1046 replies to this topic

[SpacemanDan]

There is a certain level of reasonableness for post game difficulty. For example, even though I was underleveled, Kanto in HG and the island who's name I forget in Platinum were beatable (tough, but beatable). But the difficulty jump here is just unreasonable. It's insanely difficult, and it's not fair to force that onto people.

I had a big juicy post on the matter of post game content, but Firefox crashed and I lost it.

Suffice to say, I've always believed that the developers should be able to go nuts with difficulty once the game's over and you're dealing with extra stuff. I find it makes it more fun and so much more satisfying when you finally beat then. (Beating Baal in Disgaea for the first time...Was that ever something else. XD) I wouldn't complain if it were borderline impossible because I know I don't need to do it; it's just fun. (And now Dissidia comes to mind, with characters higher than what you can actually get in the game. O_o)

[AgentLym]

There is a certain level of reasonableness for post game difficulty. For example, even though I was underleveled, Kanto in HG and the island who's name I forget in Platinum were beatable (tough, but beatable). But the difficulty jump here is just unreasonable. It's insanely difficult, and it's not fair to force that onto people.

I wouldn't call it "forcing." You want it to be boringly easy for 95% of people who play normally, and just the right toughness for the other 5%? I think what they did there was great-- I'm all for extra challenge after the main challenge is over. But, I mean, it's not too bad: these are mostly high-leveled, non-EV trained, pre-evos. I thought they were on par with, if not easier, than the Elite Four.

Since, it seems to me, that all the "scripted" battles, like rivals, gym leaders, and end-game battles, have somewhat smarter AI than normal battles. I've had Audinos use Heal Pulse over and over, after using Follow Me over and over, but don't expect that kind of thing to happen in the Elite Four!

Also, I thought the postgame in Platinum and SS to be almost too easy. Really, every single gym leader in Kanto had pokes at the same 50-55 level mark. Once you have a team that strong, there's no losing. I played through the entire post-game in SS and I don't think my Pokemon hit the level 55 mark. Actually, my team from Johto is around level 50-53, and I have all the badges, so I assume that's as high as I got. However, in White, my Pokemon have hit level 60 to 65, with exceptions almost to level 70, without any hard grinding (just plenty of exploring). I think that's awesome, and how high my Pokemon should be by the end of a country-wide tour!

Edited by AgentLym, 26 March 2011 - 11:04 PM.

[Dawnlight]

My team is now in the Lv. 75 Range. It's VERY easy to grind. I don't know why people are complaining about the post game Pokemon Levels. If you need more experience, remember you can batter Cheron once per day in Victory Road, you can battle random trainers every day in the Sports Stadium, battle the mystery trainer in the beach town, and you can battle Bianca every Saturday and Sunday. Once your party is at least Lv. 70, the Elite Four Round 2 is the ultimate way to Level Grind.

[Mitchfork]

Whelp, I done and gone beat the seventh gym.

Trainer
Tchock
Pokemans:

Separator, the Level 42 Samurott
15 Step, the Level 43 Darmanitan
Amnesiac, the Level 42 Archeops
Reckoner, the Level 42 Reuniclus
Optimistic, the Level 41 Fraxure
Airbag, the Level 44 Cobalion

My Darmanitan was able to outspeed and OHKO everything in the seventh gym. What a legend!

The new guys, Fraxure and Cobalion, have been very good as well. I only expect Cobalion to improve in usefulness; after seeing so many people complain about the Hydreigon, I just had to pick it up. It double-resists Dark and has normal resistance to Dragon, so with its higher speed I don't see it losing in a one-on-one. Fraxure is reliable, but doesn't stand out yet. Once it evolves, we'll see...

I still want to pick up a Mienshao, but I don't know what I'd get rid of on this team.

EDIT 2: I don't know how everybody feels about using legends during the main game. Personally, ever since Gen. IV (I didn't play R/S/E) I've adopted the "no ubers" rule for my single-player experience. Now, there are no ubers lists yet for B/W, but I feel that based on the performance of similar trios in the past (R/B/Y birds, G/S/C dogs, etc.) and his stats (Cobalion has a 580 total, less than Hydreigon (a non-legendary)) he's not likely to be put into the uber tier. I don't feel cheap by using him.

1. Hydreigon (we are definatley going to see this one being spammed in competitive if it isn't listed as an Uber).

I don't see it being any more significantly deadly than, say, Salamence or Dragonite. Hydreigon is powerful and has great all-around stats, but so do a lot of OU Pokemon. It also doesn't benefit from the one-two punch of Dragon Dance, because it's a specially-based Pokemon. Plus, it carries weaknesses to both Ice and Fighting, two very common attacking types in the metagame. That's not saying that he can't be very good (just look at Tyranitar, who carries a double weakness to Fighting) but it doesn't seem like an uber to me.

Also keep in mind that it just barely trails Salamence in speed (98 vs. 100 base). This may not seem significant, but in competitive play this is huge because Salamence is almost always maxed out in Speed (as I suspect Hydreigon will be). A Jolly max speed Salamence will be able to keep any non-scarfed Hydreigon in check.

EDIT: ALSO keep in mind that because of it's Special Attack focus, it'll be relying on Draco Meteor to match/exceed the damage that other Dragons do with Outrage. And while Draco Meteor is more powerful, it suffers a slight accuracy drop (which can be infuriating) and lowers the users Special Attack two stages upon use (laymans terms: you've just halved your Special Attack); you pretty much have to switch out at that point unless you have some physical backup moves, meaning that Hydreigon will have a comparatively harder job sweeping than it's other Dragon brethren.

[Koh]

Ebola, you better not beat the 8th Gym before me 8D!

Still training mah Cubchoo; I've seen that some people have beaten the gym without super-effectivity, but I don't want to risk it; I haven't whited out yet, and I don't plan to start now.

[Mitchfork]

Ebola, you better not beat the 8th Gym before me 8D!

Oops, I accidentally the whole storyline.

After the final battle:
Trainer
Tchock
Pokermounds

Separator, the Level50 Samurott
15 Step, the Level 50 Darmanitan
Amnesiac, the Level 51 Archeops
Reckoner, the Level 49 Reuniclus
Optimistic, the Level 50 Haxorus
Airbag, the Level 51 Cobalion

Yep, beat everything, got my version legend, etc. The 8th gym was a complete pushover between strong attacks from Archeops and Coablion, plus my over-leveled Haxorus as a panic button. I really liked this game's take on the Elite Four (both order and typing), but with each of them having only 4 'mons I felt that they were a little bit easy. The only one that I had trouble with was the Dark member. Krookodile outsped most everything on my team and packed Earthquake, which shut Cobalion down. However, it still wasn't able to deal with Samurott and Haxorus. The others were pretty easy.

Spoiler

N's Castle was a great way of ending the game in a new way. Even though I really disliked some of the execution (seriously I was getting pretty tired of "nobody's opinion is better blah blah blah accept others") but it was new and satisfying to have the legendaries so prominent in the final scenes.

I caught Zekrom with a little difficulty, and didn't use it at all. I was able to immediately take Reshiram down into the yellow with Archeops' Rock Slide, but his ability meant that I couldn't finish it after taking damage. I switched into Darmanitan on the faint and took it out with Dig. Easy peasy. The rest of his team wasn't a significant threat.

Ghestis' surprised me with Hydreigon. I knew he'd use it, but I really didn't expect Fire Blast, and it wrecked Cobalion (my supposed counter). However, I was still able to take it out; both my Reuniclus and Samurott could take a hit each and they both packed Fighting moves (Focus Blast and Revenge) and their combined attacks took it out. Overall, not too bad.

Looking forward to the post-game and getting a more competitive team together. While I enjoyed playing through the game with these guys, I'm afraid I'll need to try out some of the other new Pokemon (Volcarona, anyone? ).

[Orithan]

I was one of those people who beat the eigth gym without any Ice or Dragon types, but my Stoutland had Ice Fang .

Just started using the Pokeshifter to grab my Uber party from Diamond in case I need any sweeping of Isshu after I've beaten up all of the regular trainers with my normal party and I started planning to eventualy replace Simisear with Volcarona.

My Uber party from Diamond for anyone who wants to challenge it (please no complaining about the use of Ubers, since it isn't my standard party):

Articuno. Level 100,

Palkia. Level 100,

Giratina. Level 100,

Dialga. Level 100,

Empoleon. Level 100,

Mewtwo. Level 100,

If you wish to battle this party; request through PM.

[Twilight-Prince]

Anyone seen/caught a shiny Pokemon on your Black or White version yet?

As it may be apparent by my new avatar, I just found and caught a shiny Solrock at Giant Chasm. Whee~!

[Koh]

I just beat the 8th gym, and WOW, that place was a total pushover. Beartic ftw! Didn't take a SINGLE HIT.

[Twilight-Prince]

Okay, seriously, I need to borrow someone's Tornadus so I can catch Landorus. If I do, I have the entire Unova Pokedex completed!

Also, I tried out the Wi-Fi Train in the Battle Subway. It's not the fact that every Trainer's team on there is probably EV-trained and have perfect IV's in all the right places...What bothers me so much is that EVERYONE uses the same Pokemon. Garchomp, Haxorus, Gyarados...they're freaking EVERYWHERE.

Why can't people use different Pokemon? =__=

Edited by Twilight-Prince, 30 March 2011 - 07:39 PM.

[SpacemanDan]

Anyone seen/caught a shiny Pokemon on your Black or White version yet?

As it may be apparent by my new avatar, I just found and caught a shiny Solrock at Giant Chasm. Whee~!

I've never seen a shiny aside from the red Gyrados. D:


So I've beat the fourth gym now and have an Espeon. Very happy indeed. Definitely an enjoyable game, but does it open up later? I'm finding it unusually linear, so I was hoping for a little more openness later.

[Russ]

Definitely an enjoyable game, but does it open up later? I'm finding it unusually linear, so I was hoping for a little more openness later.

Not until you beat the Elite Four, sadly. That's definitely my biggest complaint about the game. I miss the non-linearity of the past regions.

[Orithan]

I didn't like the linearity either, although you could go off the beaten track to catch some of the legendaries like Coblaion at some points, but that was about it through the main story.

I caught a Lv. 70 Volcarona in the bottom of Relic Castle a couple of days ago, man that was tough! Simisear was the only one that could stand it's Big Buzz and I needed Samurott to weaken that stupid thing. That thing has an absurd special attack stat, combined with a nature that boosts it. In fact, it has a higher base SP. attack than Hydregion! Good thing it's weaknesses to rock, flying and water ought to balance it out.

Now that I've got a Volcarona, I plan to breed it with a pokemon with a Modest nature, EV train the resulting Larvesta on Speed and SP. attack, replace Simisear with it when it evolves, and then arm it with Heat Wave, Big Buzz, Hurricane and Firey Dance when it gets to Lv. 100.

Can't remeber what else I did between within this space of time, but I certainly left the Challenge Cave early to explore further afield.

[Zemious]

Oops, I accidentally the whole storyline.

After the final battle:
Trainer
Tchock
Pokermounds

Separator, the Level50 Samurott
15 Step, the Level 50 Darmanitan
Amnesiac, the Level 51 Archeops
Reckoner, the Level 49 Reuniclus
Optimistic, the Level 50 Haxorus
Airbag, the Level 51 Cobalion

Yep, beat everything, got my version legend, etc. The 8th gym was a complete pushover between strong attacks from Archeops and Coablion, plus my over-leveled Haxorus as a panic button. I really liked this game's take on the Elite Four (both order and typing), but with each of them having only 4 'mons I felt that they were a little bit easy. The only one that I had trouble with was the Dark member. Krookodile outsped most everything on my team and packed Earthquake, which shut Cobalion down. However, it still wasn't able to deal with Samurott and Haxorus. The others were pretty easy.

Spoiler

N's Castle was a great way of ending the game in a new way. Even though I really disliked some of the execution (seriously I was getting pretty tired of "nobody's opinion is better blah blah blah accept others") but it was new and satisfying to have the legendaries so prominent in the final scenes.

I caught Zekrom with a little difficulty, and didn't use it at all. I was able to immediately take Reshiram down into the yellow with Archeops' Rock Slide, but his ability meant that I couldn't finish it after taking damage. I switched into Darmanitan on the faint and took it out with Dig. Easy peasy. The rest of his team wasn't a significant threat.

Ghestis' surprised me with Hydreigon. I knew he'd use it, but I really didn't expect Fire Blast, and it wrecked Cobalion (my supposed counter). However, I was still able to take it out; both my Reuniclus and Samurott could take a hit each and they both packed Fighting moves (Focus Blast and Revenge) and their combined attacks took it out. Overall, not too bad.

Looking forward to the post-game and getting a more competitive team together. While I enjoyed playing through the game with these guys, I'm afraid I'll need to try out some of the other new Pokemon (Volcarona, anyone? ).

Swellow with Facade Toxic Orb could/would beat them all. :3
Guts and S.T.A.B ftw.

[Mitchfork]

Swellow with Facade Toxic Orb could/would beat them all. :3
Guts and S.T.A.B ftw.

This isn't a competitive team. Honestly out of the above list, only Darmanitan/Reuniclus are really competitive material.

EDIT: Actually, Haxorus could also be competitive, but generally I think Salamence is still going to be the go-to Dragon type.

Also, Reuniclus, if given my ideal EV spread (252 HP, 252 DEF, 4 SPA), would survive Facade + Stealth Rocks (barring a crit) and be able to OHKO max attack Swellow due to its low Special Defense. Also keep in mind that Toxic Orb doesn't kick until the end of Swellow's first turn; good luck surviving that in this metagame with 50/50 defenses and 60 HP, especially when you factor in 25% Stealth Rock damage. Protect will do the trick, but if your opponent predicts then they get a free switch-in to whatever they have to counter or a free set-up turn.

Cobalion also resists Facade, and would probably survive even with 0 DEF/HP. However, I don't really know how competitive Cobalion will end up being.

EDIT: Cobalion would survive Facade with no defense/HP investments.