>>43059634I was originally going to try continuing the challenge through Episode RR, but I didn't have it in me after everything I went through towards the end. It didn't feel great to be constantly shuffling through party members (again, 26 deaths), never having anyone truly take it from start to finish. I can't really imagine that Exp. Share made this game all that much easier; this might be my lack of experience speaking, but USUM really seems like the hardest game in the series regardless. There's just so much to fear in Alola.
I'm probably already proving myself wrong here. USUM with Exp. Share might have been hard for other reasons, but it definitely failed to teach me to continuously grind, especially early game. I tried White 1 twice and first lost to Cilan (I thought to myself "there's no way the game wants me to grind THAT much, right?" and thought wrong) then lost to Lenora in the aftermath of losing my starter and Lillipup to Fucking Crits in Cilan's gym. I'll probably just chalk that up to me and my idiot brain sometimes gearing into full unga bunga mode.
Tired of an earlygame that I didn't even like chugging through in the first place, I've, and this might be a mistake, switched to W2 Challenge Mode. At first, my catches were Purrloin, Patrat, and Thick Fat Azurill. I refused to run literally a single good Pokemon (my starter) for Cheren and potentially Roxie and decided to reset. My current team (pic related) is developing much more nicely; just a single level of grinding enabled my Sewaddle to solo Cheren while tanking two buffed crits. Wish me luck for Roxie.
