Are you lenient on in-game opponents?

There are quite a few ways to play Pokémon, and some people want a challenge when they play through. And we have a handful of opponents in most games that will try to throw it at you, like Gym Leaders, villainous team leaders, and even admins, before the Elite Four and Champion. Even some of the trainers might prove threats. Are you someone who will attempt to hold back and go easy on your opponents some of the time? Or do you always try to make your victory as easy and quick as possible, no matter how boring you think it may be?

In most of the not as new games (like FRLG, Emerald and Platinum), I do try to win as easily as possible, because there are a lot of opponents that I can't exactly afford to mess around against. But in Generation V (especially B2W2) and XY, I can afford to enter at significantly lower levels than, say, Gym Leaders or the like most of the time, as they're not as strong so I can attempt to have more team efforts when i'm not doing a Nuzlocke or Wedlocke.

How about you? Are you a brutal player or a soft one to your opponents? Discuss.

I enjoy trying new Pokemon, movesets, and strategies on NPCs. Even if I seem to lose miserably I don't mind as I always have a backup guy who could easily sweep the enemies if something goes wrong.

My favorite kind of battle to try this out with is flying battles :D

I try to stay as levelled (or under-levelled) as possible with each Gym, I much prefer for them to actually stand a challenge. It sort of takes the fun away if you're using a team of extremely strong Pokemon who are way over-levelled in my opinion.

Not on purpose. I get impatient sometimes and run straight into the gym after doing the minimum of leveling with the pokemon most likely to win. I never look up my opponents movesets cause it feels like cheating to me and I forget if I havent played a game for a while. With the newer games however, its a little impossible to use the same team of 6 and not be overleveled. The gym leaders and Team *Insert Name* are just so weak lately. I never had to buy healing items.

Not on purpose. I get impatient sometimes and run straight into the gym after doing the minimum of leveling with the pokemon most likely to win. After wining or losing, I even out the levels with the next trainers. I never look up my opponents movesets cause it feels like cheating to me and I forget if I havent played a game for a while. With the newer games however, its a little impossible to use the same team of 6 and not be overleveled. The gym leaders and Team *Insert Name* are just so weak lately. I never had to buy healing items.

See, some of these replies prefer the ideal play-style that i've liked to go with lately. Admittedly, when I played White 2 the first time, I was over-leveled throughout a majority of the game, but that mostly owes to me not having a full team for most of the game, and I used the Lucky Egg and mooched off of Audino a lot (my entire team was Level 60+ when I was out of Victory Road, lol). But in challenges, that is not the style I go with anymore.

One person on Marriland said that when he played through Black 2 first time, he swept three Elite Four members and the Champion with Heracross (although I question how it was faster than that Archeops...). That's clearly trying to make victory as easy as possible, and with all due respect, nobody wants to watch that. (At least I don't, I can't imagine anyone else would, either.) If that was Cynthia, maybe, but the not as good Champions, no.

I mean, getting back to what I said earlier, if you look in the Challenges forum and check out any of my challenges on B2W2, which I do on Challenge Mode, alongside no bag items and Set mode, you'll almost never see any Pokémon on my final team higher than Level 58, except in my Wedlocke (although way back in 2013, one Pokémon of mine grew to Level 60 when I beat Iris' last Pokémon). And in XY, most of the time my team would be around Level 50-52 before the last Gym and I tend to enter the Elite Four at Level 59 or 61 (again, except in my Wedlocke where I went in at 65). Victory Road in that game always throws me to the wall.

Am only happy when my party is at a higher level than my opponents and I can take them out as quick as possible with one hit KO's, so not I don't go easy on in game opponents.

I don't recall ever going easy on in-game opponents before, to be frank.

Although they do not provide threat in most cases, when battling through trainers while trying to complete storyline and whatnot, I always find myself attempting to spend as little time as possible on them, so that I'd have opportunity to proceed onto other things.

One of the most difficult trainers I have personally faced would be Lance in HeartGold and SoulSilver (GSC version was also quite tough), who I've spent approximately thirty minutes on trying to defeat.

I tend to kind of fool around with most of the in-game opponents, and don't always use ideal type match ups for the purposes of keeping my party consistently leveled up. (They ALL must be at the SAME EXACT LEVEL AT ALL TIMES DAMMIT. If a party member gets even one level higher, I won't use it. Type match-ups be damned.) That's most of the time, where I am kind of overleveled and safely powerful. But not too powerful enough to one-hit KO everything and everyone.

But if they present a challenge, I get serious and start wiping the floor with them. Or trying to. Some of the earlier games were much more difficult... (Red and Lance.)

I'll try to manipulate the conditions to my advantage, always.

Arylett Charnoa said:

I tend to kind of fool around with most of the in-game opponents, and don't always use ideal type match ups for the purposes of keeping my party consistently leveled up. (They ALL must be at the SAME EXACT LEVEL AT ALL TIMES DAMMIT. If a party member gets even one level higher, I won't use it. Type match-ups be damned.) That's most of the time, where I am kind of overleveled and safely powerful. But not too powerful enough to one-hit KO everything and everyone.

But if they present a challenge, I get serious and start wiping the floor with them. Or trying to. Some of the earlier games were much more difficult... (Red and Lance.)

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I know that feel...
I always feel like I have to grind a full team every time a 'mon takes a level. It's a hassle and I finish 5 to 10 overleveled this way.

Any ways, my team is always built so I can have the best coverage, with an Ice type move or Pokemon to defeat the mystical and powerful and all-time overused dragons. My team is always built so I can have sufficient sweeping power so I can OHKO wild 'mons and "easy" trainers.

I like kicking opponent's asses a lot. Using healing items, or items that raises stats in battle, is a thing I hate to do because I lose one turn.

I'm usually not one who goes easy on in-game trainers, I mainly just like to steamroll my away through with the right type advantages and stuff. I also tend to often get myself slightly higher-leveled when possible.

I treat in-game opponents like I would any other foe, I destroy them. Only one I went easy on was Wally before I took out the E4, he wasn't worth fighting seriously. Even with his bravado, he was still just as weak as he always was.

I don' t go easy on NPCs, I find them annoying most of the time but I have made my rules for making the games more challenging (if I am not doing a Nuzlocke):

Now for the Secret Bases, I look for the owner, and if I win without losing 3 Pokemon, I win and I obtain the flag, if not, I won't obtain the flag. If I lose all the Pokemon, is the same, no flag.

NPC trainers are a nuisance, if anything. They...get in the way, ya know? Then again, we wouldn't be able to get precious exp from them if they didn't exist.

I go full force on everything that I come up against lol. It's not like I can't play it safer I just figure I might as well go all in and I find it more fun to play that way than to hold back and make a pointless battle even longer.

Totally agreed.

Why searching a way to be defensive for a (long) while when you can just hit with the correct type.

Blue said:

I try to stay as levelled (or under-levelled) as possible with each Gym, I much prefer for them to actually stand a challenge. It sort of takes the fun away if you're using a team of extremely strong Pokemon who are way over-levelled in my opinion.

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I definitely agree. When I was younger I was normally naturally under-levelled but recently my Pokemon have been much closer (or even at par) with the Gym Leaders' teams. I much prefer the challenge of having to overcome a level gap; it makes them much more of a 'boss' character. I also find myself going easy on them, using Pokemon with type disadvantages when it's clear I'm going to win, etc, just to make it more interesting (and also because sometimes I think that it would make a cool story for this Pokemon to overcome all these odds and come out on top etc etc haha).

The best i could think of is that i do my best NOT to overlevel my team when it comes to facing content. I remember as a kid that when i had trouble with some in-game trainers and bosses (Gym leaders, team leader admins), I just build massive EXP level gaps towards them and KO their mons with even the crappiest of moves because of the huge differences in Stats (10 to 20 level differences). Back then, I knew of types and moves, but i didn't have knowledge of STAB.

But now, I realize that i'm making the games too easy for myself with I overly level my team (especially with this current generation where a lot of strong moves have been introduced to ease the early game, not to mention the abuse of Super Training to further maximize your team's needed stats), especially with my extended knowledge of the games, its best for me to NOT overlevel my team so that i actually have fun playing through the content. I find this my best way to get used to the content especially when i start going to a game's Battle Frontier/Maison related content, where obviously the challenges in those areas scale with your highest level'd pokemon (also tests how well have you been raising your pokemon through EVs, and luckily also the decent IVs as well)

If there's one series of games that i want to be blunt to, its Gen 2 (and its remakes). I remember playing Gold back in the day, after finishing whatever content was there in the Gen 1 Games, I was laughing at how ridiculously underleveled a lot of the Johto content is after Whitney. I was used to the level progressions back in RBY and when i got further in Johto, I was wondering why most of the content past Whitney are so weak (lets face it, people who have played RBY to death laughed at the hideiously underlevel'd content in Johto right?). At least the Gen 2 Kanto content is there to extend much of the longitivity (with appropriately stronger trainers and gym leaders who are laughably stronger than the Elite Four).

This kind of mindset i have in playing extends very well to the fan games, or the "hard" mod patches made by Romhackers. Like i said, I love playing these games, but for some reason, I also feel a lot of respect towards much of the content of the game that I don't want to make it a point-n-click-words game and see things get OHKO'd all the time.

I just mow my opponents over. No use on wasting PP. I try not to let my pokemon get too highly leveled but at the same time I pick Pokemon that hit hard from the get go, so sometimes it doesn't matter what the level is.