Re: Pokémon Crystal Access
I see what you're saying, at least up to some extent.
For example, bug moves. The fact that we've really only got Twinneedle, Pin Missile and Megahorn is just fugly. Heracross and a couple of others can use Megahorn, and it hurts, but things like Bug Buzz and X-Scissor are lovely, and increase viability.
It's been twenty years since I didn't know which pokemon were good and which weren't based on either their level-up move lists or their learnsets via either breeding or TM/HM. I know, for instance, that Forretress in-game is a pain in the neck because both its types lack good STAB, but it's also a very good spiker and a premium physical wall; I might use it in competitive fights, but never in an in-game run. Compare that to Lanturn; dual STAB in Surf and Spark, plus paracon support in T-Wave and Confuse Ray naturally; the thing is just made for in-game teams, and it's actually quite bulky even if it doesn't hit hard. So for a newer player, you're dead right. For me personally, it's a nonissue.
I still hold to my argument re: the game is harder though. The newer games make almost all pokemon fairly good in some way, and this can be seen as a good thing. However, the vanilla (or in my case, close-to-vanilla) games mean that actually deciding which pokemon to keep and which to not use contributes to the difficulty. If you pick up a Hopip early on, you're going to have trouble levelling it up, and you're quickly going to find out that it's speedy as hell and great for team support, but not a great damage dealer. If you pick up a Slugma, you're soon going to realize that having double weaknesses to ground and water make it virtually DOA for most of the game once it evolves into Magcargo. I don't reject your point entirely, though; when part of the difficulty is in which pokemon to reject, that can be seen as a design flaw.
I see what you're trying to say though, and I agree with you at least in part.
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