I recently (2024) played this for the first time having only played later games in the franchise, wondering how well it would hold up. My takeaways mostly boiled down to it being a question of framing.

If you view this game from the perspective of newer Pokemon games, this one is almost stiflingly limited. Clunky design limitations abound in pretty much every direction, the overall game balance is dubious at best, and pretty much every bit of quality-of-life from the later games is missing. In that sense, the game is very rough.

On the other hand, if you view this game from the perspective of it being an experimental RPG for Game Boy developed for a 1996 release, it is both wildly ambitious and incredibly effective. 151 unique monster designs with unique designs, movesets and stats? A complicated web of elemental type strengths and weaknesses? And it's got ways in which you can help your friend out by trading, or do strategic PvP battling against them? In that sense, the game is incredibly forward-thinking and impressive.

In the end I enjoyed my playthrough, and I think the game mostly holds up. But it is, nevertheless, a bit hard to go back this far if you're used to what followed.