>>18176198setting level caps in various towns prevents grinding to win. I never let my pokemon have a higher level than the nearest gym leader/ rival battles strongest pokemon, and all other pokemon on my team are 2 levels lower than the highest one. Yes, I have autism and I like my levels to be neat and tidy with one "leader" of the group, which is typically just my favorite pokemon of the six.
Anyway, this combined with other things for challenge do make the game very difficult.
And you could argue grinding makes a lot of games easier. You can grind in dark souls and get top of the line gear easily. There's tons of videos on youtube about how to get incredible weapons and armor for dark souls in under 15 minutes, and that game is fairly challenging when you don't know where anything is.
Levelling up to 70+ after the second gym and then plowing through everything is bullshit and a monkey can do that much.
>>18176241this is true. this is why nuzlockes add a challenge to the game, it's easy to beat enemy trainers but without being able to use items in battle or switch out to a pokemons check without it having to take a hit after you get a KO makes the game a lot harder, especially when your choice of pokemon stays very limited to typically weak pokemon
