Why Older Pokémon Games Are Harder To Play

The Pokémon franchise has released games for 25 years, but recent titles in the series seem to be getting easier to beat compared to older entries.

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For 25 years, the Pokémon series has released games that allow players to gather a team of six Pokémon, travel the region, and battle their way to being Champion. However, those who have played the older titles may have noticed they are harder to play. Older Pokémon entries didn’t offer a number of modern quality-of-life improvements like Exp Candy (although harder-to-find Rare Candies were available), Mega Evolution, or Dynamax to make leveling easier and battles less challenging. Many of these changes have made the titles more accessible to new players, but some of the challenges of previous games are now missing from the series.

While many elements of Pokémon Red and Blue remain in modern titles like Sword and Shield, the original Pokémon games were limited in a number of ways. Routes between towns were longer, requiring players to carefully level their teams before setting out or risk a total party knockout during encounters. It was also harder to find certain Pokémon with diverse types earlier in the games, due to a lack of species and a more challenging availability of types throughout the region’s map. While Bug, Grass, and Normal-types were plentiful on starting routes in early Pokémon games, strong Water, Fire, and Psychic-types were hard to find and even harder to catch.

However, in recent Pokémon games, players can start with almost any team they’d like thanks to online features like Surprise Trade and Wonder Trade, as well as the ability to trade Pokémon with anyone around the world. A player could trade for a team of starters from any region with perfect IVs, giving them a wide range of types, and the edge in battle when it comes to stats. In Pokémon Sword and Shield, players don’t even need to worry about party make-up while traveling, thanks to a storage PC they can access from the main menu. With this, running out of powerful Pokémon can virtually be avoided as long as backups are stored and ready to battle. This, combined with the use of Exp Candy earned in Max Raid Battles, greatly reduces the challenges of raising a Pokémon team.

Removing Pokémon’s Hidden Moves Lowered The Overall Difficulty

Unlike the easy-to-navigate routes of Sword and Shield, previous Pokémon games created complex terrain mazes out of the wilderness between towns. With the use of Hidden Moves like Strength, Rock Smash, Surf, and many others, players were required to puzzle their way through both caves and forests to get to their next destination. In Sword and Shield, players can still surf on water using their Rotom Bike, but most of the previous features that made travel interesting have been removed, creating a bland experience as players simply walk across a straightaway to battle a few NPCs. While these changes were likely meant to be balanced with the addition of the Wild Area, even the expanses of explorable, open-world land would be more interesting if players could find secret areas with the use of Hidden Moves like Dive or Waterfall.

While many of the changes made in the Pokémon series were likely meant to help the games be more accessible to all players, newer Pokémon games could benefit from the implementation of difficulty modes. These modes could remove items like Exp Candy, or prevent players from swapping their team out while between towns. Doing so would give those hoping for a more challenging Pokémon adventure the ability to experience classic limitations while exploring new regions and gameplay.

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