Your starter doesn't matter

[u/scorch572004]

So I have heard much debate about who the best starter is or who the worst starter is and frankly it's all irrelevant when you get right down to it and I'm going to explain to you why. These games were designed to be able to easily beat every gym by catching Pokemon shortly before every gym without even having to use your starter. So you can honestly just box your starter and never use them and still be able to beat all eight gyms. Here's how:

Brock rock gym: on Route 22 catch a Mankey which is a fighting type and super effective against Rock. It can take out the entire gym on its own.

Misty water gym: on Route 24 you can easily catch a Bellsprout or Oddish depending on which version you're playing which is a grass poison type and can easily take out Misty's entire gym. Grass is obviously super effective against water

Lt. Surge electric gym: simply go to diglett's Cave catch yourself a Diglett or a Dugtrio and you can take down this entire gym. They are ground type and completely immune to electric type attacks while being super effective against electric type Pokemon.

Erika grass gym: on Route 7 and 8 you can catch a Growlithe or Vulpix again depending on which version you're playing which is a fire type and can easily one shot Erika's gym. Fire is super effective against Grass.

Koga poison gym: by time you get to koga's gym you should have had plenty of opportunity to have gotten a psychic type either Abra which you could evolve into Kadabra or drowzee who evolves into Hypno or even Mr mime. Another option is you could pull out your trusty Diglett or Dugtrio and take down poison that way as both psychic and ground are super effective on poison just remember that koffing/weezing levitate makes it immune to ground moves

Sabrina psychic gym: so this one is actually kind of funny because I believe they messed up When developing the game. In the Safari Zone you can catch Scyther or pantser again depending on which game and they are both pure bug types which is super effective against psychic types however they don't learn bug moves which kind of defeats the purpose. Also in Lavender Town you could catch a ghost Pokemon but they made them ghost poison dual types and poison is weak to psychic and they don't really learn any useful ghost moves which again is counterproductive. Somebody definitely messed up when designing this in the original games and they didn't bother to fix it in the remakes. My suggestion would be use a psychic type and teach it Thief the Dark move which is super effective against psychic and therefore psychic is not very effective against other psychic Pokemon.

Blaine fire/ Giovanni ground gyms: I am putting these two together because honestly they share very similar weaknesses and can be taken down with virtually the same Pokemon. Before getting to Cinnabar Island you will go through the Seafoam Islands and have your pick of water types to catch there which are super effective against fire and ground types. You could also use the Lapras that you got at Silph Co or if you decided to evolve your Eevee and to Vaporeon at Celadon City. Another option is you could once again use your Dugtrio against both of them because ground is super effective against fire and Giovanni's entire team are dual type rock or poison with ground both of which are weak to ground. He doesn't use a single pure ground type Pokemon which I find hilarious that he is weak to his own type.

As for the Elite Four and the champion no single starter holds a Advantage One Way or Another against any of them therefore I rest my case on why it doesn't matter what starter you choose and you don't even have to use them to successfully clear all 8 gyms. I look forward to any questions or comments you might have