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It's 4am so naturally I'm gonna write about pokemon difficulty and why the general consensus is severely misinformed and framed so badly that people are rarely having the "correct" conversation in the first place.
Join me on this adventure, won't you?
Join me on this adventure, won't you?
To start, the idea that Pokemon keeps getting easier is just wrong. The difficulty has varied between games erratically, without much of a pattern. None of them are really "hard" anyway, so we have to judge them in a relative context
Speaking of context, everyone sucks at that:
Speaking of context, everyone sucks at that:
There are plenty of metrics to judge Pokemon balance by and people are fuckin' dumb about 'em. Pokemon is meant to be accessible. Instead of having a difficulty selection on the title screen, they give the player optional crutches to make sure anyone can reach the end.
If you:
play in Shift mode over Set,
play Gen VI+ with the Exp Share always on,
use broken gift Pokemon,
grind excessively,
or use legendaries,
you are choosing to play the game on easy mode.
To be clear - that's a totally valid way to play! Just don't go on to call it too easy
play in Shift mode over Set,
play Gen VI+ with the Exp Share always on,
use broken gift Pokemon,
grind excessively,
or use legendaries,
you are choosing to play the game on easy mode.
To be clear - that's a totally valid way to play! Just don't go on to call it too easy
I'm not going to touch on self-imposed challenges here because that is an entirely different conversation. I think that without the above "crutches", most Pokemon games can actually provide a bit of rewarding challenge. That's the most logical context for judging difficulty
Side-note: SwSh has a unique balance flaw w/ forced exp share. Sounds like a nitpick, but it's unironically the main reason I hate replaying SwSh casual OR nuzlocke. Might've been fine if the level curve supported it, but SwSh also has one of the worst level curves in Pokemon lol
Now to get into the meat of it with some rapid-fire takes:
- RBY and its two remakes are in their own league of hilariously easy, even next to SwSh
- GSC+HGSS is very easy, but that's okay
- RS isn't hard for good reasons, it just has a bad level curve. E too, but not as bad
- RBY and its two remakes are in their own league of hilariously easy, even next to SwSh
- GSC+HGSS is very easy, but that's okay
- RS isn't hard for good reasons, it just has a bad level curve. E too, but not as bad
- XY has some of the most interesting and engaging difficulty spikes in the series. It just suffers from big gaps between them
- Also, XY has the hardest no-name trainers, and that's good. BW1+2 do this well too.
- BW2 is the best at *consistent* challenge, and by a fair margin
- Also, XY has the hardest no-name trainers, and that's good. BW1+2 do this well too.
- BW2 is the best at *consistent* challenge, and by a fair margin
- This is a bit of a tangent maybe, but characterization being backed up by gameplay is important, and Blue fucks this up horribly. Silver, Barry, and Cheren all do a way better job with the competitive personality by being at least slightly imposing in battle. Blue is a mess.
- Gyms being easy isn't inherently bad. An easy gym followed by a tough fight with the rival or the antagonist is valid difficult pacing. SM and Pt understand this idea the best. XY, BW, and BW2 are pretty good with it too.
- Finally, the most important thing to understand about Pokemon seeming to get easier is that you get better at video games the more you play them. It's unlikely that anything will ever feel as hard as your first Pokemon game if you started before the optional crutch era took off
Well.
I'm shocked if anyone actually read to the end of this thread, but I wrote it out for my own catharsis. I'm tired of this topic that I'm passionate about being plagued by awful framing and severe nostalgia bias.
Tl;dr: XY+SM are good, you guys are just mean.
I'm shocked if anyone actually read to the end of this thread, but I wrote it out for my own catharsis. I'm tired of this topic that I'm passionate about being plagued by awful framing and severe nostalgia bias.
Tl;dr: XY+SM are good, you guys are just mean.
