I dont think they're particularly hard, just gimmicky. Everything is set up in their favor (acceptable, it's their gym and field effects can be made to work both ways), they have all the correct held items (less acceptable since you dont get access to them, but fair enough), all the egg moves, stats and TMs (another tier less acceptable since some of it is physically impossible for even the player).
But what is the most asinine is the RNG. You start getting crit, 5 turn confuses on your end, barely 1 turn on theirs. Quite a few of my gym battles are just trial and error. First turn sleep or confuse move misses even with compound eyes, reload. Getting crit at pretty much any stage, reload. Your pokemon went 5 experience over the limit and suddenly refuses to do stuff 9 out of 10 times, reload.
