I didn't care for the monkeys, or the first gym for that matter. The gym forces you to get a monkey unless you trained up your starter to levels that are way higher than par or used one of the 3 catchable pokemon up to that point, and even then Patrat is mediocre and Purrloin is worse. Lillipup is the only decent catch, but it requires some dedication, and I don't want to use Lillipup all the time. As for the monkeys, Pansear had Incinerate at that point and Panpour had Water Gun, and because the monkeys were more physical, those moves weren't too great on them. Pansage had Vine Whip, which made it half decent, but there were better Pokemon options. This concept was ok the first play-through, but any other play-through, it was more annoying due to limited choices and being more, albeit veiled, tutorial in a game that already had way too much tutorial .