I'm playing through LG and I gotta say, the openness of the game is kinda eh. I mean, yea it's open, but it doesn't really incentivize doing things in whatever order. there's a clear ordering in how thing are to play out, as if the openness was just an oversight. this is actually compounded in LG because what gates were in the original game are gone now that not-HMs are not tied to badges, so it's more open. and to be honest, there's not much exploration because of it.
but with hard set levels, and a rather linear story, there's a lot of flimsy illusions of openness. this isn't A Link to the Past here, that's for sure. and that didn't have to worry about levels.
really, the best thing GF can do going forward, if they attempt a more open ended design, is detaching the story stuff from the gyms and exploration. allow the player to run around the world without any blocks. if they want to get all 8 badges and beat the E4 before doing the story, fine. tackling the story before doing any gyms, that's fine too. these are all solved problems, GF just needs to research how they were done and do it