I have nothing to disprove the theory so
I took this route as a kid due to not getting the bike voucher. It was only after completing the game I was shown how to get the bike by peers.
Others have pointed out that you need the bike to get to Cycling Road which is not always a given. We forget after nearly 30 years and decades of folks mining this game to its very core, that when most of us were playing as a kid this might be the only way to get to Fuschia. I take the point it might be worth putting something here that can only be got here, but I can see why it was put there.
Exactly, I am watching my kids (9 and 6 yo) on parallel Gen1 runs. One of them almost missed the bike voucher and I was already excited to have both run go in totally different directions. My older daughter did tell her little bro where she found it but due to her slightly worse orientation skill, she almost didn't find the house again. 🙂
that's really cute, and it's fair to build in some safeguards for it to be more variable, just wish they made it a bit more interesting
I think one thing worth consideration here is that the seafoam islands were most likely not *intended* to be an optional area, but rather part of the critical path. It's natural to expect the player to explore the ocean to the south of fuschia immediately after getting surf. After all, the ocean is *right there* in front of them. As such, they put a lot of effort into the seafoam islands, as this is where most players would end up going.
Southeast kanto is a bit different, however. The critical path involves the player returning to cerulean after vermillion, where the player is expected to pick up the bike, which will later let them on cycling road. After traveling through lavender to celadon and then back to lavender, you're finally given the choice between taking cycling road and southeast kanto to get to fuschia. The question is, which snorlax did they find? Did the player check south of lavender when they got there? Did they check west of celadon? Which snorlax they know about will influence which way they go from here. Either of these could be the critical path, and there isn't a cut and dry answer. It's even possible that the player missed the bike, making SE kanto the only option.
Since any given player could easily miss either cycling road *or* southeast kanto, it's natural then that *neither* should have anything you wouldn't want to miss. This is why you can find ditto both to the east *and* west of fuschia. Having a lot of trainers on these routes is likely intended as a catchup mechanic for players who are behind the level curve, giving players a natural way to level their pokemon without having to grind on wild encounters.
It's worth noting that having to fight so many trainers en route to fuschia is in itself an experience, and is an exercise in rationing resources (HP, PP, items, etc). Limping into fuschia with your beat-up party is certainly a memorable experience, and I think having a skippable area that is all about endurance does in fact add something of interest to the game. Experiencing it once is probably enough for most players, but they can ignore it on repeat playthroughs once they know about cycling road, and use it as an exp bank if they need it later.
these are fair points, though I'm not super sure what you mean about seafoam being not intended as an optional area, even if that is how it worked out? the main reason I mentioned seafoam is because it has everything that I wished southeast kanto has, and at a slightly later point in the game. Thank you for your comment!
@@tortoisecity The path that makes seafoam islands optional essentially has you going through the backdoor. If you look at the map layout, there's a clear progression from fuschia to cinnabar through seafoam islands, then back to viridian through the route north of cinnabar. Flying to pallet to access this route early bypasses the intended progression.
It's like using the bomb jump to get an item early in a metroid game. It's possible, but it probably wasn't how the designers expected you to do it.
right gotcha, that makes sense, thank you for explaining!
@@caliburnleaf9323 Tagging on here to mention that while i elaborate elsewhere in a big comment, i think fly was a late game addition, which connects well with the idea that seafoam wasn't always optional
@@shadeblackwolf1508 Strange that they'd call it HM02 then.
It was inspired by the least populated part of real life kanto in Japan, Chiba!
that's interesting! thank you for sharing
You to go southeast Kanto to level up your team. You only have a finite amount of trainers to level up on.
I like the area because it feels like the middle of nowhere, like you're out exploring the ends of the Earth.
I feel the same.
totally fair!
I like having it. It may seem pointless, but sometimes in a journey you go off the beaten path and thats okay.
totally fair
Trite is correct. The bike is a side quest, an entirely optional side quest at that. There is no point in the game where you need the Bike to travel from point A to point B. Additionally, in order to get the Bike you need to:
A) Find where the Bike store is and realize its impossible to purchase
B) Find the Pokemon Fan building in Vermilion
C) Chat with a specific NPC to get the Bike Voucher
D) Head all the way back to the Bike Store and finish the quest.
It is entirely possible for a player to skip that side quest and go straight to Lavender Town. This means their only available path is that Route.
Additionally, I am willing to bet the higher number of trainers is to make sure such a player is ready for Koga's gym. If a player skips the bike, then it's reasonable to assume they haven't been exploring that much. And if the player isn't exploring, then their team might be lower leveled. It could be the devs put that route there as a way to allow such a player to catch up to a point where they can reliably fight Koga.
EXP is the only thing you would really materially take away, given the lack anything else. but these are all good points, thank you for sharing!
Its a training area and a route you can take if you weren't adventurous enough to find the bike voucher. You can easily miss the bike voucher on your first playthrough.
this is very true
I have always found the bike lane to be the optional route.
I have always found this routes to be the highlight of the game because the game reaches its peak here, because of the many water Pokemon and fishing opportunities and the atmosphere that reaches its peak here and in Lavender Town.
Fair enough! Lavender town is pretty good
When I was a kid it always was the next logical place to go after getting the poke flute. Also, even though I always had the bike, the "gravity" aspect of cycling road, the having to constantly hold a button or lose control was unpleasant.
Yeah I wouldn't anyone to think I'm arguing in favour of cycling road here, it's not very good either
I never seen this area as optional. It was always the way I went, because it was the most instinctual/intuitive. I didn't have to be "motivated" to go there, or "go out of my way" to go there. It's just the natural path to take. We don't all think like speedrunners when playing games, looking for "optimal routes" or ways to cut out parts of the games we're playing. I've never even thought of this area as optional until seeing this video.
I also see Cycling Road as optional, and usually never actually need it. I don't see it as the actual route, but as an optional area with some trainers to fight. "South East Kanto" isn't a place where I care what is or isn't there, it's just the way to go. If it was removed, the game would be forcing you to do everything in a linear way, and if you didn't know how to do it that way, you would just get stuck.
Non-linearity is a good thing for the game to offer, and cycling road certainly doesn't offer much better, but I wasn't really looking at this from the perspective of speedrunning; if I was, it wouldn't even feature. It's about what a casual player looking to explore the map would find here on their quest, and in my view there isn't enough here to justify visiting if someone does go down cycling road to get to fuschia and comes back here later
I think this area is just a backup area, so if a kid didn't find the bike they could still continue the game.
This. We tend to miss this point because everyone knows how to get the bike nowadays, but back when the game dropped, in an age before online databases/walkthroughs as we know them, the odds of someone never getting the bike were decent.
Honestly, everyone knowing where to get the bike is kinda similar to everyone knowing who the last gym leader is or who the game's final boss is. Odds are both of those reveals surprised people back in the day, even if today it's just like "yeah, he's the last gym leader". ❤
Everyone remembers going into the Bikeshop & learning they are severely overpriced at 1 Million Yen. The real thing you had to find was the voucher to redeem for the Bicycle & someday I want to learn the inspiration for that. Was there an actual bikeshop from Tajiri-san's childhood that had expensive merchandise?
It's simple really, most of Kanto and especially Johto are geographically accurate to real world japanese locations and major routes to lead to them. It could be that there's an actual long alternative path to get to the city so they made this path. After all, gen 1's target audience were Japanese kids.
It's a fair comment, but also that doesn't mean they can't add different Pokemon to battles or wild encounters
South-East Kanto in the Gold/Silver post-game is the worst part of any Pokémon game, the level curve makes the number of trainers even worse than Gen1
there are plenty of people in here defending SE Kanto in gen one and it's great that they are doing that, if I see anyone defending SE kanto in GSE I'm going to be flabbergasted, GSE Kanto is in general awful
You don't want to fight a guy with 6 lv 23 pikachu after you already beat the elite 4? 😂
@@smob0 He provides good experience points for a Houndoom still catching up to my team. Not everyone will have a full team of six before the Elite Four in GSC. Many trainers in GSC were weaker than they should be but I like the full team of Level 23 Pikachu trainer in Route 13.
@@tortoisecity GSC are fundamentally different from later Pokémon games in very stark ways that aren't appreciated in an age of challenge runs.
Game Freak was (and frankly still is - despite all of the handholding) extremely bad at explaining their more complex mechanics and intentions.
The terrible level curve in GSC Kanto is suitable for grinding out a mostly new team after the league - especially because some Pokémon (like Houndour and Murkrow) are caught at lower levels and inaccessible in the early portion of your journey.
GSC had a lot of systems that tried to nudge you into more experimentation with your team setup than gens 3-5. It's why the day/night, day of the week, and poketch/telephone systems were set up the way that they were and a reason for the wonky level curve.
Basically, Game Freak was trying to create the replayability of an MMO and leaned heavily into their roots of wanting to make a more traditional old style jrpg.
Since Pokémon has a recognized shape and identity now compared to in Gen 2, this no longer flies.
@@tortoisecity Going through kanto after elite 4 is basically just to speedrun the 8 gyms before finally facing red, the real challenge. You can easily skip most of kanto trainers and only do the gyms. Red is possible to beat with a full team of around lvl 49-50 pokemon. And possibly he can be beat with pokemon levels 45-50 also. The main challenges when fighting Red is blastoise and Snorlax, since there's few counters for them. The only counter to blastoise I can think of is lanturn. And you might defeat Snorlax easily with a ghost pokemon.
Tbh. I always thought that was supposed to be the main path. You do your buisness in Celadon, return to Lavender to clear Pokemon Tower, get flute then head south. Especially because bike technically is optional, so you potentially could not be able to get on cycling road and you had to find another way.
I can see that
South east Kanto is such a slog. There’s way too many trainers and nothing cool to find
For me it is a combination of reasons why I like SE Kanto more than you probably do. First, as many stated, it helps to train your full team of six up to the level of Koga and Sabrina. Then, I really like the "fake" non-linearity by having two ways of reaching Fuchsia. Furthermore, it brings more diversity to your travel through the region because you don't have to take the same way back to central Kanto after traveling to Fuchsia but you can go another way, where you still can find trainers to battle (yes, you can fly by that point of the game but a full play through is about exploring).
Definitely agree that exploring is great and should be incentivised, ideally these routes would just have more interesting trainer Pokemon to fight and some unique wild encounters
@@tortoisecity I second that! Thanks for the cool video :)
i agree with the lack of unique pokemon issue (but to be fair gen 1 has a good chunk of those)
Route 12 is easily the most aesthetic part of kanto though (and if we're only talking about gen 1 specifically, maybe even the only aesthetic part of kanto), and housing like a quarter of the game's trainers makes for good EXP and money grinding considering the level curve of Post-Erika, Post-Giovanni, and the fact that young kids aren't going to know the inner machinations of the code, accuracies, base powers, etc. giving them the extra EXP to help counterbalance their lack of knowledge
more importantly though, the longer trek also serves as either an alternate route to delinearize and add to subsequent playthroughs, or the ability to skip it as a reward for figuring out how to find the bike, which plenty of first time players could easily miss (we don't miss the bike because we're not 10 anymore, not because the game forces it on you; when i babysat my gf's 10 year old niece last month and we played Let's Go Eevee together, the first time i saw her save file she was at Celadon but missed Lt. Surge's gym; it's definitely not a crazy idea to assume that a lot of kids missed the bike their first time)
missing the bike and fly are very viable, case in point I missed fly when I first played crystal, and after beating the E4, I walked from new bark to olivine because I did not know it existed
As a kid this area was definitely not optional! I had no idea how to get the bike besides "save up a million dollars" not knowing that goal was out of reach. For me it was a grueling gauntlet, with an amazing reward of Fuschia City, the Super Rod, and Safari Zone. I like it more if just for the fact it juxtaposes with those and makes the reward seem more grand
I feel like pokemon fan club was going to be in fushia at some point, but they moved it so you had the bike earlier.
That's a great theory.
I was gonna say, SE Kanto may very well be there very simply to contrast the convenience of the bike path, but it obviously fails at that, for most people would indeed have the bike anyway and you also get Fly before you make it to Fuchsia, so no need to every rewalk either path.
it'd be really cool if the fan club was there, or you could have the day care there or something
It was one of the few stretches of the game that felt somewhat challenging, even if only due to the pp management, the bicycle path was too easy, to me these routes were like an endurance test and going back to heal midway was the equivalent to making two trips instead of carrying all the bags at once, a sacrilege
You either go the whole way or don't come back
ditto in the mansion basement is more for lore purposes to me, ditto in the grass is the main availability
Right but ditto is in the grass on the way to victory road as well
The hardest part of SE Kanto is not falling asleep from the sheer amount of boring fights.
Fr
It’s funny, I always take this route to get to Fuschia. I know cycling road exists, but I often forgo the bike and prefer to go down the coast. I actually like the design of the area- it’s more peaceful and leisurely compared to the rush of cycling road.
cycling road certainly is more of a rush!
Remember that Snorlax walls you off if you try to go south immediately. I think they assume you go south, fight some trainers, get blocked off, and then turn around and go the intended way, only to remember that Snorlax that was in your way and go back to catch it. Then you go back to Vermilion. Then you go south and there's a big level jump. You can either push south hard or you can turn around north again. If you keep going south you see trees to cut. If you put away your HM slave, which kids would often do, you have to turn around and get your HM slave or teach cut to another pokemon or catch another pokemon to teach cut again.
Anyway, my point is that a kid wouldn't actually do the whole thing in one sitting, since they wouldn't inherently know the layout of the game yet. For a kid it's like a big wall they scale one step at a time, and feels like several areas at once because of it.
Nothing is worse than Southeast Hoenn.
Southeast Hoenn is just so vast
I have to say I really love this area and already did so as a kid. It feels very unique with so little tall grass, one is close to the edge of the map, like one it at the furthest part of it and it lets you wonder what lies beyond to the south east.
Another thing which makes it really fit into Gen1 in my eyes is the concept of mundanity. In many modern games you constantly have to save the world, every piece of land, every NPC, every enemy and every line of dialogue serve a purpose and you are the hero who has to save the world and everything is centered around you. In Gen 1 Pokémon, there are a lot of NPCs just going on with their daily lives. You could remove them and the story and gameplay wouldn't change, but the worldbuilding and immersion does.
This area fits right into that feeling. There are some Bird Catchers in a fence-maze, who do not care about being the champion or what Team Rocket is up to. There are no game-changing items to be found here. There is no Legendary Pokémon hiding somewhere in the depths of the water. It is just a part of the world which you can visit and traverse through.
That's fair enough, but even in that context they could have some more interesting or varied Pokemon to fight
Primary purpose of those routes:
To allow players to complete the game without the bike. If you don't have the bike, you can't go through cycling road, and in Gen 1, it's surprisingly easy to miss the bike voucher.
Secondary purpose: Shortcut between Lavender and Vermillion, especially if a player didn't get around to buying a drink for the guards around Saffron yet (which can be something that can be accidentally delayed, either by missing it at first, or in Gen 1 being too broke to buy a drink)
Tertiary purpose: Having an excuse to have the Super Rod somewhere. Even if it's placed in such a way that you might get it BEFORE the Good Rod.
So, yes, it has a purpose, even if it's not the most exciting place to be.
3:31 Today I learned Red and Blue had EXP All.
Really easy to miss it, especially if you skip se Kanto!
I disagree it's a great design choice since it punishes unobservant players who didn't get the bike or look around for the bike voucher. it's a great bit of kanto's multipath design. you can get to fuschia either way it just takes longer and is more annoying if you go down the south east
Pokemon games shouldn't be punishing tf? Souls games really made yall masochists
@@Spectrum0122 XD are people allergic to games having any cost and rewarding observation and good exploration haha ahosif
I will say though it would have been nice to maybe have one more dungeon down there... shame none of the kanto remakes added any good dungeons despite the dungeons being the highlight of the region.. except in the sevii isles which are dogshit haha
@@MogusMasterSaikawa22 For realsies, we could have had a fourth bird there. Who said the limit had to be three? That would have caused most trios to be quartets. Which means more stupid Regis, yipppiieee :D :D :D :D
@@bvd_vlvd right hasdoihafsdi. and in frlg it got worse they took moltres out of victory road and put it in a volcano cool!... except it's not even a dungeon at least victory road has a unique set of puzzles and gimmick and is somewhat difficult to navigate the first time through. the volcano sucked shit. oh but visual spectacle is more important to most idiots out there ahsdofi. and context but like who cares why it's in victory road just keep it there haiofd
Tbh, when I play old Pokémon games, I make sure to fight every trainer so I’m not under level by the time I reach the league.
Somehow I have gotten to that point many times and it’s annoying.
Slightly off-topic, but damn, you went out strong with that crit-para Thunderbolt clip
I think it’s just a route meant for grinding levels before Koga and Sabrina, I just wish it was more interesting and offered more things to do or more unique Pokémon to catch as you mentioned in the video.
Yeah that would be a great improvement for me as well
There should’ve been an area down there for moltres instead of leaving it in victory road which is kind of boring
that could have been neat!
Too early. Maybe if there was a place here you can only Access later, like a hot dungeon (Pokemon Anil fangame has Moltres in a Cinnabar Cave).
@@GM_. could’ve used hms to lock its dungeon off
SE Kanto exists to fulfill the desire to explore, train, and meet new people. The fact that we’re playing the game 25 years+ later, is a testament to the game as a whole. Sure, it’s tough to go here and grind, but the reward is its own. A completionist goal of beating a game for the sake of it.
I always saw SE Kanto as the default route, and cycling road was the cool shortcut you get for finding the bike voucher. My first play through, when I was really little, I didn’t find the bike, so I was stuck taking the long way around. It’s easy to forget that missing the bike was probably very common back in the late 90’s before walkthroughs were so ubiquitous.
It's literally there because of having a choice at which path you travel to get through Kanto, it's why multiple paths connect on the map. I always found cycling road boring and have gone multiple playthroughs without even going there. I personally found that path more pleasing than an empty downward path
fair enough! I'm glad that we have the option to choose, since different folks will prefer different things
I always used it to finish grinding for the Elite Four or to play level catchup for gift pokemon like the fossils or Lapras.
I've always just referred to this area as the 'Kanto Gauntlet' given it's the longest stretch between towns in the game.
Southeast Kanto is probably meant to be the '''''intended''''' route to Fuschia, with Cycling Road being a deliberate shortcut to reward explorative players. Think of how easy it would be to miss the bike; most players will try to visit most houses in each town, but it's more than plausible to miss the Fan Club in the corner of Vermillion when there's several other points of interest in the city (nevermind the small gameboy screen).
Furthermore, the sheer magnitude of trainers is very helpful in bridging the level gap between Erika (29 or 32 depending on the game) and Koga/Sabrina (42, or *50* in Yellow), especially if you've caught some recent team members you're struggling to get up to speed.
I won't deny, however, that this area is freakin' *weird*. Like, in-universe, what's the purpose of the picket fence maze? I did always think the area could benefit from a small, minor town (not unlike the likes of Fallarbor from gen 3 or Celestic from gen 4) as a pit stop partway through to catch your breath, or even a randomly-placed Pokemon Center like the ones near Rock Tunnel and Mt. Moon. I'm surprised none of the remakes added such a thing.
A little port town on that east coast is an idea I've had kicking in my head for a long time to potentially use in a romhack. Presumably recently built, more of a business/cargo port than the tourist port of Vermillion. I know that's a weird anecdote, but I felt like sharing.
thank you for sharing, this is a thoughtful comment! I think a spot like celestic or fallarbor would be a great fit instead of the fence maze, for example, like it just needs something a little more to make it worthwhile
I love the exploration feeling of not knowing where to go next, however the execution was not perfect
me too! and I would note that aside from GSC, this area was improved on in later gens
at least these areas has the best music in any generation of games, ever
Tbh I prefer gsc versions of Kanto music, Kanto is my least favourite for music
I see it mainly as a redundancy. You can't go back north via the cycling path, and the only other way to return to any other cities after Fuschia involves surfing all the way along the southern coast, through Seafoam, over zcinnabar and back to Pallet Town. Without the southeast portion, going to Fuschia would be like stepping on the wrong forced movement tiles in the rocket hideouts, you have to start all over again, but on a regional scale! Plus you need to beat Koga to surf, if you can't do that, you need a training area, with Fushia being one of the only gyms without a minj-dungeon of sorts to train up in. They could have designed it better and made it more interesting, but the very nature of the game's layout requires such a path.
I think the genius of gen 1 Pokémon games was in the realistic and mundane vibe of the games. Early kanto was supposed to represent the banality of everyday life. I heard a TH-camr describe the feeling of gen 1 games as “claustrophobic.” Kanto just looks like an ordinary everyday city based area you’d see just walking around outside. Most of the trainers are just normal people you’d see every day and the only interesting areas are deep dungeons you’d have to explore very hard to find. These two routes (26 & 27 I think) are like areas you’d see just walking around outside. They have very weak trainers that are basically just normal people with Pokémon. Last time I played it I found myself wishing they were at least 10 levels ahead because it became mindless grinding after a while. The fishermen with 6 magikarp is just a big middle finger to whoever’s playing and it’s actually kinda funny. The routes suck to grind through but I appreciate that a series like Pokémon actually tried to represent so much realism into an adventure series. Johto and hoenn are so imaginative compared to kanto, so kanto was really just a stepping stone creatively for the later gens. The realistic and grounded vibe of kanto really shows that Pokémon didn’t expect to ever get big. At that time they just wanted to make a game that took place in our world where everyday people collected small monsters they could battle with. It’s a very small concept compared to what Pokémon would later become.
I get what you're saying about realism and real life compared to the very sci-fi-esque creatures you catch battle and trade, but I think beyond that Kanto could be a little more imaginative, even if later games maybe go a bit further than necessary in that direction
It offers several advantages
1st, as you mentioned, some new Pokemon. Sure, they can be found at other places, but this means you can enjoy traveling around while trying to fill the dex rather than staying in one place
2nd, a chance to train and battle and earn more money
3rd, alternative routes for traveling and going around Kanto. Take it away and you have many less methods to go around and it makes Kanto much more linear. If it's too unique, then it kinda makes it feel more necessary.
4th, it makes Kanto feel more full
5th, it's just nice to explore and travel around with the items and battles being a nice bonus
Personally, I think it's a great addition.
Like, could they improve it??? Yes, 100%. I feel that many limitations are due to how crunched Gamefreak was when making these games....
Like maybe adding a few unique Pokemon.
But overall, I think it's actually find and for me personally, having more to explore and having alternative routes was actually a great option.....
I honestly don't think this is filler. This is literally an alternate route. It helps make each journey and adventure unique and different than your friend's play through.
You are probably judging the route after watching tons of speedruns and no longer having the heart of enjoying and traveling around the region.
Remember, these games probably weren't meant to be played THIS much... so it kinda messes with your perspective.
It's fair to enjoy it and like battling the trainers and exploring the area generally, but I wouldn't suggest that my view on this area is because of watching speedruns, first Kanto games I played were frlg and even in those games as a kid I found this area super tedious, which was quite a standout for me because I think those games are super fun
The Pokémon Anil fangame actually places a rural-looking Town here.
GM_. That's super cool!
Southeast Kanto is considered the standard path, it's a gauntlet of routes that wears you steadily down and makes you debate turning back and healing. Personally, I'm a fan of these gauntlet routes because of how they affect my decision making, they exist in Hoenn and Sinnoh too.
The real optional route is Cycling Road. To access it, you need a bicycle, which is an optional key item. To get the bicycle, you need to bring a bike voucher to the bike shop in Cerulean City. To get a bike voucher, you need to listen to everything the president of the Pokémon Fan Club in Vermilion City says. These are all optional conversations in optional buildings. Players who actually extensively interact with the game as an RPG will be rewarded with a massive shortcut to their next destination. Not only that, but right before Cycling Road is a house blocked by a cuttable tree where you can get Fly, an insanely useful overworld ability that is also technically optional. It's the same type of game design that rewards you for speaking to the NPC on a first route who gives you a Potion, or how the first four Gens all start off with a backtracking quest that naturally teaches you the concept of tall grass, wild battles, and ledge mechanics. Compare to BW where world design became one route and MAYBE a dungeon between towns, far more straightforward route designs with very apparent paths and the interesting material off to the side with optional engagement, no backtracking quest on the first route because navigation skills were not as relevant for the main story, and only one single mandatory HM use that exists solely to make sure the player knows how to teach TMs and HMs to Pokémon rather than because you'll need a number of moves to navigate the main story.
I had never realized the usefullness of that zone, I think I just wnated to complete every part of the game when I played. But seeing your arguments you convinced me that there's quite nothing to do there, and seeing you speakinh about the Seafoam islands and how they are better and Articuno is there, I thought maybe the original idea was to put something in Southeast Kanto like the Seafoam islands where Moltres could be, because it always seemed to me that putting Moltres in Victory Road was a last minute change made because they ran out of time or space in the game. But that could be becuase I played the remakes first and the first time I played the first generation games I didn´t know the Seti island weren´t in the game so I was expecting to find Moltres there and it surprised me to see it in Victory Road.
I always liked this part of the map. I spent most of my postgame walking around that area. The fact, that I didn't have to be there made that place so calming
Nah, that's one of my favorite parts of the game when I first played it. I loved the battling, and it sort of simulated forming bonds with your pokemon, serving as a sort of gauntlet to reach the next town. I think with older Pokemon games, you need to approach it with how imaginative a child can be with his/her videogame experience. Just because an area serves no purpose doesn't mean it can't have a purpose. We fill them in.
It's for grinding.
Not everyone is obligated to battle every trainer in the map unless they're hungry for EXP and Pokemon dollars.
That's true, but if they don't battle the trainers for exp and money, then this route offers even less value
How come nobody mentioned that you get the super rod here? Or maybe I'm just that old and everybody just thinks of Mr. Dazzling in this route
Super rod is there, I did include a brief snippet of it but didn't literally say it aloud so easy enough to miss!
@@tortoisecity lol that explains it, I was mostly just listening, thx for the reply!
It provides lots of experience points, lets you advance if you missed the bike, and it gives you a chance to toy with the fishing mechanics and hints at surf existing
It definitely has a lot of exp
You have to factor in that I was 8 years old when I got this game for Christmas. Every area was an amazing experience of getting lost and smashed by trainers because alot of the games vocabulary was beyond an 8 year olds brain. I remember asking my mom what abandonded meant because i would always delete my moves on accident.
That was always my favorite part of kanto as a kid bc defeating all the trainers was really fun for me. Also, i just liked all the fences for some reason, lul. I just thought they looked cool for some reason.
totally fair! I'm glad to hear some people enjoy it :)
The southeast corner’s purpose is what to do if you don’t have a bike. Some children don’t get the bike.
Bike is relatively easy to miss
I think the devs wanted to offer another way to travel to Fusia. It does do that.
Definitely an interesting video! I agree with most of the points, but I do like the fact that the play has multiple choices for how to get to fuchsia city, and then additionally having the extra spots for grinding if needed with all of the trainers of the path that wasn't taken. Then instead of flying to pallet and surfing south they have the option to go through seafoam island. I hate all of the water routes around seafoam island so I totally get your criticism there. I also enjoy the boardwalk route esthetically so that's one plus. Anyways, overall a great video! I love hearing interesting opinions like this.
thanks! and I agree that offering multiple routes to get to the same place is a good thing in general
I actually like the little maze, it was really good at motivating childhood me to get that item that was onscreen but just out of reach. It made the area feel bigger than it was
Once i found out that there was a glitch to just walk past the guard without a bike for Cycling road, i never went south of Lavender to go to Fuchsia. Did it maybe my first 3 playthroughs. Only thing worth getting is Snorlax number 2 if you want it and the Super Rod, which once you get Surf, you can skip all the trainers between Lavender and the fishing guru house
You can get to the Snorlax from Vermillion so you can skip the northern trainers too lmao, hope they don't get lonely out there
@@bvd_vlvd lol also true
that glitch is so much fun
As many people pointed out this area might be good for grinding. I would like to add to that.
It is more likely that the player will go to Fuchsia City via the cycling path. On the cycling path it´s likely they have obtained the HM Fly. In Fuchsia City there is the Safari Zone, where you can catch a bunch of new Pokemon. But where to level them? If the player looks on the map he sees this huge unexplored area and might either decide to fly to Lavender town to descend the route from the north, or go to Lavender town from the south. The trainers in this area have rather low leveled pokemon, so they are easy training for Pokemon caught in the Safari Zone.
I´m not saying thats good design, I´m just trying to come up with a reason for this awful area to exist.
Funny that I’m seeing this after going through that exact region on a play through
I always saw this area as a way to go back to Sliph Co since usually, I visited Fushia via cycling road before doing anything in Saffron
You kinda covered it in that it’s all about EXP… Non-E4 trainer battles are an extremely finite resource, so getting your Pokemon from, say, levels 30-50 in the mid-game is hugely important.
I think we have to consider how without the 30 years of experience with these games, when these games came out, the bike was relatively pretty hidden and pretty easy to miss
Bike definitely can be missed, as can many items in Pokemon generally (I missed fly in gen 2 when I first played)
Given how this area is based of Sotobo Railway Line it's clear they didn't know what to do fauna wise.
We could've had a marshland since Safari Zone is nearby, or maybe at least 2 more towns in-between.
It's clear this part of the map was designed as a training arc is mind since Gym aces go from 29 to 43.
some more variety in landscape design would be nice!
While I think it isn't peak game design, there's something interesting in adding content that isn't mandatory. One of the reasons I enjoyed gen1 back in the day was the freedom, the beginning is linear and simple but as the map expands, your options expand in kind.
Southeast Kanto isn't memorable or charming, but the contrast makes you appreciate other areas way more. The little islands with items seem like foreshadowing, telling the player they'll get to traverse water in the future, which blew my mind when I was first playing this games.
that's a good point, I like that
I alwaus forget to grab the bike, so this is actually the main route I take to Fuchsia. It is still quite tedious though, but good to get your levels up!
Definitely gets some levels up here
Having Nidoking's health in the red the entire time was anxiety inducing. WTF
He's at absolutely no risk of dying to these fights
It’s an alternate route to bicycle road
Yeah, its not an exciting area. BUT... context is everything. On my very first playthrough as a little kid circa 1998, I beat the game and was wandering the overworld, desperate for post-game content. I stumbled on SE Kanto and it blew my mind - like most players, I used cycling road to get to Fuschia and had never even remembered the path south from Lavender, or explored east of Fuschia. I had a BLAST rolling my way through there - yes, I stomped everyone with my vastly overleveled Blastoise. But the mere fact that I found a huge new area which I had not yet explored was an incredible thrill.
Fair enough that does sound exciting!
Every time I play a Kanto game I go like "yeeeaaaah!" then I get to that area and I want to stop playing
I just avoid it entirely
@@tortoisecity ngl all this time I didn't even realize you could avoid it
It's no optional if you didn't find the bike. That's your answer.
That patch of grass next to guardhouse was my favorite place to get a ditto. I also spent a dumb amount of time in that patch of grass evolving my Dratini to Dragonair. Idk why I was a dumb kid lol.
Fair enough, it is a good place to grind!
I always saw that area as extra training. Sometimes id keep that area untouched so if i wanted a different pokemon i could just train there, great for your newly caught safari zone catches
is no one mentioning how low Nido's HP bar went😂😂 2:06
It's as optional as the bike route is. You need to take one of the two. It's not optional as much as it is one of two options to get down. You need to get past a snorlax either way even. I went down that way the first time I've played. I still remember saving after the labyrinth, hoping there would be a pokecenter close by just to run and get defeated by the first trainer after and going through it all again.
I have been working on pixel art and recently felt inspired by the fishing area here, but this is a good point that it is tedious to play through and it feels like there’s something on the other side, but its really just a more challenging way to get to Fuchsia 😆
Yeah non-linearity is quite nic3
When I played it as a child and went down the routes, it really was harrowing. But I felt accomplished upon reaching Fuchsia, it was a challenge and getting there by the skin of your teeth and figuring out where the pokecenter was to heal up from that gauntlet felt exciting. I agree that there could have been better ways to reach a similar feeling, but it worked for me, although crossing it is really annoying in retrospect.
Yeah i get that it's a long series of routes without Pokemon centers but it would be improved as a gauntlet with stronger/more varied trainer Pokemon
can you explain the EXP Share being bugged thing?
I can try, though I am no expert in the matter! basically it is intended to just equally halve the exp earned from a battle and give half to the pokemon fighting, and half to everyone else. However, if multiple pokemon fight, then some of that exp is lost, rather than distributed equally. I'm not sure on exactly why, but that's the gist of it
This was always my favorite part of Kanto.
I think your main problem is that you seek to avoid trainer battles. There are no trainer rematches in generation 1, so for training purposes, you have to make as much of every trainer battle as possible.
_thats_ why i love this area: its a giant exp dump. You can level your pokemon TONS by battling all those trainers.
Also, you forgot the *Super Rod*, which is in this area.
I noted the super rod visually at 3:30, but you're right I didn't talk about it all that much. It's not so much that I'm trying to avoid battles, more that the battles would be more interesting/have more value for dex completion if they used a greater variety of Pokemon, instead of a team of 4 pidgeys or koffings
I always loved Southeast Kanto. Even if I went down the bike route to get to Fuscia, I would fly back to Lavender Town, to journey there the other way. The point of the southeast route is offer more battles. Battling has always been my favourite part of Pokemon. Having that route that has so many more battles to enjoy is definitely a great one. Seems like that is the purpose. A place where you actually don't have to battle any wild Pokemon at all if you don't want to after waking up the Snorlax, but can battle. It's definitely a good EXP mine.
Can't deny it's got loads of exp and battles, but they could improve it by adding trainers with more varied Pokemon types to fight instead of pidgeys and oddishs
Video slaps. I hope you get more views coming your way.
thanks!
The bike shop should've been programmed in Fuchsia rather than Cerulean so that SE Kanto is required to go through.
that could be interesting
The whole point of the original Red & Blue was to get access to Surf so you can setup for the Missingno or M glitch. Then you can duplicate items for some real fun
That was the Devs intention yes
Oh man, first I hear that you don't need to go to Pacifidlog Town to beat Hoenn, and now this? I've never beat the game without going down there, because it was a wide open place after Lavender Town, and it just made sense to complete the loop.
honestly until I started speedrunning gen one I had no had idea what was required and what was optional
Something can be more than the sum of it's parts. I think SE Kanto's slow pacing down the boardwalk and grass path are a nice, chill experience compared to the fast pacing of cycling road while still gaining EXP and money. Don't necessarily believe something has to be crammed full of "content" in order to be good. Time to enjoy the music and game ambience is a crucial part of the experience in my opinion and this are allows for that very well.
definitely agree that time to enjoy music and ambience is a valid and good thing, just don't think it pans out in this case. Thanks for the comment!
I know that it was not the main focus of this video but I always go through Dark Cave when I play the Johto games. It is optional but I usually battle the three trainers in Route 46 after defeating Whitney so that my team is not underleveled later in the game. Unlike most people, I do not go straight to the Ecruteak Gym after defeating Whitney. The men at the two gates east and west of Ecruteak City do not prevent the player from going to Olivine City and Mahogany Town when you have three Johto Gym badges. So I usually go to the Lighthouse and the Lake of Rage before defeating Silver and Morty in Ecruteak City.
Fair enough - I usually stop in dark cave for the terrible experience of catching a teddiursa (25% catch rate, 50% chance to run)
One point that may not be a part of the creators’ intent- money.
In Gen 1, you have to go into the Safari Zone to get Surf, and you have to have money to get into the Safari Zone. If you run out of money, battle every trainer up to that point, and don’t have surf, the game is soft locked. Having an optional area full of trainers near the Safari Zone makes that less likely.
Then again, the fixed it in a much simpler way in Yellow.
Yellow definitely improves on many aspects of this, adding a unique encounter and changing up the trainer fights a bit
The worst part is doing 20 matches of 1 pokemon
Yep
When designing the game, the developers wouldn't have know that EXP.Share was going to be useless. Imagine if it worked in a good way, how exciting would that have been?
It's a fair point, though even at it's max potential it's probably not that great (to optimise it you would need to have two Pokemon in your party to ensure a 5050 split)
As a kid I always loved southeast kanto for being such a good EXP source to ease up those late game challenges you where about to face. I would even go back often to level up those 20ish level Pokémon. Seafoam islands I always hated because of how confusing I found them and because I pretty much almost always hated every cave in Pokémon games with a passion specially if their names where "seafoam islands" unknown dungeon" or "Mt mortar"
The caves can definitely be confusing, even if I personally enjoyed exploring them