I'm aware the game is universally lambasted but I'm having so much fun with it.
I was battling some woman and a group of five smolives walked by in the background and I noticed one of them had a black olive instead of a green one. After I won against the woman I ran up to the little one with the black olive and it was indeed a shiny. I named her Madeline.
The woman in the city who rates your pokemon's size says I have the thiccest jigglypuff she's ever seen.
spoiler
Sending out my tandemaus couple for the hundredth time only to find that they've started a family
is probably the most fun surprise I've ever had playing a pokemon game.
I heard its harder than the other games
Is that true
In my experience yes, although there's an auto-battling feature that I haven't used. I imagine if you have that going most of the time you get a good bit more exp than I've been getting.
Use the auto battle for getting the materials to craft TMs
A Pokemon will stop auto-battling and flee if their health goes critical, kind of like the Wimpy value in old MUDs. This is how I learned why you don't try to level grind on Squawkabillies.
Yes, mostly because you can go do a battle in an area where the NPCs have level 50 pokemon any time you want.
If you try to visit Victory Road early there's a trainer with level 50 Pokemon whose job is to gently suggest going another direction.
Not really. The gyms are easier than ever because the gen's gimmick makes them effectively pure monotype instead of slipping in something to catch up people who just use a single super effective type. Note that they still do that, but then turn it into a pure monotype of the gym's type using the gimmick. Combined with the lack of a clear order it's also easy to end up overleveling them horribly, like I wound up doing the highest level gym 5th and then just sweeping all the others without even bothering about typing using the same pokemon that swept that gym.
The team base boss fights are tougher than the gyms because they tend to have better type coverage despite still sticking to a specific type.
I haven't really found any difficulty spike the way Sword/Shield had and I clearly remember Sun/Moon as having a higher general difficulty level overall.
Scarlet/Violet also lets you completely ignore one of the longstanding difficulty sources and that's a lack of early access to strong pokemon, because you'll find a bunch of great pokemon just wandering around as soon as you're past the lighthouse instead of being locked into picking from a very narrow range. Granted, Sword/Shield had the wild area to let you partially bypass that and they have in general moved away from "alright you got your trash bird, some kind of mouse, and a bug, go fight this guy who's ten levels higher than the wild pokemon around and has a lineup with type coverage to shit on everything you can have except for two of the three starters, hope you took one of those lmao" as a source of difficulty and generally give decent pokemon with relevant types, but Scarlet/Violet blows that away and gives you access to way more good options right off the bat.
Which also means never even bothering with a lot of them, like yeah I could use this spider I caught but it has dogshit stats and nothing's weak to it so just why. Just sweep everything with like two pokemon and replace them as needed, nothing forces leaning on the shitty ones anymore. They're officially redundant at this point.
It can be accidentally harder due to a lack of hand holding. Without being forced to do gyms in a specific order (despite them being designed in a specific order, some are definitely much easier than others) you can just blindly walk into a mid level town with a gym whose trainers and leader have Pokemon 20 levels higher than yours.
Also one of the north western routes to get to the normal gym (roughly level 30 pokemon, mid tier leader) puts you through an area with level 55 Pokemon. There's fucking wild Dragonite and Scyther on the way between the water (level 25-30ish) gym to the normal gym. I think they expected you to come from the east where you don't run into wild fully evolved Pseudo legendaries but it's not stated nor does the game even stop you from doing that.
Even the wild pokemon of the area might not be a good indication, for example I was surrounded by level 18 Marill and a level 20 goomy then triggered a wild battle with a level 33 Salazzle that 1 shot most of my team (around level 20-23) before I gave up throwing balls at it and ran. In the same vicinity there's a level 50 Leafeon which I also started a battle with and got stomped by.
Honestly I think it's more fun if you don't read any guides or recommended routes or walkthroughs and just rawdog the game.
Did I actually white out from starting a fight with a level ??? Paradox Donphan in the desert with only 3 gym badges and nothing over level 25? Yes. Do I like how that's possible in a Pokemon game? Absolutely.
If you do the reccomend order and don't goof about toonmuch. The first trainer I found kicked my ass with strategy and It blew my mind. Haven't had a fight that good since though
Absolutely not, I’ve completely bulldozed every gym so far by just using one super effective move 3-5 times. I haven’t spent that much time dicking around but ended up 10 levels higher than the first two gyms.