I just wanna say that I started this with Charmander and won my first rival battle: charmander lv 5 vs squirtle lv 5. It's not impossible, but it's entirely up to luck. His ivs are too high, dunno. Mine were good too, as charmander is hardy with a+ in life, d- attack, d+ defense, b+ special attack, a special defense, a speed. The problem is that the first battle is all about normal attack and normal defense and there I have only d's. So basically I had to reset a couple times and then I managed thanks to growl, scratch, and a random critical hit XD
btw, this aside, I'm enjoying all the features in the game. But it was terrible to discover that there's no daycare... =(
P.S. game freeze in veridian city. There's a house (ok, maybe it's a school) with a kid reading a book and a teacher that tells you to read the blackboard to learn useful stuff. You interact with the blackboard, the game freezes