>>44220895In Gen 7 gyms are replaced with Totems, 'boss' Pokemon that have stat boosts and can summon help against your sole Pokemon out. The Totems were made to be a somewhat decent challenge in USUM (Lurantis for instance can get help from Comfey which buffs and helps it while giving it sun support). The final boss of the main story is super saiyan Necrozma with +2 in all stats and a great moveset. This is on top of a few trainer battles like a certain rival fight halfway through the game and
>>44220521 which can be a surprising jump in difficulty. Also, if you don't use the Exp Share, like most people here did on first playthrough, you generally will be underlevelled the whole time.
Is it actually hard? Not really, it still has the classic Pokemon issue of giving too many advantages to the player. But it is noticeably more difficult than SwSh and XY and quite a lot of games in the series.
