Much more competent than the predecessor, although it lacks the charm. Gen 2 purposefully made the game more open-ended although it creates a terrible level curve for over half the game that is plainly unfun. Johto as a region makes me feel weird, and going back to Kanto takes like 3 hours to beat which is a fun and short post-game. The non-linearity should have just been saved for Kanto in order to ensure Johto is actually fun. Unfortunately they didn't do that. Johto is also the start of Pokemon devs going "Hey, let's introduce all of these cool new Pokemon and make sure nobody can get any of them until after they beat the game!" Thanks Gen 2, you ruined the next 6+ generations. At least your music is good and you have cool birds. Pokemon is just plainly an enjoyable system so I can't hate Gold too much, but it definitely felt like a step down from Blue.