Severely underrated indeed. Unless you are doing the challenges where you cannot over-level, I normally have my poekmons around Lv.40 by the fourth/fifth gym.
On Pokemon legacy there's a normal mode and hard mode. Normal mode is basically a casual run through the rom hack with no restrictions or anything like that. Hard mode (the one I'm playing) basically adds in level caps (no over leveling), no switching after beating an opponents pokemon (if they have more than one) and a few more things I honestly don't remember what. Sorry for the late response, RU-vid for some reason doesn't notify me when someone comments on my videos.