Fancy a Challenge?
Are you one of those who think the Pokémon games are too easy in-game? Well, they're not. The Pokémon games have a unique kind of flexibility - you can set your own rules and make them exactly as challenging as you would like them to be.
Basically, if you want to spice up your gaming experience, you can set yourself some restrictions in the way you play your game. Of course you can sit there and train your Pokémon to level 100 before facing the first Gym leader, but you can also limit your training or Pokémon usage in order to make the game actually tough, and then your imagination is the only limit.
Some simple examples of restrictions, which can of course be combined where possible for a greater challenge:
- Only train one Pokémon (generally your starter, but could technically be anything that you get reasonably early). Catch HM slaves for the necessary HMs, but don't ever use them in battle. Though it can be fun to play through the game this way, this tends not to be very challenging - it is only at the beginning that you will actually feel the disadvantage of having only one Pokémon, while later you really start to feel the fact that your one Pokémon has six times the experience that it would normally have, and the game will become a breeze rather than a challenge. Black and White are much better about this, however, since the new experience formula ensures that overleveled Pokémon get less experience than otherwise.
- An interesting variation: near the beginning of the game, trade for a Pokémon and then use that exclusively. What this changes is first that you gain levels even faster, since traded Pokémon get more EXP - and second, that you will be playing through pretty much the whole game with the Pokémon being disobedient, since the Pokémon will be so high-leveled that its level will probably exceed the maximum level your badges allow you to control. I doubt that last bit works in B/W, though I haven't tried it; it would probably just make it around the same difficulty level as a normal mono-training team in the previous games.
- Don't evolve your Pokémon, no matter what - in case you didn't know, just press B when they try to evolve, or give them an Everstone to hold. Could for example be used in conjunction with either of the above to weigh against the advantage of the huge level gains.
- Only train Pokémon of one particular type (though they may have a second type). HM slaves can be used when absolutely necessary, but must not battle; if your starter is not of your chosen type, it is to be gotten rid of the moment you have a Pokémon of the right type. This is a well-known kind of challenge; many forums have "monotype challenge" threads.
- Train all your Pokémon evenly - basically, every time you have access to a PC, you make sure that you are carrying six of your lowest-leveled Pokémon overall. Exceptions are only to be made in the case of HM moves you need to have. Of course, to make this a meaningful challenge, you should also be catching a lot of Pokémon, the way you would on a normal playthrough. This can make things freakishly hard in no time, as your levels will be extremely low compared to even the wild Pokémon you will be facing; it also allows you nice room to devise strategies for Gym leaders and such, since you will have such a wide selection of evenly-leveled Pokémon. The downside is that this can be almost too hard, what with the abundance of nearly completely useless Pokémon - to weigh against this, you could perhaps choose not to capture every Pokémon you find. Black and White make this one somewhat easier, since underleveled Pokémon will gain more experience to make up for it and thus they won't be quite as overwhemlingly weak compared to what you're facing; I personally did give up at Victory Road, though.
- Don't train your Pokémon - progress through the game without searching around the tall grass or rebattling trainers unless you have to. If you reach a Gym leader and your Pokémon don't seem to be up for it, too bad - you'll have to think up a strategy to beat the Gym anyway.
- Another variant on the general theme of trying to keep your Pokémon reasonably low-leveled is to actively hinder your Pokémon's experience gain by giving the EXP. Share to an HM slave that you never use in battle. Your battling Pokémon will then gain only half the experience they ought to get, which should make things challenging pretty fast.
- Never switch a Pokémon from the top of your party or out of battle - once it's there, it has to handle all battles by itself until it faints, no matter how much better another Pokémon in your party would be. Then you can set specific restrictions on when you are allowed to switch your team around - for instance, you can only do so in a Pokémon Center, or you need to keep it there until it has gained a level, at which time you switch it with a lower-leveled Pokémon.
- Be greedy and don't ever buy anything - just thrive on what you find on the ground or are given by people in your way. This includes Pokéballs. You could also decide not to use any items at all besides Pokéballs, or not to use any healing items, with berries allowed or not depending on your preference. Not much of a challenge by itself, but can add additional spice to other challenges
- Choose six Pokémon before you start the game that you want in your team (or, alternatively, have other people choose for you), and catch them and nothing else. If necessary, use HM slaves, but don't battle with them. Works best when you cannot obtain one or two of them until fairly late in the game, resulting (presumably) in a lack of some types in your team while still spreading the experience among a few Pokémon so that they don't become utterly overleveled. This has the advantage of making you actually end up with a proper, balanced team of six, unlike most of the challenges here - unless your friends decided to pick a poor team for you.
- In fact, you could just go all the way with that basic concept and treat the game as if there were only, say, four Pokémon slots in your party - the last two can be filled by HM slaves, but of course those must never battle.
- Throughout the game, don't catch any Pokémon except for possibly necessary HM slaves - use only Pokémon that are given to you by NPCs (or the R/B/Y/FR/LG Eevee, which you find, but it amounts to the same thing).
- Don't let your Pokémon forget any moves - once they have four, cancel learning whatever subsequent moves they might get, barring necessary HMs. The bad thing about this is that you'll of course end up with a team of Pokémon that can only use moves like Scratch and Tail Whip, and while that will probably be challenging, it may not be the most fun sort of challenging.
- Normally, you probably try to send out a Pokémon with a type advantage whenever possible, but how about reversing it - using a Pokémon with a type disadvantage whenever you can? I wouldn't really do this personally, since it seems like the challenge of this would tempt you to just do a lot more level-grinding rather than wiser choices in battle since you'll be deliberately making poor choices, but hey. Of course, you could also combine this with the "Don't train your Pokémon" challenge and watch hell emerge.
These challenges, of course, are entirely based on the honor system: if you think it's getting too hard, nothing is stopping you from giving up and cheating to whatever extent you like. But it's more fun if you stick to it. :P
Nuzlocke Runs
A particularly famous type of challenge that is all the rage these days is the Nuzlocke run, which employs all of the following restrictions to up the stakes:
- If any Pokémon faints, it is to be considered dead and must either be placed permanently in a "Dead" box on the PC or released.
- If you white out altogether, it's game over; you have to restart from the beginning.
- You can't change the past. No reloading a save and pretending Brock's Onix didn't kill your Butterfree after all.
- The only Pokémon you can catch in every location is the very first wild Pokémon you run into after you enter that location. If you blow it on that very first wild Pokémon, you can't catch anything until the next route or area you enter.
Additionally, a proper Nuzlocke run requires you to nickname every single one of your Pokémon and get attached to them so that their "deaths" will be more heartbreaking. You can optionally write a comic about your exploits with elaborate death scenes. I didn't invent this and haven't personally gotten around to trying it, but a lot of people find it really makes Pokémon interesting again.
If you have good ideas for challenges, you can contact me to point it out.
Page last modified March 12 2011 at 11:36 GMT
