>>47639308When I was a kid and until recently I used to avoid using pokemon that wee too strong, as in, the ones that had very good stats and moves by default, because I felt like I was cheating otherwise. I'm including legendaries and pokemon/eggs that are given by NPCs or that you have to encounter for plot related reasons here obviously. Most of the time I was too attached to the first shitmons I caught in each playthrough to replace them anyway so I remember gen 1 and 2 being way harder than they actually are because of this. I do this in other games sometimes, like how I try not to be too OP in Fire Emblem games or they become boring and too easy.
I used to give HMs to my regular pokemon, I didn't like the idea of having an HM slave because that was a waste of a slot.
I used to take my time to talk to all the NPCs and catch anything and do some level grinding, and I left some of the side quests for later before to make each run last "longer" but now that I'm an adult with a job and less free time I don't anymore. I'm playing Shield with the DLC pass right now and doing all the side content on top of completing the pokedex and it's way more fun like this. I'm thinking about playing all the games again this way.
