Obviously, game difficulty is highly subjective but I find the 'SM were easy' sentiment so confusing that I start looking for 'macro' reasons to explain it - perhaps SM arrived when a lot of players were coming of age and gitting gud? Perhaps there was a competitive renaissance going on, creating wider awareness of mechanics such as STAB or stat interactions? Perhaps this tranche of players simply haven't played any of the games from around the turn of the millennium?

I'm confident in stating that I'm a good player, and I was wiped multiple times by the totems and a couple of captains when using a non-Nuzlocke team. It's a hazy recollection that I should do more to research, but I'm also fairly sure that Alola has far, far fewer of the 'four Zubats and a Geodude' schmucks and far more of the one-or-two high level, 'real Pokémon' trainers.

Let's look at the competition:

Gen 1 - Just irrelevant.

Gen 2 - 99% irrelevant, Miltank hasn't been a credible surprise for two decades now. I guess Red is a little obnoxious?

Gen 3 - RSE provide a reasonable difficulty floor for the series, but any game with Swampert available as a starter is never going to be truly challenging and a lot of the gym leaders have pretty ropey aces (with the notable exception of Wallace). FRLG pulls fewer punches with the gym leaders, but it also has a brilliant species selection for the player to work with.

Gen 4 - It's been a little while since I played them but the DP Elite Four are a bad joke, albeit much improved in Platinum. The starters are pretty great even if the wild Sinnoh species aren't... Maybe a notch above the GBA titles? HGSS are still a cakewalk.

Gen 5 - These have ended so many Nuzlockes prematurely that they're in serious contention for the hardest overall... but the severity of the rubber-banding effect on Exp gain hardly feels legitimate at times. The increasingly wide variety of moves available to AI teams is definitely starting to bite, in a good way.

Gen 6 - Now, this is the one that really baffles me in relation to the supposed ease of the SM playthrough. In XY you have to actively handicap yourself to avoid stomping Kalos into the chalky dirt - the player is offered Exp Share, Snorlax, Lucario and a second starter in the first half of the game, and that's before you get to the mega evolutions that 99% of the AI trainers can't use! Easiest non-remake titles since the GBA.

Gen 8 - Having only played through once, and with a hand-picked team at that, I found Shield to be very easy - though I would be interested to see how challenging the final tourney is without the Exp Candy feast my team indulged in prior.

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