I played through
Blue, back when I pretty much played every RPG I could get my hands on. I wasn't even aware of the cartoon when I bought it, I just saw all the coverage in Nintendo Power and thought, "Game Boy RPG!"
They're solid, sure, but yes, they are also grind-heavy. Trying to catch a particularly rare critter wasn't unlike hunting down Metal Slimes (or Metal Babbles / Metal King Slimes later on) in
Dragon Warrior. There was a time where I had less to play, and I would spend lots of time just grinding. I can't really do that much these days.
I have absolutely heard that the high-level metagame is pretty great. That's probably not too different from a lot of MMORPGs, too. I heard the same argument for
World of Warcraft.
For the record, I still own some of the games. At least one of the GBA, DS, and 3DS entries. But I played for a bit and promptly forgot about them.
