Team size for playing through the game
Posted by: IceFlame
Date: 2016-08-28 18:36:14
I've only spent much time on 1st-3rd Gen, and can't really comment on the later ones.
When looking for information about the games, I was amazed at the number of walkthroughs and other advice pages that recommended training 6 Pokemon during the initial play-through. Firstly, they end up under-levelled. Secondly, if carrying them all the time, you need to waste move slots on weak field moves. When playing Sapphire for the first time long ago, I gave up for months before beating the Elite Four, and in retrospect my team was too big. And when asking people if they played the older games back in the day, there were a few who gave up because they were under-levelled and it was taking too long.
Speedrunners seem to play most of the game with one Pokemon - normally the water starter - and in some cases pick up a legendary with the Master Ball. Avoiding as many fights as possible means the Pokemon is not really over-levelled, and advanced tricks are required to handle the bad type match-ups.
In normal play, including catching things, it's helpful to have one with a sleep move and one with False Swipe.
Recently, I've been replaying the older games with teams of 3-4, which seems to give an appropriate level progression if fighting most of the trainers. If I was writing a guide for beginners, that's what I'd put in it.
Of course, unless a team is over-levelled, it needs good type coverage (or advanced tricks). A beginner playing without a guide and trying to choose a team of 3 (and the moves to go with it) is going to have some trouble there.
SHIFT/SET makes a difference too. Probably, SHIFT favours larger teams (as in 3-4; it's still much harder with 5-6) while SET favours smaller ones (1-2). I'm mostly playing on SHIFT at the moment, to make things as easy as possible while I remind myself what's going on after years of absence, and learn my way around in Japanese. If I play again, might try making things harder with SET and/or a larger team, but still don't want to grind for levels.
So, questions: In the older games, do you play SHIFT or SET, what team size do you prefer, and do you need to grind levels (up to beating the Elite Four anyway)? Can an expert play an evenly-levelled team of 6 without grinding? How about on SET?
I read that 5th Gen scales the EXP gain depending on how your Pokemon's level compares to the opponent's level, but this idea was abandoned for 6th Gen. And in 6th Gen, the EXP Share is obtained near the start of the game, and gives 50% of the full EXP to each of the non-participating Pokemon without taking from the participating ones. How do these changes affect the situation?
And does this issue come up in any other popular games? The other RPGs I've played give the full EXP to everyone in the party whether they help or not. Is Pokemon the strange one here?