>>38362087Essentially, the difference here is that in games like X and Y, the difficulty curve is bad at its core - to make it "challenging," you have to impose nonsense rules to make it hard in an unfun way just so it seems like the AI has a chance against you. But in USUM, Game Freak has a fantastic difficulty curve as a baseline and THEN offers all of these ways around it so new players aren't turned away. It's true that, if you make use of everything available, they're probably incredibly easy - but that doesn't have to be the point if you don't want it to be. This is honestly the best solution to the dispute on difficulty:
For long-term players, there is a genuinely fun way to play the game, using only what is already in the game, without Nuzlocking, without team restrictions, that offers a challenging experience that I would argue has more creative fights than any other entry in the series and is still one of the hardest entries.
For casual players who aren't ready to deal with that, there are options they are accessible but never mandatory to make it as easy as they want, in ways that don't compromise the experience for people who want a harder challenge.
Making the games challenging and then actively implementing ways to make it easy for players to make them easy... is not the same as making the games easy and letting players make up ways to make them hard.
But sure, if you guys want to talk about how bad USUM are because you refuse to turn off its easy settings on principle ("the feature is there! I shouldn't have to regulate my own difficulty!" - never mind that the basic difficulty curve without those things IS properly balanced and deliberate, not some self-imposed challenge the devs never intended for anyone to use like a Nuzlocke), you're also *allowed* to have no fun with it. If you *want* that. Just be aware that a genuinely well-balanced core experience IS there waiting for you if you ever give it a proper try - you might be pleasantly surprised.
