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6th Gen Did X/Y feel too easy?

semi

the magnificent steiner
450
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7
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  • Seen Oct 24, 2023
I don't mean to bash the Kalosian games, since I really did enjoy travelling around the region; not to mention, graphics were stunning and music was also pretty spectacular. Still, the gameplay begs the question: Did X/Y feel too easy? Considering the amount of powerful Pok?mon that were so easily obtainable, gym leaders who were pretty weak and an elite four that were complete pushovers, I felt like the game had been "dumbed down" for a younger generation (I'm guessing the new EXP. Share played a key role in this, if one had it turned on throughout the game), or maybe replaced the concept of challenge with aesthetics.

Any thoughts/personal experiences that differ from my own?
 
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5,635
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10
Years
X/Y are one of my favourite games but I agree they are easier that previous games (and Alola games are even worse than that). I feel like player is pretty much given strong Pok?mon without any effort - Kalos and Kanto starters with their mega, Lucario with its mega, Snorlax...
Gym leaders having only 3 average Pok?mon and none of them using mega is another thing that makes games easy. I don't think E4 members are pushovers, there is always at least one of them that I have problem beating depending on my team (last time it was Wikstrom).

Last thing that I noticed is difficulty curve. The games are quite difficult at the start, but then, sometime between 3rd and 4th gym they have average difficulty and then it's just plain easy up until E4, where it can become harder.
 
8,973
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i don't know if I'd say easy, but at the same time it really didn't feel like the games provided anything noteworthy in terms of obstacles.

Team Flare really is a joke of an evil team. @_@
 

Autumne

who's ready for an ADVENTURE?
14
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5
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  • Age 29
  • Seen Oct 20, 2018
I found it -incredibly- easy. I remember being flabbergasted that I swept the whole E4 the first time with my Pokemon taking hits only -twice- throughout the whole thing. Usually I don't so grossly out-level and out-power them.

I liked Lysandre a lot, but I definitely felt like the whole of the game was a lot easier than normal, and was in general disappointing coming off the heels of gen 5's story.

Alola has sort of a yo-yo hard/easy thing going on with some of the totems, and I'm not sure I'm totally sold on that either.

I do think there's a bit more of a 'for fun' sided things to now, whereas before it focused a lot more on the allure of elbow grease and adventure. I don't think barriers to entry are necessarily great, mostly because they breed elitism that is off-putting to new people more than because the barriers are difficult.

Perhaps if the game could have difficulty choices that revolve more around more strategic AIs than around pure 'you'd better grind before you try this' stats difficulty curves, that would be an answer.
 

Resolve

I have it
1,081
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  • Age 23
  • Seen Apr 2, 2020
I really like Gen 6, but I agree that the difficulty is a joke. It's a real disappointment, especially since Gen 5 did everything better in that department.
 
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Hyzenthlay

[span=font-size: 16px; font-family: cinzel; color:
7,807
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11
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I like X/Y, but the difficulty was insanely easy. I breezed through the game with no trouble at all. I was hoping that by the end, the Elite Four would at least be of some challenge. I literally took them all out with one Pokémon and barely even needed to heal, haha.

Next time I play, I'm going to use a team of unevolved Pokémon that I like. Might make things a bit harder!
 
122
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I felt the game balance was more very weird than necessarily easy... It's like it's balanced for you to be using the new EXP Share only some of the time, so if you just have it on all the time, you'll effortlessly end up overleveled, whereas if you don't use it at all, you'll end up underleveled unless you do a lot of grinding.

That's probably the biggest reason I'm not a fan of the 3DS EXP Share.
 

dannymusic

The Smiling Trombonist
38
Posts
5
Years
Agreed, whether or not you play with EXP Share is a huge determining factor to how easy you think the game is. And then because they changed its effects, that means there wasn't traditional held item EXP Share to facilitate pokemon training, and if you typically play set instead of switch, ... ehhh.
 
2,823
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6
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  • Age 122
  • Seen Jan 27, 2019
Too easy even for a pokemon game. In other games I can expect one or two gyms to be a little challenging but none of the gyms were challenging at all. That's why I can't be bothered to replay it. Maybe next time I'll do a skip all trainers and stay under level 40 run with some unevolved pokemon to boot.
 

Yotes

GameDev
43
Posts
7
Years
At this point, so many of us have been playing for decades and it's still a game designed for kids. If We want a challenge it has to be self-imposed like nuzlockes. But maybe one day Game Freak will include a built-in Hard mode...

- a guy can dream
 
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Harmonie

Winds ღ
1,071
Posts
17
Years
Nah. Pokemon X/Y was just the right level of difficulty for me personally. I'm all for difficulty levels for other people, and definitely think they should be implemented. The 'difficulty' that Pokemon games try never works well for me, it's always just frustrating. R/B/Y and S/M were just frustrating for me. I actually enjoyed R/B/Y, but that was because they were all that existed back then. S/M not so much. Their difficulty was so uneven and random.

I play Pokemon games to relax. As I said, difficulty levels should be a thing, so everyone can play how they want. But a game like S/M should never be released as is.
 

NergyTheMighty

Can't we all just get along? Pretty please?
74
Posts
6
Years
Indeed, X&Y definitely felt all too easy for me as apparently everyone in this thread can attest to; it's really only hard for people that are just getting into Pokemon and don't know all its kinks. The thing is, though, I can link this difficulty drop-off to one specific item:

The Experience Share.

Think about it. As you go through the game, your Pokemon are levelling up at a fast rate, even when they aren't doing any battles. And with faster levelling up, trainers are easier. Leaders are easier. The whole game is easier. If the "share" wasn't given the mechanics iit did since that Gen, maybe the Gen would've been as hard as it should've been.
 
9,570
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Pokemon games are what you make of them. You can have some interesting experiences in XY that shake things up a bit like doing regular inverse battles. Also if you accept all of the sky battles you will find a few surprises waiting for you, since your pokemon choices are limited and a lot of non-flying Pokemon can pop out on you which generally have super-effective moves that damage flying types like thunderbolt gengar and stone edge flygon.

I think XY fits the pattern of the previous and subsequent games, and is not necessarily easier. They are all meant to be simple, kid-friendly games. I think its the way that people approach XY that limits their experience of this game more than others because it was sparkly and new and gave away a grab bag full of goodies. I think it was easy for players to overuse some of the tools offered and turn them into crutches. If you find that xy never had any excitement then it may be worth examining how you played the game, and playing it again under a different circumstance.

If you used the experience share for instance you took a short cut through the game. I can understand people doing it, especially the first time around out of curiosity about new features. However, if you made this choice then its not entirely fair to complain that XY is too easy. It's like seizing a 3 mile head start in a relay race, then expressing disappointment about your opponents were to slow to ever catch up with you. The exp share creates an enormous level disparity between you and the NPCs, so no matter how good your opponent's team is you will probably always sweep with Pokemon nearly double their level.

There are a lot of complaints about how easy the rival battles, but if you look at their pokemon objectively they have a lot of solid additions, Slyveon, Goodra, Talonflame, Clefable. Other than Blue or Wally what rivals had way better teams than this with psuedo legendaries and megas? Maybe Silver, but that's about it. They're also generally very fast hard-hitting Pokemon like Mega Absol, Jolteon and Hawlucha.

I personally play this game on set, never use the exp share or o-powers, make a monotype party, fight all of the chatelaines at the battle maison and find that the game is just as entertaining as any.

Some people might be alright speeding through the game in a simple way. No matter which way you play I think still at the end of the day Kalos is a fun place with gorgeous visuals, great Pokemon and cute situations so regardless it can be a nice place to visit. However, if you decide to you want to play with advantages, which XY does offer in the form of o-powers, the experience share, mega-evolutions then I don't think it should be held against the game itself. It was player who decided to lower their own difficulty level.
 
47
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5
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  • Age 33
  • Seen May 28, 2019
All of the games with the New version of the Exp Share are too easy. Yes you can turn it off, but the issue there is you're only going to level up the pokemon anyway, so turning it off just seems like a waste of time. All you are doing is reaching the same results but now much slower.

What I like to do in the games with EXP Share, is raise more than a team of 6. When a Pokemon gets too high levelled, switch it out for another, and try to keep your levels on par with the gym leaders. This way, you aren't wasting what is multiplied experience points, but you won't be stupidly over-powered either.
 
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1,824
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  • Age 37
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All of the games with the New version of the Exp Share are too easy. Yes you can turn it off, but the issue there is you're only going to level up the pokemon anyway, so turning it off just seems like a waste of time. All you are doing is reaching the same results but now much slower.

What I like to do in the games with EXP Share, is raise more than a team of 6. When a Pokemon gets too high levelled, switch it out for another, and try to keep your levels on par with the gym leaders. This way, you aren't wasting what is multiplied experience points, but you won't be stupidly over-powered either.

Logically, sure, but I still turned it off. Part of the fun in RPGs IS grinding. At least to me.

I don't think I've ever used EXP share since I learned about EVs.
 

NewtonRPG

Newton
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  • Age 23
  • Seen Jun 7, 2018
I mean, me trying to play classic Gen 3 and leveling my Pokémon up took ages... To be completely honest, I kinda like the Exp Share.
 
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18
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All I can say is that it wasn't really difficult in the slightest for me. In fact, it was probably slightly easier than most other Pokemon games that I've played. Not that I've ever chalked this up as a bad thing; Pokemon games are really only about as difficult as you make them to be thanks to self-imposed challenges as VisionofMilotic said. It's just what it is really, and I've accepted the difficulty (or lack thereof) to be a part of the Kalos experience.
 
47
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5
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  • Age 33
  • Seen May 28, 2019
Logically, sure, but I still turned it off. Part of the fun in RPGs IS grinding. At least to me.

I don't think I've ever used EXP share since I learned about EVs.

I like grinding for competitive purposes, for pokemon I have hatched and raised from scratch with control over their EV's and breeding. However I see it as a waste for in-game pokemon that will just win based on type advantaged moves regardless. You don't really need to grind in Pokemon games, and if you do it just makes the games insanely easy and takes the fun out of it.

I try and stay as underlevelled as possible for the thrill of the battles, to make the games fun. And then grind when I want an actual competitive team to use against other real-life people and their competitive teams.
 
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