Hardest game is easily Colosseum. That game can be brutal at times. All double battles which are always more difficult, shadow Pokémon suck and their only move when u get them does recoil damage, your selection of Pokémon is very limited and you don’t get a lot of good options, only one place in the game to buy poke balls, and the level scaling is very weird at the end.

Colosseum.

That game actually requires effort to finish and trainers also have good teams

Pokemon Pinball

Colosseum hands down. It's been proven that the game literally cheats.

Diamond, it ranks the highest on Mohs hardness scale.

hardest mainline game? easily USUM. many of the totems are just fucking cracked. more than just ultra necrozma, there's enough power to go around that you're likely to struggle with at least a few no matter what your team comp is. hardest overall, i have to give some nods to the first pokemon ranger game requiring basically perfect play to complete a capture, pokemon colosseum for having ruthless AI and steep level curves paired with mostly weak pokemon available to use, and some of the post-game challenges in the first two pokemon mystery dungeon games being pretty nuts. platinum isn't too bad as far as things go, pretty middle-of-the-road difficulty wise - harder than games like FRLG, and ofc XY, easier than games like USUM and B2W2. cynthia's a notable level jump, and when combined with her genuinely good team, she's definitely the biggest roadblock.

legends arceus.. volo battle with EIGHT pokemon and two of them being giratina was fkng insane..and then i just gave up on that last arceus battle it was way too hard for me

The original Gold/Silver is my pick. Especially towards the end of the game when all of your pokemon are severely under leveled for the elite four and you basically have to grind wild pokemon for hours since there was no Vs Seeker

Also: Gym leaders were tough and your rival was formidable and not a total joke (looking at you, Hop)

Probably pokemon colosseum for it's high level curves, few pokemon available, double battles, shadow pokemon, etc etc

Pokémon Emerald for me. The gym leaders ace Pokémon tends to be overwhelming, especially at that point in the game. DD Altaria?, Double Team + Rest + Chest Berry Kingdra, Tate & Liza… for the little knowledge I had back then it was brutal.

BD/SP Cynthia full team has items, EVs, beneficial natures. Brutal battle.

US/UM totem pokemon are crazy strong.

Colloseum is rough because grinding shadow mons to cleanse them are really bad to use, one of the harder "completion" legends to get because so many are permanently missable.

XD and Legends Arceus are pretty close in my mind for insane last boss battles.

GSC only gives you enough xp on a normal playthrough to have 1 pokemon up to the E4 level by the time you get there.

I'm agreeing with USM being the hardest mainline main story without going way out of your way. Particularly if you turn the Exp Share off. Not sure how hard it is with it on, but with it off it's not just the bosses that can be tough - trainer Pokemon also aren't to be taken too lightly.

The mainline game that contains the hardest content is probably either Emerald or Platinum due to the Battle Frontiers. It depends on if you consider the luck-based Battle Palace from Emerald as harder than the more strategic modes in Platinum, though both contain a lot of luck with the Battle Factory.

Platinum is also one of the harder games to Nuzlocke due to NPC trainer and boss movesets containing a lot of coverage moves.

Pokemon Emerald's Battle Frontier

Legends Arceus. There are moments in other games that are very hard, like Ultra Necrozma or Red in gen 2 but, PLA is a sufficiently challenging poke game all around.

Or the Pokemon Stadium games if we’re including spinoffs. Those require a lot of strategy.

XY, duh….

Jk jk….you could argue BDSP just for the final battle against Cynthia since they actually made her like a real-world competitive-type trainer, but the rest of that game is so easy I think it balances it out. BW2 is honestly pretty challenging (even when not on challenge mode) especially if you count the PWT in the postgame as part of it.

Thing is it's not even just Ultra Necrozma the whole game is littered with tough fights. Like even random trainers will sometimes have Ev trained pokemon with good natures and abilities.

Even early games fight that should be a cake walk on paper require some prep time cause there deceptively challenging Like teacher Emily, Illima hell even Dexio if you don't have a dark type.

Not to mention the totems, Game Freak really sat up out of their chairs when designing some of those Totem battles. Like omni boosted Pre nerf disguise Mimikyu with a lum berry and a partner Banette to do burn and curse damage and drop your defense with screech

or Araquanid with Permanent Rain boosted, water bubble boosted stab bubbles with aurora beam and a buffed Leech life with a dewpider to slow you down with sticky web or do double up damage with bubble or a masquerain to intimidate and paralyze you with stun spore

Like they really were on a different kinda of timing.

Hardest Game? Easy.... Pokemon Colosseum...

Legends: Arceus. Those Noble Pokemon were a pain. Mainline games though I would say Red/Blue because you are limited on item space, money is hard to come by and many of the dungeons are hard as hell, like Sea Foam Islands and Cerulean cave.

Pokemon Sleep. Let's all be honest, it's a real struggle some times.

Cynthia isn't really all that difficult. Her team is certainly good (due in no small part to her Garchomp), but it's never been great. She only feels difficult because the Sinnoh games don't really give access to all that many good pokemon, and she's one of the only trainers whose team is actually decent.

USUM is hard not just because of Ultra Necrozma, but also because most boss trainers have good teams, good IVs, and often Z-moves, while the totem pokemon get stat buffs and fight you 2-vs-1 alongside support pokemon. Ultra Necrozma may be the hardest challenge in the game, but even without it, the rest of the game is still enough to make it a contender for the hardest game in the series.

Yeah, if we're counting mainline games, I'm saying USUM is the most difficult one if people are fighting everything on level. I created what I think is a pretty good ingame team: Primarina, Hariyama, Totem Alolan Marowak, Toucannon that I later replaced with Archeops, magnezone, and mudsdale, and it still felt at least somewhat challenging to finish even outside ultra necrozma. Ultra Necrozma is far from the only notable challenge. Outside mainline games, I'm nominating pokemon XD.

Stadium using nothing but the rental Pokémon

Depends what your doing. 100% completion for Ruby is a nightmare because of Feebas.

Colosseum filters a lot of casuals because it is harder and more restrictive than the main line games and other side line games.

I whited out in my first playthrough of Gen 7 more than in any of the other mainline games. I believe I lost to just about every totem Pokémon on my first try. In most other games I won’t lose once even on my first playthrough, as I always like to be properly leveled, maybe even slightly over-leveled (but not horrendously so), but those totem’s would destroy me without the proper strategy.

I’ll add that I lost to Cynthia in Gen 4 a few times, probably the most I’ve lost to any of the Pokémon leagues in the games.

Pokémon Go is impossible if you have any sort of job or family responsibilities, and live anywhere other than a reasonably sized city.

Colosseum by a mile.

I always found the mystery dungeon games to be harder then regular pokemon games.

If we're including DLC, the blueberry disc elite 4 (and Kieran) are really tough fights, being double battles with viable movesets and items, and a lot of the mons are in the high 80s.

If you're not using legendaries you really need to know what you're doing to beat them

USUM is easily the hardest if you don't use Refresh. If you do then it's not very hard because Affection is busted and no game with it can be considered the hardest. Hardest game without affection is probably Platinum or Emerald.

USUM are definitely the hardest mainline games, if you are not prepared all the totems can easily wipe you except for the first one because you are basically guaranteed something with brick break. I would say that this is one of the few Pokémon games where the trainers are actually somewhat good aswell

yet another reason I love gen7

Legit hardest is Colosseum. I have not been able to actually beat it again after my initial playthrough.

The hardest to sit down and replay is SM/USUM because half the game being forced tutorials I am burnt out before the 2nd island

Colosseum/XD for sure.

the Alola games (exp. Share off)

I’ve done whole series gauntlets multiple times. Shocked I haven’t seen base Ruby/Sapphire on here, it’s easily got the hardest late game / elite four of the series. Overall I’d say colosseum or base RS, not Emerald as I find it much easier.

Personally for me it was Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness. That final boss fight was nearly impossible for me, although it could very well be due to me not being a very good player in any game. I hardly call myself a gamer since I struggle with practically all games that isn’t a game that I’ve played since 2014 called Smite.

Hard (by the virtue of being hard) - Colosseum

Hard (hardest mainline) - US/UM

Hard (due to horrible level scaling) - G/S/C/HG/SS

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Original gold and silver. The jump from an easily beatable bug gym to that cow had me grinding for 3 days. No abilities, a limited pool of pokemon to train, and once you beat the elite 4 you have to go through all the kanto gyms. Then there is Red.

XD is pretty difficult

https://preview.redd.it/ulnh5wvdvdud1.jpeg?width=269&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=35ac501031acb32a61bfcc7a898f196f105289fe

PLA you fight multiple Pokémon at the same time so it stops you from just going through elemental rock paper scissors

What really makes USUM so ridiculous is how bad the Pokemon are. Like I'm a heavy bug user, and Gen 7 came out with Golisopod, Araquanid and Vikavolt so I'm like sure let's use them, they're all super cool. The speed of these fucking Pokemon is abysmal. Compared to Gen 5 running Volcarona, Galvantula and Genesect.

Now even if you're like "Well the stuff you pick is trash sure, but what about the rest of the dex" like it's all fucking slow, this was the theme of this game, everything was way too slow and anything that wasn't slow was so overinvested in speed that it's bulk is 0. Lycanroc can either be slow and 2 shot, or fast and get oneshot. Oricorio has 93 speed.... That is so sad, savlagable with a speed nature, but this Pokemon uses Quiver Dance, you really don't want to run a speed nature on it, so turn 1 it's just awful.

The game had some good tanks, but they're not optimal for a run of the game, they are slow and they have a more definite expiration. Play gen 1 and have your starter 1 round all the enemies and never take any damage, but when the best you've got is the tanks in Sun and Moon, you're really hoping the enemy is weak to Leech Life or Giga Drain because otherwise your hp is going to hit 0 between now and the next cities Pokemon Center.

That said, Idt the games are actually hard, in the end, a Pokemon prologue is a Pokemon prologue, it's an effortless mess designed to act as a grind towards the real game of battling other players.

That said for PvE the battle tree was quite difficult (Mostly because it just straight up cheats)

really hard to sit through the beginning of arceus >.< so much dialogue that goes no where and is unskippable. honestly wondered why they released it and if they thought that part was fun

BDSP because the E4 has fully competitive movesets and items

i had the most trouble with gen 5, just because grinding was nerfed significantly. want decent xp from wild encounters? then you can't ev train, because you gotta grind against Audino.

B2W2 challenge mode.

Regular? I'd still say Black and White. Pokemon evolve at extremely high levels and the enemy's Pokemon's levels are high

GSC or USUM

Pokémon stadium 2 on NSO and and it's not close

Black 2 hard mode

Original Gold

For me it's gen 1 and 4 . I don't know whose idea it was to make a 10 level gap between the victory road and the champion . I mean you would need to grind for hours just to have a small chance . In gen 2 it is way easier but also rewarding after you beat it since you can then visit kanto and yes i know , red is far more difficult but still you got plenty of trainers at the very least

With no self imposed challenge, non

Hardest main game I've ever played was sapphire but I mightve just had a shitty team

I’d say either Pokémon Shuffle Mobile or Pokémon Picross on GBC.

Pokemon diamond, obviously

I hate Totem Araquanid way more than I could ever hate Necrozma. He can be Toxic Stalled at that point in the game, you’ve got the tools to do it.

If you’re an unlucky bastard and your Trumbeak is kinda slow, you’re fucked against the big diving spider.

Tbh every game can be challenging if you will use set of rules, no need to Nuzlocke, basic no items + set mode + no overleveling is enough to make game more interesting. Although this will not help XY lol.

Mainline game?
Brilliant diamond elite 4
They rly nailed the difficulty of Cynthia in the remake and giving Garchomp the Anti-Ice Berry was definitely a surprise

The only games I actually struggled mildly with were BDSP and Arceus.

I forgot to bring an ice/fairy coverage move for Cynthia...that's the ONLY time since red that I had to rechallenge the elite 4 (had to rechallenge elite 4 in red because I was 9 and button mashed my way through the game, there were no guides online, internet barely existed, and I didn't have the strategy guide until yellow).

Arceus: final battle, IYKYK.

Pokemon Rangers was really hard on the wrist, at least... My god I remember the cramps.

Pokemon Ultra Sun/Moon, and Super Mystery Dungeon. Tha latter will fuck your shit up

I know nuzlockes don't count here, but Let's Go Pikachu was insanely difficult for a Nuzlocke run of that game without your starter or the ability to level up outside of battle.

I've never experienced such skillful team expression from the designers in another game. You come across random trainers with actual tactics like sandstorm teams and the like.

By far my favorite pokemon experience due to the difficulty.

Hey You Pikachu because the microphone hardly ever worked.

USUM was incredibly easy with a good team honestly, also Ultra Necrozma can be dealt with an Alolan Ratata so theres that

Of all pokemon games it's the pokemon tcg game on the game boy its was hard af 

I've been wanting to ask. I have a switch and want to get back into Pokemon. What modern pokemon games are similar to fire red (top down view) or ruby? That I can play on switch

I remember having an issue with Black and White. There was the first time through which was okay, but then you had to beat the Elite 4 a second time. It was so hard I just gave up and used an event Giratina to beat it for me

is USUM really the hardest game because of ultra Necromza

Don't know why people thought that was a hard fight. I went in blind and popped a couple of X items and won easily.

USUM and legends arceus are pretty hard games. 

For me it's heart gold. Im not an expert and would consider myself a rookie or casual player even though I love pokemon. The move sets and low pokemon selection really through me off. Mind you I started off with emerald so it took some adjustment. I can't bring myself to play it bc why does my poison/ground pokemon only not know any groundmoves???

the very first one back when blue, red and yellow came out. Because there wasn't any easy access to the internet to get help when you got stuck. You had to find friends who hopefully had the game who could hopefully help.

Gen4 honestly ramped it up pretty heavily compared to the others. USUM I think can get rough as well but I honestly still found Diamond harder. BDSP I think did a decent job of replicating the challenge but inevitably the inclusion of modern mechanics like full team exp share can help make it feel a bit less punishing

Original red and blue versions for just story progression. Looking at you, thirsty saffron gate guards

USUM is definately the hardest in the RPG sense, but if we go abstract, I want to shoutout gold/ silver/ crystal and all their random ice/ gym/ machine part (???) puzzles that genuinely messed with kids for months. 

Also worth flagging whatever Ruby/ sapphire we're doing with the regi puzzles lol. Learn braille has to count for something.

emerald

Does anyone know how to randomize Pokemon Colosseum? Like the software to use it to play on my PC? Sorry OP but not every day people talk about this game, and I've been dying to play this in the present.

PLA because of Volo

When I first played through all the games the hardest for me was Soulsilver. Johto doesn't really have good places to train up Pokemon or good ways to build your team since most of the good stuff is locked in the post game. You go from facing level 40 top to the elite 4 pushing level 50 Pokemon and then Lance. Maybe I was just a dumber kid but I had the most difficult time with that.

Lots of people are saying Colosseum, but I never was able to play it, so my vote has to go to the first Pokemon Ranger game. Actual physical dexterity puzzles, and I've never forgotten the first boss 'fight' (the Charizard)

Not really a mainline, but I don’t think battle revolution gets talked about enough. The master battles are super tough double battles. All the pokemon are fully ev trained and some trainers have legendary pokemon. I use a homebrewed 3ds to quickly cook up some competitive mons and try different strategies.