Hey man, welcome to PRO.
If there's one tip I would tell new players to make their lives easier here, it would be to not evolve your Pokemon when you're doing the story unless you need to because the Pokemon is just that weak (ex. abra ---> kadabra). Reason being that when you evolve your Pokemon, it takes longer to level them up whereas if you keep them in their base evo form, they level up much quicker. I personally waited until they were level 85-90 to evolve them to make getting through the E4 much easier in every region. But, of course, if you want to retain the original Pokemon experience, feel free to play however you want x)