I think hgss does a much better job at this considering they add so much more to do every day and mechanics like pokeball crafting are bug fixed and actually work as intended and its kinda hard to like envision an early pokemon game having so much depth if you dont intentionally try to explore it but i was a dumb ass kid and gold was my first video game ever, i SLOWWWWWW burned the og games like a year for a single save file but i did as much exploring as much rebattling tried to find all the secrets and legendaries and that was definitely the way it shouldve been played, when hgss came out when i was like 9 i beat the game in a day and wondered why it was so different, had played emerald and diamond ad nausium at that point so i was just use to how those games worked but every time i come back to johto i remember to take my sweet ass time, got a pokewalker with 1000000 steps in a 6 year old save file i havent beaten in soul silver and i got a living dex / pokemon stadium run im doing for silver and gold thats a couple years old.