Just asking these questions for the sake of nostalgia and the recognition of player choices.
--- The early generations of Pokémon were difficult compared to what we have now. Even in the areas near the starting routes; I would have to go to the Pokémon Center between every two or three wild encounters to keep my starter at full health. I was glad I had a free Potion in my PC at home. I believe it was also accompanied by the basic controls for the game as well as a message from Mom or Dad, but I dunno. I might be making that last part up subconsciously. Does anyone remember in what game that free Potion stopped being a thing?
--- Sapphire was my first Pokémon game to play and I had a hard time challenging the Elite Four. I'd often buy Full Restores and Revives until I ran out of money, which was hard to earn back then, at least for me. If I ended up running out of medicine while muscling through with my underleveled Pokémon and lost a fight, I'd typically farm money for hours or days until I could try again. It was not until I got Pearl that I realized that I could've bought a few Full Restores to guard against status and that I could stock up on cheap Energy Roots and Revival Herbs to get more of my money's worth. Has anyone here made similar good/bad decisions before?
--- Pokémon was a real popular game at my school while I was growing up. My friends and I would get together to have tournaments to see who was the "Pokémon Master" as the anime hinted. The problem was that I had just started playing and I stuck with Pokémon I liked, which was at the time were ones like Mightyena and Masquerain. And unfortunately for me, everyone I knew had the compulsive need to win no matter the cost. We had no official set of rules back then so everyone bar myself ran with our box art Legendaries, non-mascot Legendaries, Dragons, the fastest hard hitters, and Pokémon with OHKO moves. It doesn't surprise me that I typically ended up last in these tourneys (and I had to stay the throughout the whole time because I owned the link cable). Because of this and a few other bad memories, I grew to dislike Legendaries, Dragons, and pretty much any Pokémon that you can slap onto a team without much though and have it win most of your battles.
Around DPP, my friends started to judge Pokémon at face value; their raw stats, coupled with how wide their movepool and how popular their typing is. Granted, a lot of people who play competitively would think alike, but they didn't even look at how they would fare in a competitive environment. They essentially eliminated more than half the national Pokédex when it comes to Pokémon that they think are worthwhile to consider for battle. To them, those Pokémon weren't even considered worthy of having their existence acknowledged. I started to feel empathetic towards the types of Pokémon that don't get much love such as Normal and Grass types, and not much has changed since. I feel as if I'm paraphrasing the Dragon's Den Elder's quiz but I have to ask this; when you became familiar to the mechanics of Pokémon, did you believe in choosing strength and pure power or did you pick the Pokémon you simply wanted to have as a partner?