It has some good ideas that are badly executed , that subsequent games either discarded or improved . Some ideas , such as removing the need to use HM ' s every time you passed through a place , instead of just the first time , were a very good idea that made backtracking great . Others , such as the Pokmon Dream World and the street passesque passive bonuses were largely ignored as pointless . Contests were replaced with musicals , and people continued to not care about either of those . This was the first gen since gen III where the versions really mattered beyond type availability . The eighth gym had a different leader in each version , along with a different aesthetic look , and each game had an exclusive location , Black City White Forest respectively , both of which required interaction to make actually useful , and were just dead areas if you never met anyone else playing the game . The plot is generally well regarded . It broke the mold somewhat , and introduced a villain whose deemed as pure evil as opposed to AquaMagmaGalactic ' s misguided villains , and pulled a few twists on the conventional eight gyms plus elite four formula . However , the plot was extremely railroaded , with every location blocked off until you ' re allowed to go there by the gym leaders , even though you could logistically get to them . Exploration was practically nonexistant to , with nothing off the beaten path save for one area once you got surf , which made the whole thing feel very linear . The game stuck to just Gen V pokmon until you beat the elite 4 . This led to a severe lack of type availability , especially early on . By the time you get to the first gym you can capture precisely three other types of pokmon , plus your starter . Compared to Gen I which had the same amount of Pokmon available preelite 4 , where you could easily fill a party with a variety of types by the time you got to Brock . The game kept pokmon to strict areas , meaning you wouldn ' t find a single electric type until the electric cave , no dragons until the dragon tower , and if you wanted a Durant in your party , forget it , they exist only on the way to the elite 4 . Gen V changed the leveling system as well . instead of a simply level 10 pokmon always being worth X amount of experience , there was a modifier for level . If you knocked it out with a level 5 pokmon it would get X plus Y . If you used a level 20 pokmon it would be X minus Z . This meant that for fast leveling you had to constantly push forwards into tougher pokmon , but made leveling up to beat a tough challenge take even longer per level than it already did . The post elite 4 also takes a massive jump in difficulty , from around mid 50 ' s elite 4 , to mid 60 ' s leveled Ace Trainers . Most of these things bar the leveling system were changed for Black White 2 . The story had less handholding , nonUnova pokmon appeared and added to type variety , the difficulty was less spiked , and a lot of optional areas were added . Though it ' s story works best as an expansion of Black White , you don ' t miss anything in skipping Black White .