Gen \ Comparative difficulty aka what just happened?!

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

Right now i'm playing through blaze black, and fire red on emulator, and weirdly i feel I'm having a harder time on fire red.

I think its mostly because of how the game itself progresses, in black there's no large expanses between cities, like mount moon.
I've been on mt moon for 2 days now i think, I keep having to leave for status effects or healing, (which i'm fine with its a big undertaking) and level my team along the way.

While in blaze black, I've gotten my 3rd gym badge and all I had to do was essentially follow the straight path, only deviating for plot events.
It's not like I wasn't having fun, it just feels...smaller.

I mean blaze black isn't easy, but its more like only special opponents are really hard, and then its more like they have a mega damaging coverage move, pokemon keeps healing/ you can't attack or rotation battle so random it feels like luck, (I'm looking at you cheron!)
Maybe I'm just doing it wrong, but it feels like most battles are either one-shot the entire team or you're dead.

I thought i was overleveled at first, then Cheron's team completely destroyed my entire team, repeatedly.

In fire red I breezed through most of the trainers outside, route 3, walked into mount moon, and nearly got whited out...against a trainer with only 1 pokemon.
partially because they were suddenly 3 levels above my average but the pokemon was just plain buff as all heck.

 

[Duck]

I think its mostly because of how the game itself progresses, in black there's no large expanses between cities, like mount moon.
I've been on mt moon for 2 days now i think, I keep having to leave for status effects or healing, (which i'm fine with its a big undertaking) and level my team along the way.

While in blaze black, I've gotten my 3rd gym badge and all I had to do was essentially follow the straight path, only deviating for plot events.
It's not like I wasn't having fun, it just feels...smaller.

Most "dungeons" like Mt. Moon are trials of attrition. That's not necessarily a good thing - in fact, I personally don't care for them, because the challenge isn't the fun kind of challenge for me - and I personally wouldn't say they make the game harder, just more tedious. But if you're fine with that, that's cool.

But just keep in mind that Unova is experimental in a lot of ways that didn't really work - hence why it's very different than the others - and Drayano didn't really have a lot to work with there.

I mean blaze black isn't easy, but its more like only special opponents are really hard, and then its more like they have a mega damaging coverage move, pokemon keeps healing/ you can't attack or rotation battle so random it feels like luck, (I'm looking at you cheron!)
Maybe I'm just doing it wrong, but it feels like most battles are either one-shot the entire team or you're dead.

I thought i was overleveled at first, then Cheron's team completely destroyed my entire team, repeatedly.

I mean, that's only to be expected. While Drayano most likely changed levels and maybe the lineup of the trainers, they can't be too good because they're essentially nobodies and because either he didn't have the time or inclination to manually tweak every trainer or the engine flat out didn't let him.

Important trainers will naturally be harder - in fact the game is more or less balanced around those - and what you're describing is pretty much the norm for the player in most runs. It's just being used against you.

It's important to keep in mind that Blaze Black is meant to be closer to competitive play - with items and some changes to make more Pokémon and moves viable - and less a casual playthrough. Which brings me to the next point:

In fire red I breezed through most of the trainers outside, route 3, walked into mount moon, and nearly got whited out...against a trainer with only 1 pokemon.
partially because they were suddenly 3 levels above my average but the pokemon was just plain buff as all heck.

Casual playthroughs, specially in the early game, will often have you start sweeping until you hit a wall. Usually that wall is an important battle, like a rival or a gym leader, but you'll likely get to a point where either you stats just aren't good enough, you don't have a big enough stick to swing or both.

It just so happened to be the Mt. Moon trainer to you. Assuming it's the Lass with the Clefairy - it's tanky yes, but it's less tanky than the Geodude and Onix you had to deal with Brock. You're probably relying too much on special / super-effective moves and / or getting bad luck with Sing / Double-slap etc. and you're just generally underleveled.

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

It just so happened to be the Mt. Moon trainer to you. Assuming it's the Lass with the Clefairy...

XD yes, yes it was. I took out brock without problem, but that was a different team, with a mankey and vine whip/leech seed bulbasaur.

I swapped out my main team a little while before I went in, for my secondary team but I had gotten them to the same levels by then.

idk I hit that clefairy with everything and I was just doing chip damage.

Are stat debuffs just handled different in that game(early gen), I feel like my stat debuffs were erased when the pokemon that used them was fainted?
I used everything I had, a tackle, peck, water gun, scratch barely any damage.

Think my team was average 10 and 11, while that clefairy was lvl 14.

 

[Sheep]

lol, I feel like I get the poison status effect in FRLG more than most other main series games. Never played Blaze Black personally but the official games definitely have their tough moments, especially older ones before we had the party-wide exp share.

In fire red I breezed through most of the trainers outside, route 3, walked into mount moon, and nearly got whited out...against a trainer with only 1 pokemon.
partially because they were suddenly 3 levels above my average but the pokemon was just plain buff as all heck.

Usually I'm quite a bit overleveled by then so this specific mon doesn't give me issues, but I can see how it can be a bit slower if you're under their level. I guess that can happen when you battle Brock with Bulbasaur or Squirtle, since the 4x grass/water weakness makes it easy to breeze through the gym when you're still low leveled!

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

lol, I feel like I get the poison status effect in FRLG more than most other main series games. Never played Blaze Black personally but the official games definitely have their tough moments, especially older ones before we had the party-wide exp share.



Usually I'm quite a bit overleveled by then so this specific mon doesn't give me issues, but I can see how it can be a bit slower if you're under their level. I guess that can happen when you battle Brock with Bulbasaur or Squirtle, since the 4x grass/water weakness makes it easy to breeze through the gym when you're still low leveled!

Yeah i used bulbasaur I think, I tinkered with my game a bit trying to learn script and somehow ended up giving myself every starter but charmander lol, including ivysaur. XD

Maybe that was my problem, I think i had made a different team for each starter at that point, before i went in i had swapped out for my same level team but with squirtle. So i couldn't leech seed either. bulbasaur is pretty much easy mode.

well poison was bad in viridian forest but what really got me is the old school confusion mecanics, zubat was so annoying.