An interesting game so far, I would give it like 7.5/10
Have seven badges right now, haven't even tried the eighth or gone past the grinding island yet because I want to boost my team a bit before then.
Current Team:
Volcarona: This is my favorite Pokemon ever, so I resisted the urge to rush getting a Larvesta and instead backtracked, then trained up the levels all in one sitting. I would NOT recommend training up a Larvesta from the earliest opportunity. Chansey makes it so that I'm actually glad Larvesta's a physical attacker for once.
Galvantula: Another backtrack, I started out with an Electivire because it was the easiest choice I had. Gotta love better speed and Compoundeyes Thunder though.
Noivern: This one actually wasn't a backtrack, I was regretfully just too stubborn to ditch the Noibat. With Speed Boost and the buffed Hurricane, Noivern is pretty great though.
Medicham: Frail and not the fastest, sucked until level 19, but it basically nukes whatever can't kill it first. Obliterated Dialga for me, so I'm definitely not complaining.
Excadrill: A slight backtrack, but not by much, Drilbur's already pretty good. This thing's a beast.
Demon Kingdra: Honestly, Demon Kingdra underwhelmed me at first, but King's Dance is shaping up to be amazing when I can just abuse save states to get around the worst of the misses it induces.
Past members:
Porygon 2: Sacked because I just got bored of it, and sick of waiting around for Tri-Attack. I never really wanted it that much from the start. Recover paired with a Thunderbolt TM was decently useful though.
Vaporeon: Really short-lived once I went to the library and decided I would rather have Demon Kingdra.
Electivire: Basically carried me for the second thru fourth badges, but ultimately I just love Galvantula's design too much.
Chandelure: Super polarizing to me. Was a nigh-useless Litwick I stubbornly hung on to, then had a jarring transition to amazing at a key tipping point. Will talk more about this below.
Cons I've noticed in my plathrough, to explain my 7.5 : (Edit: I've done more digging and it seems like the creator is aware of most of this too. Still, I'll just clarify that there are no personal hard feelings here and this is largely just to get my thoughts and feelings out)
-This game has so much that seems to heavily encourage me to rely on emulator-specific advantages that I've come to view them as a necessary evil if I want to actually have fun without needing to be a sadist.
-For example, I would've found the Giovanni Enterprises stealth mission entirely intolerable if I couldn't abuse save states between every guard. (technically, you could soft reset a normal cartridge and get basically the same effect, but save states make it a way faster, smoother process)
- Also, having to save scum certain fights to spare myself massive grinds, even with me having managed to farm multiple Lucky Eggs.
-The balance and curve pacing is also really questionable. Putting a Yanmega in the Grass-gym after only a vague NPC hint beforehand just felt mean. And a legendary in only the second gym? Not to mention the levels suddenly did this huge jump before gym six, and then it barely changed by gym seven, which I think also happened previously, making it feel like I suddenly rush through a big chunk of content after previously being at a crawl.
-Having moves and TMs bottlenecked for much of the game but then making rare Pokemon basically just a matter of patience is also something I find jarring, and its main effect seems to be less encouraging my strategy and more just encouraging me to only pay any attention to strong mons who aren't too badly impacted by the attacks that are missing/weren't buffed.
-Example, why would I even pay attention to any of those other electric types at the Power Plant once I noticed I could just get a freaking Electivire with astonishingly little effort? If I want them, I might as well just come back later for them once it's easier to level them (as was the case with my Galvantula)
-Example two, Litwick won't even learn Gen 5's new Fire moves, and when I got one it'd already replaced its Ember, so I had to deal with 15 power, 70 accuracy Fire Spin ALL the way until I could at least have it use a Shock Wave TM as a stopgap measure (I was really stubborn and wanted to see when it would finally get better. Besides, its burn + confuse ray combo was still useful sometimes)
-To be fair, this is a lot easier to tolerate once you can abuse savestates to basically get whatever TMs you want from the TM Roulette in the Game Corner... on top of how you don't even necessarily need to abuse the savestates for that since the Kecleon Guy + Amulet Coin is a reasonably good flow of infinite money.
- This is also basically Litwick's sudden tipping point. Got it to level 41, slapped an Evo Stone on the Lampent, did about ten minutes of save scumming for Calm Mind/Energy Ball/Shadow Ball/ Flamethrower, and suddenly it was my best Pokemon for a good while, until the abrupt level jumps caught up to me. Still, like Medicham, pretty much anything that couldn't outspeed it got nuked.
-Certain Pokemon missing certain mechanics and Abilities really stings. Stufful being switched to Thick Fat honestly turned me off of trying to use it at all... it's really just not the same. I won't complain too much about this one though, I know it's not exactly a walk in the park to set all this stuff up.
- I found the Lucky Egg in Giovanni Enterprises and used Thief to farm Chansey until I got four more (there's actually a much earlier spot than the island where this is possible, but it's significantly slower and more tedious off of the island), so I am at least glad I didn't have to drop so much money on that, but even so it's quite a grind.
-Old-style hard-to-delete HMs also just feel completely unnecessary and arbitrary. It's only partially mitigated by the easy access of the Move Deleter.