I’ve been replaying though the Pokémon games for the first time since they came out.
I just finished Gold and started Emerald last week. I was really looking forward to it as I always hear great things about emerald.
But I have not been enjoying it. I feel like I’m constantly under leveled and even when I have a higher level than other Pokémon, I feel weaker.
The map has been a bit annoying going in circles for the first half of the game. I am at the 5th gym now, and decided to drop it and move to gen 4.
I also have not been happy with the team I built. It seems that the move sets I have are not really that good. I’m at level 20-30 and I’m just getting my first good moves for some of my team.
I hate to tell you that you gave up too early but most of the good things about emerald happen after the 5th gym when you get surf (the expanded story from ruby and sapphire, the battle frontier, improved gym leader teams and rematches, etc)
Gen 3 has so many trainers so you shouldn’t be underleveled with probably the only exception being the 5th gym. The only trainers between the 4th gym and the 5th are 5 or so in the desert and the gym trainers. The gym leader also uses 3 fully evolved pokemon. If you don’t have a strong super effective move (which is likely) then that fight will be a challenge.
The rest of the game I don’t think is that hard, the 7th gym is probably the next difficulty spike but I won’t tell you.
Some pokemon are also just not good and so you probably shouldn’t bother using them. It’s not like in later games where even if a pokemon is weak you can use the power of friendship and drugs to power boost it until it can fight anyway.
I think not having good Pokémon has been my problem. I’m hesitant to replace them due to having trouble finding a good alternative and I don’t really care to grind for levels. I didn’t need to do that in the previous games.
I think I’m going to drop it and give it another try after finishing x and Y when I play omega ruby
Shroomish, or more accurately breloom from the first forest is amazing.
Aron gets good but takes a while. Same with lotad.
Plus mudkip is a beast. Treeko kinda sucks and torchic is good but so much of the game being water really puts fire in a bad position.
But yeah, there are a lot of bad mons especially early game.
If you aren’t having fun there is no shame in that. I feel the same way about Sun and Moon.
I am sure that there is a lot those games do right, like the island challenge instead of gyms and a different kind of elite 4 and other things but the early game is so boring that I don’t care to get that far.