I thought this game was solid. It certainly had major problems but I can certainly see why it was such a hit when it came out. Certainly decently sized and had me use the barest amount of brain cells at the end of the game which was actually really fun. A few things were quite bad though mainly the inventory system, puzzle design, and the speed of the game. The inventory system was just annoying as all hell with the limit being far too small for the amount of items you can expect to pick up. Beat a gym leader and want to get your reward? Sorry buddy back to the pokecenter as you have too many items! It is just an annoyance that only hinders gameplay. Puzzle design was also not implemented the best way as its difficult to figure out the sometimes convoluted and poorly explained puzzles when you are being interrupted every 5 seconds with a wild battle to deal with. The sea cave was a particular point of horribleness as I was under the assumption that it was the only way to Cinnabar Island which is what the game designers seemed to want you to believe given how its the path branching from Fuschia city. It seemed like a exacerbation of every problem I had with the game. It didn't help that I didn't realize until I already finished the cave that half of it was optional. Finally the speed of the game also was not ideal. After about the third gym I started playing exclusively on 4x speed as the base game time taken to do anything was just far too slow. Despite all of these flaws fundamentally this is the first pokemon game and is a very good distillation of its formula that is successful for a very good reason. Its fun to go and catch pokemon, craft a team, and battle all the gyms. In that respect this game excells and truly deserves its place. Although it took adjustments to my gameplay such as 4x speed and occasionally using a guide for a dungeon that was being obtuse I did have genuine fun with this game. I just hope that the later games in this series don't force me to change them this much in order to have a good time. (Also the glitches being as bad as they are is pretty funny but I'm gonna ignore that).