I’ve only played the Switch games in recent memory, and they’re all pretty hard to lose. I did play older games at release, but stopped at White. I guess I could say that was the hardest because I hated it so much that it put me off the series altogether for a decade.
The only battles I lost in Scarlet were the electric gym, which I went to first when I assumed the game would scale based on badge count and I was using an all-bird team, and the first battle in Blueberry which I tried to win with only a Minccino & Hoppip (level 100 and fully EV trained and everything, but still weak as hell).
Sword and Shield were both also dead easy, and apart from the enormous spike at the end of Shining Pearl that was too - that was more tedious than difficult though. Having a 30-level difference between the highest wild encounters and the E4 remakes didn’t make it harder, it just meant I had to waste a month getting ready. The rematches themselves were satisfying enough.
If you’re asking because you want to get one for a child or something, I’d probably go with Sword.
Only S/V battle I lost was the Eri boss battle in the fighting type Team Star base, which took several tries due to a similar assumption of level scaling. Didn’t lose a single battle in Sword/Shield or Legends Arceus. Hardest Switch game for me was BDSP, just from needing two tries at the Elite Four due to the difficulty spike, and I barely beat them on the second try.
Overall, in a general difficulty sense I think the most “challenging” core game I played was Ultra Sun. The totem pokemon provided a few surprises that made me have to resort to a few “plan B” options during battle, even if I didn’t lose to any of them, and trainers sometimes actually showed a modicum of intelligence. I was also at around opponent level or even underleveled throughout the game.
I’ve only played the Switch games in recent memory, and they’re all pretty hard to lose. I did play older games at release, but stopped at White. I guess I could say that was the hardest because I hated it so much that it put me off the series altogether for a decade.
The only battles I lost in Scarlet were the electric gym, which I went to first when I assumed the game would scale based on badge count and I was using an all-bird team, and the first battle in Blueberry which I tried to win with only a Minccino & Hoppip (level 100 and fully EV trained and everything, but still weak as hell).
Sword and Shield were both also dead easy, and apart from the enormous spike at the end of Shining Pearl that was too - that was more tedious than difficult though. Having a 30-level difference between the highest wild encounters and the E4 remakes didn’t make it harder, it just meant I had to waste a month getting ready. The rematches themselves were satisfying enough.
If you’re asking because you want to get one for a child or something, I’d probably go with Sword.
Only S/V battle I lost was the Eri boss battle in the fighting type Team Star base, which took several tries due to a similar assumption of level scaling. Didn’t lose a single battle in Sword/Shield or Legends Arceus. Hardest Switch game for me was BDSP, just from needing two tries at the Elite Four due to the difficulty spike, and I barely beat them on the second try.
Overall, in a general difficulty sense I think the most “challenging” core game I played was Ultra Sun. The totem pokemon provided a few surprises that made me have to resort to a few “plan B” options during battle, even if I didn’t lose to any of them, and trainers sometimes actually showed a modicum of intelligence. I was also at around opponent level or even underleveled throughout the game.