+35
Seriously, it is one thing the Nintendo games lack. Once you get enough (usually in advance) knowledge of the game, it is far easy to beat. Mostly because of opponent AI.
I think some interesting improvement proposals were posted above, such as upgrading Trainer AI to Champion level. The 16 badges before E4 idea is more practicable. As for the full parties, I don't think it is exactly needed (and in some ways it fully ruins some teams).
Other thing that I thing would be fairly needed would be a better stash for Gym Leader AI or above. I mean, most of the time all they have is a Full Restore, which is technically useless because if they got their Pokémon down to the point of using it, it means that Pokémon is already slow and weak enough that one repeat of the previous attack will bring it fown to the same HP amount, and then the next (arguably preplanned) attack will forcefully faint it. I mean, if I was an E4 of a game where the kid with a hat and a Typhlosion following him came to my chamber and he was
known to have defeated Evil Team, captured Game Mascot / Roaming Gerbil and tweaked Event Monstrosity / Eldritch Abomination for his team, the
absolute minimum Id have in my item stash would be not limited to two or three Full Restore,s but a couple Guard Specs and Max Revives, and maybe an X-Speed or X-(SP)Defense as well. And if I was the Champion of such a game and that kind of hero walked to challenge me, I'd use something like the Sacred Ash, which if I remember correctly from GSC restores
all fainted members in your team, and, if I detected any "you shouldn't have got this yet" / Event Pokémon, outright tweak all my party to
252 EVs in all statuses and Priority 4 for all attacks.
So yeah. A "Hard Mode" setting would be welcome. TWhat features I would like to see, in decreasing order of priority (and the bolded ones are
absolute minimums for a Hard Mode):
- (suggested above) level-up for non-Wild Pokémon
- (suggested above) no free switching when defeating opponent's Pokémon (mainly because you are frigging' announced what the opposing Trainer has next). Alternatively, Trainers could just lie. :cheeky:
- Limited Item Bag for Arceus' Sake!
- Opposing AI for Trainers should be raised at least one "importance" level: from Trainer to Gym Leader, and maybe from Gym Leader to E4, or Champion to Frontier Brain.
- Near end-game Trainers (such as Elite 4) should have extra tweaks in their AI to adapt modified (yet ideally still legal) movelists according to what the Trainer's Pokémon have.
- Special trainers (evil bosses, rivals, champions, maybe) should be given a more adequate stash, with at least the ability to use Revive / Max Revive and a Guard Spec or X-Item according to the part of the game.
- Ability to increase your attacks' PP should be removed. Some of them get too much advantage from that.
- More realistic economy: basic and good things, like the more items you buy, the costlier they become; or the more items you get, the more bandits will try and attack you.
- Just for once, you could be actually penalized for busting into people's houses. Ideally with an item fee.
- Opposing Pokémon should gain EXP and maybe level up and learn attacks when they defeat yours, and these changed should be propagated between rematches or when they outright defeat you.
- Equivalent matches, at least for Gyms. If the Gym Leader has only three Pokémon, you must fight him with three Pokémon.
- I'd argue about making status effects more difficult to wear off and more damaging to the player than to NPC, but the game already takes care of that... :D
- Access to drinks (Soda Pop etc) should be even more limited, since at least in FR/LG and in G/S/C/HG/SS they were absolute gamebreaker at the point in the game they appeared.
- Inability to save in some places, so you have to complete "missions" in one go.
- Gym puzzles, if any, should be more difficult. AND require more application of real-life knowledge (hey, this is Hard Mode, it is arguably for those of us who are fed up with the "for children" classification![/i]).
- Some battles could be time-critical (like the Pt one where you must defeat opponent in a specified number of turns).
- More areas should require use of all / almost all HMs.
- Hazardous areas could be larger in general. For all the scare they're supposed to do, Viridian Forest and the Whirl Islands are too easily navigable.
- All Trainers could level up concurrently with your party, like what FF8 does. I'm not sure if this would be useful for Wild Pokémon, although in the harder dungeons it would make the overall game harder.
- Trainers could register a specific Pokémon or move as a "signature Pokémon/move" and this would granted extra accuracy, one-time first attack or something.
- More powerful moves could have a "learning curve" so you can't just teach a Slowbro Hydro Cannon and spam it right away at the E4, it would miss most of the time due to "lack of experience", you would have to go train the move for some time before actually reaching the normal PP/power/accuracy for the move.
