>>47851275I think it comes down to giving the player a good deal of strategies to utilize. Coming across a Pokemon that powerful, like the one in OP's pic (a protean frogadier with max speed with Flip Turn/Grass Knot/Ice Punch/Rock Tomb i.e perfect coverage), feels really fucking restrictive. As
>>47850586 suggested, the best strategy to beat Misty in this game ended up being spamming the Super-Effective type, which is exactly that rewarding of a strategy to come up with.
If I could make my own hack, I'd probably make all the battles double battles, just to open some avenues for different strategies, which is a change many people bring up. I mean, look at pretty much every single other turn-based RPG out there. Other than Pokemon, I can't think of any that are strictly 1v1 battles. I think Horde Battles were potentially a really good idea that I wished the games took advantage of more. In addition, you could do things like 2v1s or 3v1s. Where you have one super-charged Pokemon that you are forced to use multiple pokemon against. Radical Red even does this with the Dynamax Raids.
Anyway, there are plenty of ways you can accomplish making the games 'harder' without resorting to maximizing the power of every opponent. When people say they want "harder" Pokemon games, they aren't necessarily asking for the hardest game possible, they just want a game that rewards you for coming up with unique strategies by actually giving you reason to come up with these strategies.
