Does the GTS make this game trivial in difficulty?

Does unlimited access to the GTS just make this game unusually easy? I was REALLY struggling on the volcano trail, because I had a Butterfree, and a Magnemite, both weak to fire, so that's 1/3 of my team already gone against the really hard pokemon. I quickly opened up the GTS, put in a level 19 bird pokemon, and put 21-30 Psyduck as my requested pokemon. 5 minutes later, I checked back, and I had a Japanese Psyduck with water pulse, so that carried me through the trial. It's a bit of a double edged sword. Without it, i'd still be stuck, seeing as grinding wild pokemon takes fucking FOREVER, but I feel that being able to pull down a pokemon at will to be kinda trivialising the game.

Oh well, I guess I'm gonna get an (Awesome) Golduck soon. Happy days!

For me personally it's been the complete opposite. I am way overlevelled for any of the content I am running into. My pokemon are roughly level 22-32 and NPC Trainer pokemons are level 19-21.

It's makeing it really hard for me to enjoy the game.

Well, you could have caught a Psyduck before the fire trial, so it's not really that much of a game-breaking thing. Sure, you could trade for a really high level Pokémon and use it, but it's kind of up to you. I wound up playing this game with the EXP. Share off and didn't use any traded Pokémon until after the game ended. It's always been easy to get a high level Pokémon from a friend and trivialize the game, though.

If you want some difficulty you could nuzlocke it. I'm playing a bit loose with the rules at times, like trying to find a female Salandit so that I could evolve it even though the first I met on that route was male, because I still want to experience some things of the game at my own terms, but I don't budge on the faint/death-rule. If they faint, they're gone.

Or well, I still keep them in a seperate box to have them when I've finished the game.

It really does add so much more tension to the battles. Also, if you don't already have it activated I'd recommend setting the battle option to "Set" in the options-menu, not allowing you to switch out after beating an opponents pokemon.

It was always trivial?

Played X and never even had to attempt.

The way the GTS works is that you can only request pokemon you have seen. The games are usually pretty good at letting you see pokemon moments before they are available to you.

But yes trading has always been busted in pokemon game. The 50% exp buff since red and blue was already too much. In fact GT is still the least busted trading method as any direct trade local or over the internet can literally be any pokemon you otherwise wouldn't have access too.

Gamefreak made the call since the beginning that encouraging the social aspects of pokemon far outweighs the need for balance in the story.

How is getting an overleveled or rare Pokemon through the GTS (introduced in Gen IV in 2006, by the way) any different than trading an overleveled or rare Pokemon from one of your other games/saves/a friend's game? The Pokemon games have only ever been as difficult as you want them to be.

That is absolutely not true. You can just type in the name of anything. I've never seen Popplio in my game cos I picked Litten and I can just search for it.

:

Oh sorry. I certain it was that way when it was introduced. I didn't think they had made any changes. But I guess DPPt where also the only entries to make 100% sure you could everything that was available in the games.

Well, you could have had any number of water pokemon at that point and grinded them up. So I wouldn't say being able to just grab a water pokemon from the trade system is broken. It just cut your time commitment down. They try to limit your ability to go too crazy by making stuff disobey you if you haven't progressed far enough, but for the most part they allow you to do what you want. It's kind of on you if you want to just trade exactly for what you need when you need it. Just like its on you to decide if you want to over level, or do any other number of things that can make the game easier. In the end just do whatever you think is fun, Pokemon games are about finding the way you enjoy playing them.

On another note, just in terms of difficulty, I've found this game to be the hardest Pokemon game I've played since the original gameboy color games. The AI using pretty legit strategies makes it a lot more enjoyable as well.

The game is easy pretty much no matter what you do. You can avoid GTS and exp share to increase the difficulty somewhat but you'll probably still end up being way overleveled unless you skip most of the trainers.

Maybe I just have a habit of grinding too much, but every game i the series is a cakewalk, so i can't tell if this one is any different. If anything all the GTS accomplishes is removing some of the hassle. In my opinion, hassle and busywork does not equal difficulty.

@ryuku_ryosake: I believe you could search via typing the name since X and Y. It's how I got my standard favorite team in Y and Alpha Sapphire without having seen them. You have to know the exact name and spelling though. I also got quite a few other Pokemon that way as well.

None of the pokemon games have been especially difficult. I'm not sure what you're talking about specifically with this one, but in my experience I'm typically overleveled through most of the games.

I find the Wonder trade way more game breaking than GTS. To be fair though it was worse in ORAS when there were far more potential Pokemon that could be sent to you.

With the way the game is designed, it's always been a user-customised level of difficulty. You can always over-level for any encounter and make it trivially easy, or trade for higher-level pokémon to avoid having to grind at all. Conversely, you can turn off the Exp Share and apply Nuzlocke-style rules (or your own personal limitations) if you want to have a tougher time. That's just the nature of such a strict level-based system such as these games use (specifically one where all opponents are fixed levels and don't scale to your party).

Turn EXP Share off before its too late. It ruined X and Y for me so I turned it off as soon as I started Sun. The game is perfectly balanced to be played without EXP Share, if you voluntarily fight all trainers like I do anyway.

I recommend changing the battle system from shift to set if you want a bit more challenge. All it does is remove the option of switching pokemon when you've defeated an enemy pokemon but it completely changes how you approach fights. Makes you battle differently and you start to see how useful stat changing moves and moves that let you switch out while attacking actually are. Only downside is it'll be harder to keep your team's health up past a couple fights but I've noticed that a lot of the routes have NPCs that'll heal your pokemon so it shouldn't be too much hassle.

I've personally always found these games super easy. I tend to fight every trainer and run around in the grass to get all the Pokemon in an area so that just leads to me being over levelled all the time which is totally on me but it's how I play the game and it leads to it being super easy in the end.

What's amazing to me is that I see lots of people saying that Sun and Moon are just as easy as the previous games but I find myself struggling far more than I ever have before. Lots of battles (namely main story battles) have had me burning through a bunch of items and scraping by with only a couple of Pokemon left standing in my party. I must be doing something wrong or unlearning how to play Pokemon.

I'll echo the other folks here saying Pokemon difficulty is more of a customized experience, and also that it depends how you play. If you stick to only a few Pokemon and fight everything, you will almost certainly be overleveled -- especially so if you have the Exp. Share turned on.

I've turned the Exp. Share off, and I've been rotating Pokemon out of my group frequently just for the fun of variety, and I've been finding the game to be reasonably challenging. Not ridiculously so, but enough to keep me on my toes, and it's been fun. I usually tend to form a team relatively early on and stick to it to the end, and I've gotta say it's been fun to play it more loose. I definitely recommend playing without the Exp. Share, and not being afraid to break up your party and try new 'Mons as you go. I've had a drastically different team by the end of each island so far, and that's been cool.

As for the topic question... nah. Having access to more Pokemon doesn't inherently make the game any easier. It gives you more options, but you have a lot of options at all times already (that is, I don't think trading for a Water Pokemon is much simpler than just going to a lake and fishing one up yourself). The bigger difference would be if you happen to get something in trade that's absurdly high level, then, yeah, totally it would trivialize things. But that's obvious enough, and I bet most players can decide for themselves whether that's how they want to handle things or not.

That's pretty much how I played and I agree with the recommendation. I left exp share on so I could skip more of the generic weaker trainers, and swapped out my team often to try new stuff. I don't think I've had so many pokemon faint in one of these games before.

My guess is a lot of the people who still say its ridiculously easy are most likely running around overleveled and one shotting everything. It's easy to break this game just like the others if the AI never gets to take a turn. If they fight every trainer, spend time grinding/catching pokemon, and/or only run around with a few pokemon that never leave their team, it is crazy easy to outpace the difficulty curve. If you give the AI the opportunity to take turns though by keeping your levels down it feels significantly harder than previous versions of the game. The AI hardly messes around with useless attacks anymore, so I had the same experience as you where I was burning items and losing my team to big fights.

I've been getting my ass whipped in the totem battles. The one vs Mimikyu was fucking hard as hell, and I had 2 pokemon that were strong against it.

@matoya: Yeah, it's not the GTS that makes this game trivially easy, it's the Exp Share. They changed the exp formula to take levels into account, but it seems like it only delayed the inevitable. I finally turned it off when I was 8 levels over the totems' level, and I one-shot every totem on the second island with just a supereffective STAB move. To be fair, the Exp Share broke both games in Gen VI as well. It essentially multiplies your Exp by a flat 2.5, since the other five guys in your party always get at least half. It seems like this was their compromise to make sure kids can still clear the game while freeing GameFreak up to upgrade the AI.

@matoya: I got through that one without too much trouble, but I am officially stuck on the one after that.

I've never even used the GTS before... and the game is still incredibly easy. You could have caught a psyduck or several other water pokemon before that trial, just because you used trading as your method to obtain it just saves time rather than making it easy in my opinion. I used a Gyrados I leveled up before I got to that part of the game.

Another thing that can make this game easier is Pokémon Refresh, as it gives you a boost to your EXP gain at either two or three hearts. The game's curve is also pretty weird in spots, because it abruptly jumps at the third and fourth island as the 'normal' level of Pokémon climbs up by ten, but it then stays there throughout the island. Super weird.

That said, I've just beat the game and would recommend rotation if you feel like it's getting too easy. Even just slotting out one-two Pokémon once your team hit the normal level keeps you at a slight disadvantage and keeps it compelling (plus, there's a lot of Pokés available to you).

The joys of being outside the target audience, I guess.

nothing has been a challenge leaving the 2nd island now and my team is 40 slowbro, 36 decidueye, 32 snorlax, 32 growlithe, 35 gengar, 37 machamp

Its been a cake walk so far for me as well, but i always enjoyed the discovery and collecting portions of these games more then the battle system anyways. I never use the GTS as it ruins the collecting part of the game for me, and even if you do turn EXP share off if you know the weaknesses you still will plow through the battles, none of the trainers i'v see so far even have more then two Pokemon so its pretty hard to lose with a team of six if there diverse. I really wish they would scale trainer battles to your level, and put a new game plus mode in so we can replay and level new teams without just grinding at end game. Also i still dont get why were restricted to one save anymore. If you care about getting all three starters its easy enough to get them on the GTS. Otherwise id like to train each one myself.