>>20611898No, gym leaders, the elite four, and other plot-important NPCs had one more mon to use and had better movesets, in addition to the higher levels. Admittedly it's not anything big but at least it was a tiny step forward.
>>20611926Technically speaking yes it does adjust the difficulty, but so does any other item or Pokemon. That's like saying Delibird is a difficulty select option because using it makes the game harder. That would be a very fringe definition of difficulty select that I haven't seen elsewhere outside of XY apologism. That's because everyone else calls that a "self-imposed challenge," which is not the same thing as difficulty select. One is intended by the developers as a method of challenging players and generally rewarding those who beat it, and the other is intentionally not using tools the developers expected you to use for no reward other than your own entertainment. Again, if we took
>>20611288 to his logical conclusion then almost no game could be considered easy because you could always throw more challenges on it.
And at the end of the day even if you could say that EXP share was difficulty select, then XY would still be ridiculously easier than all other Pokemon games due to most trainers having a max of 3 mons, O-powers, mega-evolutions, and amie. EXP share is just the cherry on the cake.
