This is probably a hot take, but I actually like the way that GSC balances its level curve.

I've often heard people complain that the trainers are too low leveled, while the Gym Leader/Elite 4 are too high leveled, but to me it just seems like the slow rise of the trainer levels makes it easier to train a variety of different Pokemon as I go without falling behind too quickly, which then allows me to overcome the Gym Leaders/Elite 4 even at a major level disadvantage by more freely curating my team to the challenge presented. It just feels like variety is the name of the game in GSC; people say its poorly balanced, but I think players are just meant to favor creative team composition over power leveling. It is, after all, so often the case that the Gym Leaders are legitimately quite difficult - UNLESS you just so happen to have one of the pokemon that hard counters them. If you have a ton of pokemon, it becomes exponentially more likely that you'll have one such pokemon, perhaps even more than one, and as such the trade off in levels is more than worth it.

I can't be the only one who feels this way.