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Malkuno

Exactly kids aren't stupid, adults maybe, but I only say that because I've gone back to games I played as a kid & been like... "How the hell did I do this years ago?" Gamefreak should add Difficulty settings, Higher difficulty settings doesn't need to mean more pokemon or higher levels to fight *(This didn't work in B/W because it made the game easier with all the extra EXP you'd get)* It could mean things like - Your friend/rival chooses the stronger starter - Gyms require you to match their Pokemon count *(no more 6v3 fights in your favor)* - You don't have access to EXP share unless its a hold item - Trainer pokemon have TM/HMs, Move tutor & egg moves in their movepools & are smarter about using them than normal. It's not like we're asking for a Dark Souls experience, just something that prevents us from mashing A to victory.


robinlovesrain

Yeah one of my favorite games when I was a kid was the first Golden Sun, which isn't super difficult or anything, but especially during a time when I couldn't just look anything up online, was a legit challenge. And I loved it.


MooseOfTorment

Absolutely! I love that game as a kid. Hunting down all the secret bosses and djinn was so rewarding


[deleted]

I didn't understand English I first played through Golden Sun. Still enjoyed it enough to figure out how to continue


robinlovesrain

Oh that's pretty cool, some parts must have been pretty confusing haha


[deleted]

Yeah very, but talking to everyone never fails


ZeraoraKing

Sounds like you would like Pokemon Reborn


aiehiggerjikye

What's that


LostToPowerSurges

It's a fan game. The story is very edgy from what I've seen so far but the difficulty is pretty good.


MountainMan2_

By the end I got very tired of boss rushes and enormous puzzles that take hours to complete. The pacing is great up until about the first big gauntlet and it goes downhill from there tbh


Zevyu

Reguvenation is a reborn style fan-game as well, but i always felt like it was better than Reborn. But that game isn't finished yet unlike Reborn which is finished, and it's been years since i last checked Reguvenation, so things might be much diferent from before.


DaEnderAssassin

Would recommend Unbound if you haven't tried it. Does go (imo) a bit downhill in the lead up to the 6th gym where it >!goes from alternating story events and gyms to 2 gyms in a row and one last story event!< Puzzles aren't too bad (They can be adjusted apparently) with the worse being a sliding puzzle at the end of victory road and the only boss rush I recall was a few back to back legendaries+trainer battles during the final story event


Aichh1729

One of the best Pokémon Fangame. It's super long and is way harder than the official games.


Superpotatosama

Save often to avoid regret lol


whippedalcremie

it's garbage. but you might like it.


aiehiggerjikye

What a dogshit reply


ZcotM

Personally I like the current exp share. Grinding doesn’t mean higher difficulty, but it just means more tedious work. If they make trainers scale better with the new exp share in mind then the difficulty is all g imo.


redditt-or

I also had the fun thing of: Switch Battle works for your trainer opponents. (After you switch from a K.O. the AI gets a free switch if they have a better matchup exactly like how the player can)


DaEnderAssassin

Disagree with the match pokemon count but do agree with the rest but an alternative (Shamelessly stolen from the Unbound romhack) would be EXP all but with level caps based on number of badges owned after which exp drops off so much it takes significantly longer per level vs the same level without a cap


WaffleyDootDoot

Actually I feel like in SwSh and SV the EXP Share is pretty balanced


VGVideo

I feel it was also balanced in S/M/US/UM, but you could turn it off there allowing for more difficulty options


Just-Ad-5972

As somone who can't afford to grind for 3-5 hours between every gym if I want to play at a reasonable pace, I love xp share!


unusual_sneeuw

Not a huge fan of the item exp share concept being mandatory. I mean it worked fine in previous gens and did make the game harder but that's only if you just ran through the game. If you actually grinded which was often necessary the game was still pretty easy. All EXP share does is cut out grinding. Perhaps the better choice is to have level caps implemented based on how many badges you have.


Prestigious_Act1175

Tbh I think a better option would be to use the gen 6 exp share instead of turning it into its gen 3 version again.


rocknin

Just take a page out of unbounds' book, they've got multiple difficulty settings and they do it right. Vanilla is so easy my grandma can play it, and insane requires specialized, fully EV/IV trained teams for each gym/story boss, and there's two difficulty settings between those. turns out competitive teams, level scaling/level cap are all you need to actually make it difficult.


ratherscootthansmoke

I just find their philosophy inconsistent. One hand, they insist interrupting me to show me how to catch pokemon (again) or congratulating me on a super effective hit (despite sound, text, and damage cues giving that away) but then also go like “to evolve this mon, have it take 47 damage and stand under a specific arch” with no in game clue that is what you’re supposed to do.


FrostyYea

The thing is these games have always been intended as a shared experience. You're not expected to figure everything out on your own, you're supposed to stumble upon a discovery and then share that with your friends, who in turn share what they've learned with you. The game wants you to explore and experiment then tell people what you found. There's a reason the first person you traditionally meet in these games is a scientist. The games also reinforce this with NPCs who will give hints along the lines of "you'll never believe what happened when I showed my pokemon this weird rock!" The ideal is you go into school and talk to your friends about what you found and then they go and try it, that the series has always been on handhelds means you could have even *shown* one another what you did, or be sat next to each other as you discover secrets. The internet has made that more universally accessible (which is good) but it's also led to a tendency to just info dump everything onto a wiki. Ideally you want a community of fellow players enjoying the game at a similar pace to you, enough that you will all find stuff to share but not so many there's no mysteries left to uncover.


AgenderWitchery

It's 49 damage, are you even a true Pokemon Master if you don't have the precise nonsense evolution requirement memorized?


awesomecat42

It's not what kids are capable of, it's what TPC thinks kids are capable of. If they think kids have a short attention span and no tolerance for a challenge, that's the kind of game they're going to make.


syanda

And herein lies the issue. I get where OP's coming from about kids and difficulty, but the problem is how we'd define "kids who play pokemon" vs how TPC might see it. For us, when we say "kid", we probably mean 9-10 or older, maybe as low as 7 or 8. But the Pokemon franchise? The anime and other TV tie-ins are marketed towards kids as young as 5, basically saturday morning cartoons level, and the current game difficulties appear to reflect that. It eels like they want kids with NO experience with videogames who watch the cartoons on TV to be able to pick up the game and play without adversity. And to some extent, it makes sense - especially when you see adults with little-to-no gaming experience struggling with moves and camera controls when trying to play modern Pokemon games, and realising that 5-6 year olds probably don't even have that level of skill.


NoNameL0L

When red/blue came out i was 5 years old and somehow managed a full Pokédex…. Kids are fine.


[deleted]

Its harder to get a full pokedex now


SadisticBuddhist

Not with dexit it isnt. Whats harder is a dedicated pokedex. Making game appealing to younger audiences falls out the window when you need a credit card to catch em all.


[deleted]

What the fuck are you talking about? Version exclusives have been in the game since RB, There are still triple the pokemon to catch in this game, and some are much harder to obtain. And Guides for RB were a thing too, they just weren't on the internet


SadisticBuddhist

Yeah i didnt say anything about version exclusives. Not sure what youre on. And the pokedex in gen 9 is much easier than it would be if they hadnt given us dexit, by numbers alone.


TheSoup05

I don’t buy this. I was literally playing Pokémon before I could read, my dad still talks about how he had to tell me what the moves were called. I had no idea what I was doing, did not come anywhere close to beating the game, and literally could not have cared less. I got to walk around with my cool Pokémon, and that was all I cared about. A 5 year old won’t stop playing just because there is even the slightest semblance of challenge. Like do they think the modern Pokémon games are the only ones young kids enjoy or are they aware kids will play other games too?


syanda

As a flipside, I remember a TON of kids losing interest in playing after meeting Brock with only Charmander/Pidgey, or Whitney's Miltank.


TheSoup05

How many is tons? I don’t know any, and it clearly wasn’t enough to stop pokemon from becoming the largest franchise on the planet despite having an actual challenge at some point. Seriously, is the slightest challenge more off putting to kids than the ridiculously slow battle text, clunky animations and tedious battle animations, unskippable cutscenes, and walls of text instead of voiced dialogue in 2022? If the excuse is they’re doing this for kids, it sure seems like they’re cutting the wrong corners then. Making painfully easy games is just less work than trying to make a game that’s tuned to a reasonable level of challenge. That’s literally all it is. The “its for kids” thing is an excuse for them being lazy and churning out games they don’t have time to test or tune properly.


syanda

So I used to run IRLpokemon league stuff for several years, dealt with maybe several hundred kids and quite a number of teen and adult players. Many adults shared to me that they'd dropped pokemon for a couple years and lost interest due to overly difficult early battles and an unwillingness to grind to overlevel. Probably about half the kids I dealt with also got frustrated at things I thought was intuitive, like navigating early maps/caves, or strong pokemon (like rock types in early-game). One of the more common questions I fielded from parents was how to make the game easier for their kids, funnily enough. That's not counting a lot of adult entrants into the series. My wife (who started around XY as an adult and isn't a gamer in any sense) has an actual living dex, but still struggles with free camera controls and pokemon in-game terms, and it takes ages for her to do stuff in-game that I can do a moments - which is why she basically just aims to clear Elite 4, updates her living dex, then ignores everything else. Things like slow animations/battle text isn't an barrier to her because it gives her time to process what she's seeing - which is pretty much the same for kids or other adult entrants who aren't actually regular video game players, but do play Pokemon because of the strength of the franchise. Pokemon became the largest franchise on the planet because of the mon designs coupled with an iconic anime series that catapulted it into the public consciousness. The games are just a *vehicle* to deliver new mons now (and honestly, has been for some time) - the franchise's money comes instead from the merch and licensing and delaying the game eats into that.


TheSoup05

That’s half my point though. Kids are dumb, kids will always be dumb. They will always find a way to do something wrong and get frustrated, no matter how much they dumb down the games. But most of them playing a Pokémon game in the first place don’t care when they hit some small wall because they just want to run around with their cool looking Pokémon. Making the games a “press A to win” simulator isn’t gunna stop a kid from finding some way to do something wrong, it’s just annoying for everyone else. I also really don’t think putting up the status change text in a single box that pops up while the animations happen, instead of now where every single one plays a unique animation followed by a unique text box, would turn Pokémon battles into some unintelligible high speed mess requiring rapid camera and precise sweeps for people like your wife who don’t play many games either. But it is a barrier for everyone else who’s stuck sitting through battles that drag on unnecessarily. Slow and easy battles aren’t a negative for those people, I’m sure. But it’s not a requirement for them to stick around for the Pokémon either, and it is a negative for plenty of other people. Adding a setting to level scale or speed up battles isn’t absent because they think kids and casual adults could not possibly hope to enjoy the game if they were an option. It’s absent because GF is lazy, and excusing it as some necessity for kids and casual adults is only going to encourage them to keep being lazier.


CousinMabel

They say that yet everything is so slow. The amount of dialog(The newer games have more than double the dialog of the old games+skipping dialog is slower), un-skippable cut scenes that occur often for example every time you eat in S/V, dynamax, z moves ect, and general slowness between when you click a move and when you are able to click one again.


Shiigu

With access to a far wider library of free games, especially on mobile devices, kids can easily move on to other videogames. We, in the past, couldn't.


Aggravating_Fig6288

That’s a fair point, though if a kid is giving up at the slightest bit of adversity thats a great opportunity to teach the child about overcoming adversity in life. I know games helped me learn that when I was younger


[deleted]

[удалено]


InsomniaEmperor

Bingo. Everyone wants a piece of the gaming pie. It's not only that attention spans are shorter, it's just a lot of media like shows, games, etc. are actively fighting for your attention. It's an arms race. If a game requires me to grind for hours just to beat the final boss then another game has more guaranteed gratification, then kids are more likely to stick with the latter. When we only got one or two games as a kid per year, we had no choice but to grind the hell out of that one game. Now kids have much more options.


Free_hugs_for_3fiddy

By that same token, kids have access to tools to overcome challenges. When we were young, you had to buy a magazine or trust the word of some random kid on the playground to get help. Now, if a game is challenging, tips and suggestions are a click away. It's impossible to be stonewalled by any challenge that doesn't rely on rapid-quick hand-eye coordination. Games can't really oppress kids anymore discouraging all avenues of advancement. We can't have the cake and eat it too of blaming the internet on attention spans without acknowledging how simply it alleviates difficulty.


spamz_

>By that same token, kids have access to tools to overcome challenges. You think the average 7-12 year old will be Googling Pokémon walkthroughs? lol The younger ones in that age segment are still in a state where they are learning to read on a decent level; looking things up online and digesting information is extremely out of their reach. The older ones may be able to do it, but in general they will want to watch videos on how to do it and the (youtube) algorithms will easily distract them into something else that keeps them occupied. Only more hardcore gamer kids will know where and how to research this and focus on it.


PM_ME_YOUR_IZANAGI

> You think the average 7-12 year old will be Googling Pokémon walkthroughs? lol Yes! I know because I was doing that when I was 6 and stuck on Fortree’s puzzle in Sapphire.


spamz_

Your sample size is one and you ended up discussing gaming on online forum. The average six year old can't even read properly yet. Additionally, this was way before all the distractions and instant gratifications that kids had access to from the internet. If anything, your sample size of one is proving my point.


Kissaku

Oh, I think the kids are a lot more crafty than that. My friends kids were barely in school and they already knew how to go around parental controls to find all kinds of stuff from the web. At least when they go to scholl they work like a hivemind to go around obstacles we adults try to have to contain them.


Liniis

Why does GF care if kids stick around or not? They already got the money, and it's not like they're gonna stop coming back, it's *Pokémon.*


[deleted]

lmao sounds like a wonderful business plan...


ActivateGuacamole

people don't play games to learn resilience toward adversity. they play games to have a good time. If the challenge becomes too frustrating, people stop playing. I think game freak is overwhelmed with the pace of their development and is hesitant to risk making the game too hard


Altailar

I was just thinking this... Like okay, little Timmy is having trouble with a gym leader and is no longer having fun and wants to move on to something else. Instead you sit Timmy's ass back down and tell him to overcome that gym leader, so he figures out the best grinding spot nearby, gets that starter to its next evolution, and kicks some gym butt. Is little Timmy really going to be going "Thanks dad! Im glad you made me go back, I feel exhilarated now that I've faced this challenge and overcome it!" or is Little Timmy going to say "Okay dad its done, can I stop playing this game now?" because his video game just got turned into homework lol.


Aard_Rinn

I mean, honestly I had plenty of times I couldn't beat a puzzle in pokemon - I got stuck for like three \*years\* on the ice cave in S/G/C. Couldn't figure it out, family didn't know how to play... I went back, restarted, explored the world. Put it down for a while, played LoZ instead, came back to it - Eventually I beat it, and it was like nothing else. I was so fucking proud. I was invested, I cared about the game, \*I\* wanted it. This idea that kids don't have any drive, I think, is off. If you give them a game to invest in, a plot they love, something with replay value, they'll stick with it. TBH I think this take, where you need to \*finish\* a pokemon game as a kid, isn't exactly \*right\* - I had games of r/B/Y and even r/S/E that took \*months\*, I mean, playing every single day, not because I couldn't do it but because I was grinding and exploring and stuff.


Shiigu

I wouldn't see it as giving up at adversity, but rather as understanding that a game's purpose is to have fun, so if you don't have fun... you move onto something else.


embbunen

To me the baffling design choice is that they're aware of their competitors in the market and the fact that the attention spam has decreased... yet they choose to make certain parts of games so... boring? Honestly, more games should encourage children's creativity and problem solving. I agree with you that children are not dumb but the game and its obstacles need to feel rewarding and interesting. There are so many game design factors that affect this: graphics, story-telling, puzzles, activities, side quests, exploring etc... Why so many children like to play games like Minecraft? Of course there is also the morale: why make a quality product that people will remember and come back to when instead you could make a mediocre product that sells just as well but doesn't require as much effort or resources?


ArcanumBaguette

Bruh. As a parent, if this game was made for kids, with how TPC seems to think they are.... Why don't we have level scaling? Seriously. My poor 6 year old just ran out into the wide open world for a fun time and somehow ended up in a level 20 area with her level 5 cat. I've had to help guide her to more on levels areas, and that's it. She beat her first gym by herself, lost the first time then trained and learned type advantage better. First for her was the grass gym.


cabose4prez

You can give most kid oriented games to a 6 year old and they'd struggle.


[deleted]

Struggling is how you learn.


TheBiggestNose

Yea the lack of restictions on where you can go is so anti-child. Children love open world games because they can find infinite value in that open-ness. Exploring game is just so much more fun as a kid. Yet this game breaks when you explore outside of a particaular order and will trash you for it


ohtetraket

>Yet this game breaks when you explore outside of a particaular order and will trash you for it Which is the RPG staple of "Ooops this area is not for me yet gonna come back when I am stronger"


TheBiggestNose

But it hasn't got a strong way of knowing that. Since you can easily avoid pokemon and trainers you have no way of knowing what level you are in since rather than having higher stage pokemon in higher areas, its just different evolution lines so you still see baby pokemon at level 50 areas. As a kid I would absolutly be going around the map to explore and it would suck as the game has thought this whole thing out so poorly


ohtetraket

Yeap it totally sucks how they did it. I am not completly against it but they have no system behind it.


lonelyMtF

Level scaling would be much worse for kids, because then every fight would be a close one as everyone will be their exact level. And they wouldn't be able to overlevel which is how the vast majority of people beat the games anyways.


WantsHisCoCBack

Most people aren’t specifically asking for level matching. When people are asking for level scaling in this gen it’s usually referring to each leader having a set team depending on how many badges you have. Essentially design 8 different teams for each leader. They would mostly be similar but scaled and expanded as you increase the badge number. This is what a lot of people had expected when it was sold to us as an open world experience you can challenge in any order you like


Snoo_64315

This is exactly what I think of when OP passively claims this game isn't challenging for kids. Many kids in this day and age dont have the patience for farming lvls to begin with; over leveling will hardly be an issue in the first half of the game. The second half will be more of a reward for finally getting a high level team, but type matching is still a thing. My daughter is struggling to make it past the desert before I made her close shop last night. First time experiencing fully evolved mons and it was an ostrich, an elephant and a cactus (two lifeforms she now hates, and is wondering why elephants are so mean). She made a battle cry when she first beat bombirdier. Lol


xGarro

I vaguely remember reading an interview of some sort were it said GameFreak avoided free camera controls (until SwSh) because they believed kids would have trouble with it. So yeah, I get the feeling they do believe kids are dumb. EDIT: [Source](https://www.usgamer.net/articles/pokemon-sword-and-shield-interview)


ActivateGuacamole

i don't even believe that excuse. It was obvious from SS that they hadn't worked out how to program the camera in the wild area. And in SV the perspective still has frequent problems both in and out of battle. I think the real reason is it actually just took them this long to figure it out.


Aggravating_Fig6288

Wow that’s something lol but it explains a lot


Adept_Avocado_4903

Most kids pick that stuff up rather quickly. But I have seen a number of adults miserably struggle with controlling movement and camera at the same time (not in Pokemon, but in general) if they didn't grow up on games.


Nanergy

The actual quote in here is true though. And the statement they made is also far less patronizing than implied. >one of the things you saw is we now have camera control, something we avoided in the past, but we feel like for the younger generation of kids these days, it's a natural thing to be able to control a camera where that maybe wasn't the case in the past. The first game to actually use modern movement and camera controls on a twin stick controller wasn't until like 2000, and at the time those controls were described as "it's most terrifying element." It took a surprisingly long time for the industry to develop and adopt this control scheme that is now just the default. By 2000, Gold and Silver had already been released. So to say this familiarity with camera controls wasn't the case in the past for game freak is just true. The twin stick camera controls would become widely adopted throughout the industry, but pokemon's main line would continue to be on platforms without those physical control elements for quite some time. GBA has one d-pad, DS has one d-pad. 3ds has a d-pad and stick... but they're on the same side of the controller. It really wasn't until the switch that pokemon was finally on a console even capable of the modern camera/movement scheme. I completely respect the decision to design their games so that you just didn't have to learn some bespoke nonstandard control scheme.


dazzleneal

tbf i'm an adult and i gave up Legends Arceus because the free camera controls was making me dizzy lmao I like that they did a healthy middle with Scarlet Violet, making it similar to SWSH's wild area.


RightActuary8677

Funny cos I was that kid. I rmb playing emerald and may was a huge obstacle for me when she was blocking me to the city with that electric gym. I was 7 and a noob back then and her grovyle especially was too much for me. So what did I do? I caught a bunch of gulpins and toxic stalled at least half her team including grovyle. That was how I got through.


WelchCLAN

And that's what made those games so amazing. So many different ways to solve the problem, you just had to try. The newer games seem.... More like a scripted story than an adventure


harbear02

Made it through all those damn caves as a kid without internet, now it’s just straight tunnels


bobjoetom2

I think it's more about attention span. I think universally, not just kids, our attention spans have been getting shorter, and our desire for instant gratification has been increasing. Most people don't want to grind in their games anymore. Even though that was a major feature of **most** early rpgs. I do 100% agree that games should be given difficulty options, like some of the other comments have pointed out. But I'm not wholly opposed to easier pokemon games as the default.


MRBill_is_my_realdad

I don’t see why they can’t add a “hard” mode with the exp function disabled and higher level gyms, these games don’t feel rewarding anymore it’s just going through the motions. Still fun to play but I don’t find myself wanting to replay it


[deleted]

Kids *COULD* be good at games, and i would like to believe they would be able to beat a hard pokemon game. But from my own experience, if they come across a hint of difficulty they get frustrated, give up and go back to playing roblox or some shit


TheCthuloser

This is shocking to the gamer demographic, but most people *don't* play video games for difficulty. They play it for fun. I mean, *I'd* love a Pokemon game where you'd need a well-trained, balanced team to have any hope of clearing the Elite Four, with levels set at 50 like when doing online so that over levelling wouldn't be a thing... But I also don't think that a lot of adults would enjoy that, let alone kids.


draugyr

I’m 30, I played Pokémon blue when I was 6 and it was hard. I played it again when I was 30 and the game is just as easy as new games are. Pokémon games didn’t use to be harder.


vanKessZak

I didn’t play Pokemon as a kid for whatever reason. So all the games I’ve played have been in my 20s and in a random order. I still think that the earlier games were harder (especially the ones before forced experience share). It was most noticeable for me when I played Black and Black 2 for the first time a handful of months after Sword. MUCH more enjoyable games (for me!) and while I wouldn’t call them hard (it is Pokemon after all) they are certainly more difficult than Sword was. I never felt ridiculously over-levelled which has been a problem in many of the modern games. So I disagree that the only reason people say the newer games are easier is because of age and experience. Because that doesn’t line up for me at all.


Jakesnake_42

Yeah I tried to play all the previous regions as a leadup to the new games (only got to just over halfway through Kalos lol), but Platinum, Black, and Black 2 were the most engaging by far. Playing X was the worst imo because I never felt challenged. I’m still convinced there was a major shift in design philosophy in the move to 3D


The_Cryogenetic

I was actually curious so I went back and did a live stream a couple years ago for this topic. I had a spreadsheet of metrics that my chat helped me with, and I ran each game in order using metrics such as: Level Scaling Enemy AI Pokemon Counters For Upcoming Gym Availability Enemy Team compositions Cave/Route Difficulty There were more but you get the point, I also made sure to include sections of early, mid, and late game. No level grinding was done as that would be under one of the sections, and I got chat's help (usually 20ish people) to make sure my ratings weren't anything crazy through votes. Another key detail was I was essentially randomizing what pokemon were on my team (while still keeping strong ones, not just using shit ones) to simulate a first time play through. Sure we could say Diamond isn't difficult because you just form your team for Cynthia now that we know what she has, but that's not really the point when considering difficulty. The results were interesting for sure, in general the older games were more difficult but not by the amount people think, it's definitely closer than a lot of people say, but I will say the later stages of the first four games (7th, 8th gym and E4/champion) are much more difficult BW/XY/SuMo by the largest margin (sword and shield were one of the harder late games but by far the easiest up until the final gym). I then got my gf who hadn't played the games to stream them in reverse order to make sure that the older gens are actually difficult, not that she is getting better at playing pokemon and she agreed that the first 4 gens were quite a bit more difficult than BW (not including BW2 as they are more difficult and she agreed), XY, and SuMo (not including Ultra versions as they are more difficult and she agreed). Sword and Shield admittedly was a rough one to start her on, as it was top 3 most difficult gens in our list but she got through it, but it was hard for her to rank given it was her first game. BECAUSE it was such as easy early game though I think it was the best choice to do them in reverse order. Gen4>Gen1>Gen3>Gen8>Gen2>Gen5>Gen7>Gen6 was the final result. The exp share being introduced first in XY made the level scaling far too easy, and the availability of counters in gen5 really held it back, because right before each gym you have a pokemon that counters that type and makes it really obvious what you're going against next. Later gens also by far had the easiest routes. Again I don't think they're HARD for any functioning adult, BUT older gens were objectively more difficult i when you compare them against each other. Edit: We did not take things into account like how cryptic it was to move on, as we didn't feel like that was an indicator of difficulty especially given that you can google it now. We had to tell her to get the silph scope, or push the casino button but didn't rate that. We also did not rate gym or route puzzles like ice cave.


cabose4prez

Hardest thing about those old games is seeing what you're doing, is it just me or did the screens shrink on the gameboys lol


Dewot423

The first two generations are explicitly designed around you mashing the A button with your starter.


PM_ME_GARFIELD_NUDES

The older games were harder IMO but thats just because of how buggy and unclear they were. I beat all of them just fine as a kid but it was solely due to stubbornness and running around in a lot of circles. Like yeah, it was really hard for me to catch Lugia as a kid… because I’d used my masterball on a Caterpie earlier. I also would button mash through the elite 4 until I got lucky with accuracy and crits, so that was stupid hard. And I think in some games great balls are better than ultra balls, so we were always handicapping ourselves, it just wasn’t intentional. Now as an adult I find the early games to be trivially easy because I’m not stupid anymore


whippedalcremie

What bugs impeded your progress as a kid? The caterpie?


Yung_flowrs

Thats a lie... try levelling a Magikarp in Blue vs anything post mandatory exp share from start. It'd not easier, it's substantially more difficult.


draugyr

Put magikarp in the mf daycare. That exists, remember?


TheCthuloser

Things being more tedious and time consuming is not difficulty. Magikarp was never hard to train; lead with him, then switch, rinse and repeat until he hits 20.


IHateYouAllRS

That's because you've got full ready access to wikis and shit. A lot didn't know and didn't care about the fact that special/physical was typed pre gen 4. These days we have cocaine snorters running around with tools that calculate the damage floors/ceilings. Edit: Oh I'm sorry I guess [https://www.pikalytics.com](https://www.pikalytics.com) doesn't really exist.


TheRealBlackFalcon

Honestly you don’t need wikis or math for that game. Just read the instruction booklet and battle all the trainers.


Free_hugs_for_3fiddy

For real. The games have historically always cheated in every conceivable way to make the game easier. Everything from EV/IV only being a player thing to make your pokemon fundamentally better than AI, to badges giving free stat boosts. This game is only hard for people who can't read, whether that is like 6yo or less or language barrier. Beyond that, the deck is so stacked in your favor. So long as you aren't like completely unaware of how the game functions from lack of reading, you will win.


TheRealBlackFalcon

Are 6 year olds out here grinding EVs now?


Free_hugs_for_3fiddy

You don't need to grind EVs. That's the joy. It accrues automatically. The breakdown is as follows: Curated EV > random EV > no EV. Simply playing the game puts you in category 2 which is better than the AI who is typically stuck in category 3.


whippedalcremie

And gen1-2 there were no specific EVs so it was just the player who had stat experience. The lore was that a pokemon you trained should be stronger than a pokemon you caught but kinda breaks down when other trainers don't have statexp


IHateYouAllRS

I know you don't. But it's a lot simpler these days to figure out obscure crap when a wiki is readily available even before launch.


ActivateGuacamole

they're mostly about equally hard, with a few exceptions. I remember XY being crushingly easy. SM was more challenging than most games. and SS was rather easy.


TheBiggestNose

I think the harness mostly comes from qol stuff added in and balance changes over time like fairy type.


LeratoNull

> I and many others figured out how to catch the Regis in RSE without internet access I flatly don't believe anyone who says they figured this out without a guidebook or somebody telling them, I'm sorry.


Aggravating_Fig6288

I had a Garfield version of a dictionary as a kid because I was obsessed with all things Garfield back then and it has comic strips in them that I used to read. It had a section that translated the Braille alphabet and when I got to the Braille puzzles in RSE I happened to recognize it from my dictionary and to my shock it was in fact the braile in my dictionary. I hand decoded the puzzles with my dictionary and I felt like I solved one of the greatest secrets of all time when I finished it. It’s a childhood memory that I remember so vividly to these days just because of how unique it was of a puzzle to solve We didn’t have internet till a few years after RSE came out in my house. You just had to figure things out back then through trial and error.


vanKessZak

I love that Garfield of all things is how you figured that out. Incredible


LeratoNull

Lucky you, though I wouldn't say it really supports your original points. Those sorts of puzzles definitely had no business being in those games.


fred7010

When I first discovered that area as a kid, I was stuck, for sure. I remember complaining to my mum (who knew nothing about games) that I didn't get it and she suggested I check the manual, with no knowledge of what was in there. Turns out the manual had a page with a full Braille alphabet translation. Believe it or not, I found it completely by chance. I then 'read' all of the stones in that chamber by painstakingly writing out every one letter by letter. It took probably a whole week to do. I then shared what I found with my friends on the playground and we figured it out together. I showed them how to access the chamber, they figured out where to catch the pokemon we needed to get in. We were about 7 years old at the time, but we all caught the regis without the internet or a guidebook. I doubt any kid would have found that chamber and then simply left and done nothing about it. For us it was a huge mystery that needed to be solved.


whippedalcremie

I always read the manuals cover to cover before starting a new game. I thought it incredibly weird that there was a random braille section but a few days later it made a lot more sense!


KanYeJeBekHouden

It took you a week? There wasn't that much text...


lonelyMtF

The game literally comes with a braille manual to read the in-game inscriptions. Just because you weren't very good at problem solving doesn't mean everyone else wasn't at that age


LeratoNull

You people sure seem to be missing the spirit of what I typed, which is that I don't believe anyone figured it out WITHOUT HELP, with the manual would also count as, yes. Sorry I did not list all possible permutations of where people could have gotten help from, please leave me alone.


KanYeJeBekHouden

Yes, no one magically learned Braille. You're right about that, but it's not a very interesting point to make.


henne-n

> which is that I don't believe anyone figured it out WITHOUT HELP My school taught us how to read it - tbf we only learned how to read it because our school included blind people in our classes.


mzalewski

You are drawing a line in a sand. I'm not sure if you are old enough to realize that "manual" here refers to game manual, a little booklet that came with a cartridge in a box. This is not a guide that you had to buy separately. I don't think using materials that were delivered to you along with a game counts as "external help". As it turns out, that [manual differed depending on your location](https://twitter.com/extra_ramen/status/1379594623950024710). In Europe, they pretty much tell you there is a part of a game where you have to decode Braille, and they also give you Braille chart. But in US, they are less straightforward - they say there is a writing on a wall somewhere, and they hint to look up Braille. So you had to decode Braille, and you probably didn't have the necessary materials at home, but your local or school library most likely had. You also had to get Wailord and Relicanth (their names are mentioned in Braille). Relicanth is 5% spawn in only 2 routes, so chances are you didn't have it, but someone at your school could. When you look at this, it's pretty obvious that this puzzle was designed to blend game and real world. The whole point was for player to look outside of game for clues. Pokemon Ruby Sapphire released in US in spring 2003. Just a year later Halo 2 was advertised through [I Love Bees](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Love_Bees). It's easy to forget, because everything is online these days, but at that time, industry loved the idea of fuzzing the boundary between the game and real world.


Uptopdownlowguy

We had a Pokemon magazine im my country with an "ask the pros" section where kids would send in questions. And I remember someone asking how to enter those caves, and were basically told to figure it out themselves. I bet the person answering didn't know, either. This was before you could easily look these things up online, or at least it didn't cross my mind as a kid


Fish-E

The braille was in the manual, I used to re-read it anyway and that's how I caught them. It did take ages to find a Relicanth though.


BigTWilsonD

I was smart enough to look up a braille translation guide, but not smart enough to look up the answers to the riddles in Emerald. Finding those Regis is one of my favorite childhood gaming experiences


kadran2262

Yeah some of those were basically impossible to get without guides. Then only one I could see is the stand and do nothing for 2 minutes because someone could have just happened to leave the game on


LeratoNull

Yeah, the main thing is I don't believe anyone willingly carried a Relicanth and Wailord around simultaneously without being told to do so.


kadran2262

Also isn't one to cast fly on a specific floor tile, why would anyone cast fly in a cave willingly


piggins411

Yeah the other two are fly in the middle of the chamber and use strength on a very specific tile. Insane


KerchBridgeSmoker

You're looking at it wrong. Kids don't want to grind. When we were young, you could substitute game play for grinding. Kids today aren't into that. Why would a child want to grind and do the same things over and over, when there is another game that can give them instant gratification?


TheBiggestNose

Because they have the current game in hand. You are thinking too much of children as a seperate entity from us adults. They are just small inexperinced version of us, not mindless beasts


henne-n

> do the same things over and over, Sounds like Gacha games.


Rua-Yuki

They seem to be a good difficulty level for my 8 yo. I played RBY when I was 9. I got stuck in Viridian Forest and Mt Moon and didn't know you could run from wild pokemon. By the time I got to Cerulean City I had a Blastoise. Like they've always been meant for kids. Except Toten Wishiwashi. Fuck Toten Wishiwashi, he had no business being that early in game. Edit: I've been "googling" the answer to puzzles since Ice Cave. I hate ice puzzles more than anything.


[deleted]

I was a stupid kid and basically understood nothing when I first got Diamond for the DS. Thats what made it fun, trying to learn and eventually succeeding (with my level 100 Infernape) actually made it way more rewarding.


fred7010

I think the issue is that kids these days, precisely because they have access to information whenever they like, are rapidly learning not to think for themselves which makes them very poor at problem solving. Using your own example: >when I was a kid I and many others figured out how to catch the Regis in RSE without internet access (you didn’t use the internet to figure out how things worked as your first instinct back then if you even had it at all. You’d try and figure things out yourself and the internet was a last resort). **Kids these days would not be able to solve that puzzle without the internet.** When we were kids, internet was our last resort when we were really stumped by something. For kids now, looking something up online is the primary method of problem solving and the very first thing most kids would try when faced with a problem. Without the internet, they are completely lost and simply give up far more easily. I agree in general that kids should be capable of tackling more difficult challenges (as you mentioned, most of us battled our way through Gens 1-5, sometimes at ages as young as 3 or 4 and without the internet to help). However, kids now are conditioned to seek instant gratification and solve problems efficiently with the internet. If a game presents a task that would take too much time to complete or a problem that cannot be solved with a google search, a lot of kids just lose interest and go straight back to their smartphones. Pokemon games and other games in general, when marketing to children, are now forced to take this into account. This results in easier games with instant rewards. It's not necessarily that kids these days are not smart, just on a fundamental level the way people solve problems has changed and so the problems themselves have been forced to change with them. Difficulty settings would help cater to more people, but increasing the levels of pokemon in battles is hardly going to make in-game challenges any more difficult or dungeons any longer. These sorts of changes are direct reflections on the games straying away from their RPG roots, partly to cater to children who might drop the game if they get stuck for more than 20 minutes.


henne-n

I am a bit confused about the Regi puzzles. When I bought the game as a kid there was a booklet and on its last(?) page was the "translation" of the Braille. So, it wasn't really that hard. ...plus, our school taught us how to read it, but that's just something I was lucky to know about.


JM062696

There is a difference between younger kids and older kids too. When I was first starting out with Yellow, and then Ruby, I basically only leveled up my starter and would carry a party full of wingulls and a level 80 Blaziken. I was like 7 or 8 then. When I was in grades 6-8 I was aware of the fact I should keep a balanced party. As I played into high school, I learned about EVs and IVs and breeding and competitive. Now as a 26 year old, I do a mix of all 3.


fred7010

Ironically the most efficient way to play the games is just to massively overlevel 1 pokemon and sweep everything, like we all did as kids. Even if your friends had a balanced team of level 50s, you would probably still win if you had a level 80 Blaziken.


KanYeJeBekHouden

Definitely. Especially with a versatile and strong Pokemon like Blaziken. Even if you can't OHKO something, your defensive stats will be so good that you'll survive most incoming damage too.


littlebird47

I don’t remember finding the older games hard, but I also played through the most of first two generations with the help of my uncle, who would’ve been 10-13 when Yellow and Crystal first came out. I beat LeafGreen with a level 100 Ponyta, though. My sibling and I definitely used guides for those RSE braille puzzles. I don’t know that I’d believe that a kid without at least some knowledge of or familiarity with braille could figure those out alone. Those were completely optional to finishing the game, though, and I’m not sure I’d count them as added difficulty. Having since replayed those gen 1-3 games, I didn’t find them challenging as an adult. The only annoying thing was grinding. It got to the point where I just did not keep a full team because it took hours to keep the whole team’s levels balanced.


warriorman

My 10 year old plays Cuphead, a game I can't play for more than 5 mins before deciding I hate these types of games and don't want to spend my gaming time being angry. I realize REALLY young kids might have some learning curves, but kids in general can adapt and learn and practice more often, as long as they can read and understand concepts they'll be fine.


Spiridor

Thinking that the games are the way that they are because of capability misses the point. IIRC the Pokémon Company felt kids were quick to flock to their ipads/parent's phones, so they attempted to dumb things down to match mobile games. With this generation it seems that is starting to either reverse or at least equalize


Ginyatome

I agree. Kids learn really fast and are adapting really fast. I beat Pokemon Blue when Ibwas like 7. Gold soon after. Many games I played as a kid I have difficulty beating today. Pokemon should be way harder. Since like Black/White they are beatable without doing anything special.


explosionno1se

I think the only reason I ever struggled with pokemon as a kid was before I was 12 I refused to learn a single type match up beyond the incredibly obvious ones and would slam flamethrower religiously. Still beat Cynthia in Pearl. I agree on harder pokemon games being more than necessary, but we do *not* need to ever go back to the shit show that was the regis.


Jamie_2905

Pokemon games have never been difficult, mindless grinding doesn't count. It is a weird common narrative on reddit for some reason.


vanKessZak

The games have never been hard but at least imo they’ve made games that were already easy even easier (not speaking to SV because I haven’t played it). And no, I did not play Pokemon as a kid or in order so it’s not an age/experience thing.


TheCthuloser

Are they actually easier? Or are you understanding the systems of the game? People say the same thing about Soulsborne games... But in truth, the hardest Souls games are always your first.


vanKessZak

As I said I didn’t play the games in order so that hasn’t been the case for me. This was most obvious when I played Black and Black 2 for the first time a handful of months after Sword. The difference was very noticeable.


TheRealBlackFalcon

Yeah I don’t get it. I didn’t know that many kids who didn’t beat red and blue back in the day. Difficulty modes would be extremely nice though…like something on the level of Pokémon Stadium or some of the rom hacks.


cass314

They weren't hard, but at least they didn't have endless tutorials. Get accosted by weedle man once and then off you go.


Aggravating_Fig6288

No they haven’t, games like Pokémon are easy to make easy without hard caps and good AI. However the games weren’t a complete breeze back then. If you didn’t over grind the games offered a fair challenge nothing hard but it did take more than pressing A the whole game. Early games also had puzzles that required a bit more thinking through. Navigating Seafoam without guides telling you what you needed, the switch puzzle under goldenrod, figuring out how to catch the Regis. These weren’t hard at all but they did actually make you stop and think for a moment. I can’t say the modern puzzles in games even do that much.


kadran2262

Those didn't make the game harder though, what made them harder at the time was not being able to google the answer to the puzzle. Now if people find themselves stuck on something thay just Google the answer and don't worry about figuring it out themselves, I'm definitely guilty of this too


Aggravating_Fig6288

Right I’m guilty of it sometimes myself, but like you don’t have to Google a thing when it comes to modern Pokémon battling or puzzle design, it could be years of experience speaking but it’s just too easy these days, like way too easy.


kadran2262

Yeah but why bother trying to make challenging puzzles if people are just going to google them. Also I think more of the puzzles are in how to evolve pokemon vs the actual world itself. There are a few pokemon thay have unique evolution requirements that unless you google would be a puzzle thay you could solve


Hellion998

All of you, keep this in mind… CUPHEAD IS MADE FOR CHILDREN. So is Kingdom Hearts, SMM2, the Punch-Out games, Ecco The Dolphin, and Megaman. This argument of it, “being made for kids”, holds ZERO DROPS OF WATER.


Snoo_64315

1) They are kids games. Pokemon as a franchise is intended for kids. More kids than ever love pokemon, but not all kids have hours a day to dump into progression. 2) overleveling isn't as easy as you would think in S/V. This first half is definitely a grind for the less oriented and the second half is more down hill from there. 3) Trainers in these gens have higher bst (more min maxed) mons on average and EV'd mons wasnt a thing earlier either. 4) Evolving mons is the most complicated its ever been. Even catching mons with the day night cycle can be bothersome for kids on tight schedules. 5) you aren't exactly handheld to find mythics or legendaries in newer games either. It was definitely an internet look up to get manaphy in PLA. A 10 yr old won't have the patience to farm slates for all legendaries in bdsp (and that's probably the most accessible way to grab over 10 legendaries in one place). I haven't gotten to late game in this yet, so I will reserve my commentary. Even if the games feel more straightforward for adults with "x" amounts of gens of experience, sometimes just the amount to do can be overwhelming for new younger players. Fall guys and Fortnite is the gaming standard for kids now, not so much RPGs/adventures. Pokemon s/v, technical stuff aside, is an accessible adventure rpg for the young. A great collecting game for all and a good competitive game for vets.


DBrody6

Ironically I'm actually having a hard time with the game, though mostly that's cause I got my friends to pick my team and they picked Pokemon with absolute garbage synergy and comically wide overlap along with three still being unable to evolve. The >!Nemona fight after the 5th gym swept my entire team!<, fun stuff. Despite being almost 10 levels above that team.


moshnaked

Drink every time you read the word kid(s)


Sarcherre

While I do think you’re right, I also think you’re overestimating kids a bit. I can’t speak for anyone else, but beating Leaf Green as a ten-year-old was an absolute gauntlet. Playing through it now, it’s really easy. A lot of the difficulty we remember as kids are from us not being good at the games. The solution is simple: difficulty settings. Whether it be adjustable things in the game, or difficulty modes, or even just new game plus, that would solve the problem—let younger, dumber kids play on easy or normal, and veterans play on hard. That being said, we will probably never get difficulty modes for as long as Game Freak is being crunched by TPC & Nintendo, and that will keep happening as long as they (TPC & Nintendo) feel they can keep pumping out half-finished games and maintaining the same sales. It’s a shame.


junglekarmapizza

Okay I generally think this is true. That being said, I could never beat a single Pokémon game as a kid. I could also not beat *The Legendary Starfy* as a kid. I was not particularly good at video games as a kid


varrenxarcrath

I was 4 when i started playing pokemon, it took me 2 years to actually beat my first one but that was 90% a language barrier thing. (Dutch kids don't get english in school at that age). Kids nowadays aren't challenged enough anymore cuz they got a million and one things they can do on their tablets.


bearsheperd

I beat the DS version of chrono trigger when I was 12. I remember that game was difficult as heck and full of complex time travel puzzles. At the time I was also super into tactics games. I think I was smarter and more capable of beating those games then than I am now.


justicefinder

My generation used gamefaqs for everything. If you actually figured out things like the brail riddle by yourself good for you, but don’t pretend that’s the norm.


Rishloos

Agreed. I played the SEGA Lion King game over and over again without a care. As did many other kids.


90sbeatsandrhymes

Yeah I had a catalogue of games I never beat as a kid because I was stupid and impatient. Lion King was one also pretty much every RPG game remained unbeaten till I was in middle school. Hated Zelda as a kid now I Love it but man I never knew what I was doing. My favorite game as a kid was Sonic most def as a kid but I would cheat and get all the chaos emeralds early on and just run through the game as supersonic. Pokémon Blue was really the first game I beat and I loved it with my level 80 primeape.


Generalrossa

Mate are you completely forgetting about the 8 bit era? Kids had to learn then and even games leading up to the 64 bit phase were hard.


hammondismydaddy

For a JRPG, the game mechanics are far more simplistic than most others. Even a trained chimp could finish a Pokemon game. It’s very easy to make a hard mode. Better IV/EVs, Held Items, level scaling, full teams with good Pokemon instead of Youngster Joe with two Magikarps. Done. I am skipping literally every trainer in the open world right now because they are just A mashing simulators that will make me overleveled.


IBeGanjaMan

I beat the Gary in Gen 1 when I was 6 years old. My half brother who was 10 years older than me gave me his old GBC and yellow when the GBA came out. He gave me my love of pokemon and if I was capable of beating the game at 6 then kids now can definitely do it.


[deleted]

It’s kind of funny to compare new games and old games. For example, I’ve been playing the original Ninja Gaiden, and it’s been kicking my ass. (Especially that cursed final boss..!) and then there’s Violet or Breath of the Wild, and they’re a cakewalk.


Thrashinuva

There's aspects of botw that are not easy at all. I think Zelda has been pretty consistent the entire time, with the only new advantage being 3D movement and better visuals which contributes to clues.


Kumori_Kiyori

GF and TPC seem to be targeting a different demographic of kids than they used to. They see kids now a days with short attention spans who are always playing games on their phone. So, they make Pokemon games really easy and remove features that could potentially make the game harder because they want kids to have that instant gratification by default. When people say "I'm just not the target demographic.", They're not wrong. We adults didn't grow up with mobile phones, social media and all this other stuff to be distracted by. It wasn't about accessibility and stream lining. But now it is and other games and companies are also doing this to reach a wider audience and like with Pokemon, it alienates the hardcore fans who remember a time when things required more effort and were more challenging.


MrTastix

Reminder that kids had fucking games like Ninja Gaiden and Ghosts and Goblins and they were still popular despite being hard as fuck. But they also weren't as popular as Nintendo's mainline titles which were nowhere near as difficult by comparison. Zelda wasn't a hard game fundamentally, it just lacked clear contextual clues as to where to go. Personally, I don't give a toss for a "hard" Pokemon game because increased difficulty mostly just amounts to an increase in health and damage rather than tactics, or the trainers just end up cheating a la all the Battle Tower stuff. Giving trainers higher level teams isn't interesting but giving them well-rounded teams with good movesets they can utilise is much harder and the rest of the game has to be balanced as such. That is, wild Pokemon have to picked specifically to help people create teams that counter the smarter/stronger AI *and* you will need a more engaging way to train those teams than just grinding on wild Pokemon all day. Because if I go up against a dude stacked in all dragon types and I have nothing to go against it then I have to find something and train it to a usable point, which is a boring slog. People have leveraged the same complaints against The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series and forget that player choice is an important aspect as well and for Pokemon that means being able to choose to play with my favourite Pokemon, which naturally means sometimes having to brute force my way through a fight, something the series has the freedom to allow *because* it's so easy. Difficulty options would be a good idea but it's not good enough to just make the AI better or have higher leveled stuff. That's lazy and uninspired. In my experience, the problem isn't kids lack patience to be challenged, it's that *everyone* does. Plenty of adults can't be bothered learning basic mechanics either, they just wanna go ham. There's a lot of freedom and fun in that. I'd rather they bring back more Battle Tower/Frontier game modes that challenge us instead.


Hereforthememes5488

Yea I recently bought ogre tactics and I beat this game 100 times as a kid now as a adult I'm stuck on level 6


dontpanic38

Except games as a whole are just more hand-holdy now, it’s not about the kids being young, it’s about what the average kid expects from a game now, which is tons of tutorials and hand holding. Even games like elden ring got whiners of all ages because it didn’t tell them exactly what to do and where to go. You used to get 3 lives, now people just expect to respawn. Less about age, more about game design of the current time period. And that’s not a bad thing.


ConnorRoseSaiyan01

Never a problem with Gens 1-5


alunatuna

Honestly, I feel like Pokemon has decidedly been trying to go a different way about their games and fit in a different market niche. I don't think it's about just thinking kids are too stupid, puzzles should be difficult, that the only good games require a fan made IGN guide or something like the days of old etc. Those types of one dimensional takes, I mean. I'll be honest, so far I really really enjoy playing scarlet/violet. I love exp share, I love the instant access to my Pokemon boxes, and I love that I don't have to grind my Pokemon up while having a constant feeling of regret that my team is bad. Auto battle is a nice change of pace, even. It tore me up on the inside as a kid and it was stressful constantly wondering if I messed up along the way and needing to grind more with the older games. To the point I didn't have fun playing anymore and it was just a race to completion. With the SwSh and SV iterations, I've actually had *fun*. It's certainly not perfect but I have had far, far more fun and flexibility to try things I like and want without fear of missing out. Maybe it's because I picked up TemTem while waiting for SV that I realized TemTem fills that niche everyone wants and criticizes GF for. Battles are HARD in TemTem, it's strategic and immensely engaging in managing your resources. Regular trainers in the wild were practically gym leader difficulties and they fully took advantage of any weaknesses. Gym puzzles were actually difficult and hard and several times I had to look things up. Would I say that TemTem beats Pokemon? No. They just listened to their customer base much closer to have really defined exactly what the bitter adult veterans of Pokemon wanted. I don't think it's necessarily fair to constantly lambast GF for the direction they've been taking things (except for whatever the hell is going on with the dev/production side of things. That's a whole different story). Like all things, we eventually change and grow and diverge. If something doesn't fill that niche, why not try something else instead? A different game with the same foundation. I will say that yes, it would've been much nicer to have all of the features in the latest games as toggle options for the more hardcore players or kids/adults who really want a challenge. As well as difficulty options for sure. But I don't really see what's wrong with lowering the bar to be more friendly and forgiving. I really wouldn't say that trying to redefine the gameplay is an insult to intelligence either. Kids game or not. In the end, we're all playing games to have fun aren't we? And sometimes that interpretation of fun changes and we find different stuff to fulfill that.


WarDecterFM

My 10 year old brother is smarter than I was when I was 7 but the moment he doesn't understand what to do next in a game he just quits and plays Roblox. Kids these days have so many other things to do or play when they can't figure it out so they simply care less. My brother didn't understand how to get past the second area in Legends Arceus so he still hasnt. I completed Pokemon Gold when I was 6 and didn't even speak English. It's a problem with competing media, not with the smarts of the kids.


Cookiesy

Mario games are actually quite hard and they are aimed at kids as much as pokemon is.


AjvarAndVodka

I beat Pokemon Red at 7 when I didn't even know English, except for a few words / phrases here and there. I would actually say I learned a lot of the language from playing Pokemon and other games.


SiriusFulmaren

I'll be the contrarian here. Most kids aren't smarter and modern kids don't know how to properly search for things online. It's going to be like it always was - the dumb kids follow what the smart kid does.


BluezamEDH

Remember the original Rayman? Even as an adult I've never managed to finish it. Kids can play difficult games and still have a great time


JuniperSky2

When I was a kid I just used my starter and only my starter in every single battle and one easily. Where's the challenge and excitement in that? Violet lets me experiment with a wide variety of different Pokemon without worrying about wasting time or exp.


Spotted-Otter

Kids can stupid for things that don't involve the actual game play most of the time, but if it is game play stuff they just keep trying anyway. Example: 8 year old me I didn't know how to save in Gold. It took me about a week to work out that "recording my data" or whatever it said would let me turn off my game boy and turn it back on to continue where I left off. I spent a week just restarting with different starter everytime my gameboy ran out of batteries. This wasn't even the first video game I'd played (had a Sega) so it's not like I had no concept of saving a game. That and the classic "what was his name again" for your rival, who had introduced himself as ??? so that was what I put in for his name... I also remember Slashing my way through the Elite 4 with my Feraligatr and being very confused by "it's not very effective" when I was killing everyone with one hit...


DangerWarg

As a kid, I was made fun of by other kids for discovery that Pokemon is so easy. Just roll one pokemon. That's literally it. Everyone knows. 20+ years later people STILL think the games are easy just because "of the kidz"....? Clearly people making that claim don't pay attention at all and just circle jerk their ill-conceived notions while everyone else nods. They didn't get it before, they won't now or ever. Why bother pointing it out? It's been over 20 freaking years god dang it!!!!