BW1's storyline path is pathetic. Every gym is one city apart, and it's pretty much a straight shot from Nuvema Town to the Pokemon League (with the sole exception of having to backtrack to Rt. 4 and go through Desert Resort and Relic Castle).
BW2 is not much of an improvement. The beginning is even shorter than BW1's, the gym distribution is still terrible (after having the first 6 gyms 1 city apart, the 7th is 4 cities away, and then the 8th requires you to backtrack a few cities and travel through Marine Tube), and is still predominantly linear.
Both games have long stretches of gym after gym with very little exploration, that is why they are so linear and clustered.
I always felt that was a partial throwback to the Kanto/Johto regions since they were also pretty linear in structure (though not to the extent of BW Unova).
Personally, I prefered the way Hoenn did it over any other region since they didn't have you backtrack too many times and the gym spacing was better and suited to the story.
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