How easy did you all find SV, not including any of the DLCs?

[PageEmperor]

Remember when I once made a thread here before the games came out where I had ‘nightmares’ over the game’s eventual difficulty? Good times.

Overall, the actual games weren’t really that challenging at all, and all my playthroughs of the game were nuzlockes. Granted, I used Gholdengo in my first playthrough. As well as two teammates who were meant to cover my starter’s weaknesses. But everytime I played these games, they were not hard whatsoever, despite my bellyaching I did pre release.

So what did you all think of this game’s difficulty?

 

[skynerel]

It wasn’t very difficult and battling Geeta didn’t felt like a champion battle because it was too easy, even though I didn’t had a very balanced team.

 

[Sayer]

Since you can literally complete the entire walktrough battling only with the starter... MEH. overleveling was hard to handle with, that was really bad cuz the challenge of the game disappear very quickly...
MEH!

 

[Nicolas721]

• The gyms are a walk in the park. Even in the Nuzlocke, they fall extremely easily to super effective moves and have very few counters for whatever you sent to them. Only notable are Iono's Mismagius because of her lack of weaknesses, Kofu's Crabominable because of its high attack and Larry's Staraptor because of Facade but nothing is too hard.
• Titans are extremely easy, you have your whole team available to clean them and Arven can help you too. Only noteworthy is the Asado Paradox who can surprise you with its type and high level, but on second playthroughs it will not caught you off guard.
• Starfall Street is the hardest route, Pokemon feel like they have better stats and the battles against the Starmobiles can become endurance battles. But eventually you can clean them out.
• The Elite Four is as easy as the gyms, and the champion is even easier. Only Nemona is noteworthy as she has decent coverage as well as some high-damage moves.

So yeah, it's easy but because you can blame it on your own over-levelling you don't notice it as much.

 

[Wyrmfemme]

Nemona, as much as I love her, and as wonderful her final battle is, it can be done solely by Great Tusk, especially if you chose Quaxly. Spin on Lycanroc setting Stealth Rocks, OHKO with Earthquake, OHKO Goodra with Ice Spinner, Brick Break Dundunsparce, Brick Break Orthworm, Earthquake Pawmot, and Earthquake Skeledirge.

I don't remember any fights being particularly hard in both my initial play and recent replay a few months ago, outside of self-blunders and RNG shenanigans, and I was at-level with my team of 12 on the replay. I did notice that the E4 teams felt kind of, deliberately gimped? Like there's nothing really too extremely powerful in their teams outside of like, Hassel's Baxcalibur. Using Hassel as an example, he has a Flapple, a not particularly good Pokemon, rather than like, another Pseudo-Dragon, which Paldea has a smorgasbord of. Rika has a Whiscash, Larry has Tropius, Quiver Dance-less Oricorio, and Altaria. Geeta has her infamous Gogoat and Avalugg. Gyms also don't pack coverage and often have 3/4 moveslots taken up.

There's also the part of like, even without using Healing Items mid-fight, plenty of opportunties to just, set up. Baxcalibur tears through so many fights off of 1 spare Dragon Dance and Loaded Dice Scale Shot/Icicle Spear and has plenty of opportunties to get that Dragon Dance. Pokemon getting more and more diverse movepools and coverage options is also a point in favour of the player, I recently played through the Orre games and part of the challenge I found there was that Gen 3 movepools, by today's comparison, are garbage. Aggron learns no Rock Type moves levelling up, and Steel's strongest STAB in Gen 3 is Iron Tail, which isn't great.

Edit: also there's just, a complete lack of Double Battles throughout all of ScarVi outside of Ryme's Gym (they kinda did the same with Raihan in SwSh..), but that's probably more of an issue with how ScarVi is structured than anything, but, Double Battles are usually more challenging than Singles. There's an overarching thing about "less friction" in videogames as a whole these days which is a valid discussion, the friction vs smoothing things out under the lens of QoL. See Monster Hunter Wilds or homogenization in Fighting Games or MMOs.

Indigo Disk was great, though this thread isn't about including its difficulty, I would love more of that, a 3rd Shadow Pokemon game or something like that tieing in with BB Acadamy would be like my dream Pokemon game rn off the back of experiencing Orre.

 

[Princess Viola]

in the simplest terms: it was piss easy.

 

[Palamon]

If you do the game in the not intended order, and just going "screw it, I'll play how I want" then the game in some ways is not easy. But, I found the Team Star boss fights....not easy. But not too difficult. But, I also don't find this game "baby easy" or whatever. Easy enough, but in some other areas, it was not as easy.

 

[Unovia]

If I may, as someone who just recently completed a full playthrough of Paldea, if we are limiting it to the base game, I wouldn't say that the game was easy. Some of the Titans were difficult. Nemona was challenging at times. The Gyms, due to the fact that much distance could occur between those battles, were generally easy, though there were some exceptions, such as Ryme with the Double Battle and certain select Pokemon of the different Gyms.

Overall, I would say Challenging but not Brutal.

 

[vividbunnies]

Speaking from my initial experiences with the game on first save, there was some tricky portions here and there but overall I didn't really struggle all that much. On DLC side, it wasn't much different because I was more or less prepared with what was being thrown at me most of the time. The only thing that ever really gave me trouble were 6*/7* raids because I prefer to do those solo and mostly blind. That being said, I have seen some friends play this game and got slapped around because they don't have a near encyclopedia's worth of backhand knowledge memorized over the years so going by that I think the game's difficulty standards are fine.

 

[illogicalatlas]

I did things a tad out of order on accident ((running through the both the second gym and second Team Star base before the first of either section)) so that wasn’t the easiest start. But beyond that, it wasn’t much of a challenge until Nemona and the Prof battles.

Iono, Ryme, Poppy, Ortega, and Tatsugiri were more work than the others in my experience, but even then they weren’t difficult.

Geeta was especially underwhelming in her initial battle. Solo’d her entire team with Tinkaton.

Fortunately the game made up for its lack of difficulty with its story, imo

 

[beasttrash]

did things a tad out of order on accident ((running through the both the second gym and second Team Star base before the first of either section)) so that wasn’t the easiest start. But beyond that, it wasn’t much of a challenge until Nemona and the Prof battles.

Oh sameee, I went into my playthrough of Scarlet with out knowing anything about the story or the gameplay so I kind of just thought I could break squence and the game would level out. Nope! But once I got back on track it was a bit easier lol.

I didn't run into any significant issues playing SV besides this. Its not really a game I find too easy or too diffcult. Its just about what I'd expect from a Pokemon game.