Easiest and Hardest Pokemon game?

Hmm XY was def easiest. The exp share made it a breeze. Hardest might be B/W. There's a terrible gap between defeating the last gym leader and facing N/Ghetsis that takes agonizing grinding to make up for. Then after defeating them the rest of Unova is opened up to much higher leveled trainers than you. I found it very unbalanced and so hard to actually finish I just stopped playing.

Ayselipera said:

Hardest might be B/W. There's a terrible gap between defeating the last gym leader and facing N/Ghetsis that takes agonizing grinding to make up for. Then after defeating them the rest of Unova is opened up to much higher leveled trainers than you. I found it very unbalanced and so hard to actually finish I just stopped playing.

Click to expand...

For whatever reason the leveling curve and exp rate sucks ass around that time in most of the games really. I felt that way in all the generations except the 6th one. Dunno why Game Freak couldn't have done something about that, especially in FR/LG and HG/SS.

I personally had the easiest time with X and Y. They're not bad games by any means, but I feel that there's a bit too much hand holding. Even with Black and White's abhorrent amount of tutorials, I still found it to be a good challenge, especially towards the end. X and Y however, I don't think there was a single gym leader, Elite Four, or any other boss in the game that I struggled with except for maybe Lysandre's Mega Gyarados and even then, it's not like I lost. Just had to rethink my strategy. The Champion of the game is a complete joke as well.

In my experience, I've found Platinum and Challenge Mode Black 2 and White 2 (even the normal mode can be difficult, but I was just playing challenge mode yesterday, so it's more fresh on my mind than normal) to be the most difficult games. Never overbearing in any way, but definitely more challenging than other games in the series and some trainers did send me packing a couple of times, like Cyrus in Platinum. Some trainers in Challenge Mode White 2 even knocked out at least one of my Pokemon, causing me to heal after almost every battle. Plus, the dungeons in that game tend to be very long and demanding.

I don't find most Pokemon games to be very difficult anymore though, but I do still think Platinum and BW2 still stand out as some of the hardest. RSE was difficult for me as a kid though, so I guess that deserves an honorable mention, however I no longer struggle with it so it clearly was just an age and experience thing.

If we're including fan-games as well then :
Easiest : All main series games
Hardest : Pokemon Reborn...nuff said

The hardest game was definitely pokemon colosseum. The number of available pokemon was extremely limited and it had its quirks. Even in terms of just progressing through the story, there were so many times you had to find something in the most random location.

The easiest games were definitely the gen 6 games. Not only do the NPCs literally walk you through the game now, as people have mentioned the exp share is broken and even beyond all of this, we are all older and more experienced at pokemon. We've played through so many games. We know every detail about all the pokemon and have hacked into the games themselves and completely researched most of them.

I doubt pokemon games will ever be challenging again.

I'd agree with you that X and Y were the easiest. Might be because of the EXP Share mechanic, but even without it I think it might still be easier than the other games.

Hardest for me would be Colosseum and maybe even XD. The Shadow Pokemon games were difficult but a ton of fun.

For me,X & Y r easiest...

To echo the sentiments that everyone else has already expressed in this thread...

X/Y were the easiest, in my opinion. It wasn't just because of the Exp. Share, either. The new formula for exp. gain results in Pokemon leveling up insanely fast (basically, each Pokemon that was sent out during the battle gets the full Exp. yield, rather than it being split among all of the participants). There may have been other factors that contributed to the games being as easy as they were, but those are the most obvious culprits.

The hardest were HG/SS. Again, as others have already said, leveling up felt like it took years. I generally don't have the patience for grinding, so I didn't bother, and just challenged the E4 and champion with a full team of underleveled Pokemon xD I managed to pull it off, but it's a huge challenge to battle when you're undeleveled, so those ones get the top spot for hardest games for me.

The original Gen 1 RBY games were really hard too, but for all the wrong reasons (poorly designed level curves, unbalanced typings, etc.). To their credit though, they did have the most difficult puzzles and dungeons. Silph Co., Victory Road, and the Rocket Base are good examples.

I think for me the easiest was defenitly pkmn sun and moon. After that for sure X and Y. I mean xp share was broken it wasnt even a item that u had give but you just turn it on or off. Hardest was for me platinum daimond pearl. Elite 4 was hard and gym leaders are ok but before the E4 you needed ke lvl 80 pokemon and i was a bit young. Black white i dont see often talked about it here but i think they werent to hard to play

It'll be interesting to see if people's opinions have changed now that the 7th gen games have been out for a while.

Going against the grain, I'll say that HG/SS were the easiest, if you're just looking at start -> champion. Even then, the post-game stuff isn't hard, it's just tedious.

I do agree that Platinum was the most difficult, though. Other than Gardenia and Cynthia, I actually don't remember any specific instances giving me a lot of trouble, but maybe it was just the fact that I wasn't a big fan of the game that made me struggle through it.

Going off the reasonably fair test of Grass Monotyping all the regions (Except Hoenn). I say the hardest to easiest are:

1. Heart Gold. (Johto) Poor level curve, low levelled wild Pokemon, tricky gym leaders and Elite Four and a very tough Champion in Lance. Main Pokemon - Vileplume
2. Ultra Sun (Unova) - Ultra Necrozma is very tough. Elite Four are fairly hard too. Rainbow Rocket surprisingly not so much. Main Pokemon - Lilligant
3. Red (Kanto) - Outside of Blue's Charizard and Lance nothing to worry about here. Main Pokemon - Vileplume.
4. White 2 (Unova) - Slightly trickier than White. Main Pokemon - Lilligant
5. White (Unova) - Ghetsis the only tricky opponent here but I have played this game a lot. Main Pokemon - Sawsbuck
6. Pearl (Sinnoh) - All those Bronzong everywhere are annoying but not hard. Difficulty collapses after Fantina. Volker and the Elite Four are a joke and Cynthia wasn't too tricky either. Main Pokemon - Roserade
7. Y (Kalos) - Pretty straightforward. Main Pokemon - Vileplume

It always surpises me when people say seventh gen is easy. I suppose it can be if you grind to your heart's content and then sweep the rest of the game enough, but I'd honestly say the game provides enough of a decent challenge; moreso than past generations, at least. So yeah, my experiences are that SM/USUM are among the most difficult games, and the easiest actually being a tie between XY and like... ORAS, I suppose? I've never particularly found ORAS challenging, even facing Zinnia wasn't that bad.

This notion that the more time-consuming something is then the more difficult it is is an inherently flawed premise in my opinion, but...I found XY required the least amount of grinding, and BW required the most. If you want to equate difficulty to how long it takes to do something, that'd be my response to this.

But really I would say all Pokemon games are pretty much the same, if we're ignoring optional side content. Be at a high enough level (which is rarely that high) and exploit type advantages. You win often in two to three hits. You don't even need to use stat boosting moves or stat inflicting moves. How long it takes to get to that level doesn't make it a more challenging experience. It just feels that way because it takes longer, and grinding is a process that a lot of people find tedious and repetitive.

But if you kept yourself underlevelled in other "easier" titles you would likely find the experience to be similarly "challenging" - people say XY are the easiest, but turn the EXP share off and see how it changes the experience. You would level up faster than in BW or SM because of the way experience gains were changed in those titles, BUT it would still take longer and thus it would feel more challenging. But it's the same experience, just stretched out over a longer period. The only "hard" part of that is having the patience to do it.

Pokemon titles can't be inherently difficult games because they're designed to be played by anyone, and I think that's fine. Great, in fact. It would be nice if more of the games had a Challenge Mode like BW2 - without the ridiculous unlocking requirements that had - but the fans have proven they are quite capable of making their own challenges...and that's just it, I think. None of these games are any harder than the others. Any challenge you derive from them is going to be purely self-imposed, and dependant on your level of enjoyment playing through them and how you feel about level grinding.

All the third versions/sequels are hard to some extent. As for the hardest original game, I'd definitely say BW1. Sure there is Audino grinding and all but you aren't guaranteed to always find them, for all you know they could only show up very few times during a playthrough or you could find something before you reach shaking grass, or the shaking grass throws out something else.

And outside of Audino grinding, grinding in the first half is also a bit time consuming too. It gets better later on with more stuff that gives out more exp and of course a free Lucky egg.

The hardest game in my opinion was 'Diamond' and 'Platinum', also because they were my first pokemon games and I hadn't had any experience with the games. The easiest game for me so far was 'X'.
I probably don't need to tell you all the 'whys', since it's mostly all the same with other people, who share my opinion.

Hardest games were Yellow (Electric type starter with first gym being rock, 5th and 6th gyms having lv 50 pokemon!) and Diamond/Pearl/Platinum (Cynthia is one of the toughest trainers in any of the games).

Easiest games were X/Y (broken Exp Share) and Gold/Silver (far easier than gen I, final gym leader's pokemon were at like level 30, and I remember beating the whole game with just my Typhlosion).

Hardest: Emerald. Having to go through all of that Magma and Aqua shenanigans was one heck of a trial when I was a kid. I recall struggling with the Battle frontier as well.

Easiest: Sun and Moon. It felt so straight forward in comparison to all of the other games I had played, there also felt there was a lot less to do, in terms of challenges.