This was my first time playing through the gen 1 remakes. I have childhood memories of seeing others play through the gen 3 games but I had missed out on this. I got my first ever handheld in 2006 with the release of Pokemon Diamond, so I had just missed out on that previous generation. It was amazing to see others play this though, I caught glimpses of it during the bus and recess and the mysteries enthralled me. Especially the Pokemon mansion, imagining capturing mew and finding the secrets. Finally, I went through and played it as an adult now after also completing Emerald. I was let down to play through this now, for a variety of reasons. Firstly, the story isn't anything too crazy. It's kept simple, Team Rocket is attempting to steal pokemon, capture buildings, etc. They are essentially the Pokemon mafia, which is interesting because they don't really hold back on the dialogue in this game. It feels mature even at this age with them threatening actual physical violence at times and the game mentioning Pokemon dying. I like the mature theming and makes the game feel like it ages better. The downside to this is that the story well, isn't really complex. It feels very disjointed, Giovanni doesn't really appear consistently and when he does appear it doesn't have a big impact. You beat him a few times and Team Rocket just disbands without issue. Your rival in the game is also not very fleshed out. I've heard him praised over the years, but I don't understand why. He's the most generic definition of the rival in the series thus far, he isn't mean enough to be intimidating but doesn't have enough dialogue to be likeable either. He's also obsessed with saying smell ya later, which was the one thing I enjoyed about him. As for gameplay, it suffers from standard old Pokemon gen issues. This is before the physical/special split, so strategies were inherently less complex. I am also a big enjoyer of the party wide EXP share. I play the pokemon games to get as many Pokemon as possible, level and evolve them. Having to swap train or use a single EXP share is tedious and can be annoying, since I have to grind for hours at times. The biggest issue I had with the game overall is the Pokemon variety. I understand this is a gen 1 remake, but they did introduce other regions mons in the Sevii islands. Having these spread throughout the game more would have helped immensely with the enemy variety. It felt absolutely terrible being at the end of the game and running into level 30 pidgeys or geodudes. At least remove the lesser evolutions at those higher levels to make it feel higher stakes. This was really my biggest issue for the game overall, it made it feel so repetitive and samey. Every route felt like a pidgey, sandshrew, or meowth simulator. Finally, the events. I was able to do all the in game events for the game and while I enjoyed capturing deoxys, ho-oh, and lugia, imagine my surprise that mew was unobtainable in this game but only in Emerald. I understand in the big picture this isn't a big deal, but why? This game would have made much more sense for it and would have fit right in. Regardless, overall this was a very tame experience that felt repetitive for me but I did not regret. I was nice going through Kanto for the first time and I'm eager to keep moving forward.