[Sword & Shield] How hard was SwSh for you?

While many would assume it's going to be one of the easier games between the various EXP items and the cannot-turn-off Exp share, how hard did you find the games to be? What about the DLC or mods such as the Dynamax Adventures? (Zygarde is quite the hard boss imo!)

mmm...a lot of people would say it's ridiculously easy, but i interpret that to mean the story, which for the most part in pokemon games is usually pretty simple.

things get a bit more complicated when we go into max raids because the difficulty then is measured completely on the competence of the AI, which i think is rather frustratingly against the player more often than not. this sort of frustratingly incompetent AI continues into dynamax adventures, therefore making shiny hunting there more of a pain than it should be. so i guess it's up to the individual whether that counts as difficulty.

gotta say though,,, the IoA expansion is more or less a joke in difficulty for me. not much i really found challenging there. even mustard wasn't too difficult to beat.

i can't comment on CT yet because i've barely played through it sans dynamax adventures stuff. at this point though, i've accepted that on as scale of difficulty, swsh is a solid like... 4 at the best of times. not that i'm upset over it or anything, it is what it is. i don't expect pokemon games to be brutal, and things like totem battles in sm and ultra necrozma battle in usum are more the exception than the actual rule.

i just hope there's more exceptions in the future.

Most of the game was pretty easy and the only thing that I did actually fail were some of the DA legendaries.
Zygarde taking the cake there. Npc's are garbage for this, and even if you do it online if you get bad rng with the mons available to you or just bad 'teammates', you're pretty much out of luck. Some of the other legendaries from DA that can be a challenge were: Groudon/Kyogre (if you don't get any mons to cancel out their weather), Palkia (mainly becaus eof surf since it hits everyone) & Dialga. These took a couple tries, but zygarde was by far the biggest pain in the backside.

For me, it somewhere between easy and difficult. Max Raid Battles are pretty difficult, if you ask me, and some Gym Battles really floored me sometimes...but definitely not the easiest Pokemon games, nor were they the hardest.

Neither easy nor difficult in terms of gameplay. I was never overleveled and instead ended up being underleveled every so often. The raids were quite easy in the beginning but started to pick up quite a bit as the story progressed.

I think the most challenging parts where that Milotic which took way too many hits and maybe one or two of Leons Pokemon.

Ok, so it was easy since I spammed my starter in the beginning *waits for the flying tomatoes* Yeah I chose Scorbunny don't judge.

But you know what made the beginning "hard?"

After the 7th gym I was like "Well I guess Hop is gonna bombard me again with nonsense so no use moving on"

This happened the week after I got the game. So I just goofed around the wild area and farmed some watts for a month.

So then I woman-ed up, beat the game with a walkthrough and...yeah.

Oh and DLC? IoA was easy (finished it in four hours). But I was burned out after a while with CT cause I couldn't find STUPID ARTICUNO! Then one day for giggles, I picked up the game and found him/her/it, caught it, uh....and the battles in the cave get boring after a while (max raid battles I think they're called?) so yeah.

So done with Galar mentally...even though I didn't catch all the legendaries.

Wasn't hard at all.

Should've tried to at least make the Eternamax Eternatus battle as challenging as the Ultra Necrozma battle in USUM, rather than give you two legendary allies and allow you to use all six of your Pokémon in the battle. You'd pretty much have to try to lose the fight.

Not making all Pokémon gaining Exp optional also takes some of the challenge away, letting all of your Pokémon gain Exp and EV points from every battle,

Main game: Easy. Credits years of experience. Imposed restrictions: Set mode, one Technical Record (Focus Energy for Farfetch'd's evolution), and no Dynamax outside of Max Raids. Discovered the power of setting up from challenge runs of previous games. Smoked a lot of gyms with a combination of Toxtricity's Nuzzle (and Eerie Impulse late-game) and Corviknight's Hone Claws + Power Trip. Might have had someone with Charm too.

Tried not to overlevel. Managed fine for the first half. Supplemented a few party members with experience candies. Zipped ahead in levels during the second half. Skipped several trainers. Still outleveled gym leaders. Remembers being about even with Rose. Led to a ~5 level disadvantage versus Leon. Wound up being tougher, as a result.

Isle of Armor: Simple. Used the same party, now at a significantly higher level (maybe 100?). Demolished everything, obviously.

Crown Tundra: ...Were there even trainers besides the opening battle versus Peony? Handled most legendaries with status and Charm/Eerie Impulse. Carted out (Unaware) Clefable for some, though.

Dynamax Adventures: Largely moderate difficulty. Mostly feared Zygarde, Palkia, and Kyogre. Required evaluating Pokemon for their moves and stats, not just who they were. Rates Jynx highly, of all Pokemon.

Not Very.

The modern Pokémon games are not very hard, they're very hand holdy, and constantly give you the means to win.
Friendly Rivals who heal you before fighting, and give you revives, and healing items all the time.
Giving the Rival the type weak to your starter type.

Very easy honestly. I don't think I struggled at any point. Getting exp. candies from raids is also very easy, and the exp. share being on for the entire party makes leveling a breeze too. Probably one of the easiest main series games I've played!

Sheep said:

Very easy honestly. I don't think I struggled at any point. Getting exp. candies from raids is also very easy, and the exp. share being on for the entire party makes leveling a breeze too. Probably one of the easiest main series games I've played!

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I forgot about the exp candies from raids.

Yeah.
That made it super easy as well.

I would not object to just not bringing those back, to be honest.

Pretty easy, nothing stands out to me from my memory. Max raids were just flawed/annoying rather than difficult.

I only played the main story, and it was easy on a disappointing level. I commonly hear "Pokemon games aren't supposed to be hard", but that doesn't mean I want to defeat the main antagonist along with all the gym leaders and all the gym leaders in the tournament with one move. I didn't even make much use of EXP candy, and I was playing on set.

Leon was a sudden difficulty spike. That came down to both of us having one pokemon left with yellow health, and his was going to outspeed and win. I had to use a revive.

I think I've found a reason as to why I ended up underleveled while everybody else seemed to be overleveled:
I was playing on Switch mode. Sure that gives you the Type advantage, but the switched out Pokemon actually only gains half the EXP. Compare that with Set mode where you have to switch out your Pokemon during a turn. The moment you beat the opposing Pokemon both of yours (the one switched out and the active one) gain full EXP.
In theory sacrificing a turn sounds like a bigger challenge, but in practice the games aren't that difficult so it becomes negligible. On the other hand if you get more EXP due to Set mode over the course of the entire game you are prone to accumulating a lot more in terms of experience points and levels.

Seems like GF balance their games around Switch Mode, but people are so used to Set being more difficult that the broken EXP system (which was probbaly not well tested for Set mode) made it actually easier. xD

colours said:

mmm...a lot of people would say it's ridiculously easy, but i interpret that to mean the story, which for the most part in pokemon games is usually pretty simple.

things get a bit more complicated when we go into max raids because the difficulty then is measured completely on the competence of the AI, which i think is rather frustratingly against the player more often than not. this sort of frustratingly incompetent AI continues into dynamax adventures, therefore making shiny hunting there more of a pain than it should be. so i guess it's up to the individual whether that counts as difficulty.

gotta say though,,, the IoA expansion is more or less a joke in difficulty for me. not much i really found challenging there. even mustard wasn't too difficult to beat.

i can't comment on CT yet because i've barely played through it sans dynamax adventures stuff. at this point though, i've accepted that on as scale of difficulty, swsh is a solid like... 4 at the best of times. not that i'm upset over it or anything, it is what it is. i don't expect pokemon games to be brutal, and things like totem battles in sm and ultra necrozma battle in usum are more the exception than the actual rule.

i just hope there's more exceptions in the future.

Click to expand...

Max raid battles for sure, took a quite a few tries to beat Zygarde, especially if you are grouping with randos because coordination is very hard.

Whichever gym made you participate in double battles was the most challenge I had mostly, the whole Pokemon league was a breeze since you were healed after every battle. Still enjoyed the game none the less.

I think, from my experience, the main story and general game difficulty is ridiculously easy. I can be over-leveled by 10-20 levels per Gym Leader, just by using the Wild Area's candy rewards.

Max Raid Battles though, are a whole different story. From my understanding, their difficulty depends on the mental capacity of the enemy AI- which, more times than not, is not in the players' favor.

e.g. Zygarde. It took me and my team a bunch of tries before we finally finished it.

Without experience candies, the level curve is pretty good until the 6th gym, at which point the levels slow down. It's pretty hard not to over level the 6th, 7th, and 8th gyms, as well as the first few major battles in the Champion's Cup.

Then they start spiking again, with a huge spike for the champion.

For difficulty? It's a Pokemon game.