on grinding

how often do you find yourself actually needing to grind for levels in a pokémon game?

imo, most of the recent games have a really good level curve so it doesn't take much grinding to keep at a decent level relative to enemy trainers. I did have to grind for a lot before SM's fire trial though, that one was tough.

i don't find the need to grind much in more recent pokémon games. i tend to aim to keep my team at a similar level but within the level curve of the trainers so it usually works out nicely. the only time i'll really need to do some extra training is when adding a new team member quite later on.

I tend to grind more in the older Pokemon games, as they're generally harder, although Sun and Moon had a few challenging fights and I had to grind a couple of times. Gen 1 involved a lot of grinding for me, as I had to level up all the starters to meet my team and the battles were tough at times.

Gen 6 and 7 almost deleted the necessity to grind, at least for me. I had some trouble with Totem Pokemon like Salazzle so I needed to grind, but other than that, I managed with just opponent trainers to level my Pokemon with. Having just recently bought Black and Black 2, the games seemed noticeably more challenging. No more tools like the EXP Share giving experience to the entire team and no more Pokemon Amie/Refresh boosting the experience you get. All you get in Gen 5 is Audino farming and maybe Lucky Egg. I've had trouble with bloody Cheren of all characters.

I only tend to grind on the times When i feel unsure about what's coming next And then it usually shows that the battle wasn't that tough after all and i overleveled my Pokemon
For that reason i don't grind that often Because i don't want to ruin the challenge the game has to bring to me.

I remember I had to grind like crazy in order to beat the E4 in Leaf Green.
Even though the team was great, it was still very weak to fight five battles in a row of that difficulty.

I don't think it represents a problem with recent games, though, since they've found a decent balance between the difficulty and the gained experience points.

I only really grind up my starter and other stray pokemon that I use early game to level 10 on the first route before going on ahead. Perhaps in hindsight this makes the game too easy, but, it's been an odd tradition of mine ever since Pokemon Blue, aha.

In Sun I grinded up a little bit before the Elite Four. The ggame wasn't too terribly difficult regardless, but never hurts to be sure.

I don't really grind for the most part in these new games, I just tend to battle all of the trainers on the route & explore the whole area to collect items which tends to level up Pokémon quite a bit.

Of course I grind in nuzruns, but strangely enough I also grind in regular play. Even in the broken Exp. share games. I guess its because since it isn't a challenge mode like nuzruns I can feel free to make the game easy.

I usually grind my whole teams as I'm playing Moon and the opponent isn't easy. I spend more time giving my newly caught mons some grinding until the level is suited enough.

Like the others said, with the newer gen, there's not as much need to grind as difficulty has reached a lower plateau. Older games like Black and White, yeah I had to grind hard af.

I remembered how much I hated 5th Gen's EXP system because gaining less EXP as you leveled up made it so difficult to train. Playing through Sun & Moon, which brought back said annoying EXP mechanics reminded me of how bad it was, but made even worse due to lack of easy-to-find Audino that were everywhere in Unova.