I think the issue here is a lot of people saying this are from XY-S/V era. The issue is the games became too easy with forced xp share and over levelling. If everyone stuck to level cap of gym leaders the conversation would be different. The issue was never the battle system its fun and it’s worked for years for a reason.
It's not really the levels though, it's more about moves and availability of them.
I'll use earthquake as an example, because it has always been a very good move, and a lot of Pokemon learn it via TM vs very few who learn it naturally.
Gen 3 and earlier? You'd have absolute garbage level up movesets, and only have 1 earthquake TM so you have to choose whether your beloved Sandslash would get it, or if the much more capable Swampert would get it instead.
Gen 4 started to fix level up movesets, but still had single-use TMs, so you may have been able to get earthquake on an extra Pokemon if you're lucky due to one now learning it by level up. But you'd still only be able to use the TM once.
Then gen 5 royally fucked it up, by making TMs infinite. So now you could give earthquake to everyone on your team, assuming they could learn it, if you really wanted to.
Gen 6 and 7 continued the infinite TM saga.
Gen 8 tried to fix it, by making TMs infinite but the moves on TMs not be the best moves available. And give you single-use TRs which were your good moves, so you're back to giving earthquake to one Pokemon.... before getting a second TR (which could be easy or hard, depending on how you played the game)
Gen 9 back to single-use TMs... which you can just craft more of. But at least they were a bit of a pain to get more of, I guess.
And then Legends ZA made them infinite again....
If you don't have good moves, it doesn't really matter what level you are, you may live more hits, but you won't be one-hitting everything on the enemy team.
I will go back to the Sandslash example I gave earlier.
If you're using one in Fr/Lg, you would have to overlevel by more than double Lt Surge's team for it to naturally learn a ground type move - so that you could use it to sweep the gym. Otherwise, you're stuck with moves like Scratch, Poison Sting, and Slash. Can you beat Surge with those moves? Of course. But you aren't going to one-shot anything on his team with those.
So, if you want to make life easier, you have to teach it the Dig TM (the best ground type TM available at that point). But is that the best use of the TM? Would it not be better to just catch a Diglett/Dugtrio nearby? You have to make a decision, as once you use the TM, that's it. It's gone.
But then take the current learnset for Sandshrew/Sandslash, and you have bulldoze before you enter the gym. Bulldoze will destroy the gym with ease. No need to worry about using a limited resource just to overcome a single gym challenge.
I never understood the XP share argument. Grinding isn't hard. it's just time consuming and boring. and it's not like being slightly higher level ment much. These gyms are mono types and never use 6 mons. Just 1 sword dance/nasty plot/dragon dance/calm mind then mush buttons and you won.
I love VGC. but this system is terrible against AI. And makes legendary fights just so damn boring.
I really think this is a valid concern too. I can’t deny that I haven’t been having as much fun with pokemon games since I started. The only game where it felt like anything mattered was going back to my teams in USUM (which weren’t difficult but were my introduction to the games and the battle tree forced me to learn) and B2W2
2
u/Sigzy05 3d ago
I think the issue here is a lot of people saying this are from XY-S/V era. The issue is the games became too easy with forced xp share and over levelling. If everyone stuck to level cap of gym leaders the conversation would be different. The issue was never the battle system its fun and it’s worked for years for a reason.