Been playing chunks of Pokemon Crystal Clear, which is a ROM hack that opens up Johto and Kanto (while also expanding a bit on Kanto – the Safari Zone is re-added back in) allowing you to wander around and tackle gyms as you feel like. You can choose your sprite, hair/clothes (depending on the sprite) and skin color, starter from a pool of starters, starting region and town, etc.
I recommend starting out in Goldenrod in Johto if you want to just explore the game because you can go up to the gate and get a Spearow from the guard that comes with Fly. You can also go underground and grab a Coin Case and start gambling at the Game Corner immediately so you can get a Heracross from the Celadon Prize Corner which comes with both Cut and Strength. There’s a house in Fuchsia with some boxes that has Surf in it so you can also start surfing. The fishing rods are all where they would normally be, except that you’ll always get them in Old > Good > Super order no matter where you go for the rods. The Safari Zone is worth looking through if you need to fill out weaknesses in your party – read the signs and talk to the rangers to find out what pops up in what area of the Safari Zone. There’s a cave if you surf from Cherrygrove that has Gastlys that appear rarely during the day if you’re playing during the day and need a Gastly.
There’s a guy outside of the Goldenrod Game Corner who will teach a fire, thunder, and ice type move to your Pokemon for $4k, which is useful if you need to get Thundershock on a Gastly so you can deal with Misty or overwrite Ember with Flamethrower on Houndour or want to give Totodile Ice Beam for additional coverage. There are people in the Celadon and Goldenrod PokeMarts that will do tradebacks so you can get your Gengar. If you’ve encountered a Pokemon before, you can see in the Pokedex everywhere they’re found, or if they’re found in the area you’re in.
Most of the Pokemon you can get from the Game Corner as prizes can also be found in the Safari Zone with some exceptions, but, for example, Heracross won’t come with Cut and Strength like they would if you had gotten them as a prize (Heracrosses are pretty cheap, I think). You can find Eevees in the Safari Zone, but there’s still a free Eevee on the roof of the Celadon Mansion, and you can buy evolution stones for it at either Celadon or Goldenrod PokeMarts.
Goldenrod is also where you’ll find the renamer, move recaller, move deleter, and nature tweaker. The latter is useful if you wind up with a Pokemon with a nature that’s no good on it.
There are some custom NPCs that you can battle that are kind of bleh, but they give decent rewards, will often tell you what Pokemon show up in the area, and aren’t intended to be super hard to beat, so it’s worth battling them if you see a sprite you don’t recognize.
Don’t forget to set Nurse to Quick. Who knows how much cumulative time I’ve spent in my life waiting for Nurse Joy to finish her spiel and then heal my goddamn Pokemon, but it was probably a lot.
You can also modify some of the music, though, you don’t have a ton of options. I wish there were more Pokemon TCG music in it.
