>>53152687At the time most people thought crystal was just G/S with a pretty cartridge, the idea of third versions wasn't even a thing back then - even yellow wasn't seen as a definitive third version, it was seen as Red and Blue with anime shilling.
It was only when emerald launched to adress some of the criticisms with ruby and sapphire that the idea of third versions being superior to the first came about, and thus crystal was retroactively praised as such because of sprite animations, battle tower, move tutor and so on.
It also didn't help that the gameboy advance had already been launched and thus gamefreak couldn't take it's time to add more things to make crystal stand out (like having following pokemon), as the gameboy color was really on it's way out.
