Gen 6 XY difficulty - your thoughts?

It was honestly really easy. With the knowledge I have today I can clear it pretty quickly. Back then I didn’t know anything about Pokémon so it was a bit more challenging but even then I trucked through it.

X and Y was a neat game and I liked it but the skill curling wasn’t too high for the main story mode

 

I would honestly be lying if I said I thought any recent Pokémon games were a challenge. With seven generations of experience under my belt...

The most challenge in a standard Pokémon game comes from RNG-based activities post-game, like filling up the Pokédex and breeding competitive battlers. Generations VI and VII all suffer the same issue in that healing is just too common. Especially in VI and VII because the interact-directly-with-your-Pokémon feature offers in-battle benefits like status effect negation, free critical hits, and survival of otherwise lethal damage. And once the battle is done and over with, just head into the interaction feature and cure any remaining status effects for free. Game Freak took the "this game is for kids" idea and pushed it to the nth degree to the point where the very idea of an arduous stretch of your journey now has a healer in the middle of it. You no longer need to plan ahead, or remotely worry about how much cash you have on-hand. EXP is super easy to get, thanks to the EXP Share changes. TMs no longer require any thought beyond applying them. Heck, in generation VII you don't even have to worry about HMs taking up precious move slots because of the Ride Pager system.

I will never turn my back on the franchise, but Game Freak needs to add a little something to replace all that they have taken and simplified for new players.

 

XY were the easiest Pokémon games, I have ever played. With the Exp. Share, your team is Always overleveled. I OHKOed almost everything in this game.

 

Same as several others have said- the EXP Share broke X/Y. I feel that S/M/US/UM did adjust the EXP Share somewhat (as I did find some difficulty in those games and did have to do some grinding at points), but X/Y (being the first game to bring in these changes) was extremely broken.
The region's history/game's main story had potential, and I liked the game, but there was so little going on main story/post game that I forget a ton of stuff about the region. Pokémon from Kalos I tend to remember as being from Unova or Alola, which I haven't done since Jhoto- where I used to remember some Pokémon as being from Kanto or Hoenn for a few years.
I felt that the game had little challenge, and by the time I reached the Champion, my Pokémon were around level 80! And I didn't grind very much, if at all.That just screams 'broken!' if you ask me..

 

I agree the Exp Share was a game breaker. I also felt there were too many allies--having the other playable along and maybe Shauna would've been enough of a traveling party, but five characters was a bit much. Trevor and Tierno got the short end of the stick character development-wise. I wanted to know more about them.

 

X/Y was way too easy. I mean the fact that you had constant help at every town was a little annoying. It didn't leave you much room to think. Plus the one travelling buddy that I liked was the gender opposite to your's. Calem/Serena. They always challenged you to a battle much like Gary from the original series did. I liked Trevor only for one reason. He challenged you to a book style battle. The Pokédex. So you had a Cheren there too. Would have been nice for those personas to be merged though. In a way I think that they used DNA splicers on Cheren and Bianca. Bianca represented by Tierno and Shauna since they just want to have fun. Trevor and Calem represent Cheren. Always responsible and have a goal in mind.

 

Yeah, the EXP share is pretty broken. However, I am a filthy casual and actually liked this game.
My biggest problem with it is lack of aftergame (a problem in most of the Pokémon games to be honest) and Tierno+Trevor, in other words, the world's most useless "rivals".

 

There wasn't much of a difficulty spike anywhere int he game, the only times I find it hard is when nuzlocke and have to fight Grant while I don't have type effectiveness on my side

 

X and Y are no more difficult or easy than any other Pokémon game in the core franchise. More time consuming does not equate to more difficult. Just because it takes substantially less time to train Pokémon in XY because of the EXP Share. and the way EXP is gained returning to what it was prior to Gen V does not make them easier than other games. It isn't easier to do something because it takes less time to do it...it just takes less time to do it. That's all.

If you overlevelled your Pokémon in any of the other games, you would see exactly the same results as you would if you overlevelled them in XY. Let's be honest about this: Pokémon is not a difficult series. It's a series designed to be played by everyone, and that includes young children who are not looking to go into video games and expect to be brutally punished by a crafty AI every time they make a mistake. There is a reason that the Challenge scene in Pokémon is so popular amongst fans: because the games are not inherently difficult in and of themselves. You have to handicap yourself to find any significant challenge in these games. Game Freak have skirted this to a degree from time to time by adding battle facilities and the like, but even those are not particularly hard if you know how to play the game.

Which brings me to my next point: I've found that a lot of people claiming that XY are objectively easier than other Pokémon games are also the ones who have been playing them for years and years and years. People who know the system by now inside and out. They know how to take advantages of weakness and resistance, how RPGs in general work with levelling, and so on. It's not the game getting easier - it's you getting better. Go back and replay the first Pokémon title you played and I guarantee you will find it easier than you did the first time you played it, when you had barely any knowledge of Pokémon and didn't know what to expect.

I suppose it doesn't help that XY is sandwiched between two generations that operate under a diminishing returns system for experience points, but I guarantee that if BW and SM used the same system, they would feel exactly the same as XY did, because at their core they are exactly the same games with the same systems. The AI in XY is no stupider than it is in any other Pokémon games, the game just makes levelling Pokémon significantly quicker. Creating the same conditions in other titles will take longer, but it is not more difficult, because you are doing exactly the same thing, and exactly the same tactics will work. Type advantage, or overlevel. It's all the same.

I suppose it's all determined by personal experience, but looking at it from a more neutral perspective, in my opinion it just comes down to pacing. XY had the Exp. Share - turn that off and it makes a HUGE difference - and it returned to the previous way of doing things, so of course it'll FEEL easier, but it's still the same Pokémon experience, so I don't see how it could be. Take on the Champion of another region with Pokémon 10+ levels higher than theirs and you'll trash them in exactly the same way, no?

I didn't struggle at all with XY, but then I don't struggle with Pokémon games at all these days. I've been unprepared a few times in other games - Ultra Necrozma in UM took out half my team, and I remember Cynthia causing me a bit of grief the first time I played Diamond too - but I didn't think they were inherently more difficult, because the second time around I was adequately prepared and breezed through it. XY I didn't experience that because I was several levels higher than everyone else all the way through the game. I didn't have to grind as much, which was nice.

 

I don't think they really thought to balance it for the added effects from Pokémon Amie. Like getting extra exp from it and randomly getting a crit, surviving a hit, or having a status condition healed made the game a lot easier I think. If the levels of the wild Pokémon were just a little higher, I think it would have been fine. Sun and Moon felt much more balanced. They also gave Yveltal and Xerneas really high catch rates compared to other legendary Pokémon.

 

I think XY were pretty easy, compared to others? Though that may have been because I over-leveled WAY too much at the time (I was going through a phase where I wanted to level ALL my Pokémon at the same time RIP) but I actually enjoyed it when I went back and did a Nuzlocke, and then tried for an Egglocke. But I think it's mostly because of the benefits of Pokémon Amie, and how many handycaps they give to the trainer.

 

Yeah, the recent games in general are pretty easy, especially with the ability to boost experience, crit ratios, and even evasion just by playing with the Pokémon.

Seriously, I had level 80s when I got to the Elite Four in Ultra Moon, and around the same in Y.

To be honest, the hardest games were B/W and B2W2.

 

Honestly I don’t remember much from my playthrough of Y, but I have been looking at teams that trainers use and many of their Pokémon didn’t have 4 moves. Not even your rival’s starter has 4 moves after you complete the game! That along with the brokenness of the exp share and affection from amie makes the game a lot easier than it should be. Also, have you noticed in the battle maison, how the first 10 battles are with not fully evolved Pokémon (or is it just me)? I was able to blow through them with my in game team back when they all had attacking moves and I didn’t know what EVs were.

 

Yeah, the X and Y games were certainly much easier than the Black and White plus their sequels.

I do understand the reasoning behind why people say it was a cakewalk compared to the other games, but there were so many things that helped contribute to that.

Pokémon Amie was a huge factor, basically having the boost in XP along with other benefits such as automatically curing status conditions, surviving moves that should've defeated them and dodging attacks. I've even had an instance where a maxed affection Pokémon dodged an unavoidable aerial ace.

There was the XP share, where you could have your entire party obtain experience regardless if they participated in a battle or not. Unlike in the previous games where it was a holdable item, it was in the key slot where it could be activated or deactivated. Even the longer grinding parts, I was able to level up Pokémon in the high 60s and early 70s fairly quickly thanks to this, max affection and Lucky Eggs.

It seemed like there were a lot of giveaway Pokémon that were also in the game. Your starter, then you get a Kanto starter, later a Lucario (with a mega stone), a lapras and then you have to capture the legendary Pokémon to proceed at one point in the game. There's even a Torchic with Speed Boost if you got the game early enough! Now not everyone picked the same team as I did when I completed the game: Chesnaught, Blastoise, Lucario, Aegislash, Yveltal, Sylveon, but there's a lot of Pokémon options that significantly boosted their potential that we basically had the option to melt any and all boss trainers. Seriously, a third of my team was capable of mega evolving and I'm sure some had all Pokémon with that potential.

I also think we got mega evolution wayyyy to early. Even if one was underleveled, we could use a mega evolution to beat boss trainers such as the gym leaders, rivals and the Pokémon league. They did ORAS right in megas by giving it roughly two thirds in the game, where you would have to work that far and hard to be able to use it for the first time.

Couple instances in X and Y had routes up to a city with gym that were chock full of Pokémon that were both resistant and advantageous against whatever type the gym leader was using. Reflection Cave; right before you challenge Korrina is full of psychic types. The Lumiose Badlands could get you a Dugtrio, Gible or Trapinch...right before you go up against electric specialist Clemont. The lost hotel was right before Olympia where you could get a Pawniard or Litwick...even the routes around Anistar had Liepard, Mightyena, Murkrow, Pumpkaboo and Phantump. Any trainer who would know their type advantage could pick one of a plethora of Pokémon strong against the gym leader and already have an edge.

In all honesty, someone who had never played Pokémon before could have some trouble, but there's a lot of helping hands that come along this way so that if they have the basic knowledge of type advantages/disadvantages it would be a breeze. Of course longtime veteran players of the franchise are going to find this ridiculously easy due to already implemented knowledge and using those aids to further their own team....yeah you'd definitely squish anyone and anything in your way.

Nuzlocke would definitely make it harder, but my argument still stands that all those little things such as Amie, XP share and the giveaway Pokémon are all huge reasons why everyone thought these games were easy. Turn off the XP share, don't use Amie unless you're needing Sylveon and don't use the giveaway Pokémon and I'm sure even a seasoned Pokémon player will find it much tougher.

 

XY was almost too easy for my comfort. As others said, Amie and the XP boost made it all the more easier to complete. It was incredibly easy to steamroll through the game as at some point you're too high leveled for anything to be considered a threat. I won't say I felt insulted as the player, because I didn't, but it made the game... dull with the lack of challenges presented.

 

The games were definitely simple, but what made them seem a lot more easier than they should have been was because the game itself seemed short and incomplete. Kalos felt like the smallest region and there were no "hidden" areas to explore around compared to past generations.