I liked the addition of Kris, and definitely think the series needs to maintain multiple gender options. That being said, Gold (I never really liked the "Ethan" name that they threw at him come the remakes) was probably my favorite protagonist when I first played Gold (now, it's a toss-up between Gold/Ethan and Red), and so by the time I got to Crystal, I just went with him again. I only had that one save file for Crystal before the battery died, and I never did as much with it as I did with my other gen II games, so I never went back and played as Kris. I'm sorry she was retconned out of the remakes, though; I liked her a lot better than Lyra.
I wonder if I would have switched up my character gender more from game to game had there been an option to do so in RBY and GS. By the time I got to Crystal, I was used to always naming my character the same thing and had established enough of a "tradition" in my first few hundred hours of gameplay (on Red and Gold, primarily) that I've opted for the male trainer ever since. (That, plus once the OT name became gender-color-coded, I liked the look of blue best, so I didn't really want to play as the female character. I still think it would be nice if they would let you pick your OT color from a variety of choices, as another customization feature.)
