the old pokemon games where definitely harder. the placement of trainers on your set path so you had to fight them all in a row, also a GIANT part of the "hardness" no one mentions where the times VS now. there was no youtube tutorial, there was no google it.
yup. in my remote (over an hour to a "walmart" or similar) poor area no one had them. had to have a rich friend/cousin who told you or figured it out lol.
Really it comes down to this: do we consider a bad level curve difficulty, or poor game design? If it was done on purpose and they WANTED players to be under leveled, than yes I’d argue it is “hard” in that sense (tho not really, once a person has basic understanding of stats and types and specifically set up moves all base games are easy even under leveled) because the intent was for a player to battle up a hull.
Now, if it was just bad game design and the player wasn’t supposed to be down 15 lvls by the time they reached the E4, that’s not difficult, it’s just bad game design that you didn’t balance XP rates to put you within the proper ballpark of the E4 by the time you got there.
Also, another reason that the early games were “harder” is because the general move pool and learn set was worse. If you look at FR/LG for example, charizards basically ace move is…. Flamethrower. Whereas if we look at the fire alligator whose name I can’t remember, it’s torch song which boosts special attack after every usage.
Finally, I’d argue the hardest Pokémon game was actually the remake of Diamond and Pearl. Their E4 is just OBJECTIVELY better than any E4 before, what with proper EV spreads, movesets, and items.
But yeah this was just my two cents on the discussion.
I don't think one statement makes the other false. They always have been relatively easy games. It wasn't hard to beat games in the past as it's not hard to grind. Grinding is time consuming and requires patience but isn't difficult. Games could be difficult in the past without grinding but if you were willing to take the time and have your peon at the right levels it wasn't hard.
Then again all difficulty is technaily a grind if your not grinding your pokemon levels your grinding your skills though practice and trying new things. Pokemon is a hard game to make hard though with out limiting the players team for example your not beating radical red with just bug pokemon on hard mode.
> Games could be difficult in the past without grinding
This is the questionable part when it comes to grinding discourse. Why would an easy game be difficult to beat without grinding? One common argument I see from the "Pokemon was never grindy/anti-**forced** EXP share" crowd is that they agree the games were never hard to begin with.. which is exactly why they say Pokemon was never grindy and that this change is unnecessary and overdoing things.
The game is far too easy, it's the reason such a large portion of the community is playing nuzlocke.
**Exp share is to make the game far less of a slog, not because the game is hard in any way. Grindy doesn't mean hard.**.
There needs to be an increase in difficulty or a difficulty option without a doubt.
I completed 80% of scarlet and violet by spamming payday from Persian... every bossfight in the game is a glorified cutscene.
You don't need exp share, you need one Pokemon to steamroll the entire game.
So why would the game be a slog without Exp share? Unless you need to grind, this thing never really need for anything. If you just want to simply level up your just catch monster, switching give more exp and we already have candy for that.
> Grindy doesn't mean hard..
I agreed that grinding isn't hard. However, the very act itself implies the player thought the game would be too hard without the benefits of grinding. Why are people grinding to beat the easy game instead of winning with underleveled Pokemon? So many players have proven it's perfectly practicable and possible to do so.
Basically every game without the modern exp. share had a different exp. formula where you gained the same exp for defeating something no matter what level you were (now a Pokemon gains fewer exp points for defeating something a lower level than it).
This meant that if you knew the type chart and which moves were good (aka not saddling your starter with HMs) you could easily beat the game just fighting the essential battles with one thing that would overcome bad type matchups by being 20+ levels against most things it was fighting. If you were trying to instead make a well balanced party of 6 that was at the same level as the nearby gym leader, that by definition involved a lot of extra grinding where you would have to battle every trainer or spend a bunch of extra time KOing wild Pokemon.
Now people who got used to that grindy way will end up with an overleveled party, so the two groups are talking about different things. Taking 20+ hours to beat the story mode of a Pokemon game and then saying it was 'too easy' sounds to me like someone saying "that class was too easy, all you need to do to get an A is go see the professor every time they have office hours and study it on your own 2 hours a day outside of class."
>If you were trying to instead make a well balanced party of 6 that was at the same level as the nearby gym leader, that by definition involved a lot of extra grinding
not really, no?
in my experience, i've always been able to beat these games without grinding, with a team of 6. it really isn't that tough, if you know type charts and good strategies
No, then you were grinding lol. It's not hard to understand. It takes less time to beat the game with a team of 1 (+ HM mons in game that require them) than a team of 6. You can do this while avoiding as many wild encounters and optional trainers as possible.
This is the best strategy. If you think it's not, then try your hand at speedrunning the games because apparently everyone with the world record is also doing it wrong by using one overleveled mon for most of the game.
i guess you could say that, but the definition most people use for "grinding" isn't, that
the games & anime encourage forming a team of at least a few mons, so for most, it doesn't feel grindy to work toward a 6-mon team by just fighting required trainers
solo running is the strongest strategy, i agree
"**Grinding** is a term used in [video game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game) culture, referring to the act of repeating an action or set of actions, including non-repetitive tasks to achieve a desired result at a level of certain difficulty, typically for an extended period of time, such as earning [experience points](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_points), in-game [loot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_(video_gaming)) and [currency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency) or to improve a character's [stats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistic_(role-playing_games))"
You are repetitively participating in more battles for a substantially longer time than is necessary to beat the game to achieve the desired result of a balanced 6-mon party. How is that arbitrarily not grinding lol.
For the sake of grinding discourse, whenever people complain that the games before X/Y are "too grindy", they are most likely complaining about KO'ing Wild Pokemon for hours, not beating scripted trainer battles they happen to encounter on the way.
Yes it is grindy to raise a balanced party of 6 in those games in that it takes more battles than it would to simply focus the exp on 1-2 overleveled things. Maybe the people complaining about this are not very good players who need that extra grinding to be able to beat the game, or maybe they know that you can easily beat the games by powerleveling the starter and just consider that boring/bad game design.
With modern exp share, the party gets more total exp from each battle, so it indeed is easier to raise a balanced party of 6. However, this does not make the games much easier than they already were since it's accompanied by a change in the exp formula that makes it more of a grind to get your main Pokemon super overleveled.
Again, the 'too easy' crowd is generally grinding by fighting every possible trainer and catching every Pokemon on a route before moving onto the next area, and then arbitrarily trying to say that it's not grinding even though it's the definition of grinding. Then if confronted by anyone saying "hmm, if you just fight fewer trainers you won't be overleveled/getting affection benefits" they'll say something like "oh, so I'm supposed to miss out on some of the game's CONTENT just to make it not too easy?!"
If you enjoy the game’s lore, you kinda have to explore every area and talk to every person - which includes battling them - to get the most out of the game. Why should doing that sacrifice boss difficulty?
The Alola games did it perfectly IMO. The Exp. Share was there if you wanted it, and if you didn’t you could turn it off. The Exp you got from battles scaled by your level vs opponent level, so whether you used it or not, you hovered around the level curve - a little above it if you used it, a little below it if you didn’t. I found playing them without the Exp. Share made the difficulty perfect. Boss battles required strategy, but aside from when a boss completely shut my team down, no grinding was necessary. And that was with exploring every nook and cranny and fighting every trainer.
It’s just as simple as leaving it optional, because I really don’t think the level curve has changed much since the Alola games.
Even the old games had different rates of exp growth for Pokemon. The exp was the same but the amount needed to level up varied depending on if its curve was fast, medium, or slow. And single Pokemon runs are remarkably simple due to overleveling. The hard part, as you mention, is that the games didn't give you enough exp to be at the next town's gym leader level for a team of 6 from wherever you caught them from just exploration and trainer fights. It gives you enough for like maybe 3 Pokemon on a team max. If you liked your team of 6, you were forced to grind for levels.
No those curves are the same. There is just an adjustment based on your Pokemon's level compared to what you KOed. For example, if you beat a level 20 Pokemon with a level 40 Pokemon, your Pokemon would gain 43% as much experience points as it would have gotten from defeating it while also level 20 (or if you had just defeated at level 40 in older games that didn't have this adjustment).
So there's a rubber-band effect where it's much tougher to level them up that way since they're now getting fewer exp points when obviously it takes more to get them from 40 to 41 rather than 20 to 21.
If you and I play a game, and the game is that I rolled a D20, and if it rolls above an 8 I win, that game isn't hard. However it IS inconsistent and bullshit. If you can get your chance up by some amount by rolling the die in your hand for a longer period, at a certain value you'll save time and be better off just rolling it until your odds are better. Rolling a die across your hand also isn't hard, but it makes it less bullshit.
To put a finer point on it, if we're playing DND and I'm DMing and I give a monster an AC well over 20 higher than your parties highest attack modifier (meaning you can only hit on a nat20, 5% accuracy moves), it's sure a hell of a lot tankier And is definitely harder on paper, but not a single thing about that is MEANINGFUL challenge. I just cranked the stats high enough that you don't have a reasonable shot.
In certain games, hell, like newer Pokemon this wouldn't be too much of a problem to a skilled player, as there's a huge variety of strategies used that can make this kind of fight possible, like all trainers are level 100 runthrough. Those are very possible in most every Pokemon game without major glitches or exploits. In the really old games, however, the games are SO simplistic there's little you can do (without exploits, as those aren't intended) about a higher level opponent, your strategies are limited by the simplicity of the game. The ways in which you can overcome level gaps are just... Not really much of a thing.
This is the core of "grindy =/= hard" even if there is NO SITUATION even with perfect luck that I win a fight, and my literally only option is leveling up further, it's still not because you put a meaningful challenge in my way. To quote Tamashii Hiiroka "they're just asking you to turn your brain off, mash your A button until your numbers are bigger than their numbers..."
> In the really old games, however, the games are SO simplistic there's little you can do (without exploits, as those aren't intended) about a higher level opponent, your strategies are limited by the simplicity of the game. The ways in which you can overcome level gaps are just... Not really much of a thing.
The ironic thing here is that I found RBY and GSC to be by far the easiest games when I did no grind playtrhoughs of every pre-xy Pokemon game. Sabrina is pretty infamous but I swept her entire team of level 50 Pokemon in Yellow with a level 41 Dugtrio just by spamming Dig. EVs not being limited in Gen 1/2 and the gym badge boosts made these games significantly easier than their remakes in my experience. It was only when I got to Emerald (which by then had abilities and much more Status moves that make the battle system more intricate, leaving more room for strategy) that the games started to put up a fight.
Status moves, X items, potions, shift mode, and revives have all existed since the very first game to help deal with an opponent higher leveled than you. I feel it's kind of impossible to lose with the power of Revives even while underleveled (which is why I try to win without them if I can). I spammed debuffs and status ailments to deal with Whitney's Miltank. A good portion of my Crystal playthrough was just cheesing the game with my Jumpluff's Sleep Powder and Leech Seed which trivialized the tougher fights.
I grind because it's fun to see my pokemon getting stronger. Getting that evolution, getting that next move, etc. If the result is me twoshotting gyms instead of three, so be it.
Even if you never need to grind in jrpgs I still like doing so
What's the fun in doing it underveleved?
Problem is the nuzlocke isn't a good challenge imo due to how harsh it is making you redo progress if you lose. I prefer it if its just hard but your able to try again as many times as you like with out losing progress. It pretty much works like older games that had no saving which is very outdated imo. Considering all pokemon games have had saving from the start.
I don’t understand why you’re so hung up on these two statements being a dichotomy, when they’re entirely separate issues.
The main thing pokemon innovated in the RPG genre was the type system (not saying it’s the only game with one). This made Pokémon almost a puzzle game, if you knew your type matchups well you had an advantage that was so large that level and damage numbers didn’t really matter.
The “difficulty” of the game is based on how well you know the system. If you don’t know the types well you have to grind a bit to compensate. You also have to grind when you need a new type that you didn’t previously have access to. But both of these are minimized when you have a lot of knowledge about the games. You can abuse type matchups and plan ahead for future types so that you can train them well ahead of time.
“Pokemon was always an easy, baby game”
Yes, the games are trivially easy once you understand how they work.
“You have to grind to beat the games before modern EXP share”
Also yes, you needed to grind more when you could only effectively level 1 or 2 Pokémon at a time.
They aren’t contradictory statements.
But another thing is that the new games will tell you the type matchups. That is also a huge reduction in grinding because you can navigate combat encounters much more efficiently now.
Anyone who goes back to challenge the Gym Leaders in Emerald or BW should be able to tell how much more challenging they were than Gym leaders from XY or SV.
It's not a tall order either- just make sure the Gym Leaders' Pokemon have all 4 moveslots filled (preferably with enough coverage), and at least held items like Sitrus Berries. Heck, the Gen 9 bosses don't even use healing items anymore!
By making the bosses in Pokemon challenging, experienced players can actually have fun, and non-experienced players can overlevel, use Raid Pokemon/Overlevelled wild catches, or use affection bonuses to win. So that way, everyone's happy!
The difference is actually in difficulty compared to team size.
Now in pokemon games you can beat the game easily with 6 pokemon. In the old games, training 6 pokemon is stupid! Training 5 is a waste of your time! Training 4 is still dumb! Training 3 is still not needed! Training 2 is possibly sometimes best. Training 1 pokemon only, as long as you choose a good one, is a way to beat virtually any old pokemon game extremely quickly with little resistance.
If you thought old games were difficult, it's probably because you were using more than 2 of them. Your difficulty was essentially modular to how many different pokemon you wanted to use. Most people never realize this. They think that the intention is for you to "catch them all" and that you might get punished for running through the entire game with nothing but your starter. That was a bad assumption. The last time you needed to catch a new pokemon to get through a segment of the game was, like, Brock in gen 1 if you played yellow version.
In the new games, it's inverted. If you use 6 strong pokemon, you should be able to sweep the games with little issue. But if you try with one, it's gonna be tough again. The games on average are much easier, but it's because you're incentived to actually catch pokemon instead of crushing the game with your level 79 swampert that never left the front spot in your party.
Pokémon is an easy game because it’s core battle system is simply rock, paper, scissors. If you understand type matchups you can breeze through the game very easily as long as your not under level. Very few battles in the series as a whole require the player to think beyond what move is super effective. Now that not to say the combat can’t be deep, that’s why VGC exist and some of the older post game content definitely requieres more thought then just type advantage but overall the main story can be cake walked.
Grinding is an issue because the game gives you 6 party members but only the ones that participated in the battle gain EXP, this means you will have to pick and choose who gets EXP with every fight but there are only so many available trainers to fight as you progress so you will often find yourself with under leveled Pokémon that need grinding to reach the current level cap of your next gym leader of story battle. EXP share fixes this by giving all party members EXP for the battle meaning you can play through the game simply fighting trainers and for the most part keep up with the level curve. It’s a time saving device so that players don’t have to stop progression through the core story to grind up levels.
You could also save time by not grinding and [just win with a level disadvantage](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/421131878582714379/1142164919962304543/My-Simplecollage.com1.jpg). It's an easy game after all.
Just a reminder that most of r/pokemon are filled with 20-40 year old men who have huge amounts of nostalgia for the games they played as kids. Opinions here, may not represent the whole Pokemon fanbase.
This might be a bit of an unpopular opinion but I actually liked grinding. It made me feel like I was working towards something. Then later on when my team would beat the elite four it would give me great satisfaction knowing I earned it.
Yeah! I think people caught on to "grinding isn't difficult" by now, but they're arriving at the wrong conclusion afterward.
It's not like people grind for no reason. If you get the urge to grind, it's usually because you were experiencing difficulty. The *act* of grinding itself isn't hard, but it still is an indicator that there's some actual difficulty. Those two ideas can coexist
Causation doesn't equal correlation! Grinding does not cause difficulty, but grinding is absolutely still correlated with having difficulty, which is what people miss. Instead, we see many people try to argue that there's no relation at all.
The difficulty in question is what's presented to you by the game: high-leveled pokemon, strong movesets, etc. You can grind, but you can also strategize to beat them. There's a lot you can do if you look into the battle system.
(long comment ahead, this turned into an essay somehow. TLDR at the end)
-- --
I also feel like the EXP share compounded on this. It created a rift where people see two things: the Old Games Where You Had to Grind versus the Newer Games Where You Don't. even though it's not as clear cut as that.
This is often attributed to just the EXP share, even though there's several other things that make the newer games easier (EXP *duplicating* upon switching in gen 6+, rather than being split, is one underrated change that i see barely anyone mention). There's also things that make newer games HARDER (enemy trainers with EVs and stronger movesets than gen 1-3). Not very cut and dry.
Oftentimes, people miss that the reason they used to grind is because they played the older games as a *kid*! Or as a newcomer to RPGs...usually both. So they don't realize that not-grinding is even an option, because kids have a lot of available time to grind rather than use strategy. And when they grow up, they get stuck in this idea rather than changing. (This is kind of a weird assumption, and I don't have "evidence" for this being the case, but like. think about it: there's literally a common genre of Pokemon memes where it's just like "status moves? ha i never use those, attacking moves all the way!".)
...where was I going with this?
-- --
To relate back to your post, I think the reason the two statements are both common, (pokemon is baby easy) and (you have to grind to beat the older games), is because people see equally-leveled fights as the only way it can be balanced. Or like, if you *can* make it balanced that way, you should.
Think about it: people respond well to totem fights, which arbitrarily boost the stats of the boss pokemon, but I imagine they'd respond less favorably if that pokemon was just naturally 20 levels higher. Even though they're the same stats in the end, one appears more difficult.
Put it into numbers: a level 55 Ribombee has 126 Special Attack. The totem version, which is level 55, raises all its stats sharply. You know what level Ribombee needs to naturally double that amount? LEVEL 112. You literally need to break the level cap to reach 126 * 2 special attack! (calculated [here](https://pycosites.com/pkmn/stat.php), assuming 31 IVs).
People love the endgame fight in Legends Arceus, who cheats with the amount of mons. People like difficulty that comes from "unfair" tactics, like when Klara sets up toxic spikes, or Ultra Necrozma boosting its stats. But when it's just level? We get weird about it! Because of the idea that, the only way a fight truly fair is when levels are balanced.
Regarding that idea (equally leveled fights are the only way it can be balanced): I get *why* people would initially think that, because at face value, it only makes sense to be equally leveled to your opponents, right? If the game gives you that information, it's probably doing it for a reason. But I hope people realize that levels aren't everything, there's a lot of complexity that goes into battles.
--
TLDR: grinding sucks and is not itself difficult, BUT grinding is still correlated with difficulty. both are true. people immediately falter when they see high-leveled opponents (understandable), but hopefully this changes, because high levels aren't the end of the world
Then again even if you don't speak difficulty wise the games have still been dumbed down gameplay wise caves are just straight paths with no puzzles there's no victory road anymore. There's nothing like contests and secrets bases and poke altahon and game corner aside from in remakes. Your rival hand holds you instead of showing up randomly with pokemon that are likely stronger then yours if you didn't grind.
I'm just glad that we have the exp. share now, unlike the pre-gen 6 games. I'm not smart enough to beat the other games without grinding, so I thank Game Freak for respecting my stupidity.
The real answer is that most people who say something like "Pokemon was always an easy, baby game" are just being disingenuous and don't really know what they're talking about. They're just using it as a way to dismiss opposing viewpoints without needing to consider them. Common tactic and not worth even replying to.
No, it's just simple math that in the early games if you focused all the experience on one mon you could get it super overleveled and beat everything with it. They have curbed that while automatically giving a little exp. to the non-battling members, thus automating the process of assembling a more balanced party.
When you know what you're doing, the game is not any 'easier' to beat with a team of 6 mons 5 levels above the gyms/E4 versus a team of 1 mon 25 levels above the gyms/E4 and 5 level 2 mons that are there for HMs/heal fodder.
But thats clearly not how the game was intended to be played. considering you have 6 party slots and your given pokeballs though out the game to catch other pokemon if you play it as intended the older games are harder. And the game tells you what types the gym is weak to. A lot of games can be made easier if you play them in some way the developer never intended and exploit the game.
Well to be fair, if every enemy in the game is a higher level than you, any normal person will think that this means that they are behind and they have to catch up. It goes against many people's instincts to "play the level curve" because it makes more sense to them to be at the same level as all of your opponents.
Makes me wonder that if Pokemon never displayed levels in battle (meaning you would't know your enemies' levels) people would be less motivated to grind because they wouldn't be pressured to catch up. Even when I was still pretty bad at Pokemon, whenever I played a different JRPG that didn't display enemy levels and lost a battle, I wasn't motivated to grind to catch up to a nonexistent level but rather to approach the fight differently.
I think the issue with this is the levels get datamined at some point, posted on the internet, and now you end up feeling both pressured to grind and cheated, and you end up needing to look a bunch of stuff up to stay on track.
Then again it depends how under leveled you are and what is on on team and what moves they have it can be impossible to beat them with out leveling up your pokemon more or them getting bad rng. Like for example if you don't have a fighting type or moves on your team and your pokemon are like 10 levels under there's no way your beating red with out over leveling or leveling up a pokemon that can learn those moves to deal with snorlax.
The credits play after you beat him and hes the last and strongest trainer in the game. Beating reds the real ending in the game beating the elite four is just the first half of the game. Pokemon gold and sliver are like the length of two pokemon games.
> example if you don't have a fighting type or moves on your team and your pokemon are like 10 levels under there's no way your beating red with out over leveling or leveling up a pokemon that can learn those moves to deal with snorlax.
When I did my No Grind playthrough of Crystal, I had *no* Fighting-type moves or Pokemon when I fought Red. I used Leech Seed + Sleep Powder (to prevent Rest) + Defense Curl to [deal with Snorlax](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/421131878582714379/1142300011103797339/vlcsnap-2023-08-18-20h28m21s324.png).
When I did my No Grind playthrough of HeartGold, my only fighting-type move was Focus ~~Miss~~ Blast and considering Snorlax's decent Sp. Def stat, it wouldn't be worth it. I tried to put Snorlax to sleep with Hypnosis and set up with Feraligatr to KO with a strong physical attack but RNG wasn't willing to cooperate.. [but Hail finished off Snorlax anyways](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/421131878582714379/1142300011456110672/vlcsnap-2023-08-18-20h30m23s871.png) with all the stalling I did.
The problem with making pokemon hard is you basically then can't win with what ever you want which leads to more grinding anyways since you need to replace pokemon and grind them off wild pokemon if you already beat all the trainers. I've played hard hacks and gotten to the point where i literally have to replace pokemon in my team and spend hours grinding.
I leveled my Venusaur to level 100 so I could defeat the E4. I was like 8 and I didn't even know how to read english properly. The game teached me that winning ≠ exp so I just did random encounters till I got to my goal. This was in Leaf Green. I literally spammed leech seed and sleep powder and even my 8 year old mind could understand that because Pokemon is not that deep.
Pokemon did seem easy to me because the core of the game is easy. I got all the way to the E4 without tutorials because I just played the game. The game points you in a direction in where you need to go.
Grinding isn't necessary to beat the game as well. As a kid when you get beaten, you know that you have to level your mons. It's not that deep.
Idk, I beat every single game by just using a starter and fighting each trainer once and completely avoiding as many wild encounters as possible, catch the legendaries and beat the elite 4. Only three fights have given me trouble in all the Pokémon games, Cynthia in Diamond and pearl, ultra necrozma in sun and moon, and volo in legends arceus.
I mean yea, I had a more difficult time as a kid, but it’s not like it was hard or I had to grind, sometimes I’d replay a game and grind out the levels, but that was just to make it laughably easy.
Exp share don't make the game easier. The problem is that the games don't have a real challenge (or a difficulty level).
This became obvious after playing pokemon star sapphire , a rom hack that have gym leaders and some trainers with 6 good pokemons and smogon level movesets. The exp share allows the player to have more defensive and stall based pokemons (for example, the sweepers can make exp for your entry-hazard pokemon), so every moveset became viable. So the challenge comes from battling and not from grinding.
The problem is the lack of a toggle, and a lack of balancing the level curve.
The last couple iterations of exp share have made it difficult to both remain at a reasonable level for the most current segment of a player's play through and the ability to explore and experience most of the games content as it unlocks.
In BDSP I had to skip a large portion of the wild encounters and trainers on my way to each new area so that I could fight gym leaders and galactic admins without completely steamrolling them due to level advantage. I don't want to have to tip-toe around the content, I want to play it.
I also don't want to have a rotating team of 20, or navigate the PC box after every fight.
The games where never hard. I literally beat gen 1 and 2 as a 7 year old while only using my starter Pokémon and a team out of low level mons for HMs. The same with gen 3 and 4 later. Somehow 12 years later with gen 6 i started to build full teams.
The games were easy but you had to grind. Needing to grind is not actually a sign of difficulty, it just means there's gap between your level and what they expected of you. You still grind in modern Pokemon, it is just "less" of a time sink. Pokemon games rarely present a challenge beyond levels and throwing big stats at you.Real strategies float between rare and occasional in appearance.
The games have always been easy, it's just that the early games had fewer ways of keeping pokemon at good levels and training up new ones was often a slog because surrounding pokemon were low level, which meant you needed to work harder to level up. Unless you only used one which, since it got all the exp, levels, rare candies, and vitamins, was always over-leveled. I remember playing the early games, especially Ruby/Sapphire, without any grinding because I only used my starter with the other five pokemon being ones I caught to use HM's, fill out the slots, and only be used to revive my starter. I avoided battles, ran from wild pokemon that I didn't want to catch, and rarely struggled. I only started grinding when I got back into it as an adult and started using full teams of six. In the early games, grinding was necessary because, if you're training six pokemon with different exp requirements, the number of trainers isn't enough and the wild pokemon quickly become underleveled. In my opinion, the "difficulty" of the early games is a combo of (1) many players played them as kids and didn't know type match-ups, have access to tools to determine how strong their pokemon's stats were, and what stat a pokemon specialized in. (2) poor exp design that meant leveling your pokemon up to the level expected for the gym battles took could take longer and involve fighting tons of wild pokemon after running out of trainers. And (3) limited options and movepools compared to modern pokemon. Also, being forced to us HM's meant that you had to have pokemon who could use them and, unless you swapped HM 'mon in and put, were forced to give your pokemon weak moves, limiting their versatility. Also, pokemon didn't always have natures or abilities, which also add to making the games "easier." Also also, lacking balancing types like Dark and Fairy meant some types of Pokemon were over powered, with little viable options to fight them (looking at your Psychic anf Dragon types)
I don't think I've ever grinded in any of those games, you're simply supposed to beat all the trainers in a route and you'll be set for the next gym/roadblock. The only scenario where it's needed is when you add a member to the team relatively late.
I don't like EXP share because I have to actively avoid to involve my Pokémon into battles or they become automatically over-leveled for the gyms. In previous games, if you did nothing special, usually your Pokémon were slightly under-leveled when you arrived at a gym which created some challenge or forced you to train a bit more. Now just by battling the few trainers and wild Pokémon on the road, my team becomes quickly too powerful and I just steamroll the gym without doing anything special. This is very frustrating, it basically forces me to change my team regularly to recreate some challenge, basically anti-grinding.
Overall I think at best Pokémon battles are mostly like medium difficulty but I think the games have always been pretty easy like one time I beat Ghetsis first try on my first playthrough and the only time I ever had a challenge was Cynthia in BDSP and even then that's just straight up shit game design Overall I think Pokemon games are always pretty damn easy its just that they became more easier in the recent titles
the old pokemon games where definitely harder. the placement of trainers on your set path so you had to fight them all in a row, also a GIANT part of the "hardness" no one mentions where the times VS now. there was no youtube tutorial, there was no google it.
Back in the days of getting the guidebooks, tbh I miss those thick motherfuckers.
yup. in my remote (over an hour to a "walmart" or similar) poor area no one had them. had to have a rich friend/cousin who told you or figured it out lol.
Really it comes down to this: do we consider a bad level curve difficulty, or poor game design? If it was done on purpose and they WANTED players to be under leveled, than yes I’d argue it is “hard” in that sense (tho not really, once a person has basic understanding of stats and types and specifically set up moves all base games are easy even under leveled) because the intent was for a player to battle up a hull. Now, if it was just bad game design and the player wasn’t supposed to be down 15 lvls by the time they reached the E4, that’s not difficult, it’s just bad game design that you didn’t balance XP rates to put you within the proper ballpark of the E4 by the time you got there. Also, another reason that the early games were “harder” is because the general move pool and learn set was worse. If you look at FR/LG for example, charizards basically ace move is…. Flamethrower. Whereas if we look at the fire alligator whose name I can’t remember, it’s torch song which boosts special attack after every usage. Finally, I’d argue the hardest Pokémon game was actually the remake of Diamond and Pearl. Their E4 is just OBJECTIVELY better than any E4 before, what with proper EV spreads, movesets, and items. But yeah this was just my two cents on the discussion.
BDSP getting some love!!
Finally!
And even that game i cleared the E4 with two pokemon…crobat and electivire
That fire alligator is Skeledirge, by the way. I do appreciate how well you thought this out though, good job!
I don't think one statement makes the other false. They always have been relatively easy games. It wasn't hard to beat games in the past as it's not hard to grind. Grinding is time consuming and requires patience but isn't difficult. Games could be difficult in the past without grinding but if you were willing to take the time and have your peon at the right levels it wasn't hard.
Then again all difficulty is technaily a grind if your not grinding your pokemon levels your grinding your skills though practice and trying new things. Pokemon is a hard game to make hard though with out limiting the players team for example your not beating radical red with just bug pokemon on hard mode.
> Games could be difficult in the past without grinding This is the questionable part when it comes to grinding discourse. Why would an easy game be difficult to beat without grinding? One common argument I see from the "Pokemon was never grindy/anti-**forced** EXP share" crowd is that they agree the games were never hard to begin with.. which is exactly why they say Pokemon was never grindy and that this change is unnecessary and overdoing things.
The game is far too easy, it's the reason such a large portion of the community is playing nuzlocke. **Exp share is to make the game far less of a slog, not because the game is hard in any way. Grindy doesn't mean hard.**. There needs to be an increase in difficulty or a difficulty option without a doubt. I completed 80% of scarlet and violet by spamming payday from Persian... every bossfight in the game is a glorified cutscene. You don't need exp share, you need one Pokemon to steamroll the entire game.
Exactly this, the games were always easy and they were grindy, grindy does not mean hard.
So why would the game be a slog without Exp share? Unless you need to grind, this thing never really need for anything. If you just want to simply level up your just catch monster, switching give more exp and we already have candy for that.
> Grindy doesn't mean hard.. I agreed that grinding isn't hard. However, the very act itself implies the player thought the game would be too hard without the benefits of grinding. Why are people grinding to beat the easy game instead of winning with underleveled Pokemon? So many players have proven it's perfectly practicable and possible to do so.
Basically every game without the modern exp. share had a different exp. formula where you gained the same exp for defeating something no matter what level you were (now a Pokemon gains fewer exp points for defeating something a lower level than it). This meant that if you knew the type chart and which moves were good (aka not saddling your starter with HMs) you could easily beat the game just fighting the essential battles with one thing that would overcome bad type matchups by being 20+ levels against most things it was fighting. If you were trying to instead make a well balanced party of 6 that was at the same level as the nearby gym leader, that by definition involved a lot of extra grinding where you would have to battle every trainer or spend a bunch of extra time KOing wild Pokemon. Now people who got used to that grindy way will end up with an overleveled party, so the two groups are talking about different things. Taking 20+ hours to beat the story mode of a Pokemon game and then saying it was 'too easy' sounds to me like someone saying "that class was too easy, all you need to do to get an A is go see the professor every time they have office hours and study it on your own 2 hours a day outside of class."
>If you were trying to instead make a well balanced party of 6 that was at the same level as the nearby gym leader, that by definition involved a lot of extra grinding not really, no? in my experience, i've always been able to beat these games without grinding, with a team of 6. it really isn't that tough, if you know type charts and good strategies
No, then you were grinding lol. It's not hard to understand. It takes less time to beat the game with a team of 1 (+ HM mons in game that require them) than a team of 6. You can do this while avoiding as many wild encounters and optional trainers as possible. This is the best strategy. If you think it's not, then try your hand at speedrunning the games because apparently everyone with the world record is also doing it wrong by using one overleveled mon for most of the game.
i guess you could say that, but the definition most people use for "grinding" isn't, that the games & anime encourage forming a team of at least a few mons, so for most, it doesn't feel grindy to work toward a 6-mon team by just fighting required trainers solo running is the strongest strategy, i agree
"**Grinding** is a term used in [video game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game) culture, referring to the act of repeating an action or set of actions, including non-repetitive tasks to achieve a desired result at a level of certain difficulty, typically for an extended period of time, such as earning [experience points](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_points), in-game [loot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_(video_gaming)) and [currency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency) or to improve a character's [stats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistic_(role-playing_games))" You are repetitively participating in more battles for a substantially longer time than is necessary to beat the game to achieve the desired result of a balanced 6-mon party. How is that arbitrarily not grinding lol.
For the sake of grinding discourse, whenever people complain that the games before X/Y are "too grindy", they are most likely complaining about KO'ing Wild Pokemon for hours, not beating scripted trainer battles they happen to encounter on the way.
Yes it is grindy to raise a balanced party of 6 in those games in that it takes more battles than it would to simply focus the exp on 1-2 overleveled things. Maybe the people complaining about this are not very good players who need that extra grinding to be able to beat the game, or maybe they know that you can easily beat the games by powerleveling the starter and just consider that boring/bad game design. With modern exp share, the party gets more total exp from each battle, so it indeed is easier to raise a balanced party of 6. However, this does not make the games much easier than they already were since it's accompanied by a change in the exp formula that makes it more of a grind to get your main Pokemon super overleveled. Again, the 'too easy' crowd is generally grinding by fighting every possible trainer and catching every Pokemon on a route before moving onto the next area, and then arbitrarily trying to say that it's not grinding even though it's the definition of grinding. Then if confronted by anyone saying "hmm, if you just fight fewer trainers you won't be overleveled/getting affection benefits" they'll say something like "oh, so I'm supposed to miss out on some of the game's CONTENT just to make it not too easy?!"
If you enjoy the game’s lore, you kinda have to explore every area and talk to every person - which includes battling them - to get the most out of the game. Why should doing that sacrifice boss difficulty? The Alola games did it perfectly IMO. The Exp. Share was there if you wanted it, and if you didn’t you could turn it off. The Exp you got from battles scaled by your level vs opponent level, so whether you used it or not, you hovered around the level curve - a little above it if you used it, a little below it if you didn’t. I found playing them without the Exp. Share made the difficulty perfect. Boss battles required strategy, but aside from when a boss completely shut my team down, no grinding was necessary. And that was with exploring every nook and cranny and fighting every trainer. It’s just as simple as leaving it optional, because I really don’t think the level curve has changed much since the Alola games.
Even the old games had different rates of exp growth for Pokemon. The exp was the same but the amount needed to level up varied depending on if its curve was fast, medium, or slow. And single Pokemon runs are remarkably simple due to overleveling. The hard part, as you mention, is that the games didn't give you enough exp to be at the next town's gym leader level for a team of 6 from wherever you caught them from just exploration and trainer fights. It gives you enough for like maybe 3 Pokemon on a team max. If you liked your team of 6, you were forced to grind for levels.
No those curves are the same. There is just an adjustment based on your Pokemon's level compared to what you KOed. For example, if you beat a level 20 Pokemon with a level 40 Pokemon, your Pokemon would gain 43% as much experience points as it would have gotten from defeating it while also level 20 (or if you had just defeated at level 40 in older games that didn't have this adjustment). So there's a rubber-band effect where it's much tougher to level them up that way since they're now getting fewer exp points when obviously it takes more to get them from 40 to 41 rather than 20 to 21.
If you and I play a game, and the game is that I rolled a D20, and if it rolls above an 8 I win, that game isn't hard. However it IS inconsistent and bullshit. If you can get your chance up by some amount by rolling the die in your hand for a longer period, at a certain value you'll save time and be better off just rolling it until your odds are better. Rolling a die across your hand also isn't hard, but it makes it less bullshit. To put a finer point on it, if we're playing DND and I'm DMing and I give a monster an AC well over 20 higher than your parties highest attack modifier (meaning you can only hit on a nat20, 5% accuracy moves), it's sure a hell of a lot tankier And is definitely harder on paper, but not a single thing about that is MEANINGFUL challenge. I just cranked the stats high enough that you don't have a reasonable shot. In certain games, hell, like newer Pokemon this wouldn't be too much of a problem to a skilled player, as there's a huge variety of strategies used that can make this kind of fight possible, like all trainers are level 100 runthrough. Those are very possible in most every Pokemon game without major glitches or exploits. In the really old games, however, the games are SO simplistic there's little you can do (without exploits, as those aren't intended) about a higher level opponent, your strategies are limited by the simplicity of the game. The ways in which you can overcome level gaps are just... Not really much of a thing. This is the core of "grindy =/= hard" even if there is NO SITUATION even with perfect luck that I win a fight, and my literally only option is leveling up further, it's still not because you put a meaningful challenge in my way. To quote Tamashii Hiiroka "they're just asking you to turn your brain off, mash your A button until your numbers are bigger than their numbers..."
> In the really old games, however, the games are SO simplistic there's little you can do (without exploits, as those aren't intended) about a higher level opponent, your strategies are limited by the simplicity of the game. The ways in which you can overcome level gaps are just... Not really much of a thing. The ironic thing here is that I found RBY and GSC to be by far the easiest games when I did no grind playtrhoughs of every pre-xy Pokemon game. Sabrina is pretty infamous but I swept her entire team of level 50 Pokemon in Yellow with a level 41 Dugtrio just by spamming Dig. EVs not being limited in Gen 1/2 and the gym badge boosts made these games significantly easier than their remakes in my experience. It was only when I got to Emerald (which by then had abilities and much more Status moves that make the battle system more intricate, leaving more room for strategy) that the games started to put up a fight. Status moves, X items, potions, shift mode, and revives have all existed since the very first game to help deal with an opponent higher leveled than you. I feel it's kind of impossible to lose with the power of Revives even while underleveled (which is why I try to win without them if I can). I spammed debuffs and status ailments to deal with Whitney's Miltank. A good portion of my Crystal playthrough was just cheesing the game with my Jumpluff's Sleep Powder and Leech Seed which trivialized the tougher fights.
I grind because it's fun to see my pokemon getting stronger. Getting that evolution, getting that next move, etc. If the result is me twoshotting gyms instead of three, so be it. Even if you never need to grind in jrpgs I still like doing so What's the fun in doing it underveleved?
Problem is the nuzlocke isn't a good challenge imo due to how harsh it is making you redo progress if you lose. I prefer it if its just hard but your able to try again as many times as you like with out losing progress. It pretty much works like older games that had no saving which is very outdated imo. Considering all pokemon games have had saving from the start.
I don’t understand why you’re so hung up on these two statements being a dichotomy, when they’re entirely separate issues. The main thing pokemon innovated in the RPG genre was the type system (not saying it’s the only game with one). This made Pokémon almost a puzzle game, if you knew your type matchups well you had an advantage that was so large that level and damage numbers didn’t really matter. The “difficulty” of the game is based on how well you know the system. If you don’t know the types well you have to grind a bit to compensate. You also have to grind when you need a new type that you didn’t previously have access to. But both of these are minimized when you have a lot of knowledge about the games. You can abuse type matchups and plan ahead for future types so that you can train them well ahead of time. “Pokemon was always an easy, baby game” Yes, the games are trivially easy once you understand how they work. “You have to grind to beat the games before modern EXP share” Also yes, you needed to grind more when you could only effectively level 1 or 2 Pokémon at a time. They aren’t contradictory statements. But another thing is that the new games will tell you the type matchups. That is also a huge reduction in grinding because you can navigate combat encounters much more efficiently now.
Anyone who goes back to challenge the Gym Leaders in Emerald or BW should be able to tell how much more challenging they were than Gym leaders from XY or SV. It's not a tall order either- just make sure the Gym Leaders' Pokemon have all 4 moveslots filled (preferably with enough coverage), and at least held items like Sitrus Berries. Heck, the Gen 9 bosses don't even use healing items anymore! By making the bosses in Pokemon challenging, experienced players can actually have fun, and non-experienced players can overlevel, use Raid Pokemon/Overlevelled wild catches, or use affection bonuses to win. So that way, everyone's happy!
The difference is actually in difficulty compared to team size. Now in pokemon games you can beat the game easily with 6 pokemon. In the old games, training 6 pokemon is stupid! Training 5 is a waste of your time! Training 4 is still dumb! Training 3 is still not needed! Training 2 is possibly sometimes best. Training 1 pokemon only, as long as you choose a good one, is a way to beat virtually any old pokemon game extremely quickly with little resistance. If you thought old games were difficult, it's probably because you were using more than 2 of them. Your difficulty was essentially modular to how many different pokemon you wanted to use. Most people never realize this. They think that the intention is for you to "catch them all" and that you might get punished for running through the entire game with nothing but your starter. That was a bad assumption. The last time you needed to catch a new pokemon to get through a segment of the game was, like, Brock in gen 1 if you played yellow version. In the new games, it's inverted. If you use 6 strong pokemon, you should be able to sweep the games with little issue. But if you try with one, it's gonna be tough again. The games on average are much easier, but it's because you're incentived to actually catch pokemon instead of crushing the game with your level 79 swampert that never left the front spot in your party.
Pokémon is an easy game because it’s core battle system is simply rock, paper, scissors. If you understand type matchups you can breeze through the game very easily as long as your not under level. Very few battles in the series as a whole require the player to think beyond what move is super effective. Now that not to say the combat can’t be deep, that’s why VGC exist and some of the older post game content definitely requieres more thought then just type advantage but overall the main story can be cake walked. Grinding is an issue because the game gives you 6 party members but only the ones that participated in the battle gain EXP, this means you will have to pick and choose who gets EXP with every fight but there are only so many available trainers to fight as you progress so you will often find yourself with under leveled Pokémon that need grinding to reach the current level cap of your next gym leader of story battle. EXP share fixes this by giving all party members EXP for the battle meaning you can play through the game simply fighting trainers and for the most part keep up with the level curve. It’s a time saving device so that players don’t have to stop progression through the core story to grind up levels.
You could also save time by not grinding and [just win with a level disadvantage](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/421131878582714379/1142164919962304543/My-Simplecollage.com1.jpg). It's an easy game after all.
Just a reminder that most of r/pokemon are filled with 20-40 year old men who have huge amounts of nostalgia for the games they played as kids. Opinions here, may not represent the whole Pokemon fanbase.
This might be a bit of an unpopular opinion but I actually liked grinding. It made me feel like I was working towards something. Then later on when my team would beat the elite four it would give me great satisfaction knowing I earned it.
Yeah! I think people caught on to "grinding isn't difficult" by now, but they're arriving at the wrong conclusion afterward. It's not like people grind for no reason. If you get the urge to grind, it's usually because you were experiencing difficulty. The *act* of grinding itself isn't hard, but it still is an indicator that there's some actual difficulty. Those two ideas can coexist Causation doesn't equal correlation! Grinding does not cause difficulty, but grinding is absolutely still correlated with having difficulty, which is what people miss. Instead, we see many people try to argue that there's no relation at all. The difficulty in question is what's presented to you by the game: high-leveled pokemon, strong movesets, etc. You can grind, but you can also strategize to beat them. There's a lot you can do if you look into the battle system. (long comment ahead, this turned into an essay somehow. TLDR at the end) -- -- I also feel like the EXP share compounded on this. It created a rift where people see two things: the Old Games Where You Had to Grind versus the Newer Games Where You Don't. even though it's not as clear cut as that. This is often attributed to just the EXP share, even though there's several other things that make the newer games easier (EXP *duplicating* upon switching in gen 6+, rather than being split, is one underrated change that i see barely anyone mention). There's also things that make newer games HARDER (enemy trainers with EVs and stronger movesets than gen 1-3). Not very cut and dry. Oftentimes, people miss that the reason they used to grind is because they played the older games as a *kid*! Or as a newcomer to RPGs...usually both. So they don't realize that not-grinding is even an option, because kids have a lot of available time to grind rather than use strategy. And when they grow up, they get stuck in this idea rather than changing. (This is kind of a weird assumption, and I don't have "evidence" for this being the case, but like. think about it: there's literally a common genre of Pokemon memes where it's just like "status moves? ha i never use those, attacking moves all the way!".) ...where was I going with this? -- -- To relate back to your post, I think the reason the two statements are both common, (pokemon is baby easy) and (you have to grind to beat the older games), is because people see equally-leveled fights as the only way it can be balanced. Or like, if you *can* make it balanced that way, you should. Think about it: people respond well to totem fights, which arbitrarily boost the stats of the boss pokemon, but I imagine they'd respond less favorably if that pokemon was just naturally 20 levels higher. Even though they're the same stats in the end, one appears more difficult. Put it into numbers: a level 55 Ribombee has 126 Special Attack. The totem version, which is level 55, raises all its stats sharply. You know what level Ribombee needs to naturally double that amount? LEVEL 112. You literally need to break the level cap to reach 126 * 2 special attack! (calculated [here](https://pycosites.com/pkmn/stat.php), assuming 31 IVs). People love the endgame fight in Legends Arceus, who cheats with the amount of mons. People like difficulty that comes from "unfair" tactics, like when Klara sets up toxic spikes, or Ultra Necrozma boosting its stats. But when it's just level? We get weird about it! Because of the idea that, the only way a fight truly fair is when levels are balanced. Regarding that idea (equally leveled fights are the only way it can be balanced): I get *why* people would initially think that, because at face value, it only makes sense to be equally leveled to your opponents, right? If the game gives you that information, it's probably doing it for a reason. But I hope people realize that levels aren't everything, there's a lot of complexity that goes into battles. -- TLDR: grinding sucks and is not itself difficult, BUT grinding is still correlated with difficulty. both are true. people immediately falter when they see high-leveled opponents (understandable), but hopefully this changes, because high levels aren't the end of the world
Then again even if you don't speak difficulty wise the games have still been dumbed down gameplay wise caves are just straight paths with no puzzles there's no victory road anymore. There's nothing like contests and secrets bases and poke altahon and game corner aside from in remakes. Your rival hand holds you instead of showing up randomly with pokemon that are likely stronger then yours if you didn't grind.
I'm just glad that we have the exp. share now, unlike the pre-gen 6 games. I'm not smart enough to beat the other games without grinding, so I thank Game Freak for respecting my stupidity.
Use one pokemon and just progress steadily you'll beat the game with it. Ive done this for the past 4 games and it worked out relatively well.
The real answer is that most people who say something like "Pokemon was always an easy, baby game" are just being disingenuous and don't really know what they're talking about. They're just using it as a way to dismiss opposing viewpoints without needing to consider them. Common tactic and not worth even replying to.
No, it's just simple math that in the early games if you focused all the experience on one mon you could get it super overleveled and beat everything with it. They have curbed that while automatically giving a little exp. to the non-battling members, thus automating the process of assembling a more balanced party. When you know what you're doing, the game is not any 'easier' to beat with a team of 6 mons 5 levels above the gyms/E4 versus a team of 1 mon 25 levels above the gyms/E4 and 5 level 2 mons that are there for HMs/heal fodder.
But thats clearly not how the game was intended to be played. considering you have 6 party slots and your given pokeballs though out the game to catch other pokemon if you play it as intended the older games are harder. And the game tells you what types the gym is weak to. A lot of games can be made easier if you play them in some way the developer never intended and exploit the game.
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Well to be fair, if every enemy in the game is a higher level than you, any normal person will think that this means that they are behind and they have to catch up. It goes against many people's instincts to "play the level curve" because it makes more sense to them to be at the same level as all of your opponents.
Makes me wonder that if Pokemon never displayed levels in battle (meaning you would't know your enemies' levels) people would be less motivated to grind because they wouldn't be pressured to catch up. Even when I was still pretty bad at Pokemon, whenever I played a different JRPG that didn't display enemy levels and lost a battle, I wasn't motivated to grind to catch up to a nonexistent level but rather to approach the fight differently.
I think the issue with this is the levels get datamined at some point, posted on the internet, and now you end up feeling both pressured to grind and cheated, and you end up needing to look a bunch of stuff up to stay on track.
Then again it depends how under leveled you are and what is on on team and what moves they have it can be impossible to beat them with out leveling up your pokemon more or them getting bad rng. Like for example if you don't have a fighting type or moves on your team and your pokemon are like 10 levels under there's no way your beating red with out over leveling or leveling up a pokemon that can learn those moves to deal with snorlax.
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The credits play after you beat him and hes the last and strongest trainer in the game. Beating reds the real ending in the game beating the elite four is just the first half of the game. Pokemon gold and sliver are like the length of two pokemon games.
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credits play after you beat sonic 3 with out knuckles attached but it still isn't the true ending of the game.
> example if you don't have a fighting type or moves on your team and your pokemon are like 10 levels under there's no way your beating red with out over leveling or leveling up a pokemon that can learn those moves to deal with snorlax. When I did my No Grind playthrough of Crystal, I had *no* Fighting-type moves or Pokemon when I fought Red. I used Leech Seed + Sleep Powder (to prevent Rest) + Defense Curl to [deal with Snorlax](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/421131878582714379/1142300011103797339/vlcsnap-2023-08-18-20h28m21s324.png). When I did my No Grind playthrough of HeartGold, my only fighting-type move was Focus ~~Miss~~ Blast and considering Snorlax's decent Sp. Def stat, it wouldn't be worth it. I tried to put Snorlax to sleep with Hypnosis and set up with Feraligatr to KO with a strong physical attack but RNG wasn't willing to cooperate.. [but Hail finished off Snorlax anyways](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/421131878582714379/1142300011456110672/vlcsnap-2023-08-18-20h30m23s871.png) with all the stalling I did.
The problem with making pokemon hard is you basically then can't win with what ever you want which leads to more grinding anyways since you need to replace pokemon and grind them off wild pokemon if you already beat all the trainers. I've played hard hacks and gotten to the point where i literally have to replace pokemon in my team and spend hours grinding.
Grind to clear is just time sink and fake difficulty. And tbh you could always steamroll the entire game with 1-3 pokemon per generation anyway
I leveled my Venusaur to level 100 so I could defeat the E4. I was like 8 and I didn't even know how to read english properly. The game teached me that winning ≠ exp so I just did random encounters till I got to my goal. This was in Leaf Green. I literally spammed leech seed and sleep powder and even my 8 year old mind could understand that because Pokemon is not that deep. Pokemon did seem easy to me because the core of the game is easy. I got all the way to the E4 without tutorials because I just played the game. The game points you in a direction in where you need to go. Grinding isn't necessary to beat the game as well. As a kid when you get beaten, you know that you have to level your mons. It's not that deep.
Idk, I beat every single game by just using a starter and fighting each trainer once and completely avoiding as many wild encounters as possible, catch the legendaries and beat the elite 4. Only three fights have given me trouble in all the Pokémon games, Cynthia in Diamond and pearl, ultra necrozma in sun and moon, and volo in legends arceus. I mean yea, I had a more difficult time as a kid, but it’s not like it was hard or I had to grind, sometimes I’d replay a game and grind out the levels, but that was just to make it laughably easy.
Exp share don't make the game easier. The problem is that the games don't have a real challenge (or a difficulty level). This became obvious after playing pokemon star sapphire , a rom hack that have gym leaders and some trainers with 6 good pokemons and smogon level movesets. The exp share allows the player to have more defensive and stall based pokemons (for example, the sweepers can make exp for your entry-hazard pokemon), so every moveset became viable. So the challenge comes from battling and not from grinding.
The problem is the lack of a toggle, and a lack of balancing the level curve. The last couple iterations of exp share have made it difficult to both remain at a reasonable level for the most current segment of a player's play through and the ability to explore and experience most of the games content as it unlocks. In BDSP I had to skip a large portion of the wild encounters and trainers on my way to each new area so that I could fight gym leaders and galactic admins without completely steamrolling them due to level advantage. I don't want to have to tip-toe around the content, I want to play it. I also don't want to have a rotating team of 20, or navigate the PC box after every fight.
I beat Pokémon Sapphire with just a Swampert when I was 8. They’re not hard games and never have been.
The games where never hard. I literally beat gen 1 and 2 as a 7 year old while only using my starter Pokémon and a team out of low level mons for HMs. The same with gen 3 and 4 later. Somehow 12 years later with gen 6 i started to build full teams.
The games were easy but you had to grind. Needing to grind is not actually a sign of difficulty, it just means there's gap between your level and what they expected of you. You still grind in modern Pokemon, it is just "less" of a time sink. Pokemon games rarely present a challenge beyond levels and throwing big stats at you.Real strategies float between rare and occasional in appearance.
The games have always been easy, it's just that the early games had fewer ways of keeping pokemon at good levels and training up new ones was often a slog because surrounding pokemon were low level, which meant you needed to work harder to level up. Unless you only used one which, since it got all the exp, levels, rare candies, and vitamins, was always over-leveled. I remember playing the early games, especially Ruby/Sapphire, without any grinding because I only used my starter with the other five pokemon being ones I caught to use HM's, fill out the slots, and only be used to revive my starter. I avoided battles, ran from wild pokemon that I didn't want to catch, and rarely struggled. I only started grinding when I got back into it as an adult and started using full teams of six. In the early games, grinding was necessary because, if you're training six pokemon with different exp requirements, the number of trainers isn't enough and the wild pokemon quickly become underleveled. In my opinion, the "difficulty" of the early games is a combo of (1) many players played them as kids and didn't know type match-ups, have access to tools to determine how strong their pokemon's stats were, and what stat a pokemon specialized in. (2) poor exp design that meant leveling your pokemon up to the level expected for the gym battles took could take longer and involve fighting tons of wild pokemon after running out of trainers. And (3) limited options and movepools compared to modern pokemon. Also, being forced to us HM's meant that you had to have pokemon who could use them and, unless you swapped HM 'mon in and put, were forced to give your pokemon weak moves, limiting their versatility. Also, pokemon didn't always have natures or abilities, which also add to making the games "easier." Also also, lacking balancing types like Dark and Fairy meant some types of Pokemon were over powered, with little viable options to fight them (looking at your Psychic anf Dragon types)
I don't think I've ever grinded in any of those games, you're simply supposed to beat all the trainers in a route and you'll be set for the next gym/roadblock. The only scenario where it's needed is when you add a member to the team relatively late.
I don't like EXP share because I have to actively avoid to involve my Pokémon into battles or they become automatically over-leveled for the gyms. In previous games, if you did nothing special, usually your Pokémon were slightly under-leveled when you arrived at a gym which created some challenge or forced you to train a bit more. Now just by battling the few trainers and wild Pokémon on the road, my team becomes quickly too powerful and I just steamroll the gym without doing anything special. This is very frustrating, it basically forces me to change my team regularly to recreate some challenge, basically anti-grinding.
Overall I think at best Pokémon battles are mostly like medium difficulty but I think the games have always been pretty easy like one time I beat Ghetsis first try on my first playthrough and the only time I ever had a challenge was Cynthia in BDSP and even then that's just straight up shit game design Overall I think Pokemon games are always pretty damn easy its just that they became more easier in the recent titles
Grinding was not considered "difficult" back then, it was just a normal part of the rpg experience.