I have some thoughts regarding this mod, but before I get into them: If your response to the points I make is simply 'git gud' then just ignore me and pretend I didn't post. This mod is great but I think it can be better. If you don't want to engage that's ok. I just want to help.
TL;DR: Mod is awesome and fun, but the balancing is off and doesn't provide a sense of skill progression because literally every single trainer battle is against Smogon World Champion level trainers with literally perfect pokemon. Gym Leaders, Champion Cup matches, and Battle Tower trainers don't feel fun, special, or noteworthy because the only thing separating Gym trainers from regular trainers is Pokemon level. Wild Pokemon are too low-level compared to surrounding trainers making grinding an unnecessarily tedious chore. The level curve of the gym section of the game is absurd given how few trainers there are between gyms.
I do overall enjoy the mod and most of the time I'm having fun. I tend to prioritize difficulty mods when replaying titles. However, I think there is a difference between a difficulty mod and straight-up unfair masochism. This is the hardest difficulty mod I have ever played across all gens aside from Radical Red Hardcore/Nuzlocke My Nuzlocke RR playthrough was only after a few clears with other difficulty mods and multiple playthroughs of the base game. The difference between that and SwSh is that there are quite a few mods for top-down Pokemon games that allow players to find a difficulty that suits them or mods that offer various difficulty options. SwSh does not have that. Either you play the poorly balanced base version, or this ball-busting mod. If there is a mod that offers an experience in between, I haven't found it. I think the balancing is off for a number of reasons that mostly have to do with the balancing philosophy.
First is the fact that due to the way SwSh is built, the same balancing bedrock that works in every Pokemon game up to gen 5 (arguably SwSh because it's the first game that is a fully 3d environment). Routes in the early to mid game are much shorter than they would be in a less graphically intensive gen. The Wild Areas have no trainer battles at all. What this leads to is hours and hours and hours grinding wild pokemon just to make it past the two of the first three gyms that your chosen starter isn't strong against. I beat the 2nd gym and had to spend literally an entire day just grinding because going from a level 30 gym to a level 40 gym is already hard enough to grind for, but even more so when they are close together with very few opportunities to effectively grind because there are only a handful of trainers between the two gyms and all the wild pokemon that you would be grinding around are all 5-10 levels below you, not counting your decrease in global exp gain. Compounding this is the presence of exp share, which further dilutes your ability to adjust your teams for various battles (which I will get to in a minute).
Chancey and Audino battles offering such a steep exp bump to compensate is nice, but you have them set with an abysmal spawn rate. Having your grinding depend heavily on rng or absurd time investment is bad design imo, difficulty mod or not. Also having the wild pokemon in any given section of the game be so much lower level than what your team needs to be just to beat random trainers makes grinding laborious, unrewarding, and unengaging. Am I saying that wild pokemon should be as difficult as trainer pokemon? Of course not, but if gym 3 requires a full high IV, EV trained, element strong team (that will need to change from route to route and gym to gym requiring constantly adjustment, grinding, training) at level 41 minimum, wild pokemon at level 25-30 with a 2% chance for a Chansey-OR-Audino spawn (which will also be way under-leveled) you aren't making the game harder, you're just making it longer. There is a subtle but distinct difference between the two. People with the time will just grind and over-level anyway, but the people who don't will be boxed out of enjoying the experience you've crafted.
On to the regular trainer battles. Older gens had many more trainers between gyms than in SwSh simply because they could afford to make areas larger and routes longer due to less memory needing to be allocated to graphics. Trainer battles have always been the main chunk of leveling between gyms, set pieces, etc. I know this is more difficult to balance since there are far fewer trainer battles in SwSh than in any other gen. That being said, either the trainer battles need to be weighted heavier or wild pokemon need to be of appropriate level to whichever gym is next in sequence. I have no problem with regular trainers being more difficult, I actually think route trainers have always been too easy in base games...however, I personally think it hurts the experience (difficulty mod or not) if every single trainer battle is the same difficulty as the Champion Cup finals.
I know this is counter-intuitive but let me explain. The point of differentiating between gym trainers, route trainers, and battle tower trainers is to offer different intensities so that the player feels like they are getting better and becoming more mechanically proficient. Take Dark Souls 1. The first time you fought the Asylum Demon was hard, painfully so for most. Then you finally beat it, fight some mobs to grind on your way to the next boss, repeat, and so on and so on. But when you get all the way to the end, conquer Gwyn, and start a new game, when you get back to the asylum demon it should be easy because the skill you've gained and mastery you've shown during your journey has made you better. The way you have this balanced, every trainer battle, gym battle, champion cup match, battle tower run, etc is Gwyn. Dark Souls 1 is a hard game. No one disputes that. Most people get to the asylum demon and quit, but even games like Dark Souls understand that progression is about more than actively trying to kill the player by any means necessary (even unfair ones sometimes) while they aren't doing anything significant aside from making a number go up.
Imagine if every single enemy in Dark Souls from the Asylum Demon, to the skeletons, to the giants, to the dragons were Gwyn, but every attack can one-shot based on rng, and rng is weighted higher for Gwyn than you so that he's always lucky and you're always unlucky. The Champion's Cup matches should be the hardest fights in the game. Battle Tower should be a little easier than that, Gym Leaders a little easier than that, and regular trainers a little easier than that. People remember and relish the challenge of bosses in Dark Souls because they are a different, more intense kind of challenge than other enemies. Gym Leaders, the bosses of pokemon, should feel uniquely special and difficult, but they don't when the backpacker that I fought on the way there gives me a much worse thrashing because with a Drapion 5 levels below me that knows Night Slash.
Again. I enjoy a challenge and understand that there are some that enjoy harder challenges than I do. I respect that and believe they should absolutely be able to challenge themselves in any way they want, but I don't think this kind of challenge is fun for a lot of people and I think you would get a lot more people playing Divine Sword and Blessed Shield if the barrier for entry wasn't so high. This is an awesome mod and I hope you are continuing to work on it because this is the kind of experience I've been waiting for since 2020. Keep up the awesome work!!!
