[Megathread] Nintendo Switch

[Lorgar Aurelian]

All I get from Pokemon reviews is that it's painfully mediocre and the easiest game in the series so far. Safe to say I won't be buying Sword/Shield, shame because I usually like the games and was looking forward to it, but not wasting my money. The difficulty thing is the worst, Pokemon games aren't the hardest at the best of times, can't they just offer a difficulty mode and keep everyone happy?

I have to agree with this white and black 2 had difficulty settings and while they weren't all that impactful having the option was nice and I’d say those were the last good Pokémon games.

The move to 3D seemed to make the game easier and easier to the point where I just dropped sun and moon all to gather as playing dress up with my trainer was funner then the Pokémon battles. Not sure why they can’t put in an option for like blaze black difficulty with trainers having full teams that aren’t awful it would personally get me back into the game.

[Yunru]

I'm enjoying Sword a lot more than I thought I would, especially the raid battles. Only problem is the AI companions. I have never seen AI this retarded.

Right now I am battling a 5 star Drifblim and my companions are: A Magicarp that tries to get all 4 deaths required to lose by itself and when it is alive it uses Hydropump and misses every time; an Eevee spamming Helping Hand and thus being completely useless and a Throh that doesn't have a single ability that is able to hit ghost types.
This game is totally trolling me.

Save a game and if you get crap Ai team, shot down the game and do it again till you get something that is capeable.

[Galathir]

Save a game and if you get crap Ai team, shot down the game and do it again till you get something that is capeable.

Every time I see Eevee I could just instantly reset. This Pokemon alone is such a giant liability in 5 star raids it loses you most fights on its own.

[Shakzor]

I'm enjoying Sword a lot more than I thought I would, especially the raid battles. Only problem is the AI companions. I have never seen AI this retarded.

Right now I am battling a 5 star Drifblim and my companions are: A Magicarp that tries to get all 4 deaths required to lose by itself and when it is alive it uses Hydropump and misses every time; an Eevee spamming Helping Hand and thus being completely useless and a Throh that doesn't have a single ability that is able to hit ghost types.
This game is totally trolling me.

agree... they could've atleast made the participating AI having Pokemon that make sense. Getting a Throh against a psychic, Pikachu against ground or getting any Woobuffet really (have yet to see them do anything but using Amnesia or failing Counter)
Even at 4 stars it can be really up to luck if you win or not, and 5 stars is best to just restart over and over till atleast 1 other person joins

[Galathir]

agree... they could've atleast made the participating AI having Pokemon that make sense. Getting a Throh against a psychic, Pikachu against ground or getting any Woobuffet really (have yet to see them do anything but using Amnesia or failing Counter)
Even at 4 stars it can be really up to luck if you win or not, and 5 stars is best to just restart over and over till atleast 1 other person joins

Well, waiting for human companions is the next problem. From what I've heard it seems to be bugged. I waited at a G-max Sandaconda a few days ago, saw several people riding past and over 15-30 minutes not one joined. Might as well gamble with NPCs.
Never had problems with 4 Star raids (but then the Pokemon I send are lvl 100 and can pretty much solo everything up to 4 star), 5 stars are a bit of a gamble though as mentioned above.

[jackofwind]

I can't understand the people who complain that QoL things (like Escape Rope being key) in Sw/Sh ruin the game for them when the games have always been piss easy and you'd just have a stack of Ropes on you anyways unless you were a child or an idiot. Money farming has never been challenging in the games and you've always been able to easily overlevel content.

Pokemon isn't supposed to be some grueling single player experience and it never has been.

[Galathir]

I can't understand the people who complain that QoL things (like Escape Rope being key) in Sw/Sh ruin the game for them when the games have always been piss easy and you'd just have a stack of Ropes on you anyways unless you were a child or an idiot. Money farming has never been challenging in the games and you've always been able to easily overlevel content.

Pokemon isn't supposed to be some grueling single player experience and it never has been.

Sw/Sh really is a lot easier than earlier generations though. Never before were you bombarded with high IV Pokemon like here through glowing overworld and raid Pokemon and the xp candies in raids trivialize the game faster than ever before.

I've had an Aegislash in the lvl 70s the first time I set foot into Hammerlocke with just some raid battles before. Having 5 lvl 100s in my team before even entering the endgame (granted, I've been raidfarming a lot hunting for G-Maxes). It's quite ridiculous.

Not saying I hate it. As I mentioned above I enjoy the game because I don't play it for the challenge but I can see why others would think otherwise.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Pokemon isn't supposed to be some grueling single player experience and it never has been.

Someone didn't play the first three gens.

[Erolian]

I can't understand the people who complain that QoL things (like Escape Rope being key) in Sw/Sh ruin the game for them when the games have always been piss easy and you'd just have a stack of Ropes on you anyways unless you were a child or an idiot. Money farming has never been challenging in the games and you've always been able to easily overlevel content.

Pokemon isn't supposed to be some grueling single player experience and it never has been.

I mean okay so if you were good at pokemon games you didn't even need to buy things like escape rope because you just naturally picked up more than you'd ever need and money never really mattered. However in the first gen you could get worked by the elite four or whatever just because you didn't actually stop and train up ever. Later games, especially the new ones, are just under leveled relative to your exp gain and you can kinda just progress through the game without pause. There are other things too like the second time around at the elite four in the leaf green/fire red or the gold/silver remakes that are just significantly harder than new things. Stuff like Lance having a lvl 75 dragonite doesn't happen too often in the newer games even though if you look at how fast it is to level up now it should probably start in that level range at the end of the game

[Jester Joe]

Someone didn't play the first three gens.

I did, they were easy.

What are you trying to say?

[Tech614]

Someone didn't play the first three gens.

Gens 1-3 where not challenging.

Also after reading the last few posts it's clear people are confusing QoL changes and handholding with mechanical difficulty which isn't the same thing. Pokemon has always been a very easy SP game mechanically and nothing has changed about that.

[Swisted]

I did, they were easy.

What are you trying to say?

Joe, please behave.

[Erolian]

Gens 1-3 where not challenging.

Also after reading the last few posts it's clear people are confusing QoL changes and handholding with mechanical difficulty which isn't the same thing. Pokemon has always been a very easy SP game mechanically and nothing has changed about that.

For sure nothing is difficult about the mechanics of the game the newer ones just come out a bit shallow because whatever depth does exist matters less just because you're kind of too high of a level most of the time. Essentially its just less time consuming and easier to brute force without meaning to do so.

Like who even cares about type advantages when I roll up 10 levels higher than I probably should be or maybe even more if you really like the raid battles and use the items they drop. If you flip that scenario around the game still isn't hard but you might have to stop and think about what you're about to do a little bit. I think that's the real loss/difference between the older and newer games

[Bigbazz]

Gens 1-3 where not challenging.

Also after reading the last few posts it's clear people are confusing QoL changes and handholding with mechanical difficulty which isn't the same thing. Pokemon has always been a very easy SP game mechanically and nothing has changed about that.

Except it has got easier. In the early generations you entered gyms generally under levelled unless you grinded, in SW/SH you enter generally way over levelled while just playing the game and actively avoiding grinding. Seeing people 5-10 levels above the rivals/gym leaders is hilarious, how about basic wild pokemon that are higher level than trainers in the area? Your starter Pokemon has super strong stats, a far cry from the randomness in previous games where the only real way to get a strong pokemon was to breed for it.

In every apsect of the new games they are designed to be a walkover, you're defending your point by saying the games have always been easy while ignoring that they are easier now. And it's nothing to do with QOL changes, most of them are good things for the game, but the game holding your hand so you crush everything in your path is not, at least when they didn't bother to include a difficulty option.


Every time somebody says this gen is the easiest (literally everyone who has played the game, every reddit post, every forum post, every youtube video) you go "well the old games weren't hard".... Great, and the new games are easier, why are you so upset?

[jackofwind]

Someone didn't play the first three gens.

I've played every released Pokemon game, and none of them were hard. You can't possibly be trying to argue that Gens 1-3 are objectively hard games unless you're Nuzlocking them. That's ridiculous to the point of being comical.

[Smash Adams]

I've played every released Pokemon game, and none of them were hard. You can't possibly be trying to argue that Gens 1-3 are objectively hard games unless you're Nuzlocking them. That's ridiculous to the point of being comical.

I definitely think you can make the case for Gen I being fairly challenging. Especially if you took Charmander. Unless you knew to get and evolve Weedle or Caterpie, Brock was a pain in the ass without a type advantage. Ditto for Misty. Gen II could be hard at times as well(Bug guy using Fury Cutter or the gym leader with Rollout).

Absolutely nobody should be arguing for Gen III being hard however. At no point were they even sort of difficult. I remember being incredibly disappointed my first time through.

[Jester Joe]

Except it has got easier. In the early generations you entered gyms generally under levelled unless you grinded, in SW/SH you enter generally way over levelled while just playing the game and actively avoiding grinding. Seeing people 5-10 levels above the rivals/gym leaders is hilarious, how about basic wild pokemon that are higher level than trainers in the area? Your starter Pokemon has super strong stats, a far cry from the randomness in previous games where the only real way to get a strong pokemon was to breed for it.

In every apsect of the new games they are designed to be a walkover, you're defending your point by saying the games have always been easy while ignoring that they are easier now. And it's nothing to do with QOL changes, most of them are good things for the game, but the game holding your hand so you crush everything in your path is not, at least when they didn't bother to include a difficulty option.


Every time somebody says this gen is the easiest (literally everyone who has played the game, every reddit post, every forum post, every youtube video) you go "well the old games weren't hard".... Great, and the new games are easier, why are you so upset?

I don't know what you're doing but I'm entering gyms at roughly the same level they are in Sword.

Maybe you're grinding too much?

Again, not sure what you're trying to get at here, I haven't seen wild pokemon being higher levels than a trainer's pokemon.


The only issue I remember entering a gym with a problem was Yellow version, because...Pikachu.

And yet I steamrolled Lt. Surge with Pikachu alone later in the game.

[jackofwind]

why are you so upset?

You seem to be the upset person here to be honest. Saying the games have always been ludicrously easy really seems to really ruffle the feathers of older hardcore Pokemon fans for some reason. Grinding isn't hard, it's tedious. A Gym Leader having a level 25 Pokemon vs having a level 20 Pokemon doesn't make the game harder because the assumption is that your Pokemon will be of a competitive level.

It's like saying RFC is a really hard instance because when you're level 8 everything in there wrecks you. That doesn't make it hard. Having an Escape Rope as a key item doesn't make it easier than having to buy Escape Ropes, because inventory management isn't difficulty and money has never been hard to acquire. You would just buy a stack of Escape Ropes anyways and that's effectively the same thing.

People seem to very much forget that Pokemon is a game series designed and developed for children. It always has been. It's not a Souls game, it's not a grindy Korean MMO, it's designed, marketed and catered towards kids. It's never been hard, and the things that people tout as making it "difficult" simply aren't.

Timesinks, RNG stat blocks and layer upon layer of hidden variables do not make anything difficult, they make things drawn-out and tedious. If leveling Pokemon took twice as much experience the game would not be any harder, it would just be twice as long.

[Bigbazz]

Actively avoiding grinding

Maybe you're grinding too much?

At least read it if you're gonna reply to it. Go read anywhere about the game, everyone talking about not grinding at all and by the final gyms being 10 levels above.. But what's worse is how the trainers have lower level Pokemon than the average wild Pokémon in the area, even rivals.

You seem to be the upset person here to be honest..

Not upset at all, bit miffed as to why Tech specifically gets angry at anyone who calls the new games the easiest so far though. It's like he is personally offended by the idea that the new games are considered easier than the old games, by pretty much the entire internet. I mean if you look outside this thread it's pretty much a clear consensus.

Every time someone brings up the difficulty he goes on a tangent about the old games being easy.. I suggested a difficulty selection (hard mode) would be good, such as we had in Pokemon Black... He lost his mind but wouldn't explain to me why he felt it was a bad idea.

[jackofwind]

I definitely think you can make the case for Gen I being fairly challenging. Especially if you took Charmander. Unless you knew to get and evolve Weedle or Caterpie, Brock was a pain in the ass without a type advantage. Ditto for Misty. Gen II could be hard at times as well(Bug guy using Fury Cutter or the gym leader with Rollout).

Absolutely nobody should be arguing for Gen III being hard however. At no point were they even sort of difficult. I remember being incredibly disappointed my first time through.

Gen 1 was arguably the most difficult for the sole reason that people weren't very good at the strategy of the game because it was brand new. That didn't mean the game was hard though, it meant that people were using incorrect strategies to try to beat what was actually an easy game, and therefore making the game much more challenging for themselves. That's not true game difficulty though - it's like saying walking in footwear is hard because you chose to walk in flippers.

Even alternate modes of playing that were invented to make the game "harder' only increase the challenge of playing it that way. Playing a Nuzlocke run doesn't make the Pokemon game itself any harder, it only makes that particular Nuzlocke run more challenging. Trying to play through the entirety of a Pokemon game using only level 10 Pokemon isn't even possible, but choosing to play that way that doesn't mean the game itself is hard.

- - - Updated - - -

At least read it if you're gonna reply to it. Go read anywhere about the game, everyone talking about not grinding at all and by the final gyms being 10 levels above.. But what's worse is how the trainers have lower level Pokemon than the average wild Pokémon in the area, even rivals.



Not upset at all, bit miffed as to why Tech specifically gets angry at anyone who calls the new games the easiest so far though. It's like he is personally offended by the idea that the new games are considered easier than the old games, by pretty much the entire internet. I mean if you look outside this thread it's pretty much a clear consensus.

Every time someone brings up the difficulty he goes on a tangent about the old games being easy.. I suggested a difficulty selection (hard mode) would be good, such as we had in Pokemon Black... He lost his mind but wouldn't explain to me why he felt it was a bad idea.

I think an actual difficulty toggle would be fantastic for the Pokemon games. I would love a built-in Nuzlocke mode that enforced things like perma-death and one catch per route, but I acknowledge that that wouldn't make the base game harder and would be a specific niche thing for people like me who are looking for a challenge. I disagree completely with difficulty being tied in any way to trainer Pokemon level though since anything can be grinded out and that does not make the game harder, just longer and grindier.