Has anyone went out of their way to make a somewhat difficult team, that they actually play in the game?

Playing through XY twice recently - finding out that not using the EXP Share severely underlevels you without allowing you to grind near-equal level trainers, and being forced to grind wild Pokemon, made me give up the "difficult" playthrough, as that just became excessively tedious, not truly difficult.

So I started again and used the EXP Share and it's just too fucking easy, even with 5 Medium-Slow levelling Pokemon and one Slow levelling Pokemon.

So, I've thought of starting again upon completion once more, and only using the worst Pokemon available to you in the vicinity of each badge, catching one Pokemon per badge to use on the team, obviously until the sixth gym.