Happy New Year Everyone I wanted to start this year talking about something I enjoy. Pokemon and a challenging game, I can honestly say I have attempted both of these Challenges and tried to see how far I would get. A Nuzlocke is a challenge where you can only capture the first Pokemon per area and route and you nickname all of them. While none of that is that hard the next part is difficult if a Pokemon faints it is considered dead and needs to be released. This is particularly hard if Pokemon are high level hatred over grinding as you need to consistently swap your team and sometimes protect members of your team in exchange for others. I managed to do well in a Nuzlocke, but experienced a full team wipe in Brilliant Diamond’s Victory Road when mixed with being tired and some bad luck ended that run.

The next Challenge I tried was a Clone Challenge where someone picks a Pokemon and sees if they can beat the game with a team of them. This forces the player to decide move-set and weaknesses as there are eighteen types you need to get through and you are limited to one or two. When I did my Clone Challenge I picked Pikachu and limited it to just 2 of them. While I did struggle I still had fun with it and managed to get better luck and beat all of base Violet with just remembering moves, TM usage, and over leveling. For Star Road levels I added a Pokemon that was low-level or would lose almost instantly as those require a third party member.

A lot of people may ban healing items, ban over leveling, or only allow one Pokemon. Honestly, I like these challenges because with Nintendo’s focus on family friendly content there is so little challenge so by making a few self-imposed rules to make things harder brings some difficulty that was missing that I feel other RPGs have.