You hit the nail right on the head there. Radical Red sucks because it is made for fans of COMPETITIVE Pokemon, not just Pokemon fans in general. Whereas the Kaizo games are hard as fuck and definitely do some of the same bullshit, but they don't force you to EV train, in fact they remove that aspect entirely, that's where the challenge comes in. Me personally, if I want to play Pokemon but challenging, I'll just stick with Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth on Hard Mode. Not just because Digimon > Pokemon but also because it's fair. You don't need to make competitively viable teams to beat the game, you just to know what you're doing on a general level and actually use the game's systems to your advantage.