These games are far better and more challenging than Sword and Shield. Not even just because of nostalgia, but because it's clear the devs made an effort to change individual trainers so they'd be much more challenging to the player without being stupidly overwhelming. I just beat the elite four and I can't even remember the last time I actually had to think and build a competent team in order to win in a pokemon game that wasn't a romhack. It's clear that ILCA needs to be put in charge of future pokemon games instead of game freak; I'm sure if they had the creative liberties they would've fit the entire rest of the pokedex in the game as well.