I grew up playing the games, and still have my copy of Yellow and Red. I fell of the wagon somewhere around Gen VI, the games just got to easy. It became clear to me that Gamefreak was just throwing in the towel and gave up making interesting games.

That being said, recently I started getting into the world of Romhacks and they have sparked new joy in me. The games are hard, fun, and have a lot of love poured into them. I'm going through Radical Red right now, and its been an incredible time.

Pokemon is one of the worst games for min maxing into a broken game. You go on the subreddits and everyone runs the same perfectly optimal team with the same perfectly optimal movesets. Playing like that probably is remarkably boring, but also once you learn of these patterns and playstyles it becomes hard not to consider using them. Like games that give you free money cheats, the seems great for a second then the drive to actually play the game as it was meant to be played is lost.

I've tried to keep my pokemon knowledge free and clear from this influence. I don't look up anything. I don't really understand the meta beyond basic type matchups. I fumble through the games inefficiently and slowly same as I did in the 90s.

The romhacks are definitely the way to go. I don't need much in terms of gameplay mechanics besides Gen 3 or Gen 4, what I do need is interesting and challenging dungeons/gauntlets

should check out the Legacy line of romhacks, ie Crystal Legacy, Emerald Legacy. if youre ever in the mood for vanilla+. very very high quality releases made with intention and care for the base games.

For absolutely crazy releases, Pokemon Unbound is an absolutely next level romhack

In my head there are and only ever will be ~151 pokemon. I played red/blue when they launched as 8-bit wonders. I could never get into the rest of them.