Is Normal difficulty a bit too hard?

[Chris247]

I started a new playthough for v13 in Intense Mode , and pretty much every single Important fight I am asked to form the perfect team against that opponent and also do repeats of the fight so I can predict when they switch or not . After all that goes well I also have to pray to rng jesus to win for some of them . Its satisfying to win but for some of these fights its like cool I won a 1/100 version of the fight . In my normal run which I played in V12 I remember getting destroyed in the fight with Geara and Zeta on top of the mountain (maybe it was an even more previous version ) and now Saki which I had to cheese the f out of it to win .  

[MhicKy]

40 minutes ago, Chris247 said:

I started a new playthough for v13 in Intense Mode , and pretty much every single Important fight I am asked to form the perfect team against that opponent and also do repeats of the fight so I can predict when they switch or not . After all that goes well I also have to pray to rng jesus to win for some of them . Its satisfying to win but for some of these fights its like cool I won a 1/100 version of the fight . In my normal run which I played in V12 I remember getting destroyed in the fight with Geara and Zeta on top of the mountain (maybe it was an even more previous version ) and now Saki which I had to cheese the f out of it to win .  

Welcome to Rejuvenation Intense Mode!
We have cookies and soda by the table, enjoy your stay~

But yeah, that's pretty much how it goes.. Fight the first time, get a feel of the leader's team and strategy, create a party to counter that strategy, fight again, try to get the hang of which pokemon should lead and what you should do for each of the enemy's pokemon and, finally, win.. And yeah RNG play a big part too.. There were fights that if I missed one move or got paralyzed and lost the turn that meant the entire battle was now over..

[Mia789]

I think it is way harder now. I played it on v12 on Normal and started 2 playtroughs on Casual & Normal after v13 came out. With the blocking of the early EV room access it is way more punishing now even battles I could do before with relative ease or with some problems. My playstyle is to only use 6 POkemon at a time and if I switch one out I am not allowed to use them again afterwards. (Boxing is sending them on vacation).

 

The fight against Venam I needed to use trash mons (Mons I only used as deathfodder and to do chipdamage in this battle and never used again). The Lycanroc moved to later game is ok in my opinion even tough I loved to use one cause Its one of my favorites overall.

The Riftpokeon how they are now I dont really like. I never played gen 8 but I think a few said that is kind of an Dynamax enounter. Most are way harder and less fun than before The Gardevoir one was hard before but now it feels kind of impossible without the right Pokemon. It was the one of the 2 times I broke my playstyle rule with only using Sylveon for this 1 battle (switching out afterwards) cause it oneshot everyone of my team even Mawile wich double resists. The Eric & Saki battles were also just a joke in my opinion it depended on RNG and wernt fun..

 

The Geara fights are all way harder now but the worst was the last (before Sakis gym battle) The Megagangar just outspeed and oneshot everyone of my team even those that double resisted. I had to train up an Absol with enough ATTack to suckerpunch oneshot it. I broke my gamerule again... Ericks gym battle is also way harder now same as the Angie & Cera fight which took me many tries and RNG.

It seems overall harder now and I dont get the feeling it is that easy or possible to do Monoruns compared to before. Even on Casual and that the AI knows what you do before you do it sucks. Be it item or attackusage adn just outsmarts you. Use i Protect it doesnt attack my Pokemon even if it is double effective on me.

I think one of the Problems in my opinion  is the lack of Megastones and the late Megaring (which makes sense storywise) compared to Reborn. A few trainers already have megapokemon but I couldnt use one except (Megaabsol)

 

I am thankful for the Narissa gym battle nerf it is way easier now.

I wanted to try intense before but now I totally lost the urge casue of the difficulty but I am glad a few still like and do it.

 

[Rage991]

how much harder is "Intense" compared to "normal on set mode and without using items infight"?

Edited August 15, 2021 by Rage991

[Chris247]

6 hours ago, MhicKy said:

Welcome to Rejuvenation Intense Mode!
We have cookies and soda by the table, enjoy your stay~

But yeah, that's pretty much how it goes.. Fight the first time, get a feel of the leader's team and strategy, create a party to counter that strategy, fight again, try to get the hang of which pokemon should lead and what you should do for each of the enemy's pokemon and, finally, win.. And yeah RNG play a big part too.. There were fights that if I missed one move or got paralyzed and lost the turn that meant the entire battle was now over..

 

Yeah for example Valarie , if her Primarina didnt get paralyzed one time at the end to the battle it was a full reset . Its not like I dont enjoy it but yeah you really gotta earn that win . I even had to use berries which I never did before .

Edited August 2, 2021 by Chris247

[SoulN7]

On 7/31/2021 at 5:02 PM, Arthesia said:

Disclaimer: This based on my experience playing "Set" and usually beating story/gym battles within 5 tries and a roster of 8-15 pokemon.

 

Might be controversial but... normal difficulty feels a bit too hard? Nearing the end of ch14 now but I assume ch15 is similar.

 

Don't get me wrong, I love the puzzle approach to the battles. It's something I fell in love with playing Reborn,

That said, as the story progresses it starts to detract from my enjoyment of the game narratively.

Mostly because there's rarely a story battle you can go into blind with a strong team (but still knowing how the field works) and hope to win.

 

I don't mind that for the first half of the game you need to exploit everything you can. You're the underdog and this is a core part of the story.

However, after training strong pokemon and crafting a balanced team I hoped that I could rely on them to win with more consistency.

But I still find myself heavily pushed toward cheese tactics and hard-counters.

 

It's mostly because specific pokemon are so optimized for their field that they shut down any strategy of your own that isn't a direct counter.

 

I've fallen pretty hard for this game so I'm seriously considering making a difficulty tweaks mod (if there isn't already).

e.g. tweaking Valarie's Dewgong (replace Stockpile so that it can be wall-broken), or Geara's Typhlosion (change from Timid to Modest so it can be outsped), etc.

Would probably add an option that adjusts all trainer IVs from 31 -> 20.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rejuv is pretty an hard game, even in casual. It has long battle and sometimes intenses, despite the difficulty. It's up to you to take out tactics and more, even the weirdest ones.

 

Example for my plays:

 

Today I started Intense Mode for the first time...and...sometimes, some battles are HARD, but others maybe you can pull out something which works for battles in short time. (like me -with a Beedrill with Bug Bite and Harden which sweeped half of Venam's team, included a Seviper which is supposed to have Glare and Bulldoze- and a Glameow with Hypnosis)

[MhicKy]

10 hours ago, S7rife said:

 

Rejuv is pretty an hard game, even in casual. It has long battle and sometimes intenses, despite the difficulty. It's up to you to take out tactics and more, even the weirdest ones.

 

Example for my plays:

 

Today I started Intense Mode for the first time...and...sometimes, some battles are HARD, but others maybe you can pull out something which works for battles in short time. (like me -with a Beedrill with Bug Bite and Harden which sweeped half of Venam's team, included a Seviper which is supposed to have Glare and Bulldoze- and a Glameow with Hypnosis)

Yeah, for Venam on Intense I just used a Meowth with Technician, a Glameow and a Butterfree, both Meowth and Glameow had Fake Out so they could take one of her pokemons each with no issue, the other 3 pokemons in my team were canon fodder so I could keep using the Fake Out strat, except for Butterfree since it had Confusion so.. 

Point is, if you wanna win you gotta find cheese strategies like this on Intense or else it's pretty damn difficult and reliant on RNG..

[triplebassist]

I haven't found the Gym Leaders to be too bad (on normal) but the story fights where you're just randomly thrown into a 6v6 with someone who's got a team designed for the field they're on and using items you don't have access to is just rough.

[Juice]

20 hours ago, MhicKy said:

Yeah, for Venam on Intense I just used a Meowth with Technician, a Glameow and a Butterfree, both Meowth and Glameow had Fake Out so they could take one of her pokemons each with no issue, the other 3 pokemons in my team were canon fodder so I could keep using the Fake Out strat, except for Butterfree since it had Confusion so.. 

Point is, if you wanna win you gotta find cheese strategies like this on Intense or else it's pretty damn difficult and reliant on RNG..

 

I beat Crawli with a Purugly too, Faking out the Galvantula and killing it with your other party member before that guy even sets up the webs makes that battle very much easier. 

[MhicKy]

1 hour ago, Juice said:

 

I beat Crawli with a Purugly too, Faking out the Galvantula and killing it with your other party member before that guy even sets up the webs makes that battle very much easier. 

One of my main MVPs is an Ambipom EXACTLY because of Fake Out, with the Technician ability his Fake Out is the strongest there is, he can defeat anything with the one-two punch Fake Out + Double Hit, ever since I started my first playthrough in v12 I NEVER dared to remove him from my party, he's been there since and I always pick him as soon as I get to Route 2, he's been the Pokemon that has been consistently reliable on my team for years..

He is also consistent in how sure you are to KO something
Did Fake Out removed 30% of the enemy HP? Than a Double Hit will kill it
Did Fake Out removed 50% or more? If the enemy isn't resistant, use Thief for assurance (Since Double Hit isn't 100% acc)

[Necrikus]

Well, it's nice to know I'm not the only one surprised by the difficulty, though I am a bit disheartened how far into the game I see people complaining about. 

 

I had played version 12 of Rejuvenation some time back. But in it, I recall playing on normal before getting stuck on Terajuma for some reason. I took a long break until recently when I downloaded V13... and I couldn't beat Geara in chapter 3. I just kept banging my head trying to figure out a way to handle Giratina and the double battle with Geara with the same team until I forced myself to try a new game on casual mode instead of normal. 

 

On casual I was easily able to finish chapter 3, rarely needing to retry battles against even the toughest fights. It really lives up to the "casual" name that difficulty has; so much so that it feels like I've robbed myself of a lot of the fun. 

 

During my short time trying to do my run on normal mode (no mods/debug mode), I kept having a feeling that the game just does not give me the tools to handle the harder fights. It's as though the game is so restrictive on what available pokemon, items, and services one has access to during any of the chapter's I've seen so far that it's impossible to progress with just a strong team and a good understanding of the game's mechanics. Far too often, I straight up had to drastically change my team to have a chance at winning a battle, and even then luck had to be on my side. And it really isn't fun to catch/train pokemon I would normally not want to use if I didn't feel like I was being forced to do so. And forget about IVs and EVs, without debug mode I just do not hate myself enough to optimise in that sort of way just so I can get through the earliest of the early game. 

 

It also feels as though the "bosses" of the game are a little too optimized, not just having field advantages that the player often can do little about in the early game where the tools available to you are the most restrictive, but also having teams that have so much type coverage that I often find the pokemon I bring in specifically for the fight being one or two shotted by a move the opponent doesn't even have STAB with. 

 

Also, I feel like the computer cheats sometimes; like, knowing when I'm going to use an item or certain moves and acting accordingly. I cannot prove it, but it definitely feels that way. Which just makes it feel more like I won because of luck instead of my tactics or strategy. I really, really hope there can be a healthy middle-ground between the game's casual and normal settings. 

Edited August 13, 2021 by Necrikus

[Arthesia]

51 minutes ago, Necrikus said:

Also, I feel like the computer cheats sometimes; like, knowing when I'm going to use an item or certain moves and acting accordingly. I cannot prove it, but it definitely feels that way. Which just makes it feel more like I won because of luck instead of my tactics or strategy. I really, really hope there can be a healthy middle-ground between the game's casual and normal settings. 

 

Trainers absolutely know what your items are and what you're going to do next. In practice this lets them use moves like Sucker Punch and Pursuit, but the side effect is that they are always a step ahead.

[Nocturne93]

13 hours ago, Arthesia said:

 

Trainers absolutely know what your items are and what you're going to do next. In practice this lets them use moves like Sucker Punch and Pursuit, but the side effect is that they are always a step ahead.

The AI apparently also knows what kind of moves and abilities your Pokémon have, so abilities like Zoroark's Illusion become kind of useless because of this. I also noticed in the battle with Valarie that the AI will switch to a Pokémon that resists or is immune to your last used move. 

[Anddy]

Rejuv v13 in Intense is basically

 

1) Enjoy the story 

2) Have a really tough fight that takes me one day to beat (no breed no debug no ev/iv training) 

3) Forget the whole story I enjoyed the 2 past days

4) Repeat

 

The lack of ability capsules, EV rooms and good berry makes the game unecessarrly hard, I play without guide so I miss some items or tactics

I play with 2 friends and we made a rule that we can not use the same mons, but on some fights (like marianette for example) some mons (Xatu Ominous wind / Stored power) are REALLY goated and almost mandatory

 

 

Like, yeah, the game is hard, but I really not enjoy playing against a full OP team with perfect attacks when I have only shit pokemons, make it fair you know, give us chances, it's like playing pokemon showdown with PU pokemons vs Anything goes

[321_King_123]

On 8/13/2021 at 11:56 PM, Arthesia said:

 

Trainers absolutely know what your items are and what you're going to do next. In practice this lets them use moves like Sucker Punch and Pursuit, but the side effect is that they are always a step ahead.

Its not only in certain battles tho?

I play on Normal mode, and i remember that in the V13 content, there was a battle i used a gardevoir and the enemy a absol, i used Calm Mind and it went with Sucker Punch, and obviusly it failed.

 

But i do agree in certain fights the trainers read everything over you, as many have already said, a trainer know when you have chesto berry, because of that it will never go inyo hypnosis on the mon with the berry

[Juice]

1 hour ago, 321_King_123 said:

Its not only in certain battles tho?

I play on Normal mode, and i remember that in the V13 content, there was a battle i used a gardevoir and the enemy a absol, i used Calm Mind and it went with Sucker Punch, and obviusly it failed.

 

But i do agree in certain fights the trainers read everything over you, as many have already said, a trainer know when you have chesto berry, because of that it will never go inyo hypnosis on the mon with the berry

 

even the Audino trainers know to use Knock Off if you have an item, and it doesn't use it if you don't

[Anddy]

50 minutes ago, Juice said:

 

even the Audino trainers know to use Knock Off if you have an item, and it doesn't use it if you don't

I believe this is intended as in 8G you see the opponent team and whether they have items (well in rejuvenation you don't so it's still unfair) 

[Zumi]

We're aware of the issues with balancing. Unfortunately, most of these issues came to light after V13 was brought out. The feedback we got during alpha and beta seemed to have been too little in regards to balancing to properly gauge how other people would be experiencing the game (especially now that the AI is completely different -- which really did end up adding a lot to the overall difficulty), but we take feedback on this stuff very seriously and hope that we can make a more enjoyable experience in the future. Sorry for the trouble things have been causing in the game, we're definitely looking at different options for what we can do to make things better!

[triplebassist]

1 hour ago, Zumi said:

The feedback we got during alpha and beta seemed to have been too little in regards to balancing to properly gauge how other people would be experiencing the game (especially now that the AI is completely different -- which really did end up adding a lot to the overall difficulty)

If you don't mind me asking, do you have any ideas as to what the problem was in the alpha and beta feedback?  Was it something as simple as having playtesters who were too experienced with the game (and so more able to handle extra difficulty than a normal player), or do you think there was something else going on under the hood that needs to be considered?

[vepper]

I haven't gotten to the end of V13 yet (just about to catch up to actually starting V13 content in my replay) but after the changes in the patches to V13 I've been mostly happy with normal difficulty. I play easier games on set but I play this one on shift to avoid tilting myself out of existence, and only use items, especially revives, if I'm really frustrated with a battle. Not as restrictive as some people play, though. I have been training a larger than average, if type-lopsided rotation though, up to about 30 pokemon at this point; though only about 10-15 really get used extensively.

 

One change I do actually kind of like is the complete removal of  RNG from damage. While it removes the possibility to survive with lucky low rolls, I would take that for also not worrying about having attacks that have a non-100% chance to OHKO. It's a little weird at first, but it works. 

 

Fights that did stand out as off, though some of them may have been due to being in a bad mindset or being too stubborn to use items like seeds:

Amanda in Erick's gym. Her opener is ridiculously hard to crack and she actually has one of the hardest to outslow trick room teams of any trick-room based boss with things like the 20 speed Torkoal. I completely demolished Lorna by contrast, though that may be due to a larger selection of slow pokemon along with her pokemon just not really being quite as slow as Amanda's. This could be me being too stubborn to adapt, and I didn't think of the possibly-unintended strategy of equipping Power items to slow your pokemon down further.

I never cheesed Souta's field in the past, but I was a lot more liberal with revive spam. It was one fight I did end up burning one or two on anyway, though. Honestly, the only thing I hate about this fight is being flinched by Sky Attack, so even if you wall the massive damage with something like a Rhyperior you might get flinched anyway. I get you're probably meant to stall out his tailwind then counter with your own, but I was really stubborn on using an elemental seed or breeding Sky Attack onto my own pokemon. So part of this may be due to me not adapting as much as I could, as opposed to someone like Adam who I crushed with pre-prepared inverse-effective moves like Golisopod one-shotting Aerodactyl.

 

[Rage991]

I acutally quite like normal mode difficulty, at least now that EV-room cards are back to the beginning. I did a rock-mono run, set-mode, no items in battle on normal mode with V13 release and loved the experience. Maybe I got a bit lucky with fights like the zetta+geara fight or ryland. Some fights felt like writing a script and souta was still really hard (ironically erick was the hardest fight in the game for me), but I had restrictet myself after all so it still felt fair in context. There are only 2 fights that I call bullshit on:

Spoiler

Angie while playing as Erin. It felt like a luck fight, every move from Ampharos had to hit or you were toast, but it might be that my strat wasnt perfect, still didnt feel fun. And even worse: the reshiram fight as lavender. pure luck based fight. reset until you have 3 rounds of sleep AND thunder wave hits. Nope, didnt like those 40 minutes it took me, after figuring out a/the strat, at all.

 

[Zumi]

2 hours ago, triplebassist said:

If you don't mind me asking, do you have any ideas as to what the problem was in the alpha and beta feedback?  Was it something as simple as having playtesters who were too experienced with the game (and so more able to handle extra difficulty than a normal player), or do you think there was something else going on under the hood that needs to be considered?

 

Feedback either got buried underneath a lot of other things, or simply just... kinda went over our heads due to the other stuff we had to pay attention to. There were indeed a lot of experienced players part of both alpha and beta, which might've also skewed the perspective compared to people who are playing for the first time or aren't completely used to the difficulty of these kinds of games yet. We're probably going to use a better method of collecting feedback about balancing during testing in the future to make sure the former doesn't happen as often.

[HirsuteMonkey]

On 8/1/2021 at 7:13 AM, CaptainMomo said:

This isn't a 'git gud' scenario like Reborn, this is 'reset until everything goes right' scenario and it's annoying.

And this right here sums up the problem. Your options for countering things usually boil down to the following:

 

1. Using an expansive roster of painfully boring OP Über-tier mons instead of your favorites.

2. Go full Edge of Tomorrow on the bosses with countless resets to figure out the optimal strategy and then pray to RNGesus for victory.

3. Cheese like no one has ever cheesed before, using absurd filth like evasion boosting, Shedinja, imposter Ditto, Destiny Bond x5, Perish Song, and so on.

4. Try to beat the boss at their own game, using their field effect against them, which usually entails your team being completely useless in most other situations.

5. Laboriously grind up a series of hyper-specific hard counters and then put them in the box after the fight on the off chance they’ll come in handy later.

 

The problem is the field effects. They’re not able to be countered or destroyed nearly as easily as in Reborn, and unlike in Reborn, there’s little feeling of give-and-take. In Reborn, it felt like the fields were an advantage in total, but had the possibility to be subverted into an advantage on your side. In Rejuvenation, the field effects are staggeringly OP and made to eliminate all but a tiny handful of niche counters against a particular bespoke team.

 

If I had any skill whatsoever in modding the game, I’d severely scale back the field effects for normal mode, making them much more like Reborn’s. More ways to alter them, less broken Seeds, less drastic buffs and debuffs (things like 1.2x or 0.8x effectiveness instead of 1.5x, 0.5x, and complete immunities, not to mention accuracy modifiers like always-hit Hypnosis), and more moves being logically boosted or hindered by interacting with the fields. Reborn’s fields had a diverse variety of move interactions, and now it’s often down to a bare handful in Rejuvenation.

 

Credit where it’s due, though: signature moves are a fantastic idea, and generally they’re well-implemented (if you ignore the brokenness of the field effects themselves). Those can stay or even be expanded upon as far as I’m concerned. Those and crests. There can never be enough crests. 

[triplebassist]

1 hour ago, HirsuteMonkey said:

The problem is the field effects. They’re not able to be countered or destroyed nearly as easily as in Reborn, and unlike in Reborn, there’s little feeling of give-and-take. In Reborn, it felt like the fields were an advantage in total, but had the possibility to be subverted into an advantage on your side. In Rejuvenation, the field effects are staggeringly OP and made to eliminate all but a tiny handful of niche counters against a particular bespoke team.

 

If I had any skill whatsoever in modding the game, I’d severely scale back the field effects for normal mode, making them much more like Reborn’s. More ways to alter them, less broken Seeds, less drastic buffs and debuffs (things like 1.2x or 0.8x effectiveness instead of 1.5x, 0.5x, and complete immunities, not to mention accuracy modifiers like always-hit Hypnosis), and more moves being logically boosted or hindered by interacting with the fields. Reborn’s fields had a diverse variety of move interactions, and now it’s often down to a bare handful in Rejuvenation.

One interesting difference with Reborn is that it's more than happy to let you use a bunch of broken Seeds right along with the bosses. You can by unlimited numbers of them for 3000P starting when your level cap is 35. The game seems to be perfectly happy to let you respond to a battle that's giving you trouble by rolling in with 6 seeds and using their brokenness in your favor. It's expensive, sure, but it's presented as a viable option. That's not really the case in Rejuv, and I think it's another way in which Reborn is able to use the field effects with just a bit more nuance as a fact of the battle that can be beneficial or harmful to both sides rather than another obstacle for the player to overcome.

[GhxstPapi]

Yea the difficulty spikes are a pain. I had to start over due to the update not working with my old v12 file and just had problems after problems. i dont mind the advantages they give the gym leaders and POI but it becomes a problem when the advantages make it one sided and have you rely on for the whole fight. it feels great to win in those situations even though you raged and lose 9/10.