>>54400000Numbers wasted but I'll try to give you an honest answer
The game is pretty well curated before you reach ecruteak, wild levels are fine, your first Pokemon are evolving or have evolved already and you got your first overworld encounter and landmark distraction, however this heavily curated experience dies after you reach ecruteak since you are presented with a fork in the path that has many different new Pokemon and the first great opportunity to backtrack and explore in surf but not much in the trainer department to raise all those new Pokemon, even after you clear all the parts of the fork and the 3 gym leaders around it you are forced to go into the mindnumbing rocket takeover with trainers that barely rose in levels using lines you already fought up until the executives show up, from that point onwards the game doesn't really recover in the trainer department and barely increases the new team mates that you can add with the added difficulty that if you choose to add a new member to your team it will be grindy to get them up to speed with the rest
The main issue here lies in people treating the ecruteak fork as some sacred cow of open world design instead of admitting it's flaws and basically changing a lot of stuff it ruins going forward, if you develop a good romhack after ecruteak it becomes really enjoyable but it is so different from the base game that it might as well be a whole new fangame at that point
I hope this helps
