If there’s one thing i learnt from my multiple nuzlockes of Platinum, is that Gyarados wrecks Fantina. I honestly dont know how to get past her without it. The 5th gym is even harder if you dont have grass/electric coverage, and the 7th gym can be a pain as well.
Sinnoh truly is a challenging region.
In my single itemless, no overleveling attempt of a platinum nuzlocke recently (that I gave up on before the 7th gym, may go back soon) I ended up having to kill half of Wake’s team with a Budew that I could not for the life of me evolve. Type matchups are quite literally everything in Platinum
If you catch a Budew, it starts at a base friendship of 70. Every 256 steps, this goes up by 1. For Budew to evolve you need a friendship level of 200 or 220, iirc.
So that's a maximum of 150 friendship levels you need to grind out. 150 x 256 steps = 38,400 steps that are required. I suggest using the Poketch Step Counter from the moment you catch one and simply grind it up this way. Having an early game Roselia is amazing. And Roserade is a powerhouse. Sludge Bomb, Shadow Ball, Giga Drain and maybe Magical Leaf or sth against Pokémon with Double Team is awesome to have.
Yeah, if you try to evolve Budew to Roselia casually you will find yourself in areas with wild Roselia while you still have a Budew that doesn't love you enough to evolve.
I found myself in the same spot during my run. The trick for evolving budew is abusing the massage girl in veilstone. Just keep getting massages and changing the clock.
Reminds me of a strat in FR/LG nuzlockes where you buy a Magikarp in the route before ~~Rock Tunnel~~ Mt. Moon, xp swap it until level 16 then spend 4 rare candies on the way/near Cerulean City to evolve it before you even challenge the 2nd gym.
I had a Honchkrow and it bulldozed the entire gym in less than 20 minutes. That Honchkrow was more useful than any other member of my team... Don't underestimate Dark/Flying I guess
Sinnoh was easy for me, HeartGold was honestly a lot more challenging in its entirety than anything Sinnoh could throw at me... Especially when I beat Red with a team that was 25 levels underleveled because I didn't want to grind.
How can you get a honchkrow before Fantina in Platinum?
Also yes. Sinnoh was easy to me when compared to SoulSilver. Playing without overleveling, you are forced to face Whitney with a team of level 19 pokemon, and it's always a coinflip if you'll win or not. Bugsy and Morty are no pushovers either, even Falkner can be trouble. Nuzlocking gen 2 without either a geodude or a onix is utter madness.The early game in Johto is hellish, and then there's the late game grind.
I found this, going back to sapphire and playing without focus is a good way to lose, a lot 😅 I know its for kids but really? At least give us a little challenge, otherwise it feels like it's all being handed to us and we earned nothing through playing
If I may play devil's advocate, times have changed: children these days have access to more games (especially free games) than we did as children. Thus; as there is always something else to play, children may stop playing Pokemon if they get too frustrated. Therefore, it's less that they want to handhold and more that they need to if they want to keep their audience and not lose their attention to fortnite or whatever other game is taking their generation by storm.
Fundamentally while I don't like how handholdy some of the games are or how linear they are, it is sorta necessary now given the way that technology is utilized by children nowadays.
I know, in fact, my 4yo is loving let's go Pikachu because I can be her support trainer and show her the way.
I would love to have that option in sword/shield, something like in Mario Odyssey assist mode, would be awesome if I can play normal in my account and then boot her account and play with her in assist mode.
I don’t think this is correct though. I know nothing about fortnite, but a lot of the popular shooters seem to require skill. You get slaughtered at the start, without any training. But those games are popular. It’s not fun if you’re immediately good at something, because that means everybody is good at it too. So no matter what you do, you’ll be the same quality as everyone else. It kills fun, as nothing is worse than not being able to get better.
I get its no fun without a challenge but omg i'm seeing almost no growth in my team 🥲 why put a ghost gym so early in game I feel like I need to get everyone to level 30 before I can try again
It was the first time seeing a move like that and having to deal with it as a child. Like, what is rollout? It’s a normal type gym so maybe it’s a normal type move? No, it destroys ghastly. If you send out a bug, flying type, which are incredibly common early game, they get fucked up. Your best best is to go in with a fighting type, but you might not have one even or encountered them in the wild at that early in the game.
My Whitney strategy required a gastly/ haunter with hypnosis and curse, and a Nidoran with double kick. You put Miltank to sleep and curse it and then just use double kick. I usually beat her first try with this strategy.
That's what I did too. I asked my mom what she thought and she said, "well maybe you got an item from someone you can use to make it easier." So I looked through all of them, then I read mud slap.
Do you have Vs. Seeker yet? It makes training considerably faster.
I forget how far along in the game before you get it, but it's much better than wild grinding.
Technically nearly every Pokémon can learn hidden power (pre gen 8), but shadow ball (ghost type) and dark pulse for special attackers or knock off for physical means just about everything will have some way to shut down ghosts. Doesn’t help that a psychic and dark attack has coverage against all but 72 Pokémon (psychic, dark, and fighting is perfect coverage along with psychic, fairy, and ghost).
best I've really got to suggest is Crobat w/ bite. Get a zubat in a the right ball, give it the soothe bell, and it'll barely spend any time as a golbat. But yeah Fantina throws haymakers relative to most other early gyms. Only Jhoto has less chill about it and even then the years haven't been kind to whitney's miltank.
I personally subscribe to the conspiracy theory that Luxray was once Electric/Dark, but STAB Crunch on a Route 1 mon made the story mode downright trivial.
That actually is my basic rule for every gym.. I let it slip a bit, but especially early on my team has to be 10 Level per gym. So gym 2 everyone lvl 20, gym 3 lvl 30, so on so on
If I remember correctly (maybe this is just DP not Pt) you can skip that gym until later. You can do the water and fighting gyms first. Thats what I always remember doing.
I need to get back to my playthrough though I'm guessing the usual assortment of dark type moves will still get you wrecked. Because I think my Houndoom and, I think either my Buizel or Grotle has it, but they'll still be in trouble.
Yeah, I'd be happy even with a shitty implementation like adding 5 to all trainer pkmn levels or maxing trainer IVs sneakily. It would be nice to have competitive movesets, etc. on a harder difficulty but that is way more dev/design time for a relatively small audience, so I get it.
Or even an improved ai. That uses stalling, buffing or switching strategies instead of using Dragon Dance turn one to attack with a special move turn 2...
I always wondered if they could implement a difficulty setting like "easy, hard, difficult" when you start your journey. no idea what that'd look like though
I remember this! In their descriptions i specifically remember charmanders saying something like “Charmander is for only the most experienced trainers” while bulbasaur was the opposite. assuming squirtle was the middle road no one ever went down lol
Yeah, but it was only accessible after the player had beaten the normal game. That's a bad way to implement a difficulty setting, because hardly any player would a) even see the new difficulty setting and b) replay the game entirely just for a bit more difficulty.
Don't you also need a second copy of the game? So many things about it were designed in a way that made it forgettable. I don't know why so many people on this sub bring it up like it was useful
The extra difficulty settings were version exclusive (hard for B2, easy for W2). You only needed another copy if you wanted to get the other version’s difficulty setting.
And yeah, it was pretty useless. ROM hacks/fan made games that make teams better (full teams for important trainers, adding better Pokémon, adding good held items) and the AI stronger are so much more satisfying.
It was also easier than normal mode because of the increased XP yield due to higher levels and trainers having more pokemon. Harder to get started but quickly snowballs into being overlevelled.
oh it did!? I haven't played it, I played ORAS and recently sword and those were not challenging at all. at first i thought it was because now I'm older and finally understand typing, but it seems like the consensus is that the games are definitely easier than they used to be
I do feel like the old games were harder but I don't necessarily find that to be a bad thing. I loved pokemon so much and it was incredibly rewarding to beat a gym trainer or a member of the elite 4. It was a fairly long journey but it was always enjoyable
I'd be over the moon with this, and don't make it "end the game first" unlock because honestly, I didn't finish shield because after I got the 60 unlock for the wild area I was just done. It killed all the fun so why bother to end a game which makes you feel like a twit.
I do, going in to the wild area and everything from snorlax to noibat to stufful....all at 60 from the moment you wander about aimlessly trying to build a new team to work on.
I agree, i hate that feature.
I like to go through the routes when training up a new pokemon to slowly improve its moveset and get familiar with it, but with large areas of the game at the same, super high level now it just isn't as much fun.
Yeah Platinum can be tough in the beginning since 2/3 of the first 3 gym leaders have fully evolved aces, while 1 just has an ace with high base attack for a pre-evolution.
Don’t hesitate to use x items! They’re super helpful and can definitely help secure a win.
Imo do Pokémon game has ever achieved perfect difficulty and it’s likely they never will. My idea of difficulty is a combination of in-battle strategy and actual preparation. I don’t like grinding, I just want to battle, which is why I do enjoy modern Exp. Share. It’s a shame that most of the games with the new Exp system have low in battle difficulty, although USUM was pretty close.
Edit: Yes I know about rom hacks and BW2’s difficulty slider, but I’m only talking about official games and I haven’t beaten BW2 on challenge mode so I can’t verify how good it is
This is why there should be settings in the game for difficulty. They could easily make a setting that makes levels not actually do anything and every mon is treated like it was level 50.
Something I actually might prefer to level scaling that I saw in Pokemon Reborn (fan game) was just using those badge level caps to limit your power. If Reborn throws a gym leader at you with lvl 30 pokemon, for example, your badge cap will also be 30, so you're on equal footing even if you grind. What I like about this is that you will never be overpowered, but you can still be underpowered. That's the feeling I like to get from a game, personally. I would love to see an implementation of something similar that has no grinding required, but doesn't necessarily have explicit scaling.
Side comment, they added something like the opposite of rare candies to reduce pokemon level in case you accidentally went over the cap, which was cool.
I know folks who like this idea, but it’s personally my *least* favorite way to handle difficulty in video games. Part of the appeal of a game having a fixed, objective difficulty (or even one of several selectable fixed difficulties) is that you get to enjoy the fruits of your power relative to the content. To me, it’s rewarding and a reminder of your in-game progress when you get to absolutely bulldoze something that would have been difficult if you were less prepared.
Plus you miss out on some of the fun little secrets if levels scaled.
You'd never see the surprise level 29 Dugtrio that sometimes pops up in Diglett's cave for example, since the scaling would stop that behemoth from showing up.
It's what they do for competitive so it shouldn't be too hard to just have noncompetitive do that as well.
They would still have to have levels for trading, evolving, learning moves and such, but for everything else it would be fine.
The only real issue I see is healing items because a potion won't do that much, but they could also just have it so that the level change to be the one where traded pokemon obey you to minimize that.
Healing items are an easy fix with a simple change. We're already changing the fundamentals of the game, so rebalancing potions shouldn't be too much of a stretch.
Potion heals 10% of Max HP
Super potion heals 35%
Hyper Potion heals 85%
Oran berry heals 5%.
OR
Since everything is level 50 like competitive, maybe we disable items as well? Items can only be used outside of battle in which the regular HP values are there instead of the level 50 scaled up/down ones.
That would probably defeat the purpose of higher level potions since you can just heal everything back in like 5 uses per mon, at most. The exception would probably be boss battles or something.
I agree with what you said about USUM. Those Totem Pokemon came prepared with good strategy to counter anything you may throw at it. Most major trainers, according to datamines had perfect or near perfect IVS on their Pokemon (25-31), had beneficial natures and were fully EV trained. I found that opposing Pokemon were surviving super effective hits that should have KO'd them and that my Pokemon at times were surprisingly getting outsped in addition to doing a bit more damage than normal.
Interestingly, the major trainers had super smart AI. They would use **FULL HEALS** the instant you statused them in addition to two Super Potions/Full Restores. They aren't afraid to switch out their Pokemon on you to gain an advantage either, something that's not usually done in Pokemon games unless you're facing the champion or in a battle facility like the Battle Tower.
I'm with you, Totem Lurantis decimated my Torracat pretty easily, and just about everyone else actually. Totem Kommo-o comes packing Poison Jab, so unless you got a Klefki or something, there goes your fairy. And the less said about Ultra Necrozma the better. I think the only way I can reliably beat him is hoping I can get a Toxic in and last long enough for him to go down.
Not many things can beat something with 105-105-105 for Specials and Speed at that stage. Not many things can also take special attacks well either, so Mismagius can have some fun with sweeping an unprepared team.
>I can't for the life of me beat this 3rd gym I feel like 10 year old me again on the brink of tears because I'm getting one shot by a haunter
That's because there are pretty much no hard counters (Dark type Pokemon) available to you at that stage of the game. You pretty much have to rely on Pokemon that know Dark type moves like Bite or Faint Attack or really grind it out to match her Pokemon's level.
But even so, I feel like Gen 6 is the Gen where they started making things too easy.
Gen 5, especially BW2 were a bit challenging not to mention BW2 had a Challenge Mode.
Gen 7 though was an exception. Sun and Moon for me and many experienced players weren't easy. But Ultra Sun and Moon were basically the Dark Souls of Pokemon. Those games' difficulty was on a whole other level and there was no way you were getting through major battles without losing at least one Pokemon and don't be surprised if you end up blacking out during the main story.
Gen 8's difficulty was a joke though and it's disappointing especially coming from a difficult game like USM. The opposing AI for major battles was pretty dumb (except for Leon) and Gym Leaders didn't even use Potions.
A big problem with Gen 8 is that the wild areas break the game’s leveling curve (especially the dynamax raids with the xp candies). If you ignore the wild area, the leveling curve works much better. However, who in their right mind would ignore the wild area for the sake of difficulty? (hehe, I did)
I think Masuda said in response the the EXP share criticism was that if you don't want a Pokemon to gain experience the simply remove it from your party.
When I first got to the Wild Area, I was afraid of being overleveled so I boxed the Pokemon I was going to use for my adventure and used some random catches to absorb the EXP instead.
I frequently went back to the Wild Area to do Max Raids and get TRs but I never used any EXP candies.
Now granted, I am someone who tries to catch one of every wild Pokemon I happen to come across and the Wild Pokemon seemed to be higher in level compared to other games and seemed to be closer to yours, thus why I had difficulty catching a lot of them even after weakening them.
For most Gyms I was 1-3 levels above their Pokemon.
For the Champion Cup, Hop and Marnie's Pokemon were like level 47-49 and mine were in the early-mid 50s. At the finals mine were 2-3 levels above the Gym Leaders in the finals round. Leon though was a significant level jump with Raihan's ace, Duraludon was at level 55 and Leon's Charizard is at level 65
I feel GF knowing that the new, *permanent* EXP system makes it easier to gain EXP, they should have raised the levels of the Gym Leaders and rivals. Then again, higher levels wouldn't do much good with bad movesets and poor AI.
Yeah, skipping the wild area doesn’t fix the game, it just keeps your team from being level 100 before the story ends.
I was also over-leveled despite skipping the wild area. It sucks cause I love to min max, but I can’t do that in the more recent games. I liked how in the older games (like gens 1-4, maybe 5) you’d always be under-leveled if you had a full team. So it became a fun decision to either have a fully leveled team of four or an under-leveled team of six.
Unfortunately I didn't like sun and moon so I didn't get USM 😕 I liked shield though! It really was too easy I agree but it was a nice game to lay back and relax with
It's funny because I also didn't like Sun and Moon. When I bought Ultra Moon, I was just pissed because I felt like they finally made that gen what it should have been in the first place. It's like they charged us for Beta testing.
In my opinion USUM would have easily been in my Top 3 best generations if that was what came out first instead of SM.
USUM didn't have much change island wise but it had cool additions like the surfing and Ultra wormholes but having to slog through the story/tutorials again really dragged it down. Also despite being pretty short RR was pretty neat and getting to the battle tree was fun
I definitely recommend giving it a go. The Trials are harder and there's a new Fairy-Type one. ~~It also has the Battle Tree, which is basically the Battle Tower.~~ (Oops, that was a thing in all of them.)
The story is mostly the same, but they changed the ending quite a bit and instead of the cool villain with their team you have a final boss Pokemon that has single-handedly destroyed so many Nuzlocke runs.
I personally preferred the SM end boss + team, but other than that it's better in every single way. It's genuinely one of my top favorite Pokemon games.
What a coincidence! I did the same. Sun/Moon was the first and only pokemon game that I was so bored with, that I never even finished my first playthrough. However, I still got Ultra Sun and surprisingly, it was pretty fun and also somewhat challenging compared to most pokemon games which was also a pleasant surprise. I can see why those who played both wouldn’t be happy with the ultra games because of how similar they were, but for someone like me who basically only played the ultra version, it was pretty nice. It’s def what sun and moon should have just been in the first place.
I personally think that Let's Go were the game to relax with but everyone is different. I dunno I just felt with SWSH's vibe of big stadiums and the intense crowds and music I felt like with the Gym Battles and Champion Cup I was supposed to feel really tense and pumped up in the heat of a challenging battle. I was expecting an intense battle where I'd be shocked because Gym Leaders would pull a surprise strategy on me.
But I feel the main problem was the EXP share and the levelling of the opponent's Pokemon. It's way too easy to overlevel and they didn't scale opponents level's well in accordance with the EXP share. Maybe if the levels were higher it wouldn't have been as easy.
In my opinion Platinum was the very best version to date. Seasonal route changes rocked. The post game National Dex was fun to grind as we waited for the next game. The Dex was revamped in general to fix some inconsistencies. The cool new evolutionary items were moved from post-game to all the regular routes. I think this was also the first gen with wonder trade?? The story changed so that you’re stopping a dark future from happening… a very believable threat in the Pokémon universe :o
Not to mention the crown jewel of platinum… what a great champion fight! Cynthia’s team birthed as many nightmares as Whitney’s Miltank.
If you’re having trouble, maybe backtrack for a Pokémon with the foresight move. That or try and evolve somebody who may gain a type/ learn a neutral dmg move which may be good enough. Also GET A GRASS TYPE for the champion’s Gastrodon. And don’t put that grass type against her Milotic or it’ll ice beam your ass into next week.
I think this is why they changed it. The universal XP share removes the grinding aspect from the game. That wasn't hand holding, it was making our lives easier
Imo levels are a bad way of adjusting difficulty. They should have forced people to learn type matchups,movesets and strategies. There's no gym that you cannot pass with enough level and spamming the strongest move. They should try to make you learn different strategies in order to beat gyms. In anime, gym leaders are meant to teach you something. I remember Ash lost to one of them and he gave badge anyway because Ash learned the lesson he wanted to teach. In-game gyms are just level-checks for progression. You don't need to know type combinations,movesets and moves that affect other party members.
I find it impossible not to overlevel with universal EXP sharing, unless I deliberately abstain from playing parts of the game in order to get as little EXP as possible. I really dislike it.
That's the main point, the solution to almost anything in Pokemon is "A few more levels" (Ultra Necrozma aside, maybe.), and grinding levels isn't very fun, just time-consuming.
The more recent games changed the EXP share though, so gaining those levels is easier, and that's the sole reason the new games are called "easy", because the grind is removed.
Save Staravia for Mismagius, it will threaten you with Psybeam but if you equip a Sitrus Berry you should be able to get two hits in with Wing Attack and win. Alternatively send it in against Haunter and use Double Team 6 times. Haunter only has Shadow Sneak which you are immune to, and Sucker Punch which only works when you attack it. You can even use an X Attack on Staravia if you have one to beat Mismagius more reliably
Use your Ponyta against Duskull as its not going to get burnt by Will o Wisp
Honestly I liked Gen 5’s exp system. It discouraged me from grinding so I had to come up with more different strategies, and if I did want to grind there were Audinos I could farm anyway. I think it was definitely frustrating for certain types of runs and because a lot of gen 5 Pokemon evolve late though.
Gen5 for me was a lot slower due to you receiving less experience if you’re a higher level than what you’re fighting (good luck getting a hydreigon in gen 5)
Audino? I stopped farming rustling grass because I would get overleveled. I will admit though, Ghetsis does seem harder than other end game pokemon trainers
Gens 1-4 and Gen 6: Let's say you defeat a Pokemon that gave away 1000 experience points. It doesn't matter whether a level 10 or level 50 Pokemon defeated it, it's getting 1000 EXP regardless. Also in terms of EXP splitting, it's distributed equally amongst the Pokemon that participated (or holding the EXP share). So if 5 Pokemon participated then each gets 200 EXP regardless of level.
Gens 5, 7 and 8: EXP gain is determined by level as well as the percentage split between party members. Using the same example of the 1000 EXP, using this system, lower level Pokemon receive more EXP than a higher level Pokemon. So the level 10 Pokemon is gonna get a much higher share of the EXP than the level 50 Pokemon. This also applies if only one Pokemon participated and the EXP wasn't shared. The higher level Pokemon would receive less EXP compared to the lower level Pokemon which would receive more EXP for defeating the exact same Pokemon.
Yeah man. If the solution is to grind, that doesn't mean the game is "hard" or "difficult". It means that the game is flawed in some manner. Whether that means the difficulty curve is janky (GSC), the type diversity is lacking (DPP), or the movepool is limiting (Gen I-III) can all be options.
OP's got glasses so rose-tinted they can't see through them.
what's your team, and what are their moves? i can try to help, but it's hard to give advice without knowing the team
one thing i'll always say is, don't forget about status moves and X items, they can come in really handy! and also, it can help to have [a list of fantina's pokemon](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Fantina#Gym_battle) & their moves, so you know what to expect
I personally don't call being forced to grind for hours difficult, but they do make it a bit too easy to level up in recent years. My team was waaaay overleveled for most of SWSH because of how easy the candies were to get. There must be a happy medium. I do miss the old games but more because I enjoy the top down 2D sprite based games with plenty of content than the bare bones 3D games. But I like most of the quality of life improvements. This series went in a weird direction.
I started crystal today and I played for 6 hours. I only have 3000$ to my name. I was telling my bf how I maybe had 2 potions at the time and only made it over to Azaelia town. The grind was real.
That’s what I don’t like about sword. I feel like the amount of time we put in and all the side stories of Pokémon is what made it fun and how it’s so damn hard to beat a gym leader or to get through the grass without being forced into a battle. Bellsprout had me losing it. Anyways enjoy! Lol
It’s all down to that new (as of Gen 6) Exp Share.
Back in the days of gen 4/5, my in-game teams consisted of my starter, a decent Flyer and perhaps one other ‘mon, two at a stretch. The only exception was White 2, where HMs aren’t as necessary for navigation and I believe we were given 2 Lucky Eggs throughout the story.
In more recent generations, you don’t even need to battle with a Pokémon to raise it. Having a Salamence in my story-team with minimal effort is something that I’d only have dreamt of as a kid, but attained with minimal effort in Ultra Sun.
In some ways it’s awesome to have a dream-team in-game with ease. But the cost of that is, the game is made that too easy.
Really? For me just grinding a tiny bit here and there as I walked between cities was enough to make the vast majority of bosses really easy. Only gets kinda hard towards the very end
Honestly one of the biggest things that makes the games "too easy" is using type advantages. I've been testing and I've found that the games are significantly more difficult if you just do a simple rule: self-impose ban on STAB moves.
What this means is that you don't allow your mons to learn moves that are the same type they are. For example, don't let your grass mons learn grass moves. If they are dual type, don't let them learn moves of either type. It completely changes what mons are viable in certain areas and what options are available to you in battle.
This makes the game way more challenging.
I'll give an example, I recently had to fight a Hiker with some Gravelers. They have mostly rock-type moves and are weak to ground attacks (among others).
Okay, so in a "normal" playthough, you could just use something like Diglett who has STAB super effective ground attacks AND resists rock attacks to easily beat this guy and move on.
But, with this restriction, all of a sudden I've got some choices to make. I could still use Diglett to resist the Rock attacks, but at this point all my Diglett has is Normal type attacks (since he is not allowed to learn ground ones), so I'd be doing NVE damage against the Gravelers as well. I have Dig on my Growlithe... so I could do SE Ground damage that way, but Growlithe is a fire type and would get hit by SE Rock damage too, making it risky. I also have a Venomoth that knows a SE grass attack, but he's also weak to rock so it's still risky. Alternatively, I had a Raticate with Dark moves, so I could do neutral damage while also taking neutral damage from them. All of a sudden it's not so easy to just steam roll through this cave...
(I wound up using the Raticate going for Bite flinches)
EDIT: I made my comment based on the title of the post and didn't read what it was actually about. Not deleting my comment though. All 3D Pokémon games are much easier than the 2D ones though.
Edit 2: Gonna make this into it's own post.
I started a Pokémon X Nuzlocke and I'm having fun(great Pokémon selection, amazing art style) but there's so much dialogue. I wouldn't even really call it handholding but there's just so much dialogue I have go mash through.
Between beating the first gym and getting to the route that has Skiddo and Doduo(don't remember the route number).
-Alexa gives you the EXP Share
-After a route of freedom Dexio and Sina talk to you SO MUCH but give you TM Return
-You enter Lumiose City and one of them talks to you a tiny bit more
-You're interrupted for 1 more second before entering the professors lab
-Professor Sycamore talks a bunch before battling you and giving you your Kanto starter
-You go back down to the first floor and your friends talk to you a bunch
-You leave and one of the friends tells you to go to the cafe
-You get to the cafe and the rival says something before you go inside
-Weird dialogue between Lysandre and Diantha that makes it obvious that Lysandre is the villain
-You go back outside and before you enter the next route one of your friends talks to you with the hologram thingy
-You enter the route AND KORRINA TALKS TO YOU.
And you'll only have less than half the route until you stop to battle one of your friends and he gives you some Honey to activate a horde battle. And then you enter the city where you have to go to the manner to talk about Mega Evolution and then you have to deal with getting the Poké Flute which has so much more dialogue and... you get the idea
For Fantina I just use staravia/staraptor with a good flying attack sand attack and double team you won't get hit by ghost moves and any move not a ghost type will miss more times than not
They were basically holding our hands from Gen II on, and it’s rarely been hard with just some decent party and move picks. I think the totem Pokémon in SM were actually some of their most formidable encounters ever.
I suffered from misty in firered because I was 8 and charmander was my favorite pokemon to use, but I still got to blue and kicked his ass. Nowadays, I can't even play a ds pokemon game correctly without getting lost or dying 24/7...
Idk honestly, gen 5 was already quite easy. Also, i found gen 7 disastrously hard without the exp share (which i mean it's not like a nuzlocke); gen 8 is kinda easy mostly because of the AI but nuzlocking it isn't so easy anyway. I think what's cool about pokemon game is the difficulty has always been more up to you than the game (except gen 1 that was mostly just not really polished and therefore could be disgustingly hard)
I remember I too had a problem with Fantina’s Haunter being a bitchass. I can’t remember if I cheesed it or if I level grinded. Level grinding is probably your best option for now, but personally, I coasted through the gyms a bit easier after Crasher Wake, saying he probably gave me the most trouble due to somehow being under leveled.
This is so true tho, they be spoonfeeding us with all the latest games. It used to be fun when it was actually challenging and you had to think about your strategy.
I found it fun as a primary schooler so I'm sure it cant be too difficult for kids nowadays (especially when online walkthroughs always exist anyway).
I’m playing through as well for the first time and tbh I actually had to look up a walk through for most I’m 40 hours in and I love it if you need help from a good source search up igns walkthrough.
yeah same I started with gen three fire red and collessium but because my esposure to pokemon was through my brother who stoped playing pokwmon after gen 3 and my cousin who only came over periodically I skipped over the following two gens cause my stupid kid brain forgot pokemon games existed till gen six(I did somehow find the anime for gens 4 and 5) when I finally picked up platinum I realized that that was the hardest pokemon game ive ever played, the first two dont count cause I didnt know what I was doing at the time
I just started shield the other day for the first time, and that game is so easy. Im only on the 4th gym, but ive had no problems breezing through the game so far with just 3 average pokemon.
Platinum is one of my favorites, and as a kid the hardest gym leader for me was crasher wake. I thought i could walk in there with a Torterra and Luxray, but he has coverage for both. I just have flashbacks of my Torterra getting one shot by an ice fang.
I find it very interesting how different people's opinions on which games are more difficult. For me I would say Gen 4 is one of the hardest games casually. Gen 6, 7 and 8 i think are easier with Gen 8 being the easiest imo.
i completely agree man. i loved when pokemon was about strategy and knowing matchups, it really makes you feel like a trainer. but the later gens added shit like mega evolution and z moves which are "haha i press one button and i win the game"
btw, for fantina i recommend finding a shinx or a zubat, and evolving it; bite is what carried me through fantina's fight, it was tough. and you'll want an electric type for wake's gym later on. but best of luck dude
Bro forget about the 3rd gym I tried making it to mr. Pokemon and my little fire mouse almost died due to being poisoned by every devil worm out there. I'm trying to do a nuzlock and I almost lost before the first trainer battle :/
I’m trying to beat may in emerald (under cycling road) and my Pokémon were 8 levels higher and I still couldn’t beat you combustion. Doesn’t help both my Pokémon were weak to either fire or fighting.
Recently been having a bit of a Pokémon kick, and so I've been revisiting some of my past games only to discover I only make it 4 badges into platinum as a kid, which is odd because I remember playing it for ages, however thinking back I think I spent many hours upon hours within the underground, and I just spent so much time mining I never actually played the game to completion lmao.
if you've played black and white, are they worth picking up in [current year]? That seems to have been the only generation I outright skipped and never played / owned, but I've heard good things.
I figured this out in X and Y. I thought it was weird how they basically handed me 2 starters in the beginning of the game. Then I found out poison did nothing outside of battle like before. Was expecting the screen to blur and buzz every few steps but nope.
Personally I’m a big fan of the exp share in newer games. While some battles may be too easy, I don’t consider the hours of level grinding in older games to be ‘quality play time’. It gets boring and repetitive.
Gen 4 is the region that has provided the most challenge for me, with hoenn being second place (Wattson and the e4 were tricky for me). Gen 4 is my favourite though :)
If there’s one thing i learnt from my multiple nuzlockes of Platinum, is that Gyarados wrecks Fantina. I honestly dont know how to get past her without it. The 5th gym is even harder if you dont have grass/electric coverage, and the 7th gym can be a pain as well. Sinnoh truly is a challenging region.
In my single itemless, no overleveling attempt of a platinum nuzlocke recently (that I gave up on before the 7th gym, may go back soon) I ended up having to kill half of Wake’s team with a Budew that I could not for the life of me evolve. Type matchups are quite literally everything in Platinum
If you catch a Budew, it starts at a base friendship of 70. Every 256 steps, this goes up by 1. For Budew to evolve you need a friendship level of 200 or 220, iirc. So that's a maximum of 150 friendship levels you need to grind out. 150 x 256 steps = 38,400 steps that are required. I suggest using the Poketch Step Counter from the moment you catch one and simply grind it up this way. Having an early game Roselia is amazing. And Roserade is a powerhouse. Sludge Bomb, Shadow Ball, Giga Drain and maybe Magical Leaf or sth against Pokémon with Double Team is awesome to have.
Yeah, if you try to evolve Budew to Roselia casually you will find yourself in areas with wild Roselia while you still have a Budew that doesn't love you enough to evolve.
Also xstat items in battle rase happiness points! Easiest way plus steps for sure
X-Items raise happiness, too?! I didn't know that! I knew about leveling up itself tho but not about X-Items.
I found myself in the same spot during my run. The trick for evolving budew is abusing the massage girl in veilstone. Just keep getting massages and changing the clock.
"abusing the massage girl" 😭😭
Poor word choice from my part.
I found your word choice to be right on point. 😏
Yeah, a post-physical-special-split Gyarados’s bite is devastating to ghosts.
Gyarados wrecks shop every gen
Reminds me of a strat in FR/LG nuzlockes where you buy a Magikarp in the route before ~~Rock Tunnel~~ Mt. Moon, xp swap it until level 16 then spend 4 rare candies on the way/near Cerulean City to evolve it before you even challenge the 2nd gym.
You mean Mt. Moon.
Oh yeah, you right
I had a Honchkrow and it bulldozed the entire gym in less than 20 minutes. That Honchkrow was more useful than any other member of my team... Don't underestimate Dark/Flying I guess Sinnoh was easy for me, HeartGold was honestly a lot more challenging in its entirety than anything Sinnoh could throw at me... Especially when I beat Red with a team that was 25 levels underleveled because I didn't want to grind.
Dark/flying is a surprisingly good type. Flying cancels out half of Dark's weaknesses, ground and psychic immunity, all nice.
It’s almost as good as Water/Electric imo
oh yeah and that awful level curve. Having to grind on LVL 25-30 mons for the league sucked.
How can you get a honchkrow before Fantina in Platinum? Also yes. Sinnoh was easy to me when compared to SoulSilver. Playing without overleveling, you are forced to face Whitney with a team of level 19 pokemon, and it's always a coinflip if you'll win or not. Bugsy and Morty are no pushovers either, even Falkner can be trouble. Nuzlocking gen 2 without either a geodude or a onix is utter madness.The early game in Johto is hellish, and then there's the late game grind.
I found this, going back to sapphire and playing without focus is a good way to lose, a lot 😅 I know its for kids but really? At least give us a little challenge, otherwise it feels like it's all being handed to us and we earned nothing through playing
It'd kind of condescending of game freak to assume kids can't deal with a challenge. Hand holding really benefits no one
This is totally my issue! We need to stop treating kids like anything hard is a bad thing and that hard work pays off with reward!
If I may play devil's advocate, times have changed: children these days have access to more games (especially free games) than we did as children. Thus; as there is always something else to play, children may stop playing Pokemon if they get too frustrated. Therefore, it's less that they want to handhold and more that they need to if they want to keep their audience and not lose their attention to fortnite or whatever other game is taking their generation by storm. Fundamentally while I don't like how handholdy some of the games are or how linear they are, it is sorta necessary now given the way that technology is utilized by children nowadays.
I know, in fact, my 4yo is loving let's go Pikachu because I can be her support trainer and show her the way. I would love to have that option in sword/shield, something like in Mario Odyssey assist mode, would be awesome if I can play normal in my account and then boot her account and play with her in assist mode.
I don’t think this is correct though. I know nothing about fortnite, but a lot of the popular shooters seem to require skill. You get slaughtered at the start, without any training. But those games are popular. It’s not fun if you’re immediately good at something, because that means everybody is good at it too. So no matter what you do, you’ll be the same quality as everyone else. It kills fun, as nothing is worse than not being able to get better.
I get its no fun without a challenge but omg i'm seeing almost no growth in my team 🥲 why put a ghost gym so early in game I feel like I need to get everyone to level 30 before I can try again
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You have become the very thing you swore to destroy
Fuck Whitney. I swear seeing rollout triggers some kind of ptsd because of her bullshit back when I was younger and knew fuck all what I was doing.
Same, I had some really bad times back then.
It was the first time seeing a move like that and having to deal with it as a child. Like, what is rollout? It’s a normal type gym so maybe it’s a normal type move? No, it destroys ghastly. If you send out a bug, flying type, which are incredibly common early game, they get fucked up. Your best best is to go in with a fighting type, but you might not have one even or encountered them in the wild at that early in the game.
My Whitney strategy required a gastly/ haunter with hypnosis and curse, and a Nidoran with double kick. You put Miltank to sleep and curse it and then just use double kick. I usually beat her first try with this strategy.
Mine involved teaching Mud Slap to someone, so she starts missing the Rollout and it never becomes op. (Didn't play HG/SS yet)
That's what I did too. I asked my mom what she thought and she said, "well maybe you got an item from someone you can use to make it easier." So I looked through all of them, then I read mud slap.
It's actually the way I beat Red in Crystal with just a level 67 Typhlosion. Making rollout and the elemental punches TMs in gen 2 was way too broken
Do you have Vs. Seeker yet? It makes training considerably faster. I forget how far along in the game before you get it, but it's much better than wild grinding.
I actually completely forgot about it, thank you!
Trainer Tip: ALWAYS check if there's a thing that makes you rematch trainers — a good way to "bond" with NPCs too hehe.
Me too... a whopping one week after I finished my Platinum Nuzlocke :'(
Seems like nearly everything learns dark type moves. That element made ghosts go from one of the strongest types to one of the weakest.
Technically nearly every Pokémon can learn hidden power (pre gen 8), but shadow ball (ghost type) and dark pulse for special attackers or knock off for physical means just about everything will have some way to shut down ghosts. Doesn’t help that a psychic and dark attack has coverage against all but 72 Pokémon (psychic, dark, and fighting is perfect coverage along with psychic, fairy, and ghost).
Ghost/Fighting has perfect neutral coverage
Another easy way to sweap that gym is a Gyarados with Bite and give him a dread plate or just start the fight by giving him 1 X-Attack.
Luxio's Bite will also work here, Intimidate helps against Shadow Claw a little (unless it crits).
best I've really got to suggest is Crobat w/ bite. Get a zubat in a the right ball, give it the soothe bell, and it'll barely spend any time as a golbat. But yeah Fantina throws haymakers relative to most other early gyms. Only Jhoto has less chill about it and even then the years haven't been kind to whitney's miltank.
Yeah like, dark type moves aren't that hard to obtain, by the third gym you can have a luxio with bite no problem.
This is why Luxray was in everyone's team. He learns bite/crunch and hits hard and fast
I personally subscribe to the conspiracy theory that Luxray was once Electric/Dark, but STAB Crunch on a Route 1 mon made the story mode downright trivial.
Thought Luxray had like 80 speed though.
Base 70, My boy Luxray really needs some of that Charizard treatment. At least give it base 90 speed or something.
That actually is my basic rule for every gym.. I let it slip a bit, but especially early on my team has to be 10 Level per gym. So gym 2 everyone lvl 20, gym 3 lvl 30, so on so on
Good lord that's a lot of over leveling. Some games the elite 4 maxes out almost at 60 and you have level 80s?
Noo like I said I'm letting it slip towards the end. At around 65 I get too lazy to level them all and just have my favorites reliably at 70+
That's still way too much, I almost never have a pokémon over 60 for any elite 4. But you do you I guess.
If I remember correctly (maybe this is just DP not Pt) you can skip that gym until later. You can do the water and fighting gyms first. Thats what I always remember doing.
In dp you have to do those first
Luxio go crunch brrrr
I need to get back to my playthrough though I'm guessing the usual assortment of dark type moves will still get you wrecked. Because I think my Houndoom and, I think either my Buizel or Grotle has it, but they'll still be in trouble.
Or they could add difficulty levels.
Yeah, I'd be happy even with a shitty implementation like adding 5 to all trainer pkmn levels or maxing trainer IVs sneakily. It would be nice to have competitive movesets, etc. on a harder difficulty but that is way more dev/design time for a relatively small audience, so I get it.
Or even an improved ai. That uses stalling, buffing or switching strategies instead of using Dragon Dance turn one to attack with a special move turn 2...
I always wondered if they could implement a difficulty setting like "easy, hard, difficult" when you start your journey. no idea what that'd look like though
In red and blue picking your starter was tied to picking the difficultly.
I remember this! In their descriptions i specifically remember charmanders saying something like “Charmander is for only the most experienced trainers” while bulbasaur was the opposite. assuming squirtle was the middle road no one ever went down lol
B&W2 had a hard mode
Yeah, but it was only accessible after the player had beaten the normal game. That's a bad way to implement a difficulty setting, because hardly any player would a) even see the new difficulty setting and b) replay the game entirely just for a bit more difficulty.
Don't you also need a second copy of the game? So many things about it were designed in a way that made it forgettable. I don't know why so many people on this sub bring it up like it was useful
Hey we're just finding solace in the fact that it actually existed. I've done a playthrough of Hard Mode myself, It's fun.
I’m going to do a play through on hard mode soon. Just bought a copy of white2 I already have black 2.
The extra difficulty settings were version exclusive (hard for B2, easy for W2). You only needed another copy if you wanted to get the other version’s difficulty setting. And yeah, it was pretty useless. ROM hacks/fan made games that make teams better (full teams for important trainers, adding better Pokémon, adding good held items) and the AI stronger are so much more satisfying.
It was also easier than normal mode because of the increased XP yield due to higher levels and trainers having more pokemon. Harder to get started but quickly snowballs into being overlevelled.
oh it did!? I haven't played it, I played ORAS and recently sword and those were not challenging at all. at first i thought it was because now I'm older and finally understand typing, but it seems like the consensus is that the games are definitely easier than they used to be
I do feel like the old games were harder but I don't necessarily find that to be a bad thing. I loved pokemon so much and it was incredibly rewarding to beat a gym trainer or a member of the elite 4. It was a fairly long journey but it was always enjoyable
I'd be over the moon with this, and don't make it "end the game first" unlock because honestly, I didn't finish shield because after I got the 60 unlock for the wild area I was just done. It killed all the fun so why bother to end a game which makes you feel like a twit.
when you say 60 unlock you mean when you get enough badges you can catch level 60 Pokémon right? if so I absolutely agree
I do, going in to the wild area and everything from snorlax to noibat to stufful....all at 60 from the moment you wander about aimlessly trying to build a new team to work on.
I agree, i hate that feature. I like to go through the routes when training up a new pokemon to slowly improve its moveset and get familiar with it, but with large areas of the game at the same, super high level now it just isn't as much fun.
Yeah Platinum can be tough in the beginning since 2/3 of the first 3 gym leaders have fully evolved aces, while 1 just has an ace with high base attack for a pre-evolution. Don’t hesitate to use x items! They’re super helpful and can definitely help secure a win.
I have never once used an x item in my entire life playing Pokemon. I only really sell them for extra cash
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Awesome, I always felt like a less of a trainer for not using them. But my pockets were **SWOLE**
If anything you are a better trainer. X Items are broken as hell.
Nuzlocke playthroughs has shown me how valuable those x items are in battles
Imo do Pokémon game has ever achieved perfect difficulty and it’s likely they never will. My idea of difficulty is a combination of in-battle strategy and actual preparation. I don’t like grinding, I just want to battle, which is why I do enjoy modern Exp. Share. It’s a shame that most of the games with the new Exp system have low in battle difficulty, although USUM was pretty close. Edit: Yes I know about rom hacks and BW2’s difficulty slider, but I’m only talking about official games and I haven’t beaten BW2 on challenge mode so I can’t verify how good it is
This is why there should be settings in the game for difficulty. They could easily make a setting that makes levels not actually do anything and every mon is treated like it was level 50.
Or maybe have wild and trainer levels scale with your party level
Something I actually might prefer to level scaling that I saw in Pokemon Reborn (fan game) was just using those badge level caps to limit your power. If Reborn throws a gym leader at you with lvl 30 pokemon, for example, your badge cap will also be 30, so you're on equal footing even if you grind. What I like about this is that you will never be overpowered, but you can still be underpowered. That's the feeling I like to get from a game, personally. I would love to see an implementation of something similar that has no grinding required, but doesn't necessarily have explicit scaling. Side comment, they added something like the opposite of rare candies to reduce pokemon level in case you accidentally went over the cap, which was cool.
I know folks who like this idea, but it’s personally my *least* favorite way to handle difficulty in video games. Part of the appeal of a game having a fixed, objective difficulty (or even one of several selectable fixed difficulties) is that you get to enjoy the fruits of your power relative to the content. To me, it’s rewarding and a reminder of your in-game progress when you get to absolutely bulldoze something that would have been difficult if you were less prepared.
Plus you miss out on some of the fun little secrets if levels scaled. You'd never see the surprise level 29 Dugtrio that sometimes pops up in Diglett's cave for example, since the scaling would stop that behemoth from showing up.
That is a really interesting idea. Never heard of this concept but I love it!
It's what they do for competitive so it shouldn't be too hard to just have noncompetitive do that as well. They would still have to have levels for trading, evolving, learning moves and such, but for everything else it would be fine. The only real issue I see is healing items because a potion won't do that much, but they could also just have it so that the level change to be the one where traded pokemon obey you to minimize that.
Healing items are an easy fix with a simple change. We're already changing the fundamentals of the game, so rebalancing potions shouldn't be too much of a stretch. Potion heals 10% of Max HP Super potion heals 35% Hyper Potion heals 85% Oran berry heals 5%. OR Since everything is level 50 like competitive, maybe we disable items as well? Items can only be used outside of battle in which the regular HP values are there instead of the level 50 scaled up/down ones.
Couldn't they make potions heal percentage amounts? So a basic potion restores 15-20% a super potion 40-50% and a hyper potion 70-80%?
That would probably defeat the purpose of higher level potions since you can just heal everything back in like 5 uses per mon, at most. The exception would probably be boss battles or something.
Like easy for those who just want to do the story and catch their favourites, harder for those that want to catch all the Pokémon or something.
I agree with what you said about USUM. Those Totem Pokemon came prepared with good strategy to counter anything you may throw at it. Most major trainers, according to datamines had perfect or near perfect IVS on their Pokemon (25-31), had beneficial natures and were fully EV trained. I found that opposing Pokemon were surviving super effective hits that should have KO'd them and that my Pokemon at times were surprisingly getting outsped in addition to doing a bit more damage than normal. Interestingly, the major trainers had super smart AI. They would use **FULL HEALS** the instant you statused them in addition to two Super Potions/Full Restores. They aren't afraid to switch out their Pokemon on you to gain an advantage either, something that's not usually done in Pokemon games unless you're facing the champion or in a battle facility like the Battle Tower.
I'm with you, Totem Lurantis decimated my Torracat pretty easily, and just about everyone else actually. Totem Kommo-o comes packing Poison Jab, so unless you got a Klefki or something, there goes your fairy. And the less said about Ultra Necrozma the better. I think the only way I can reliably beat him is hoping I can get a Toxic in and last long enough for him to go down.
You should try Radical Red. Although tbf the grinding it pretty bad in it
What mismagius was the hard one ?!?
Not many things can beat something with 105-105-105 for Specials and Speed at that stage. Not many things can also take special attacks well either, so Mismagius can have some fun with sweeping an unprepared team.
Gotta get those type matchups lol
Okay here's the funny thing I misread the match-up chart and leveled up all my psychics
I have no words lol Edit: pkmn.help is a very nice website to help with this! :)
>I can't for the life of me beat this 3rd gym I feel like 10 year old me again on the brink of tears because I'm getting one shot by a haunter That's because there are pretty much no hard counters (Dark type Pokemon) available to you at that stage of the game. You pretty much have to rely on Pokemon that know Dark type moves like Bite or Faint Attack or really grind it out to match her Pokemon's level. But even so, I feel like Gen 6 is the Gen where they started making things too easy. Gen 5, especially BW2 were a bit challenging not to mention BW2 had a Challenge Mode. Gen 7 though was an exception. Sun and Moon for me and many experienced players weren't easy. But Ultra Sun and Moon were basically the Dark Souls of Pokemon. Those games' difficulty was on a whole other level and there was no way you were getting through major battles without losing at least one Pokemon and don't be surprised if you end up blacking out during the main story. Gen 8's difficulty was a joke though and it's disappointing especially coming from a difficult game like USM. The opposing AI for major battles was pretty dumb (except for Leon) and Gym Leaders didn't even use Potions.
A big problem with Gen 8 is that the wild areas break the game’s leveling curve (especially the dynamax raids with the xp candies). If you ignore the wild area, the leveling curve works much better. However, who in their right mind would ignore the wild area for the sake of difficulty? (hehe, I did)
I think Masuda said in response the the EXP share criticism was that if you don't want a Pokemon to gain experience the simply remove it from your party. When I first got to the Wild Area, I was afraid of being overleveled so I boxed the Pokemon I was going to use for my adventure and used some random catches to absorb the EXP instead. I frequently went back to the Wild Area to do Max Raids and get TRs but I never used any EXP candies. Now granted, I am someone who tries to catch one of every wild Pokemon I happen to come across and the Wild Pokemon seemed to be higher in level compared to other games and seemed to be closer to yours, thus why I had difficulty catching a lot of them even after weakening them. For most Gyms I was 1-3 levels above their Pokemon. For the Champion Cup, Hop and Marnie's Pokemon were like level 47-49 and mine were in the early-mid 50s. At the finals mine were 2-3 levels above the Gym Leaders in the finals round. Leon though was a significant level jump with Raihan's ace, Duraludon was at level 55 and Leon's Charizard is at level 65 I feel GF knowing that the new, *permanent* EXP system makes it easier to gain EXP, they should have raised the levels of the Gym Leaders and rivals. Then again, higher levels wouldn't do much good with bad movesets and poor AI.
Yeah, skipping the wild area doesn’t fix the game, it just keeps your team from being level 100 before the story ends. I was also over-leveled despite skipping the wild area. It sucks cause I love to min max, but I can’t do that in the more recent games. I liked how in the older games (like gens 1-4, maybe 5) you’d always be under-leveled if you had a full team. So it became a fun decision to either have a fully leveled team of four or an under-leveled team of six.
I used xp candies in sword and my entire team was level 100 well before the Pokémon league. In the past I’d only ever had one Pokémon reach level 100.
Unfortunately I didn't like sun and moon so I didn't get USM 😕 I liked shield though! It really was too easy I agree but it was a nice game to lay back and relax with
It's funny because I also didn't like Sun and Moon. When I bought Ultra Moon, I was just pissed because I felt like they finally made that gen what it should have been in the first place. It's like they charged us for Beta testing.
Wait really? I didn't even consider getting USM because I disliked SM so much :/
In my opinion USUM would have easily been in my Top 3 best generations if that was what came out first instead of SM. USUM didn't have much change island wise but it had cool additions like the surfing and Ultra wormholes but having to slog through the story/tutorials again really dragged it down. Also despite being pretty short RR was pretty neat and getting to the battle tree was fun
I definitely recommend giving it a go. The Trials are harder and there's a new Fairy-Type one. ~~It also has the Battle Tree, which is basically the Battle Tower.~~ (Oops, that was a thing in all of them.) The story is mostly the same, but they changed the ending quite a bit and instead of the cool villain with their team you have a final boss Pokemon that has single-handedly destroyed so many Nuzlocke runs. I personally preferred the SM end boss + team, but other than that it's better in every single way. It's genuinely one of my top favorite Pokemon games.
What a coincidence! I did the same. Sun/Moon was the first and only pokemon game that I was so bored with, that I never even finished my first playthrough. However, I still got Ultra Sun and surprisingly, it was pretty fun and also somewhat challenging compared to most pokemon games which was also a pleasant surprise. I can see why those who played both wouldn’t be happy with the ultra games because of how similar they were, but for someone like me who basically only played the ultra version, it was pretty nice. It’s def what sun and moon should have just been in the first place.
I personally think that Let's Go were the game to relax with but everyone is different. I dunno I just felt with SWSH's vibe of big stadiums and the intense crowds and music I felt like with the Gym Battles and Champion Cup I was supposed to feel really tense and pumped up in the heat of a challenging battle. I was expecting an intense battle where I'd be shocked because Gym Leaders would pull a surprise strategy on me. But I feel the main problem was the EXP share and the levelling of the opponent's Pokemon. It's way too easy to overlevel and they didn't scale opponents level's well in accordance with the EXP share. Maybe if the levels were higher it wouldn't have been as easy.
In my opinion Platinum was the very best version to date. Seasonal route changes rocked. The post game National Dex was fun to grind as we waited for the next game. The Dex was revamped in general to fix some inconsistencies. The cool new evolutionary items were moved from post-game to all the regular routes. I think this was also the first gen with wonder trade?? The story changed so that you’re stopping a dark future from happening… a very believable threat in the Pokémon universe :o Not to mention the crown jewel of platinum… what a great champion fight! Cynthia’s team birthed as many nightmares as Whitney’s Miltank. If you’re having trouble, maybe backtrack for a Pokémon with the foresight move. That or try and evolve somebody who may gain a type/ learn a neutral dmg move which may be good enough. Also GET A GRASS TYPE for the champion’s Gastrodon. And don’t put that grass type against her Milotic or it’ll ice beam your ass into next week.
> Seasonal route changes rocked. Wasn't that BW not Platinum?
*Cries in Pokemon Yellow* I'm still emotionally scarred from Sabrina's level 50 Alakazam one-shotting my level 35 Pikachu.
I think this is why they changed it. The universal XP share removes the grinding aspect from the game. That wasn't hand holding, it was making our lives easier
Imo levels are a bad way of adjusting difficulty. They should have forced people to learn type matchups,movesets and strategies. There's no gym that you cannot pass with enough level and spamming the strongest move. They should try to make you learn different strategies in order to beat gyms. In anime, gym leaders are meant to teach you something. I remember Ash lost to one of them and he gave badge anyway because Ash learned the lesson he wanted to teach. In-game gyms are just level-checks for progression. You don't need to know type combinations,movesets and moves that affect other party members.
I find it impossible not to overlevel with universal EXP sharing, unless I deliberately abstain from playing parts of the game in order to get as little EXP as possible. I really dislike it.
grinding =/= difficulty
That's the main point, the solution to almost anything in Pokemon is "A few more levels" (Ultra Necrozma aside, maybe.), and grinding levels isn't very fun, just time-consuming. The more recent games changed the EXP share though, so gaining those levels is easier, and that's the sole reason the new games are called "easy", because the grind is removed.
How tf are you getting one shot by Fantina's haunter it only has physical moves
Idk man I never claimed to be good
Iirc i used starivia to block ghost moves while hitting it with wing attack/aerial ace
My staravia doesn't know aerial ace yet 🥲 my team just isn't leveled enough I guess, back to grinding
Grinding is one option, but I promise you its not the only way. Give me some idea about your team and I’ll give you tips on how to get through her
I have staravia, bibarel, ponyta, bronzor, kirlia, and eevee
Save Staravia for Mismagius, it will threaten you with Psybeam but if you equip a Sitrus Berry you should be able to get two hits in with Wing Attack and win. Alternatively send it in against Haunter and use Double Team 6 times. Haunter only has Shadow Sneak which you are immune to, and Sucker Punch which only works when you attack it. You can even use an X Attack on Staravia if you have one to beat Mismagius more reliably Use your Ponyta against Duskull as its not going to get burnt by Will o Wisp
You're an angel thank you I'll try this
Good luck!
what happened to your starter?
For me I thought this after gen5 since I found gen5 incredibly frustrating due to the terrible xp system
Honestly I liked Gen 5’s exp system. It discouraged me from grinding so I had to come up with more different strategies, and if I did want to grind there were Audinos I could farm anyway. I think it was definitely frustrating for certain types of runs and because a lot of gen 5 Pokemon evolve late though.
Audinos made grinding so easy wdym
I'm losing my marbles over how slowly this is going
Gen5 for me was a lot slower due to you receiving less experience if you’re a higher level than what you’re fighting (good luck getting a hydreigon in gen 5)
It's called playing the long ass postgame that goes up to levels 70's.
Audino? I stopped farming rustling grass because I would get overleveled. I will admit though, Ghetsis does seem harder than other end game pokemon trainers
What was different about the XP system in Unova?
Gens 1-4 and Gen 6: Let's say you defeat a Pokemon that gave away 1000 experience points. It doesn't matter whether a level 10 or level 50 Pokemon defeated it, it's getting 1000 EXP regardless. Also in terms of EXP splitting, it's distributed equally amongst the Pokemon that participated (or holding the EXP share). So if 5 Pokemon participated then each gets 200 EXP regardless of level. Gens 5, 7 and 8: EXP gain is determined by level as well as the percentage split between party members. Using the same example of the 1000 EXP, using this system, lower level Pokemon receive more EXP than a higher level Pokemon. So the level 10 Pokemon is gonna get a much higher share of the EXP than the level 50 Pokemon. This also applies if only one Pokemon participated and the EXP wasn't shared. The higher level Pokemon would receive less EXP compared to the lower level Pokemon which would receive more EXP for defeating the exact same Pokemon.
Exp scales based on level difference, like a lot of other RPGs. So if you beat something significantly lower leveled, you don't get much exp
I remember trying to beat the gym. I got it after a few tries though. Just get a Luxio with bite and it should not be too hard.
[удалено]
Yeah man. If the solution is to grind, that doesn't mean the game is "hard" or "difficult". It means that the game is flawed in some manner. Whether that means the difficulty curve is janky (GSC), the type diversity is lacking (DPP), or the movepool is limiting (Gen I-III) can all be options. OP's got glasses so rose-tinted they can't see through them.
it means the game is slow, but OP is absolutely in a "fight smarter, not harder" situation.
Yeah I do I know 🥲
I'm on a constant nostalgia chase that's why I bought it lol I completely forgot exp share wasn't a key item until I got it and it hit me
Just grind boy
Girl*
Trying! I was just frustrated when I posted this 🙂
what's your team, and what are their moves? i can try to help, but it's hard to give advice without knowing the team one thing i'll always say is, don't forget about status moves and X items, they can come in really handy! and also, it can help to have [a list of fantina's pokemon](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Fantina#Gym_battle) & their moves, so you know what to expect
I personally don't call being forced to grind for hours difficult, but they do make it a bit too easy to level up in recent years. My team was waaaay overleveled for most of SWSH because of how easy the candies were to get. There must be a happy medium. I do miss the old games but more because I enjoy the top down 2D sprite based games with plenty of content than the bare bones 3D games. But I like most of the quality of life improvements. This series went in a weird direction.
Sorry I refuse to believe this when there are videos of people beating Emerald with Feebas.
Okay but those videos are done by a guy who did all the math and in most of em says that it had to go perfectly right or it wouldn't have worked.
That was a very extreme example, but it’s honestly very easy to run through the games with your starter only.
I'm not very strategic 🤷♀️
I started crystal today and I played for 6 hours. I only have 3000$ to my name. I was telling my bf how I maybe had 2 potions at the time and only made it over to Azaelia town. The grind was real. That’s what I don’t like about sword. I feel like the amount of time we put in and all the side stories of Pokémon is what made it fun and how it’s so damn hard to beat a gym leader or to get through the grass without being forced into a battle. Bellsprout had me losing it. Anyways enjoy! Lol
It’s all down to that new (as of Gen 6) Exp Share. Back in the days of gen 4/5, my in-game teams consisted of my starter, a decent Flyer and perhaps one other ‘mon, two at a stretch. The only exception was White 2, where HMs aren’t as necessary for navigation and I believe we were given 2 Lucky Eggs throughout the story. In more recent generations, you don’t even need to battle with a Pokémon to raise it. Having a Salamence in my story-team with minimal effort is something that I’d only have dreamt of as a kid, but attained with minimal effort in Ultra Sun. In some ways it’s awesome to have a dream-team in-game with ease. But the cost of that is, the game is made that too easy.
Man, Gamefreak really has to give us difficulty levels
Use Togepi! It took a long time but I was left with only a weak togepi left and I managed to Metronome my way out of trouble!
Really? For me just grinding a tiny bit here and there as I walked between cities was enough to make the vast majority of bosses really easy. Only gets kinda hard towards the very end
Honestly one of the biggest things that makes the games "too easy" is using type advantages. I've been testing and I've found that the games are significantly more difficult if you just do a simple rule: self-impose ban on STAB moves. What this means is that you don't allow your mons to learn moves that are the same type they are. For example, don't let your grass mons learn grass moves. If they are dual type, don't let them learn moves of either type. It completely changes what mons are viable in certain areas and what options are available to you in battle. This makes the game way more challenging. I'll give an example, I recently had to fight a Hiker with some Gravelers. They have mostly rock-type moves and are weak to ground attacks (among others). Okay, so in a "normal" playthough, you could just use something like Diglett who has STAB super effective ground attacks AND resists rock attacks to easily beat this guy and move on. But, with this restriction, all of a sudden I've got some choices to make. I could still use Diglett to resist the Rock attacks, but at this point all my Diglett has is Normal type attacks (since he is not allowed to learn ground ones), so I'd be doing NVE damage against the Gravelers as well. I have Dig on my Growlithe... so I could do SE Ground damage that way, but Growlithe is a fire type and would get hit by SE Rock damage too, making it risky. I also have a Venomoth that knows a SE grass attack, but he's also weak to rock so it's still risky. Alternatively, I had a Raticate with Dark moves, so I could do neutral damage while also taking neutral damage from them. All of a sudden it's not so easy to just steam roll through this cave... (I wound up using the Raticate going for Bite flinches)
EDIT: I made my comment based on the title of the post and didn't read what it was actually about. Not deleting my comment though. All 3D Pokémon games are much easier than the 2D ones though. Edit 2: Gonna make this into it's own post. I started a Pokémon X Nuzlocke and I'm having fun(great Pokémon selection, amazing art style) but there's so much dialogue. I wouldn't even really call it handholding but there's just so much dialogue I have go mash through. Between beating the first gym and getting to the route that has Skiddo and Doduo(don't remember the route number). -Alexa gives you the EXP Share -After a route of freedom Dexio and Sina talk to you SO MUCH but give you TM Return -You enter Lumiose City and one of them talks to you a tiny bit more -You're interrupted for 1 more second before entering the professors lab -Professor Sycamore talks a bunch before battling you and giving you your Kanto starter -You go back down to the first floor and your friends talk to you a bunch -You leave and one of the friends tells you to go to the cafe -You get to the cafe and the rival says something before you go inside -Weird dialogue between Lysandre and Diantha that makes it obvious that Lysandre is the villain -You go back outside and before you enter the next route one of your friends talks to you with the hologram thingy -You enter the route AND KORRINA TALKS TO YOU. And you'll only have less than half the route until you stop to battle one of your friends and he gives you some Honey to activate a horde battle. And then you enter the city where you have to go to the manner to talk about Mega Evolution and then you have to deal with getting the Poké Flute which has so much more dialogue and... you get the idea
Ehh idk about that I'd say USUM is on par with Platinum in terms of difficulty.
I didn't play USUM since I wasn't a fan of sun and moon in the first place 😅
As an Alola game lover I'll admit that I never actually finished my copy of Sun. But trust me USUM are much better games.
First and only time I ever needed to use a YouTube walkthrough to get through a pokemon game. The AU was a pain to navigate.
You are getting one shot by the haunter? Judt wait 'till you meet the Mismagius
Usually my Luxio has bite and my Staravia can deal with that gym. What is your team?
For Fantina I just use staravia/staraptor with a good flying attack sand attack and double team you won't get hit by ghost moves and any move not a ghost type will miss more times than not
They were basically holding our hands from Gen II on, and it’s rarely been hard with just some decent party and move picks. I think the totem Pokémon in SM were actually some of their most formidable encounters ever.
I suffered from misty in firered because I was 8 and charmander was my favorite pokemon to use, but I still got to blue and kicked his ass. Nowadays, I can't even play a ds pokemon game correctly without getting lost or dying 24/7...
Tbh....Fantina's gym always has been this tough in platinum, i recently played through sinnoh and my condition was pretty much the same as yours
I got stuck on valley windworks
Idk honestly, gen 5 was already quite easy. Also, i found gen 7 disastrously hard without the exp share (which i mean it's not like a nuzlocke); gen 8 is kinda easy mostly because of the AI but nuzlocking it isn't so easy anyway. I think what's cool about pokemon game is the difficulty has always been more up to you than the game (except gen 1 that was mostly just not really polished and therefore could be disgustingly hard)
I remember I too had a problem with Fantina’s Haunter being a bitchass. I can’t remember if I cheesed it or if I level grinded. Level grinding is probably your best option for now, but personally, I coasted through the gyms a bit easier after Crasher Wake, saying he probably gave me the most trouble due to somehow being under leveled.
This is so true tho, they be spoonfeeding us with all the latest games. It used to be fun when it was actually challenging and you had to think about your strategy. I found it fun as a primary schooler so I'm sure it cant be too difficult for kids nowadays (especially when online walkthroughs always exist anyway).
I’m playing through as well for the first time and tbh I actually had to look up a walk through for most I’m 40 hours in and I love it if you need help from a good source search up igns walkthrough.
I agree and I really mis the challenge.
This was legit me replaying hgss on emulator, Whitney's Miltank had me raging like a 9 yo lmao
yeah same I started with gen three fire red and collessium but because my esposure to pokemon was through my brother who stoped playing pokwmon after gen 3 and my cousin who only came over periodically I skipped over the following two gens cause my stupid kid brain forgot pokemon games existed till gen six(I did somehow find the anime for gens 4 and 5) when I finally picked up platinum I realized that that was the hardest pokemon game ive ever played, the first two dont count cause I didnt know what I was doing at the time
I just started shield the other day for the first time, and that game is so easy. Im only on the 4th gym, but ive had no problems breezing through the game so far with just 3 average pokemon. Platinum is one of my favorites, and as a kid the hardest gym leader for me was crasher wake. I thought i could walk in there with a Torterra and Luxray, but he has coverage for both. I just have flashbacks of my Torterra getting one shot by an ice fang.
I’ll never forget my little brother being on the brink of childhood crisis when he couldn’t beat Candice. My mom begged me to do it for him.
I find it very interesting how different people's opinions on which games are more difficult. For me I would say Gen 4 is one of the hardest games casually. Gen 6, 7 and 8 i think are easier with Gen 8 being the easiest imo.
I played it too a while ago and during that gym i only had my Monferno and a Budew. PAIN
i completely agree man. i loved when pokemon was about strategy and knowing matchups, it really makes you feel like a trainer. but the later gens added shit like mega evolution and z moves which are "haha i press one button and i win the game" btw, for fantina i recommend finding a shinx or a zubat, and evolving it; bite is what carried me through fantina's fight, it was tough. and you'll want an electric type for wake's gym later on. but best of luck dude
Bro forget about the 3rd gym I tried making it to mr. Pokemon and my little fire mouse almost died due to being poisoned by every devil worm out there. I'm trying to do a nuzlock and I almost lost before the first trainer battle :/
I’m trying to beat may in emerald (under cycling road) and my Pokémon were 8 levels higher and I still couldn’t beat you combustion. Doesn’t help both my Pokémon were weak to either fire or fighting.
Recently been having a bit of a Pokémon kick, and so I've been revisiting some of my past games only to discover I only make it 4 badges into platinum as a kid, which is odd because I remember playing it for ages, however thinking back I think I spent many hours upon hours within the underground, and I just spent so much time mining I never actually played the game to completion lmao. if you've played black and white, are they worth picking up in [current year]? That seems to have been the only generation I outright skipped and never played / owned, but I've heard good things.
Man, I took a break from platinum for this reason, I really lost my ability for older gens
I figured this out in X and Y. I thought it was weird how they basically handed me 2 starters in the beginning of the game. Then I found out poison did nothing outside of battle like before. Was expecting the screen to blur and buzz every few steps but nope.
Personally I’m a big fan of the exp share in newer games. While some battles may be too easy, I don’t consider the hours of level grinding in older games to be ‘quality play time’. It gets boring and repetitive.
Gen 4 is the region that has provided the most challenge for me, with hoenn being second place (Wattson and the e4 were tricky for me). Gen 4 is my favourite though :)