Bad level scaling isn't an inherent fault of two regions,

>>31146374

Bad level scaling isn't the only problem with multiple regions, the other problem is that Johto and Kanto were both small and empty

There was nothing to explore or do in either of them

>>31146656
Which, once again, is not a flaw that is inherent to having two regions, but rather the incompetence of Game Freak and possibly the technical limitations they had to deal with at the time of making Gen 2.

>>31146374
It's sort of an inherent fault. It's because of Kanto's open-endedness in the game - since there's multiple paths you can take early on, the game has to treat it as if you can go down any of those paths in any order, and in an RPG that means making them all about the same level. GameFreak's incompetence still comes into play, though, for making it so open-ended in the first place.

>>31146374
>We could easily have the first region go from level 5 to 55-60 and the second from 60 to 85-90
senpai, level requirements are cubic
the exp requirement to go from 60 to 85 is almost double the amount needed to get to 60 in the first place.
since experience pokes give grows linearly, that means you need to have more battles per level, which means levels inevitably scale incredibly slowly as the game goes on
In a small gameboy cartridge, battles can take up memory, so difficulty arises when trying to add more story content. That's why Johto is small.
Level scaling in most of the other older games felt just as bad to the casual player, because in reality the only thing Johto lacked was a good grinding spot before the E4. IIRC, the best place to grind was Tentacruel in the water routes.

>>31148233
That's not a big problem in itself, though. You can just have lower enemy levels to compensate. But instead, they put in a level jump for Kanto for most of the gyms, and then another FUCKOFF GIGANTIC level jump for fighting against Red.

>>31149107
Oh, and Clair, and the E4 in general. The 7th gym had three Pokémon at levels 30, 30, and 34. The next gym jumped to four Pokémon and added 8 levels, and Lance after that added a fifth and another 10 levels - not to mention going from Ice to Dragon.

>>31146656
Not in HGSS they werent

>>31147898
Kanto's level-scaling was pretty tolerable though regardless of the fact that you could take on gyms 3-7 in any order (for the most part anyway, you need Surf and Strength I believe). GSC/HGSS just shit the bed there.

>>31149201
Red I'll accept, he's obviously overleveled on purpose for a laff.
The rest I dunno, I handled it well enough as a kid, except for Red.
I think it's not as extreme as you'd expect from a cursory glance at the levels because on average the Johto league has the lowest levels in series to date. That 10 level jump before Lance is peanuts compared to the 15 level jump to Steven, or that ridiculous 16 level jump to Cynthia, especially when those fights are working with higher levels which are more difficult to grind out.
Even when you get over to the Kanto side, most of the Gym leaders are about E4 range in levels, except for Blue who's around 6-8 level above Lance, but you can't battle him until you've just about finished your tour of Kanto.
Though honestly, all of the games pretty much require some plain old grinding if you want fair levels, except for gen 6 and beyond thanks to exp.share and amie/refresh.

>>31149817
Gen I, II, and III don't really require grinding, you can clear the game with underleveled mons fairly easily. Platinum really ramps it up though which makes it more difficult.

>>31149201
This was the same issue as Kanto as you can go either way from Ecruteak.

>>31149793
Kanto's gyms are a "You don't have to fight them right now if you don't want to" kind of skippable. As in, there's still a clear path of where you're supposed to go next that you can just ignore if you want. It's not the same as Gen2's actual multiple choice paths.

What's bad about having one region with lots to do in it?
Why do you literally want to go through 16 goddamn gyms, and 10 fucking elite 4 members?
What does this accomplish?

>>31152458
Probably because with the way things are currently done 16 gyms IS "lots to do", Pokémon regions are desolate and empty as they are and the games are really shit excuses for RPGs.