What was your favorite and least favorite game to train in?

Sometimes we need to train/grind our teams to get them up to par with other members of our party, or just to catch up to other trainers.

Which game did you find to be the best to train in? What about the worst? This is all based on your personal opinion!

Training in Gen V was absolute hell because of that awful change to the EXP system, it's anti grind and a colossal waste of time. My favourite was actually Gen VIII, if only because the candies earned from raid battles meant you'd catapult in levels very quickly with minimal effort.

Platinum is probably the best for me since you get the VS Seeker fairly early to let you rematch most trainers in the game, and since there are also parts in the game when your team are fully healed after every battle, making it easy to grind without having to restore HP/PP at the Pokémon Center.

Gen 5 games can be pretty tedious for grinding as there aren't many trainers you can rebattle while Audino can take a while to appear to give you easy Exp. It's especially frustrating when you end up encountering something else before reaching the shaking grass (or find something other than Audino in the shaking grass)

Pokémon training was never my favorite aspect of playing Pokémon to begin with. In most Pokémon games I've played, Pokémon training mostly consisted of defeating the same wild Pokémon or Elite Four over and over, which often took a long time to achieve, especially when considering that different Pokémon level up and gain experience at different rates. Having to train each Pokémon one at a time simply made it tedious. I didn't truly start enjoying training Pokémon until generation VI, when Game Freak introduced the Exp. Share that allowed all Pokémon in your party to gain experience without having to force each party member to battle once at a time. I especially enjoyed Pokémon training in generation VII games because of Poké Pelago, as one of its options allowed players to give a certain amount of boxed Pokémon juice that increased their experience points over a set amount of real time, which allowed me to level up many Pokémon in my boxes while I casually played the game without even having to make them battle. This allowed me to evolve several Pokémon I had stored in my boxes easier and allowed me to complete the Alola PokéDex much easier than I would have without this feature. However, my favorite game to train in was definitely generation VIII, Pokémon Sword and Shield, mainly because of the Exp. Candies that made leveling up to level 100 much easier. Because of this, I literally have several Pokémon that are level 100 now, a feat that I could never truly accomplish in other games before generation VI because of the tedium. I hope the existence of Exp. Candies and the Exp. Share continues in generation IX.

SwSh and their Exp Candies are amazing, easily my favorite.

As for worst, any of the really old games tbh.

Favorite is definitely gen IV. But I grieve for the hours I spent grinding in gen III and gen V that I'll never get back, u_u;

Favorite: Sword/Shield. Comes down to ease here. Earns good passive experience from Poke Jobs, especially with early-access, farmable Lucky Eggs. Fine-tunes any more level growth with Candies (during a normal playthrough).

Gives games with a VS Seeker a mention for the positive side. Liked refighting trainers for experience far more than wild Pokemon.

Least Favorite: Red/Blue/Yellow. Operates partially on an assumption, due to not having played it in ages. Fights level 53-65s in Indigo Plateau. What does Victory Road give you to train on? A 55% chance of an unevolved level 22-26 wild Pokemon. Gross.

First three generations. You can't rebattle trainers you once fought in Generation I. Generation II has very little places to reliably grind, and Gen 3 has very few high leveled trainers to fight against to get a reliable amount of EXP. As well as you can't overlevel above 50 because you won't be able to use them in the level 50 course in the battle frontier/battle tower.

I feel like SwSh don't even count, due to the easy availability of the candies...if I hadn't completed the HGSS Johto Pokédex in 2020, my first complete regional Pokédex would have felt cheap (even if it is 400 'mon).

Legends: Arceus has one great QoL feature - manually triggered evolution. I hate being stuck between Everstone (then needing to remember to take it off at a certain level) or using items and wearing out my B button.

Of the ones I've actually played often - Gen III-V - its a tie between Platinum and HGSS. The former has Vs. Seeker, which is very easy, whilst the latter's PokéGear isn't as simple but being able to manipulate the clock is great - means you can get your Pokémon up to lv. 60-ish battling against the highest-exp. gym leaders, then switch to one your Pokémon can sweep once it can defend itself! The poor variety of wild Pokémon in many areas also makes it great for EV-training. DP is just too slow.

I've gone on paper before saying that I think levels are a bad design decision in 2022 year of our lord to begin with (and I stand by that) so the easier training is, the better.

So I guess something like SwSh would be best.

BW on the other hand is easily the worst to train in. They introduced decaying exp yields which sure, makes some kind of sense, but didn't quite balance the rest of the game around that, so it just felt annoying in general.

I have to agree with the people here. Sword and Shield really makes training much less frustrating and time-consuming thanks to the advent of easily-obtainable Exp. Candies. Sure, it still has that inferior experience system from Gen 5, but the candies make up for it. Honorable mention to Gen 6 for both introducing the new Exp. Share and briefly bringing back the old experience system from Gens 1-4.

As for least favorite... yeah, I have to say that the experience system combined with the old version of the Exp. Share makes training a slog.