>>54742438I never felt like the AI was outright cheating even on the handful of occasions I ran into quick claw+sheer cold/fissure/guillotine sets, but the factory in particular gives you the least control of any facility besides the palace so RNG and the lack of foreknowledge feels really pronounced in there. Like in the platinum frontier I once got a dragonite with dragon dance and a lum berry at the very start. That whole round was an effortless sweep, never even traded pokemon. The round where I finally got a shot at the gold symbol? Complete horseshit, even abusing savestates it took me about 8 tries against Thorton alone to get the RNG to swing far enough in my favor for a win. Even one of the regular matches turned into a fucking puzzle game of "how do I arrange this match so gyarados is at full HP when it switches into arcanine at the end, thus allowing it to survive a thunder fang after intimidate and OHKO back with waterfall?" The answer was "bring in magnezone against their altaria and get lucky enough to beat it before you get 2HKO'd by flamethrower." Even that would have been ruined by a critical hit.