The Best and Worst Boss Fights in Pokemon

[ScraftyIsTheBest]

Glacia is also pretty bad for using only 2 Pokemon lines. Even Agatha and Lance in RBY are not this pathetic.

To be fair, there are only two Ice-type Pokémon lines in Hoenn, not counting Snowy Castform and Regice.

Phoebe has a similar problem in the same game. There are only four Ghost-type families, one of which is a gimmick, and one single stage, so Phoebe also has nearly similar lack of variety in her team as Glacia: she has two Banettes and two Dusclops plus one Sableye. It's not as bad as Glacia who uses two Sealeos in OG RSE (thankfully ORAS fixed this and replaced them with Froslass), but the problem is still apparent.

Sidney was the only one of the four to have true variety in his team due to the multitude of Dark-types Hoenn had, Drake did too to an extent but in RSE he had two Flygons, one Shelgon and one Salamence so there was still overlap there, and in ORAS he still has two Flygons, but thankfully they let him keep the Kingdra he had from Emerald.

 

[The Mind Electric]

Cilan, Chilli, Cress are also cool. They add some variety and show how tutorials can be fun.

Gotta disagree with this one. Yes, it's a unique concept, but I don't find it to be a particularly fun tutorial. As someone who has played enough Pokémon to know how the Grass/Fire/Water matchups work, this fight has nothing for me. I go get the monkey from the Dreamyard, win the fight for free, and move on with my life. I get that first gym leaders aren't supposed to be ball-crushingly difficult, but these guys are a joke even by that standard. I've actually lost to the likes of Falkner and Cheren due to underestimating them, but I don't see a universe where I could possibly lose to these jokers. I'd call them a speedbump, but at least speedbumps can fuck up your car if you drive over them too quickly.

 

[Celeb]

As someone who has played enough Pokémon to know how the Grass/Fire/Water matchups work, this fight has nothing for me.

It's a tutorial, after all. I rarely encounter ones that are a real danger to the player or provide a particularly interesting content for multiple playthroughs. BW made a good attempt in my opinion so we can agree to disagree.

 

[The Mind Electric]

It's a tutorial, after all. I rarely encounter ones that are a real danger to the player or provide a particularly interesting content for multiple playthroughs. BW made a good attempt in my opinion so we can agree to disagree.

I see where you're coming from there, but personally I think tutorials can be better than this even in a game with basics as basic as Pokémon. Hell, even just looking at first gym leader fights that introduce the player to something important about type matchups, Cheren is leagues ahead of the Three Stooges. While the trio introduce the player to an elementary type matchup and try to get them to think about said matchups in future fights, Cheren gets the player to think about deeper strategies beyond just bringing in the winning type because he doesn't have an easy counter due to how unlikely you are to have a decent Fighting type by this point in the game. On top of that, he manages to be a decently-threatening first leader. I lost to him on my first attempt in my recent White 2 playthrough.

Granted, the game doesn't consistently follow through on the whole "type matchups aren't all there is to this game" thing in the later fights, but you can still get caught off guard at points if you're expecting to just roll everything with a super-effective type advantage.

 

[Hugin]

Among other things, it's just so bad on replays. You have exactly one mon that the game basically forces you to use.

Compare Yellow. Gen 1, and it's required that your starter be useless for the battle. So they changed the level-up movepools and which pokes are available, meaning that Butterfree, Mankey, NidoranM, and NidoranF are all viable options. It was a really good solution to the problem the anime forced them into. Striation City could have given the player a decent handful of mons that can win and used the gym as a way to force players to catch something other than their starter, but they set the player on rails instead.

 

[ScraftyIsTheBest]

Among other things, it's just so bad on replays. You have exactly one mon that the game basically forces you to use.

Compare Yellow. Gen 1, and it's required that your starter be useless for the battle. So they changed the level-up movepools and which pokes are available, meaning that Butterfree, Mankey, NidoranM, and NidoranF are all viable options. It was a really good solution to the problem the anime forced them into. Striation City could have given the player a decent handful of mons that can win and used the gym as a way to force players to catch something other than their starter, but they set the player on rails instead.

What's really ironic (and irritating) about this is that after you obtain the first badge and that one required HM use in the whole game, your available options expands so much that ironically, after you leave Striaton you can catch a Pokemon who would've been advantageous against Striaton in the first place. Right nearby you can catch Pidove, Blitzle, Roggenrola, and Drilbur (and Woobat too I suppose), and all of them would've been advantageous against at least one of the triplets (Pidove and Woobat against Cilan, Roggenrola and Drilbur against Chili, and Blitzle against Cress). But nope, while those are all interesting early route Pokemon, they instead decided to withold them from the player until *after* Striaton, when they would've all been viable options to have an advantage against Striaton in the first place, and decided that the only wild options you get are Lillipup, Patrat, and Purrloin, and the latter two are complete garbage.

It basically means your only other option outside of the monkey is to catch Lillipup for a neutral matchup and have the puppy muscle its way through with Tackle, which fundamentally also means the gym fails in its role as a tutorial on type matchups. This is also bad for replays because this is precisely one other option outside of the free win monkey. Yes, you have to use Lillipup every time you're not using the monkey. Stoutland is a good Pokemon, sure, but I definitely wouldn't want to force myself to use it on every single playthrough. And this is coming from someone who actually likes the elemental monkeys as Pokemon.

The railroading is so bad that to my knowledge, BW1 is the only game so far that doesn't have the generational early-route bird on the first route (Pidove isn't available until Route 3, ironically).

 

[Siggu]

It's indeed very strange how much they want you to use the elemental monkey in order to enforce learning about type matchups.

... or you can use Snivy (as you should anyways as it's best starter ) and set up with Growth against Lillipup. You might need an Oran Berry and a Potion or two, but I never said this was efficient.

 

[Celeb]

You have exactly one mon that the game basically forces you to use.

Three unless you always pick the same starter for some reason.

Anyway, Yellow applied a band aid to a broken limb. A player has to either neglect Pikachu or grind other Pokemon to get proper moves. With this in mind, you can apply the same preparations to BW's team and just use a starter, Patrat or Lilippup to win. It is easier to use a monkey (and inexperienced players will most likely do so) but it is not mandatory at all.

 

[The Mind Electric]

What's really ironic (and irritating) about this is that after you obtain the first badge and that one required HM use in the whole game, your available options expands so much that ironically, after you leave Striaton you can catch a Pokemon who would've been advantageous against Striaton in the first place. Right nearby you can catch Pidove, Blitzle, Roggenrola, and Drilbur (and Woobat too I suppose), and all of them would've been advantageous against at least one of the triplets (Pidove and Woobat against Cilan, Roggenrola and Drilbur against Chili, and Blitzle against Cress). But nope, while those are all interesting early route Pokemon, they instead decided to withold them from the player until *after* Striaton, when they would've all been viable options to have an advantage against Striaton in the first place, and decided that the only wild options you get are Lillipup, Patrat, and Purrloin, and the latter two are complete garbage.

It basically means your only other option outside of the monkey is to catch Lillipup for a neutral matchup and have the puppy muscle its way through with Tackle, which fundamentally also means the gym fails in its role as a tutorial on type matchups. This is also bad for replays because this is precisely one other option outside of the free win monkey. Yes, you have to use Lillipup every time you're not using the monkey. Stoutland is a good Pokemon, sure, but I definitely wouldn't want to force myself to use it on every single playthrough. And this is coming from someone who actually likes the elemental monkeys as Pokemon.

The railroading is so bad that to my knowledge, BW1 is the only game so far that doesn't have the generational early-route bird on the first route (Pidove isn't available until Route 3, ironically).

To be fair, it's not like you're legally obligated to use the monkey after trouncing the trio with it. I usually just box it next to the Patrat that I teach cut for that one branch and then neglect for the rest of the run.

 

[Hugin]

Three unless you always pick the same starter for some reason.

Anyway, Yellow applied a band aid to a broken limb. A player has to either neglect Pikachu or grind other Pokemon to get proper moves. With this in mind, you can apply the same preparations to BW's team and just use a starter, Patrat or Lilippup to win. It is easier to use a monkey (and inexperienced players will most likely do so) but it is not mandatory at all.

No grinding, at least depending on your definition. Nidorans win at 12, Butterfree at 10, and Mankey at 9. The Onix is lvl 12, you'd want to be 10+ anyway to take it on(and it's not hard to hit that level). And the key is, those are options. I can choose any of them, depending on how much effort I want to put in. And that was Yellow, where GF's hands were tied by the anime. 4 generations later, they chose to lock off any usable counters until after the gym that's supposed to teach you about type matchups. That's what's silly to me. Give the player tools beyond "overgrind" or "follow the rails".

 

[Bakugames]

The striaton gym tutorial is p bad, but I actually never used the monkeys and I ended up fine, so I dont see the "forced to use the monkeys". Theyre just a cheap ticket to win

 

[DrumstickGaming]

Ilima in Alola is like if the devs said “okay BW1 triplets too railroaded? Well here you go”

But seriously. In a game filled with good boss fights that almost always play fair, this is the game essentially forcing you to go grab Magnemite or Grimer, and it’s just bad design to have IV/EV opponents this early. Literally all the fighting types come after him. Everything else is way too frail to eat his moves.

He has Technician Smeargle to make the normally manageable earlygame moves hit like a truck, and his Yungoos even has an Adamant nature. The rest of the game gives you more options to handle this AFTER this fight, but if you go in with anything less than the best earlygame has to offer for Ilima’s squad, this is probably the meanest earlygame bottleneck in any game.

I love BW1 and yes the variety early is a little weak, but Alola is arguably worse with Ilima, who hits hard unlike the triplets.

 

[Celeb]

Oh, you reminded me of the teacher from USM, Drumstick. Her Litten is absolutely brutal.
Ilima's rematch in SM is comically unbalanced as well. The idea of giving early trainers fantastic IVs and full amount of EVs is absurd to me.

 

[The Mind Electric]

Ilima in Alola is like if the devs said “okay BW1 triplets too railroaded? Well here you go”

But seriously. In a game filled with good boss fights that almost always play fair, this is the game essentially forcing you to go grab Magnemite or Grimer, and it’s just bad design to have IV/EV opponents this early. Literally all the fighting types come after him. Everything else is way too frail to eat his moves.

He has Technician Smeargle to make the normally manageable earlygame moves hit like a truck, and his Yungoos even has an Adamant nature. The rest of the game gives you more options to handle this AFTER this fight, but if you go in with anything less than the best earlygame has to offer for Ilima’s squad, this is probably the meanest earlygame bottleneck in any game.

I love BW1 and yes the variety early is a little weak, but Alola is arguably worse with Ilima, who hits hard unlike the triplets.

I haven't played S/M yet so I looked up the fight, wow that's cruel. He even has the move strong against your starter the first time you fight him.

 

[Siggu]

Oh, you reminded me of the teacher from USM, Drumstick. Her Litten is absolutely brutal.
Ilima's rematch in SM is comically unbalanced as well. The idea of giving early trainers fantastic IVs and full amount of EVs is absurd to me.

They were like "Did you not like how we forced a disadvantage on your starter with little to no countermeasures? Well, let's make it two".

 

[The Mind Electric]

They were like "Did you not like how we forced a disadvantage on your starter with little to no countermeasures? Well, let's make it two".

Time to grab the one free counter, win, and then box it forever. Again.

 

[R_N]

Ilima is hard (& always fun when people write off him being easy) but I don't think it's as railroady as the triplets were. It's something to be aware of, he's got a mean punch to him, and he'll definitely take a hit, and all the fighting types being after him is mean, but I've gone through that fight 3 times and didn't feel the need to use ~The~ counter.
All the bugs, poison &/or flying types resist the grass move. You have access to water types to resist the fire move. The water move is the hardest to resist, its basically just Pichu & Magnemite.
That leaves the boosted tackle but I'm gonna level with you the stab and technician boost and IV/EVs are probably only going to even out from the yungoos, a pokemon literally no one complains about even when they complain about Ilima.

You can't ignore him by any means, but you have more options than the triplets & it's probably why there's significantly less complaints about him over all.

 

[DrumstickGaming]

Oh, you reminded me of the teacher from USM, Drumstick. Her Litten is absolutely brutal.
Ilima's rematch in SM is comically unbalanced as well. The idea of giving early trainers fantastic IVs and full amount of EVs is absurd to me.

Yeah I was gonna mention the teacher too. IIRC she has like Magnemite and Meowth in vanilla, then the utterly insane starter strong against yours in USUM. When your options for countering that are like...maybe 1 per starter?

There’s being challenging and then there’s just being mean.

 

[ScraftyIsTheBest]

While I'm talking about Platinum, Flint was the only fight in the game that I found disappointing. He's the third E4 member, so you'd think he would put up a real fight, but I swept him completely by spamming Earthquake, and he couldn't even get a hit in. He went down as easily as Gardenia, and I picked Chimchar, so that really says something. In an otherwise fairly challenging League, Flint stands out as being a complete joke, and it sucks because he's the only E4 member with actual buildup with the meeting in Sunyshore.

It has struck me recently that it seems like Fire-type specialists in particular tend to get easier the later you encounter them. Fire is a very glass cannon type with three extremely exploitable weaknesses, further compounded by the typical stat build of most Fire-types, which leans towards them being frail and fast/powerful attackers. Flint's Pokémon are all in that build lean except arguably Flareon, who is also slow. Given that, that ultimately makes his team aggressively glass canon because of one reason: he has no defensive utility or synergy in his team whatsoever which means you can muscle through him easily in Platinum. The other Elite Four member across the games who is also a Fire-type specialist is Malva in X and Y, and she's by far the easiest of the XY Elite Four herself: granted, XY's League not the most difficult League by any means, but Malva is definitely known to be a total pushover amongst the four, since the other three have at least some chance of being decently challenging depending on the circumstances.

While not an E4 like Malva or Flint, Blaine is also a late game Fire-type specialist being one of the last Gym Leaders you face in both the OG Kanto games and the Johto games, and well...he's not exactly hard at all. You should definitely have a Water-type by the time you reach him given the circumstances.

On the other hand, you have cases like the RSE/ORAS and SwSh where the Fire-type specialist is an early-mid game Gym Leader, and Flannery and Kabu are both pretty tough for the point of the game where you encounter them. Flannery's Torkoal is known to be quite strong and her team can blow through your own with Overheat if you're not careful (plus Torkoal has rage inducing Attract+Curse/Body Slam combo), while Kabu has three strong Pokémon for the point you see him and he spams Will-O-Wisp which is a rage inducing and annoying move, combined with how tough Arcanine and Ninetales will be for that point plus the limited availability of good Water-types. Totem Salazzle/Marowak is also a pretty tough boss fight in the Alola games and that's early-mid game as well.

Perhaps part of it is due to your available options to deal with Fire-types. Early on you might not have a wide selection of Water-types at your disposal other than maybe your starter if you opted for the Water starter, and if not it's probably something like Magikarp, and of course there aren't a whole lot of Rock or Ground-types as well in most cases. But late-game, you ideally should have a strong Pokémon that is Water-type because you probably have Surf by then, or if not you've probably met a strong Rock, Dragon, or Ground-type and/or have access to strong moves of those types now that you have access to stuff like Surf, Earthquake, Stone Edge, Rock Slide, etc. Those are all very powerful and good moves, in addition to the Pokémon of the type that are good becoming available. Whereas early on you might at best be stuck with stuff like Water Gun and Rock Throw on mediocre Pokémon or at least Pokémon who aren't available or aren't strong enough yet.

It's an interesting phenomenon when it comes to Fire-type specialists, really.

 

[lucariomaster2]

I'm not sure it's necessarily limited to Fire-types, either. The overall issue, at least to me, is that later bosses tend to be easier than earlier ones because the player has more options lategame. There are exceptions, of course; for example, HGSS Clair is a notoriously difficult battle because odds are you have nothing to hit her Kingdra for super-effective damage, since its only weakness is Dragon, no non-Dragon-types that you have access to off the top of my head learn Dragon-type moves, and even if you managed to get a Dratini from the game corner, well, that Kingdra has Dragon Pulse itself. This is an instance of a lategame boss being difficult because the player is fully denied the necessary tools to effectively deal with them.

Another infamous lategame boss is, of course, Cynthia. The Sinnoh games (mostly Platinum, less so DP) are actually pretty good with giving you access to powerful Pokemon; however, she is exemplifying "if you can use it, so can your opponent" and - even ignoring Garchomp - comes at you with the most diverse, well-built teams we've ever seen from an ingame opponent. If you think about it, she is the final test of your ingame teambuilding abilities - you need Pokemon that can not only take hits from every type, but also effectively deal damage to every type.

I guess the point of this post is to demonstrate two different ways to keep challenging the player after they've been given all available options - either make these options still fairly limited in effectiveness to take on the boss, or design the boss to challenge the player to use these options to their widest potential. It should be obvious from the tone of this post that I think more highly of the second of these.

 

[The Mind Electric]

I have finished White 2, and the only bosses I didn't bother with are the E4/Champion rematches, so here we go again. This time, I'm only going to talk about one boss, my best and worst:

I feel bad for Marlon. He does a lot of interesting things, but he gets done extremely dirty by where he is in the game and the surrounding story.

Thematically, I think Marlon is the most interesting boss in B2/W2. He embodies the divide between the older and younger generations, as his youth and carefree attitude contrast with Drayden's age and general seriousness. This divide can even be found in the gym trainers; Drayden only has experienced Veterans while Marlon only has ambitious Ace Trainers. Neither side of this divide is better than the other in the story, and both are shown to have their advantages and disadvantages (Drayden's seriousness compels him to do everything he can about Team Plasma but he loses the DNA Splicers by letting his guard down and the player has to go get them back, Marlon's lack of fucks to give allows him to be content despite the state of the world but he's also not very helpful because he barely even knows what Team Plasma is). It's a really interesting bit of theming that fits with the theme of opposites in gen 5 as a whole.

What a shame that this idea crashes and burns when you factor in gameplay. Given what I've just said, you might think that Drayden and Marlon would both be tough trainers with different specialties to keep with the theme, but you'd be wrong. Drayden is pretty damn challenging if you don't have a speedy Ice type, but Marlon sucks ass. He's a Water specialist at a point in the game where you're almost guaranteed to have multiple counters for Water types (you can get Sewaddle on the first route, so he would still be at a disadvantage if he was the first gym leader in the fucking game) and none of his Water types are particularly threatening either (Shell Smash/Sturdy Carracosta is sometimes a problem but it's still almost never more than an inconvenience), so it's honestly kind of impressive when he poses any threat to the player. On top of that, he's right in the middle of the climax of the story, and the epic chase of Team Plasma before they can freeze the region comes to a complete stop so you can body Marlon before moving on. He's literally just a brief interruption during the more interesting story, and then all that cool thematic shit I was talking about earlier completely vanishes.

Marlon is awesome in theory, and there's some great ideas here, but he completely falls apart in practice. So disappointing.

 

[aegon the unlikely]

In FR/LG, Blue was by far the best boss fight. Intense music, very well-rounded and strong team, and just the thrill of bringing this guy down. Brock and Misty are also really good boss fights that help newbies understand type matchups to a T and why they're important, Misty in particular manages to be beastly even if you have a type advantage and that helps keep players on their toes. The worst would be Giovanni (the final battle), dude is actually legitimately challenging in Celadon City but gets easier and easier to defeat until Viridian. In spite of being the final gym leader and technically having the strongest team at that point, he's easier to defeat than ever. Koga and Bruno are pretty weak too, though Poison and Fighting just failed then.

In GSC, Whitney was the best boss fight. RNG abuse through Clefairy (can be REALLY deadly at times) and Miltank, nuff said. Clair is only right behind her due to how difficult her team of Dragons is to defeat (practically impossible to solo itemless unless you grind like a lot). Red is right behind them both due to how crazy OP and versatile he is and the atmospheric nature of fighting yourself from the previous games, the music helps a lot. The worst fight goes to the Kanto gym leaders as a collective (sans Blue), all of them are individually fairly weak and though they aren't total fodder, their levels aren't high enough to make them a proper challenge at that point and their moves could have been a lot better for that point in the game. Silver, in spite of being a serious challenge in Azalea for many, is also a joke in his initial pre-E4 fight and very clearly inferior to the Elite Four.

In ORAS, the worst boss fight goes to Wattson, dude's a total joke and easy to troll with even Pokemon that Electric-types happen to resist. I tried to lose to him and still defeated him at one point, and have consistently defeated him using the Cosplay Pikachu or Roselia. The best boss fight goes to Steven Stone himself, hyper music and a very strong and balanced team that's incredibly difficult to defeat without X spam (and challenging with). Brawly is also quite strong and can really take you by surprise with the strength of Knock Off if your Pokemon hold items.

In USUM, the worst boss fight goes to Lusamine, very forgettable. SM's version is clearly much better, both in terms of difficulty and narrative. The best fight is hard to call, but it'd probably be Kukui, fighting the Pokemon Professor himself for Champion and his near competitive moveset? Real cool! Guzma and RR are also fantastic, the latter more for nostalgia and the former more for being a creative and strong foe.

 

[Wukong]

Worst

#1. Wallace (E)

This fight creates three problems. First, it shoehorns Juan in as the eighth gym leader, making him the second water boss in a region which already suffers from "too much water" jokes. Juan also uses Kingdra as his ace, even though it's a Johto Pokémon already used by Clair as the eighth gym leader in the previous region, making it a puzzling choice. Next, it makes Wallace the champion which frankly he's underwhelming as. He makes a solid eighth gym leader but as a champion he's a type specialist with a team that isn't challenging nor does it stand out. If they were going to do this, I would have even preferred they made Drake the champion since at least he spotlights the other pseudo-legendary of the region, Salamence. Lastly, this exiles Steven to Meteor Falls. I know they were going for the Red treatment from the Johto games, but the problem is Emerald is not a sequel to RS like GSC is to RBY. Continuity wise, it makes no sense. Plus they gave him the rival theme which is not bad in and of itself, but doesn't represent him as he should be as the champion of the Hoenn region. For these three problems I mainly blame Wallace since he's the common thread, but it's unfortunate that they botched the landing of what I consider to be an otherwise terrific game (second only to Platinum on my list).

#2. Lance (HGSS)

If you play the game the "right" way (i.e. Set mode, no healing items in battle, no grinding and only battle trainers for experience) this fight is practically impossible to beat without luck. It's a completely unreasonable difficulty spike without giving you the resources to combat it. The problem is, for this game you have to plan a team to beat both Lance and Red (I prefer sticking with a team throughout the game, rather than renting a Pokémon for a specific purpose only to abandon it) and in this game you have a limited selection of Pokémon to build such a team with. HGSS is plagued by shitty Johto Pokémon stats/placement, inconvenient TM placement, annoying methods of obtaining evolutionary stones/items, and the infamously meager level curve. If you train six Pokémon you'll be around level 40 which is simply not enough to give you a good shot against those Dragonite. This fight is so unreasonable I don't even think if they gave you the TM for Ice Beam before the Elite Four instead of parking it in Seafoam Islands, that it would make that much of a difference. Whoever is using Ice Beam could probably only kill one Dragonite since it'll have to absorb a Dragon Rush/Outrage or one of those strong elemental attacks. Overall, HGSS has its flaws but this fight is the most glaring for me since it's supposed to be this climactic battle that ends up turning into some shitty luck fest.

Best

#1. Cynthia (Pt)

Call it cliché but it is for a reason. This fight is the perfect capstone for what I consider to be the perfect Pokémon game. Platinum, unlike HGSS, gives you a ton of great resources and options to build your team with. But at the end of the day, you still need to build a team to take down Cynthia who probably has the best assembled team of any NPC in the main series. With a team of six you'll probably be around level 50 which makes this fight difficult but not unreasonable, especially given the amazing options available to you in this game, relatively early on. I also love that Cynthia spotlights the pseudo-legendary of the region, Garchomp, which still probably has the most impressive debut generation of any pseudo. Her theme and design are also fantastic. Not much else to say about this fight other than it checks all the boxes and is the best in the series for me.

#2. Blue (FRLG Champion Rematch)

I don't hear this fight get brought up as much. Top to bottom, I daresay Blue's FRLG champion rematch team gives Cynthia's a run for her money in terms of overall quality. I ultimately give Cynthia the edge due to spotlighting Garchomp instead of the comparatively lackluster Kanto starters, but this is still an amazing fight. Blue's theme is also amazing and his cocky personality makes for a great rival. His team's updated move sets are also quite good at covering their weaknesses. With a team of six you'll probably be around level 58 which makes this fight difficult, but Kanto actually gives you decent options to combat him with solid Pokémon and TM availability, as well as evolutionary stones being easily purchasable. Even though FRLG isn't quite the caliber of game Platinum or Emerald is, this fight is certainly a better capstone to the game than the sequence of boss fights Emerald ends with in my opinion.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

If you play the game the "right" way (i.e. Set mode, no healing items in battle, no grinding and only battle trainers for experience) this fight is practically impossible to beat without luck. It's a completely unreasonable difficulty spike without giving you the resources to combat it.

It sounds to me like the game does give you the resources to combat it, and you're just actively ignoring them.

 

[Wukong]

It sounds to me like the game does give you the resources to combat it, and you're just actively ignoring them.

The point I was trying to make was that the two fights I cited as the "Best" (also difficult fights) can be beaten reasonably without using cheese tactics such as Switch mode, healing items in battle, and/or over levelling. I think most people would agree those tactics erode the level of difficulty in Pokémon games to the point of being non-existent, which is why I choose to play the games a certain way to retain some semblance of difficulty.

If the HGSS Lance fight was well designed it would not punish me for playing that way as egregiously as it does.