>>46922929I made a run of Vietnamese Crystal recently and took chikorita as a starter. It's far from being as bad as people are saying.
Once you get past the 2nd gym (which you can beat easily by catching a growlithe earlier), there's very little stopping you from doing an easy almost-solo run with it. It beats Whitney's Miltank easily, the ghost gym is easy because it kills itself with curse (you just have to switch), fighting gym, no problem here, steel gym ? Magneton can't do much, Steelix doesn't resist grass. Ice gym ? The leader's pokemon are all weak to razor leaf. You can body slam the dragons until they're KO.
In the victory road you get the earthquake TM which is helpful for the elite 4. The elite 4 itself is pretty easy (you can even use synthesis on weak mons to save healing items), Lance can be a bit of a problem if you decided to not use suicune/another water mon, but with body slam's PRZ and healing items you can stall him out and win.
Kanto is easy, and Red is ... Red you can just grind like with the other starters.
