My biggest problem with these games isn’t the insane slowness, or the HMs, or the lack of Pokémon availability, but the fact that the AI for literally every NPC is entirely random.
Nothing sucks me out of the experience quite like an important boss battle wasting every turn available to them while I knock out all their Pokémon with no resistance whatsoever, and that legitimately happens all the time in these games. It’s indefensible. I’m blown away that more people don’t bring this up because it’s an ACTUAL flaw that breaks the experience on a MECHANICAL level, and it’s the only real reason I can’t stomach a playthrough of these games. They just don’t function properly as GAMES on the most basic level if the battles (aka the core gameplay) aren’t designed to present some kind of coherent obstacle for me to play against.