"Why the hardest fights in the series were hard"

Not every generation had that "wall" so to speak. Gen 1, for example, was pretty much a cakewalk throughout. I'm just going to talk about the common barricades and why they were hard.Whitney (Gen 2)Why she was hard: You didn't expect to have to use conditions and debuffs in gym 3.Whitney was early in the game, she was a normal type trainer, and you were unlikely to have a fighting type by this point, so when she threw out her Milktank (a 1 stage evo, which is rare at this point), she's got crazy strong tanking and attacking stats, and rollout, which gets stronger every turn it's used.There is counterplay, but it's pretty much conditions, debuffs, and prayers. Rollout is really susceptible to accuracy down, but the accuracy down options that you have are learned by the fire starter and mostly flying type route 1 mons.Whitney is hard because Gen 1 and the entire previous game never taught you that the AI can have a strategy.Red (Gen 2)Why he was hard: Gen 2 sacrificed a level curve in favor of lore.You beat the elite four, all their Pokemon are level 45. Then you fight Kanto gym leaders, around level 45 or 50. Blue is in the mid-50's.Then Red throws out a level 80 Pikachu. There is not enough exp from every trainer in the game to bonk you up to level 80, so you either grind around Mt. Silver or you constantly redo the elite four (still level 45) to work your way back up.If you're at Red's level though, his team is only okay.Cynthia (Gen 4)Why she was hard: Gen 4 forgot about the final act.Basically, you fight Volkner, who peaks at level 49. You would expect your best Pokemon to be about level 48 or 49 as well by this point.Piddly little victory road might prop you up to like 52 or 53 at best.Aaron maxes out at 57.Bertha hits 59.Flint gets to 61.Lucian maxes out at 63.And after all that, provided you pulled a miracle out of your butt and won first try, you're up against Cynthia.Her weakest is 61 and has no weaknesses.Her strongest is 66, it's a sweeper, and there's like one counterplay in gen 4 and it requires you to get a Sneasel and breed it to get ice punch, then trade with a friend to get Weavile, and YOU STILL MIGHT BE SLOWER. It's also not useful against a lot of Cynthia's other team of high effort, nigh on impossible to get Pokemon. You can only get Gible by exploring an area obscured by the bike path, and you can only get Spiritomb by suffering.Lenora (Gen 5)Why she was hard: There was no available counterplay.Lenora had a team based around the move revenge. You beat one, the next one comes out with a 120 base power STAB move (so really you're looking at a 180 base power move from gym 2)The deal with revenge is that it's a normal type move so you can counter it with ghost, rock, or steel types to resist the effect.Shame that there are no ghost types before the gym, and if I remember right, one rock type and it sucks.You're going to take those revenges. Your best strategy is to just have more Pokemon than she has, which is a valid strategy, but the first and second gyms of black and white really lead to this impression that other gym leaders have strategies. They don't. They throw out Pokemon in the correct type.Ultra Necrozma (Gen 7)Why it is so hard: It's a sweeper and you don't know anything about it.Ultra Necrozma is a legendary that isn't obtainable in any game because it's purposefully and painfully overpowered. It's got good typing and it wants very much to hurt your face. You also, crucially, have no method of telling what the heck this thing's typing is, since you've never seen it before, and it does moves that you've never seen before.Zygarde (Gen 8)Why it's hard: AOE.Zygarde wants to take out the weakest Pokemon on your team, and there will be a weakest. If you got kingler, this fight is nothing. Wide guard to victory. If not, he will hurt every member of the team a lot every single turn. via /r/pokemon https://ift.tt/vFMKOpb