yes I want the world to sometimes kick my ass and sometimes I want to feel powerful and like I can stroll on by without care
it colors the world instead of everything feeling the same the entire way through, which is boring
I do too, but I'd rather it be something purposely planned. Like, how I stumbled onto Alfornada didn't feel like a natural "oh, this place has higher levels, better come back to it later" but rather was a "oh, Levels suddenly spiked, this is meant to be a late game area". At the point I was in the game, Alfornada Gym should have been nearly impossible for me to beat, I should have stood no chance against Tulip or at the very least have to use every single Pokemon in my team. But, no, despite clearly being late game area, I was high Level enough where I was able to defeat Tulip by maintaining Type advantage. Which, yes, while fun, as I said lead to another problem: For pretty much the rest of the game I was unchallenged. The only other time I felt challenged was against Eri but that's because she was the last boss and I fought her early. And, like with Tulip, a battle I should have no business beating as easily as I did, I did so. Other Gym Leaders, Star Captains, and Titans from then on? No problem. Elite Four & two Champion battles? No problem.
There's a difference between planned difficulty highs & lows and ones which are caused by unintentional sequence breaking. Most if not all the bosses I should feel are a difficulty spike, they're meant to test to see if we're properly progressing. Between then, when battling the Route trainers and Wild Pokemon should we feel powerful, a cut above the rest who are capable of defeating the bosses. But the unintentional sequence breaking I did? It destroys that sense of balance. Now instead of a wavelength of ups and downs I have a giant spike early midpoint, a steep slope for the remainder of the midpoint and near end game, and a final small blip during the end game followed by a steady slope. Not really the kind of game experience I think they were planning.
It makes the feel erratic in an unnatural way.
Then people would complain its not open world and you’re being forced along a specific path.
Except you're not; a suggestion isn't the "next goal" you're forced to go to, it's just something which says this is the next planned location. But an open world game lets you completely ignore that and go wherever you want.
That said, since the Bosses are set Leveled, even with the suggestion thing not working as it's supposed to you're subtly being hinted where the next location is. Katy and Brassius are supposed to be the first Gym Leaders you battle, that's what their Levels say, but you can skip them and save them for your last two battles and completely wipe the floor with them.
"Then what's you're issue with battling Tulip early"? While I knew I'd entered into a late game area, due to Alfornada being on the south of Paldea, I thought at most it would be the 5th or 6th Gym. Mt. Glaseado and the two green areas above it very much felt like the end game locations for the main game bosses. I thought even if I defeat Tulip now the Levels will likely even out again upon getting to the base of the mountain. But not only do they not, on the mountain the Levels are equal to near Alfornada. Oh, and by the time I got to Mt. Glaseado, I had gone through the area where Eri's Squad is which I believe is the highest Level in the game. Here I thought the toughest Star Captain would be the one after Mt. Glaseado as it takes the most effort to get to, but no, it's the one that's relatively close to Atticus's Squad. Not to mention I find it odd that, not only is a Gym Leader not the strongest boss in the main game, but there's two Team Star Captains above them. It feels very anti-climatic no matter what way you do it.
You can see what happened with say, Final Fantasy 16 or Starfield. They're fine games on their own, I think both easily earn a 8/10, but everyone, fan or critic, expected lord knows what kind of masterpiece, and honestly it didn't help that the advertising pretended they would be the next best thing.
Advertising definitely didn't help. FF16's commercials made you think it was a kaiju slugfest with Kingdom's vying for power while causing massive destruction upon a defenseless populous. The actual game was a social commentary on caste systems, valuable resource management, and of course a sprinkle of climate change with the kaiju's battles mitigated to fancy boss battles with a lot of reaction commands that don't really use any of the skills and equipment you've gotten. Starfield was a Bethesda game, 'nuff said.
And just "being a good game" doesn't fly on modern internet.
Honestly most fans and critics like FF16, that wasn't the issue. The issue was Square Enix expecting it to suddenly sell a billion copies even though no other FF game or any of their JRPGs selling that good. It's a thing you see over and over again with companies like Square Enix, Capcom, Activision Blizzard, EA, etc.; they expect even the most niche of games to sell to every single person on the planet twice over to "break even". And all so a few dozen shareholders can grab more and more money, expecting infinite growth no matter the cost (and then when it all goes kablooey said shareholders jump off with their golden parachutes with their ill gains leaving everyone else to deal with the mess of what happens next).
