First: love the idea!
Little thing I found: The sign in front of the "first" gym still says "Leader:Norman".
You have the advantage of being able to use an incredibly complex combat system which was build over decades and still holds up today for millions of people. The right way to make it actually difficult is giving the enemies good teams,movesets, items, abilities etc. - and making the tools available to counter them. Like the Kaizo games do. Then you have to plan and make meaningful decisions. "I'll just grind an hour or buy 20 rare candies" is not a meaningful decision and not difficult.
Little thing I found: The sign in front of the "first" gym still says "Leader:Norman".
Then you should remove ralts from the encouter table for route 102For special Pokemon like Ralts you can't catch them normally.
Difficulty in games is a term that imo gets misinterpreted very often. Mindless grinding is not "difficult" - it is tiresome and time-consuming. Nobody needs that, unless the grind itself is enjoyable, like it is for some people in games like Diablo or DarkSouls. In Pokémon grinding is not fun. So making the enemies high-leveled for the sake of "difficulty" makes no sense - it simply forces the user to mindlessly grind. Similiar thing is giving the first (or any, really) boss Double Team and other RNG-heavy strategys and making that a core part of the fight. There is no skill or effort in winning something that is entirely chance-based - so it's not really "difficult" it is just unlikely. Unless there are ways to play around it, like there are in Pokémon with Aerial Ace and stuff. Still - stuff like double team is simply frustrating.I see where you're coming from, and I agree with a lot of it. While I do believe that there's a conversation to be had about difficulty having no place in porn games (some that have reached legendary status are pretty hard) I do see were you're coming from. Seeing some comments and messages I'll definitely look to helping people power up their pokemon for an easier time (especially early game).
Thank you for the input!
You have the advantage of being able to use an incredibly complex combat system which was build over decades and still holds up today for millions of people. The right way to make it actually difficult is giving the enemies good teams,movesets, items, abilities etc. - and making the tools available to counter them. Like the Kaizo games do. Then you have to plan and make meaningful decisions. "I'll just grind an hour or buy 20 rare candies" is not a meaningful decision and not difficult.