that the gym setup is very similar to Paldea's progression?
Check this out:
- Grass gym leader as the first/second boss, early-game (Brassius was my first in SV, so I misremembered him as first in the code. I am so fucking sick of early-game Grass bosses. It's been the standard since Sun/Moon and none of them have any fucking variety because they're all so weak.)
- Flying boss as the strongest early-game/weakest mid-game boss
- Normal gym leader as the fifth/sixth boss, mid-to-late game
- Fairy boss as the near-final challenge, right before the league
That's half the fucking gym lineup being very comparably similar to Paldea, with most exceptions being placement swaps (Steel going from early-game to late-game, Poison going from mid-game to early-game, Dark going from early to mid). Ice, Bug, Ghost, Water, Electric, and Psychic don't appear as gym leaders, but every type except Psychic
does appear as a new Titan... so they're still very likely to be bosses.
I realize that there were going to be similarities to Paldea no matter what, given that Paldea uses the entire type chart for its bosses, but could it have killed Gamefreak not to reuse half the fucking roster placement?
The only types that aren't near-confirmed to be bosses of some type are the following:
And that's only because their current purpose (and order) is very unclear. We don't know if they're to do with legendary encounters
(my pet theory because they're majin and the game's legendaries seem to be all about weather), bosses, evil team leaders that specialize in types, or anything like that. They could just be placeholders for all we know. But they're still there, so I'm still bringing them up.
I'll even go as far as saying that WiWa seems to be recycling Paldea's entire structure, sticking with the "three paths of every type" thing again and doubling down on the open world (the latter has already been confirmed via the official site and marketing). It seems like it's not only ripping off Alola, but borrowing heavily from Paldea... which we just fucking had. How anyone can get excited for this is beyond me.