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6th Gen Does anyone find the gyms too easy?

JimmyS1985

    • 39
    Posts
    11
    Years
    • Seen Mar 2, 2017
    These gyms, well, so much for having to take time out and "train" your Poke'mon.

    I've now played Poke'mon Red, Blue, and now Y. ANd to date, there has only been ONE Gym leader who gave me problems, that was Brock. Ok maybe Cerulean City was tough too, because I chose Charmander for my first Poke'mon who was weak to both Rock Poke'mon and Water. Thats the only time I ever felt I really had to "train" before a Poke'mon battle, as I'd spend 2-3 hours taking out Kakuna's, Weedles, Caterpies and Metapods with Charmander and other Poke'mon I had before I'd take a shot at Brock. If I had gone with Squirtle, that battle would have been a cakewalk as well.

    I could probably count on one hand, through hundreds of hours of gameplay across 3 poke'mon games, how often all my poke'mon actually fainted in one of the hand held device games.

    Anyways, I go into these gyms and its suppose to be a major accomplishment that you beat a gym leader. Sure doesn't feel like it!

    I just finished the grass gym (first time playthrough) and I only used a level 40 or so Charizard and I only had to use flamethrower one time to make a grass pokemon insta-pass out. Cleared out the whole gym without taking much damage at all with a single Charizard.

    The fighting pokemon gym, I used my Haunter, he wouldn't even obey me, but he cleared that gym out single handedly with taking next to no damage. Most the time he was loafing around or wouldn't listen to my commands.

    I kind of wish this game was moddable, this has reminded me why I prefer PC games because they ARE moddable for these types of things, such as increasing difficulty.

    One thing I would do, is make it so, I dunno you could use the Poke'mon centers services maybe like once a day, instead of take a little damage, run back to it, heal up, and go back for more. Perhaps have them actually charge poke'dollars to heal your poke'mon up so healing poke'mon isn't like getting a drink of water. There certainly are no free veterinarians where I'm from for that matter and there shouldn't be in this game.

    This simultaneously would make money much scarcer and more useful in the game as well, there are VERY few games I've played in the last 25 years of my life (Civilization IV: Colonization is the game with the single best economy I have ever played), that have had a good economy that has ingame cash seem as hard to earn as real-life cash. Heck if it were up to me I'd have save points in the game that you had to make it to and pay poke'dollars to save as well, similar to the system in Grand Theft Auto 2. You at least had to make $50,000 in that game to break even before you could save and leave the game.

    Limit the amount of potions and stuff you can carry in the game. Seems ridiculous I can carry all this Poke'mon medicine that I carry around without an 18 wheeler helping me out.

    For that matter, dungeons and caves and such, should take some actual preparation before you set foot in them, that forces you to buy a bunch of potions and ether and stuff, before you walk in. I do recall all my poke'mon fainting in the mountain where you get the moonstone in Poke'mon Red and Blue once due to lack of preparation.

    As soon as you walk in, the entrance gets blocked, and so the only way to beat it is to finish the whole cave, not make some way in, take some damage and run back to a poke'mon center to heal up. Get rid of the NPC's in the midway points in Caves that are the equivalent of Poke'mon centers too.

    Another idea for restrictions is either restrict the amount of poke'mon we can bring with us into a gym, or give the gym leader and all of his trainers a maximum of 6 pokemon. The 6 pokemon team vs 1 or 2 is laughable when the NPC's act like its such a huge surprise that they lost the battle.

    Also if you're working for a Poke'mon badge that goes up to level 70 (Clemonts Gym in particular), have the poke'mon you're facing at level 70 then, so if they do have a weakness to your poke'mon they at least have a high level to help negate some of it. If that causes your poke'mon to level up too fast, the game designers could have made it so it took more xp per level to level up to counter that.

    Right now I guess I'm just training for WiFi battles because the NPC's and Gym Leaders in this game offer no real challenge if you ask me.
     
    Last edited:
    I think it really depends on if you use Pokemon Amie and Exp Share, the 2 most broken mechanics in the whole series, or using traded in Pokemon, which give you a hefty experience boost. My first play through was incredibly easy and I was even underleveled. When I did my Monotype though, even with 4 Pokemon I wasn't keeping my experience very high when I wasn't using Exp Share, and the loss of the Amie buffs made it much more of a challenge. By the end with no grinding, I was under Diantha by about 10 levels. I wound up having to use the ingenuity I always use while underleveled to win.

    I do agree that they should have difficulty modes, like they did in BW2, because it's such a cool feature and some more seasoned players don't want mechanics that make the game easier but do want a bigger challenge. I really didn't view the Gym leaders as any easier than most regions, Kanto probably being an exception since it's from the era of extremely difficult children's games.
     
    Yeah, the level curve in XY was a bit gimped thanks to the broken Exp. Share mechanic, but the main story of a Pokémon game is never really meant to be a huge challenge in the first place. Like in every game, the gym leaders cover their type weaknesses fairly well, but if you're twelve levels higher than them, it doesn't make much of a difference. XD
     
    Timbjerr said:
    the main story of a Pokémon game is never really meant to be a huge challenge in the first place
    Click to expand...

    Yeah, this. The story is really meant for children or casual gamers; WiFi battles are for the more hardcore gamers. If you want a challenging RPG, go play Dark Souls :P
     
    This is pretty much why we have Challenges, haha. The Pokemon games are really not that hard to begin with so we make them harder.
     
    Just like in the anime, I only bring the same number of pokemon that the gym leader has, so that makes it fair. After that, it all depends on how easy you want to make it.
     
    It depends on your Pokémon's level. If you've trained them hard enough and brought them up to a certain point, then the gym leader you're planning to face shouldn't be too hard to go up against. If not, then, well, it might be a little challenging. Personally, I found all leaders to be equally as difficult. d:
     
    I share some of the opinions with what others have stated. The gym leaders themselves, if you look at their basic construction as oppose to practice, are actually all pretty challenging and even with their mono-type teams, they can still cover certain weaknesses very well (I thought the rock leader's set-up was very clever in particular).

    Their challenge is mitigated, however, by some of the same reasons as other gyms before the release of this game. The more options for Pokemon the player recieves, the more likely he'll be able to easily beat a gym leader, just because the coverage against them is available. As a result, gym leaders tend to start off relatively difficult (as you typically don't have many pokemon/move options to counter them) but get easier as the game goes on.

    Another factor is level. Even if you build a team of Rattatas with everstones, you're still going to win against a gym leader if you outmatch them in level, regardless of type disadvantages. X/Y in particular made grinding nearly obsolete thanks to the new EXP share, so you can have a full team of trained Pokemon, ready for the next gym, without actually sending out half of your party against a wild pokemon/trainer.

    So I don't think the gym leaders themselves are necessarily too easy, so much as the mechanics of the game mitigates their potential difficulty.
     
    The only gyms I found hard was Koga and Sabrina in Kanto.
    Sabrina was too powerful in Yellow using lv 50. Especially since you got there early in the game. I think it was based off that Ash got there early in the anime.
     
    I did notice that this game is easier than the few Pokemon games I have played. I wish it had a difficulty setting like some games. The higher the difficulty, the more difficult other trainers and the less money you get from winning.
     
    It depends, the Gym Leader I had the hardest time beating was no other than Olympia than the rest were easy. However on the rematch I had a hard time beating Viola and Ramos with my Pokemon that are level 40
     
    I think this gen it was made a little bit easy with the help of the new exp.share
    Non of them were that hard.i used 1-2 pokemon for each gym and basically 1-2 KOing everything.the elite four wasn't that different as well.i only used 1-3 diff.pokemon for each of them.no deaths,no full restores
     
    Personally, the gyms in X/Y are easy for two reasons.

    For one, I'm an experienced player. I've been playing Pokemon since Red/Blue were released. I never took a break from the series, and Pokemon is the only game I never have to think about when playing. Type match-ups are easy for me to pick up (the Fairy introduction, for example) and they just stick with me.

    For another, I train my Pokemon. Not only do I find level-grinding a fun thing to do, but X/Y just made it so much easier. Pokemon-amie gives boosted experience, and Pokemon-amie is my favorite feature of X/Y. The new Experience Share means experience points are distributed evenly across the board. Using the new features of X/Y in combination with the standard Lucky Egg (and trading Pokemon like I currently have) means that experience is coming at a higher rate than what we're used to.

    So when I'm playing Y and I know the gym ahead is the Ice-type Gym, I'm ready with my level 76 traded Raichu that I've played with in Pokemon-amie.

    But I don't play Pokemon for the challenge anymore. I just play the games because there are times when I just want a simple game to relax with. So while I do wish that there was more of a Challenge mode in all the games, I'm okay with the games being easy for the younger audience and fun for the older audience.
     
    Not really sure as I didn't pay much attention to the gym leaders, but I thought playing against Cynthia from D/P was way tougher, so the Champion this time seemed like she could've had a better stronghold on her pokemon at least. P.S. Idk why but I feel like she looks like the human form of Diancie, the latest event pokemon.
     
    Like some others had mentioned, it is not the gyms that are easy, but the availability of type coverage and high levels the casual player will come across make most gyms a cake walk. This COULD be changed by:

    -Giving the player less availability to type coverage. This would almost certainly make the gyms harder, as they would have to go with what they had and nothing else, a bit like the Nuzlocke challenge.

    -Put more trainers in gyms, and don't make said trainers optional to battle. For example, Cyllage City Gym. Other than Grant, I had to deal with one trainer. One. Make it so that you have to battle them all, leaving you weakened for the Gym Leader, if you come unprepared.

    -Branching off from Gym Leaders, we got to tackle the Elite Four at our own pace? No, this is wrong. The battles should be directly after each other. Don't give me time to heal my pokes.

    Anyway, since I just woke up, that's the best I've got. I'll most likely have more ideas later.
     
    I've always had a knack for mastering games. It goes back to 1989 when as a toddler I beat my 47 year old dad, something like 57,XXX points to his 3,XXX points in the original Super Mario Bros.

    Take Skyrim for an example. I play it on the highest difficulty level and on top of that I have several difficulty mods to boot. Seems the only games that give me a challenge tend to be RTS's and realistic infantry combat FPS's. For that matter I've even gone towards simulators (I have around $1500 in equipment for my PC for flight simulation) to keep iT as close to flying a real airplane as I can.

    Currently I'm climbing the ranks of Online Poker so as to make an income from my skills at learning and beating games have been quite successful (made enough cash in two days of Online Poker to pay for my 3ds XL new).

    Yea I guess it just bothers me more than most when a game isn't difficult enough because I often find games on their highest difficulty too easy.

    On the other hand some of the games on the Nintendo Entertainer System were ridiculously hard and impossible to beat.
     
    I do admit these gyms were pretty easy, but there's some major factors to take into account like using the Exp. Share (which causes overleveling in the tail end of the story) and also the huge variety of obtainable Pokemon in the game means you're pretty much certain to have something that can counter that Gym Leader's Pokemon.

    I guess the only real way to have some sort of "challenge" is to not use the Exp. Share. That's why some people like to turn it off, they don't want a team that levels up too quickly. I did use the Exp. Share but I didn't complain since I'm usually not much of a challenge person myself. I just like to go with the flow.
     
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