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Here's my progression through all 18 badges on a completely blind playthrough. It's worth noting that I was underleveled by 10-15 levels for the last 4 badges, so I ended up grinding my team to level 50 off wild mons. I skipped almost all trainers.
Overall, I thought the level curve was manageable for an open world game, plus it was really fun wandering around and exploring.
The fire base, psychic gym, and fighting bases were the steepest curves in my playthrough. If anything, I was more worried about running into wild mons 10-20 levels higher than my team than I was annoyed about having to grind for the last few gyms on my sequence.
