There is a very big difference between limitations at the time they were released like Zelda 1 or Metroid 1, and games that flat out didn't work as they were intended to. The worst thing you can say about Zelda 1 is that it's localization lead to either incorrect clues like "Eastern Peninsula has a secret" instead of "you won't be able to use the bow if you have no money", or mechanics that don't exist on the nes like "pols voice hates loud noise" but no famicom controller 2 mic to use.
Pokemon Gen 1 had a ton of issues that even as a kid I realized something was wrong. Like how characters in game and in the anime say "use ghost Pokémon against psychic types" only Psychic types were immune to ghost by accident. Or the fact that "moves that can't miss" could easily miss, or that you could surf/fish in statues, or invisible pcs you could access. Even as a kid the bizarre distribution of pokemon (like only 3 ghost pokemon, 3 dragon pokemon, or 5 ice pokemon pokemon vs 33 poison pokemon and 32 water pokemon) or how psychic types were comically unbalanced, or how charmander is a horrible starter that a lot of players will get stuck at Brock because there's virtually no wild pokemon before his gym that can beat rock/ground.
These aren't just looking at gen 1 or 2 with modern lens, these were issues that impacted players from day 1 even if they didn't fully understand what the problem was. What you won't see me do is criticize gen 1 for things like the lack of qol improvements like the running shoes, the limited battle animations, the general slowness of battles, the primitive story, the lack of a way to rematch npcs, etc. Those are all actually improvements made in later generations that make Gen 1-2 harder to go back to but are forgivable for the time they were released.