>>35325610The first gym's level cap is 20; the gym teams are strong movesets "balanced" to be ~5 levels below each cap. I remember outspeeding/2-shotting most of her mons with an overleveled (18-19) Croconaw. It feels like Whitney syndrome, where you need to have a plan/Mons that have a fair bit of work put into them, but they're not so tough that you can't beat them without grinding (last update added a turbo button, too like emulators).
Most of the wild Pokemon you can find in the grass are shitmons: for the first gym, all you get in the grass are the regional rodents/birds, Poison fodder (Ekans, Stunky, Trubbish, etc.), but the creator tends to reward exploration. For the first electric gym, I recall that you can find a Numel (ground type), Pachirisu (volt absorb), Goldeen (lightningrod), Blitzle (lightningrod), Espurr (pranktster light screen/yawn), Tynamo/Grubbin/Joltik (electric terrain STAB, speed control). Doing a quest for a guy opens up a garden with basic grass/bug shitmons; Dustox has super high SpD for the early game, most of the other grasses resist electric, etc. Different quest gives you an elemental starter monkey (fast, elemental STAB), fishing rod, or a super strong for early game normal mon (Skill Link Mincinno, Wish Igglybuff).
I really liked digging around for new Mons, and the overall shittiness of the wild pokemon goes up linearly as you progress through the story, and I got a ton of use out of pokemon I would never otherwise use. You can either do status moves from the wild grass pokemon + rely on your starter, or you can go do tons of sidequests for slightly better pokemon. And you get to swap out your teams quite frequently.
