Kanto or Johto?

[Sakuyamon]

Unpopular opinion but I will say Kanto. To me it felt more familiar and kind of like home. Johto seemed a bit bigger and had more caves but the region wasn't exciting or special.

 

[RedBlastoise]

Johto's cooler, more style. But it's still kind of small for a region. Wish it were bigger with more routes and towns and stuff. The routes is has at present aren't all that big, either.

Gamefreak should have added more routes. They did that in HGSS and I liked it but looking back it was something that was missing in GS that they could've fixed in Crystal.

 

[Leonhart]

Gamefreak should have added more routes. They did that in HGSS and I liked it but looking back it was something that was missing in GS that they could've fixed in Crystal.

There should've been a route between Hiwada (Azalea) Town and the Ubame (Ilex) Forest. In fact, I seem to remember that the G/S/C map showed a route between the two locations. It was a mistake on Game Freak's part, but I think the Jouto region would've benefited from having more landmarks.

 

[Ditto B1tch]

Of course I prefered Johto.

Kanto was just a quick trip

 

[tricket the cricket]

One of my biggest gripes was that Game Freak went overboard with shrinking the Kanto region by not only shortening a lot of the routes and getting rid of some dungeons, but also by them getting rid of certain buildings altogether like the Safari Zone, the Nibi (Pewter) Museum, and turning the Pokemon Tower into a Radio Tower instead.

omg mate this exactly they took almost all the magic and mystery out of kanto. cinnibar island? gone, would love to visit there which no one talks about but pokemon mansion was very creepy too. lavender town? calm city now they took all the creepiness away. viridian forest? cut down to a petty road with some trees safari zone? closed pewter muse? closed they made kanto from this magical wild beast into a beaten down broken will pet

 

[Chaos Emperor]

It’s kinda hard to say when u really get down into the games development cycle. I always assumed the reason for Kanto being roughly half a region in terms of content was due to not having enough space on the tiny game boy color cartridge, and considering hgss added most of the missing stuff in, that makes sense. But apparently before even finishing johto, they were running out of space (which is why johto kinda feels small compared to other regions), but the late mr iwata was able to find a way to compress the data to where Kanto was even able to fit in the first place.

Also gen 2s development was a bit of a mess; not as bad as gen 1, but still more chaotic compared to later gens. But people have combed through the code to find things like the idea for the honey item in gen 4, an undestroyed cinnabar island, and of course the beta safari zone map, among other things. So my guess is they just couldn’t buy more time to put more stuff in; after all gen 2 was supposed to be released in Japan in 1997 I believe, but didn’t come out til 1999 in Japan and 2000 in America. And with the gen 1 not even being out internationally at the time, nintendo might not of been as eager to offer extra help beyond what iwata was able to do.

again hgss added a lot of the missing areas, but by then game freak got their development cycle down pat, had a lot more space to work with and could probably get extra money/help from nintendo if all else failed, luxuries that weren’t a thing while working on gen 2.

overall johto is the better of the two (considering it was newer it’s understandable that it would get the higher quality stuff), but seeing Kanto change over three years (even it was only about half the stuff as before) was still nice even if it was more a bonus thet really only made it by luck.

 

[tricket the cricket]

gen 1 games were great and gen 1 in general

 

[shadyrock]

Gen 2 sucked so bad. Between almost no good pokemon being available in the johto region itself, to the postgame kanto region being basically empty with not a whole lot going on and the gyms all basically being around the same level as the johto e4 it was super disappointing. i was really bummed on my crystal play through when i discovered many of the best mons from gen 2 weren’t available until after the e4, and that the kanto gyms didn’t scale up the levels and actually present a challenge. and then they expect you to grind your pokemon 30 more levels to beat red (my mons were all mid 40’s when i beat blue in kanto)

 

[FloatzieDPPT]

If we compare the Pokémon from Kanto to Johto, then Kanto is better in that front. Aren't most Johto Pokémon really slow or is that just my bad memory?

 

[ToonsJazzLover]

Both have its pros and cons, but I always thought Johto was a little more interesting when it comes to its locations. It helps that it’s the most Japanese influenced out of all the regions based on Japan.

 

[Orphalesion]

I mean both weren't the most interesting regions tbh, but Johto was still the better region in Gold/Silver. Not only was Johto new and exciting, but several locations in Kanto were cut down and/or simplified (no more Viridian Forest, Pokemon Tower, Safari Zone. Cinabar Island was wiped out etc. etc.) leaving G/S Kanto a pale shadow of the R/B/Y version.
Of course they probably did that because of Cartridge size limitation, but it stillgave me the impression hat Kanto was in decline or had hit a terrible economic recession or something like that.

 

[Locormus]

Johto for me. Purely because of the richness it has when you travel around it. The sea-routes actually feel like a rough sea when you try to get to Cianwood for the first time, compared to me cheesing the game in Kanto and skipping SeaFoam Islands entirely to get to Cinnabar. Which for a volcanic island really seems quite bland.

For me:
- Kanto: Viridian Forest, PewterCity, Mt.Moon, CeruleanCity, VermillionCity, RockTunnel, LavenderTown, FuschiaCity and the SafariZone.
- Johto: Every single town. Even Cherrygrove'City' with its beach gives me the feeling that there's a lot of land to explore on the other side of that. Just all the lore, the bustling GoldenrodCity, quaint mountain villages like Mahogany and Blackthorn. The IcePath.

I still love Kanto to death - and there are more areas that I actually like, but stuff like CyclingRoad just isn't as well designed and is more thanks to a mental image I've created of it over the years.