>>51422771Actually on second thought I think the difference is how readily the games hands you the necessary counters to beat them. Most gym leaders in other games have a handful of Pokémon that will counter them, with the player likely to have at least 1, even Whitney has a few (Geodude, Onix, Ghastly). By comparison, Wattson is only truly countered by geodude, there’s virtually no water types before Flannery and Torkoal can potentially fuck on anything else even at a type disadvantage cause of its stupid high defence, Normans only hard counters are mons that learn protect/detect via level up which aren’t that common and it’s just generally less obvious than a type match up, and Winona’s team is diverse enough that no one type can sweep her whole team, in particular you need a good rock/ice type attacker for her Altaria, neither of which are remotely common (Literally no ice types by then so no stab bonus on ice beam, and this was back when rock types had no good offensive moves outside the stingily distributed rock slide)
I’m beginning to realize the players toolset makes just as much if not more of a difference than the gym leaders.