Notioriously incompetent, you mean?
I think you are massively overestimating how well your average player handles things like Rollout Miltank, Shadowballing Gengarm a Steelix with a 5 level advantage over the previous 2 pokemon in the fight before you have decent Fire coverage and a fucking entire Dragon Gym that they haven't necessarilly prepared for (some might even go level up a Delibird to teach it Blizzard). The first couple of gyms may be complete jokes, but I can get behind that, it is a better introduction to the game than Charmander vs Onix was back in the day. There is more than a few non-negligible fights there that can throw newer/unexperienced players for a bit. We are talking the kinds of players that don't use TMs and are largely relying on self caught Pokemans here. You are looking at a level of play that is way below what you are used to dealing with Hinode.
Shadow Ball was physical back in gen 2, so it was nowhere near as damaging as the one that Djinn just faced (although it admittedly lacks the embarassing achille's heel as well). The Steelix was dangerous by Steelix standards due to being overlevelled, but it's still a Pokemon with 30 base speed, subpar special durability, and glaring weaknesses to Water and Fire.
Whitney and Clair were genuinely competent, but they're still only 2 out of 8 gyms, while Falkner/Bugsy/Pryce dragged the average down a ton. At best you could argue that GSC is on par with RB for gym leader difficulty despite the latter's embarassingly primitive AI and moveset design, which is to say it's still the dregs of the series.
What was Morty's Achilles' heel?
Also, Whitney did KO me once with the Milktank out of nowhere~
I'm playing without any guides at all. I don't even have a type advantage list, and I'm going basically off of memory from RBY from about a decade ago. I figure this is an appropriate challenge to offset the fact that I traded in all three starters from the beginning. I didn't even know there was a Ghost-type gym until I got there, so I didn't exactly have the appropriate pokemon levelled up. It just kind of surprised me how competent Morty was, considering all I had heard about GSC balance.
Current team:
Golbat (Lv29, was lvl24 when I fought Morty, subsequently became my MVP despite being crap until evolution)
Quilava (Lv26, was 23 vs Morty)
Croconaw (Lv28, was 27 vs Morty)
Bayleef (Lv25, was 20 vs Morty)
Dratini (Lv24, was 21 vs Morty, was my MVP before Morty)
ShinyRedGyarados (Lv30, replaced Slowbro, sits in the back of my team as my trump card)
Slowbro (Lv20 vs Morty, pretty much useless, but his Disable saved my ass against Gyarados' DragonRage)
Geodude (Lv18, was using him as a tank until Morty)
Furret (Lv18?, HM Slave~)
Machop (Destroyed Whitney with him and Dratini~)
ElectricSheep (Forgot its actual name, was using it as a warm body before better things came around)
Pokemon I've seen, but haven't bothered to catch, but look relatively interesting to use: Giraffe-thing (I don't even know what typing it has)
Abra (because I got one in RBY, but it took forever to catch and then forever to evolve and I just don't have that kind of patience as an adult~)
