>>58911505I disagree because the game does a pretty good job of displaying why you should have more than one Pokemon early on.
The second rival fight in RB is close enough to the first that your starter isn't gonna get super overleveled from flying solo, and he has a second Pokemon that'll probably be close to your starter's level which you aren't gonna deal with easily (especially if you pick Bulbasaur).
You are not beating that fight with just your starter without grinding and it's all down to the fact that he has two Pokemon while you have one.
You could argue this becomes less of a problem as the game goes on and starts expecting you to catch Pokemon and level them out evenly, so a solo run is gonna have you level past the curve easily during the mid game, but once you get to late game you start running into that same problem where the level gap isn't enough to cover for the roster gap without copious grinding.
