"Playing Pokemon Gold again and realizing its many flaws..."

I recently got back into playing Gold (Virtual Console on the DS) and I just have to say many features have aged horribly.First there's the matter of the level curve. You are fighting level 20's for pretty much the entire first half of the game. This leaves almost nowhere to level grind efficiently. This became a huge problem when training for the final gym (levels 35-40) and the Elite Four (levels 40-50).There's something also off about the way happiness is measured in the game, as it took quite a while for Eevee to evolve into Umbreon, even using the haircut methods - it still wouldn't evolve until level 49.The overall shoddy diversity of available TMs - Defense Curl? Really?The availability of the Johto Pokemon is shit. You have a handful - Qwilfish, Yanma, Remoraid, Dunsparce, etc - that can pretty much only be caught when a trainer calls you to tell you that they're swarming. Otherwise, good luck with their 1% encounter rate. Pokemon like Houndour, Houndoom, Murkrow, and Slugma can't be found until after the Elite Four. (Even PIKACHU can't be found until Viridian Forest.) Sneasel, Misdreavus, the Larvitar family - you can't even sniff them until Mt. Silver, which in case you didn't know only appears after you've obtained 16 badges and thus completed nearly the entire fucking game. Why have so many of Johto Pokemon only available in Kanto?And then there's the matter of evolution stones. The methods of obtaining them here have to be the worst in the entire series. First off, you don't even get them until Kanto, meaning your options for strong Pokemon to take on the Elite Four are even more slim. You have to show certain Pokemon to Bill's grandfather, one at a time, and in return he'll give you ONLY ONE of each stone. This cannot be repeated. No Cloyster and Vaporeon at the same time. No Arcanine and Flareon at the same time. No Victreebel and Vileplume at the same time. This totally discouraged me from ever wanting to come close to completing the Pokedex, as trading was hard to come by.All I can say is thank God for Crystal, which fixed at least some of these issues. via /r/pokemon https://ift.tt/2q9ails