Zoomer here, just finished gen 1 for the 1st time (picrel), here are my thoughts for those interested
>Pokémon
Obviously iconic. Even ignoring the official artwork, the OG sprites are great. People overstate how ugly they are, they have personality. They’re balanced horribly, some are god-like, others are mediocre or shit, but that’s not a flaw, there’s no reason a single player RPG should have to make all the mons equal
>Routes
linear and simplistic, theyre moreso designed around naturally funnelling you through a series of battles rather than for exploring. Theyre serviceable
>Dungeons
Peak dungeon design. They all have a unique gimmick or puzzle, and a lot of them have a major reward at the end. They’re also mostly quite long, testing the player on their item/PP management, which some may find tedious but personally I love it
>Towns/Cities
Hot take but they’re nothing special. They mostly use the same tiles so there’s not a lot setting them apart visually. That said, the music helps, especially places with unique themes, and they all have a handful of notable spots (Celadon especially) so they’re far from bad
>Battles
Disappointingly easy. Brock was a challenge as I had to win at a disadvantage but every other battle was trivial. Most battles, even major ones, just have the terrible level up movesets on top of being monotype, while the player has endless options for decking out their team with whatever mons/moves they want, so I steamrolled every battle with 0 opposition. I swept Sabrina with a lv 35 Elecrode by using light screen/thunderwave, then spamming thunder bolt for fucksake
>Misc
Limited level-up movepools good, incentivizes using TMs. Limited bag space good, incentives item management. Glitches/bugs hardly present. Broken mechanics were fun, loved clamp-locking everything. Level curve surprisingly good but Surge and Erika need to be ~5 levels higher. Story parts nicely told albeit minimal

Gonna start Gold now, anything I should know?