Hardest Relative NPC

This Thread is for those kind of battles that leave you feeling that you just climbed a mountain. The kind of battles that make you give everything you got. These are the battles that you will never forget because they forced you to fully believe in your pokemon's abilities and prevailed against all odds. These are the battles that define what pokemon really means.

For Me it would have to be Red in HG because of his Lv. 80^ pokemon that fully forced my Lv.82 Typhlosion, Lv.84 Ho-Oh, Lv.78 Lugia, Lv.74 Dragonite, Lv.72 Snorlax, Lv.71 Gyarados. I went into the fight thinking that i would just be facing upper 60's or lower 70's pokemon and had prepared as such bringing only 6 Full Restores, and 6 Revives and was totally surprised when i saw a Lv.88 Pikachu with Light Orb about to Brutalize my pokemon. After a long drawn out battle filled with moments of deep despair i finally prevailed when my Ho-Oh used Fire Blast on his Venusaur therefore making me the strongest Trainer in Kanto

Edit: Bertha in Platinum due to me being a complete newbie to the game and had only 2 Lv.50^ pokemon while the rest were 32 and lower, the Lv.50^ are: Lv. 58 Infernape with Close Combat, Fire Blast, Flare Blitz, and Rock Climb and a Lv. 51 Giratina with Shadow Force, Dragon Claw, Thunder, and Ancient Power. During the battle I kept spamming Fire Blast, Shadow Force and Close Combat and repeatedly fell to Earthquake monster that is Hippowdon and The Rock type threat in Rhyperior.
 
It was concluded in the RBY in-game tiers thread that Misty is probably the toughest opponent in all of RB. Starmie's Bubblebeam is just too strong to handle for so many Pokemon. I can't think of a whole lot of things that can actually beat it without getting really lucky, other than Bulbasaur/Ivysaur, Bellsprout, Oddish, and Wartortle. Of course RBY AI is funky and she might just use Tackle or X-Defend ten times in a row to let your Pidgey win.

The Yellow leaders are pretty intimidating compared to their RB counterparts, but I don't think they'd really give any trouble to a prepared player ever.

I guess HGSS Red can be up there considering the versatility of his team. You have like all game to prepare for this shenanigans though.

Obligatory mention for Whitney's Miltank.
 
Wattson was kinda gay, but mostly because parahax happened like 18 times in a row and Grovyle couldn't land the last Quick Attack to win.

Aside from that, not much. Norman did take the cake the first time I played Ruby, because I didn't know Slaking had the stats of a legendary and i kept failing with my L30 combusken -.-"
 

Chou Toshio

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Obligatory mention for Whitney's Miltank.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thM0W0WhtB4


On another note,

I actually had a REALLY hard time against Iris in B2W2 (I lost twice...). My team was pretty tough too for in-game; I actually got swept by the Archaeops, losing 3 teammates and lost 2 to the lapras. If it weren't for being able to set up Gliscor to +6 against Druddigon, I would have lost (as it was, Gliscor was my last Pokemon at 3% health when I beat Haxorus). Of course, that weakness is gone next time you fight her and she has Salamence instread... great...

I'd actually say HGSS Lance is a pretty impressive opponent as long as you don't specifically have something that destroys him *cough*starmie*cough*

Yeah, Misty is a bitch though. Not exactly "unforgettable battles" in a good way, because your team is just so unprepared for the unfair massacre that is 100 Special and 65 base power STAB Water attacks at only the 2nd gym. If I'm not going with Gyarados or Bulbasaur, I probably am depositing my whole team, spending all my money, and fighting her continuously with just oddish/bellsprout until it's beaten staryu enough times to get over starmie.
 

Jorgen

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Whitney Miltank is pretty nasty. Even if you have, like, a Geodude, you can't just hack and slash your way past it because Rollout reaches 480 Base Power and it takes paltry, easily-recoverable damage from your attacks. It's easy enough to Defense Curl stall and then X Attack up, though, if you have the foresight and patience for that.

Misty is definitely pretty nasty in RBY, though 2 of the 3 starters tank it just fine. Charmander is the only starter that means a lot of trouble with Misty.

That one Rocket in RBY Mt. Moon with the lv. 16 Hyper Fang Raticate was a doozy regardless of your starter, though, and even with a Geodude you'll struggle because it'll be at a pretty low level.
 
That one Rocket in RBY Mt. Moon with the lv. 16 Hyper Fang Raticate was a doozy regardless of your starter, though, and even with a Geodude you'll struggle because it'll be at a pretty low level.
Every time I nuzlocke R/B/Y, I always try to sneak past that Grunt. He's such a pain.

I remember struggling for ages in R/S against Norman. His Slaking were just so strong, and all I had was Marshtomp and Swellow. I also remember not being able to beat Juan in Emerald with Swampert, Dustox, and Altaria. When I learned that I could go back and get Rayquaza before battling him, though....

Every time I pick Oshawott in B/W, I struggle a bit with Cilan. Even though I get the Pansear before the battle, it's Incinerate is just so weak, and more often than not, I'd have to try and muscle through with a Lillipup. Pansear is that bad.

One final bad memory I have is of being an 8 year old kid, getting Silver version, starting with Chikorita, and playing through the early game. It all went well, even though I had to 3HKO everything (and the Elder of Sprout Tower was annoying with his Hypnosis Hoothoot). But I pushed through, until Bugsy. Bayleef was all I had. I laughed at his Metapod and Kakuna, but that Scyther..... man, was it tough.
 

Arcticblast

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Unless you grind a lot, Lenora's Watchog is a nightmare to take out. I remember having a lot of trouble with Bugsy in my very first run of Silver (I was 6 or something, first Pokemon game ever) despite starting with Cyndaquil. Never had trouble with it after that though.
 
Whitney Miltank is pretty nasty. Even if you have, like, a Geodude, you can't just hack and slash your way past it because Rollout reaches 480 Base Power and it takes paltry, easily-recoverable damage from your attacks. It's easy enough to Defense Curl stall and then X Attack up, though, if you have the foresight and patience for that.
Use Protect
Misty is definitely pretty nasty in RBY, though 2 of the 3 starters tank it just fine. Charmander is the only starter that means a lot of trouble with Misty.
I was trying to get all the badges in a Blue version as fast as possible so I did a solo run of Charizard with Fearow and Slowbro as HM slaves, and the only part of the game I had any difficulty with was Misty. By the time I was fighting the Elite Four, I was horribly overleveled and had no difficulty, but Misty has a quite powerful Starmie before you get into a lot of the major grinding areas so she gave me a run for my money
 

Codraroll

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I see nobody have brought up Cooltrainer Jennifer from Ruby/Sapphire. You walk along with your slightly underlevelled Pokémon, then BAM! A trainer! Oh, she has only one Pokémon? Milotic? That's cool...

...five minutes later, it's not cool anymore. I rushed a little too much through Sapphire, and Jennifer was the first trainer to beat me. That Milotic took everything I threw at it, Recovered back the damage, and confused me with Water Pulse until my entire team was down. I felt so pathetic afterwards.

Whitney is also a royal pain in the lower end of your back.
 
Use Protect
Who's got Protect that early in GSC?

Though I never had trouble with that whole gym because of the ingame trade for Machop. Resisted Rollout, immune to Attract, and Karate Chop 2HKOd.

Other candidates:
- Anyone with a Kingdra - Clair's hits like a truck, and Juan's has Double Team.

- Veteran Ray in Black/White, the guy on Route 18 with Basculin/Simisage/Darmanitan. Closest I ever came to a wipe ingame since... RBY.
 

Diana

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All of the ones I thought of are already mentioned except one (Totally agreeing on Cooltrainer Jennifer by the way... Ugh I hated her). Yellow Sabrina might seem okay now but back when I was 9 or so that level 50 Alakazam just destroyed me more times than I can count. Actually a level 50 Alakazam at that point of the game is generally ridiculous anyway...
 

Carl

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In RBY, the Rocket with the level 16 Raticate in Mount Moon. Misty, too, for obvious reasons already stated.

In GSC, Whitney is annoying but they do give you that female Machop trade option right before that gym battle.

In RSE, definitely agree on Norman. He's not terrible but you definitely want to be up to par level wise if you don't have Protect.

I remember in BW that Archen trainer in Chargestone Cave caught me off guard.
 
Oh yes, the Hyper Fang Mt Moon Raticate and the Archen trainer are definitely up there.

I'd also like to give a mention to the Gary battle on Nugget Bridge. Even though he isn't necessarily the hardest to beat in any kind of casual run, his fat Sand Attack Pidgeotto is a great killer of speedruns.
 
Since I nuzlocke mainly on Black (what's in my DS) and Emerald (ROM). I have to say that Archen trainer in chargestone cave and Norman are the worst.

I always forget about the archen and it almost always kills something. Eviolite Boldour is the only thing I feel confident sending out against it. Norman comes at a time where the is really no new/good grinding spots. I usually wind up going against him early and paying the price.
 

atsync

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I remember my first playthrough of Emerald when I came across that Tag Team battle just before the pokemon league where one trainer had Slaking and Dusclops and the other had Slaking and Gardevoir, and they would Skill Swap Truant from Slaking. It wasn't really hard once you figured out what was going on but the first time I did it I just happened to lead with 2 pokemon with Protect and I decided that it would be smart to double Protect first turn to block Slaking. Obviously that backfired...

I also had trouble with Ghetsis's Hydreigon in my 1st run of B1W1 (didn't everyone?). My team was Samurott/Watchog/Simisear/Swoobat/Lilligant/Beartic, so it's no wonder why I was screwed. Samurott was the only thing tht could take it on and it was able to 2HKO with Megahorn I think, but Hydreigon was faster and could 2HKO as well. I ended up having to sacrifice and Revive and heal Samurott to beat it. Good thing the rest of his team isn't as threatening (although his Toxic + Protect Cofagrigus is a troll).

I thought Clay's Excadrill was annoying too.
 
Skill Swap in RSE double battles is literally the only reason to turn on attack animations...so you know with whom they're swapping.

I see nobody's mentioned the RB trainer to the immediate left of Erika? That female Cooltrainer had a Weepinbell that was fast as all get out and would spam Wrap, even past the normal 20 PP limit. And after you managed to get past that, there was at least one more 'mon (a Gloom?) waiting in the wings...and as long as I'm on RB, the entire Saffron Gym. Seriously, you have a god-tier type and you're going to make us go through an entire fucking gym of it, plus a few in the Fuchsia one for good measure?

Yellow had a few pains in the butt as well. Surge was a huge departure from his Red/Blue incarnation, as he played more like the anime depicted him, throwing Raichu's 90 Atk and 100 Speed around with devastating Body Slams instead of just spamming Thunderbolt. Lance's Dragonite is just...ugh. Four 120+ BP attacks? COME ON.

As a kid playing Gold, I managed to intuit one of the steel-type's weaknesses after watching my brother struggle with a Magnemite in the underground of Silver. "Maybe it's one of those new steel-types! Try your Ember!" Karen's dark-types, however, were a complete mystery, and I usually handled them by attacking their secondary type, which for the stubborn son of a bitch that is Umbreon was not an option. It wasn't until Machoke resisted a Bite attack out in the field some time later did I get my first clue.

GS Jasmine's Steelix. Argh. Seriously, you're going to pack Sunny Day on your Steelix just to screw over water-types, then when Quilava comes in you throw a Rock Slide for the OHKO? Not cool.

Agree with Emerald Wattson and Norman. Those guys are epic run-killers if nothing else. There's a huge hole in RS Slaking's AI, though: Send an Aron/Lairon in against his Slaking, and ATTACK HIM EVERY ROUND. He'll keep trying to focus punch you into oblivion, but since you're scrabbling away with Metal Claw, you should get a perfect kill. This is refined even further if you get him to burn through his potions in the process.

One more: RS Winona's Altaria. "How the FUCK does a BIRD use Earthquake?!"
 
My RBY and GSC choices are predictable, but I'll also throw up a couple of nominations for Platinum (which I'm more familiar with than Diamond or Pearl).

Red / Blue / Yellow: Probably Misty. You're up against one of the strongest Pokemon in the game, and it's only the second major boss. Yeah, Starmie's not used to its full potential, but Bubblebeam that early is enough to wipe out practically anything you can throw at it in one shots (or two if it's a Grass-type) unless you grind them up to ridiculous levels or they're called "Ivysaur". Yeah, there are Grass-types available to you to the north, but they're not quite up for the challenge without a bit of grinding. I remember once on Yellow (when I was like 11), I basically shifted my entire team around so that it was something like Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Oddish, Bellsprout, Paras, and Zubat (chosen for Leech Life :P ), and Misty still used them as mops around her pool.

Gold / Silver / Crystal: Dat goddamn Miltank! Whitney is arguably an even worse situation than Misty. At least with Misty, they tried to give you some nearby Pokemon that could have an edge over her (not much but something). The ONLY Fighting-type you get before Whitney is the Machop in the Dept. Store, which you have to trade for by giving up a Drowzee in GS (eh, alright) or an Abra in Crystal (grrrr!). And even then, if you let Rollout go on for too long, nothing's gonna stand up to Miltank at that point. To be fair, you could've also caught a Geodude (or Onix, but I'd prefer Geodude) a while back and raised it to handle Rollout pretty well, and there are Nidoran with Double Kick (I think) on the route directly north of Goldenrod. But be honest: would you have thought of either of those ideas when you were 12?

Platinum: Probably the one that comes closest to that in Platinum is Fantina. Fantina's situation is a very similar situation to Misty: you're facing an unexpectedly powerful Pokemon (in this case, her Lv. 28 Mismagius) at a point where your options for dealing with it are rather limited. Plus, it's also a Pokemon obtained through a Stone Evolution, but that has no bearing on the difficulty. The only actual Dark Pokemon you could possibly get at this point is Umbreon (Murkrow is not available in Platinum, only Diamond), and Umbreon would mean a BUTT TON of Friendship grinding for a Pokemon that's absolute garbage for an in-game run, not to mention sacrificing the free Eevee and giving up a chance to get a Vaporeon, Jolteon, or even Espeon later. That said, this situation isn't quite as bad as Misty or Whitney; there are Pokemon around that can learn random Dark moves like Pursuit (Buizel) and Bite (Grotle), and there are really good Normal-type Pokemon in Platinum that learn non-Normal physical attacks (*cough*cough*Staravia*cough*). A decent Normal-type may actually be useful in this game in particular, especially for...

...another candidate for hardest NPC: Giratina. The phantom centipede just might be the most difficult main-story legendary ever conceived. It's not necessarily that it's hard to weaken Giratina, although being unable to use False Swipe on him is a letdown. Unlike Rayquaza using Fly in the Hoenn games, though, you actually can't catch Giratina during the turns when it uses Shadow Force; it's apparently not even there. You do have to waste a turn switching your Normal-type into the battle (you want a Normal type for this fight, even if it's just the Bibarel you're using as an HM slave). To me, the main source of difficulty lies in the sheer luck it takes to capture a Pokemon with a catch rate of 3. But shouldn't this also apply to Groudon and Kyogre in Ruby and Sapphire? NO! Because Giratina has something that these two don't: a terribly low PP count. Giratina gets 30 attacks altogether (15 for Dragon Claw, 5 each for Ominous Wind, Ancient Power, and Shadow Force), which adds up to a pretty small amount of turns for a legendary Pokemon. I've had a few times where I failed to catch Giratina after dozens of Dusk and Ultra Balls, and then Giratina ended up killing itself with Struggle. It's embarassing and kind of frustrating. I could always just kill the hellish bastard, but wouldn't you rather be ruling over the Pokemon Lucifer than simply letting it levitate away?
 
Well, you could just use the Master Ball on Giratina, but anyways, I think SS Whitney was the toughest. Miltank used Attract, then flinchhaxed me to death with Stomp. Ouch. Also, Leorna was a pain in the butt. Her Hypnosis Watchog was soooo annoying. I had to PP stall her with a Roggenrola...
 
I've never actually had trouble with Lenora or even Whitney, but Norman was ridiculous what with his two Slaking. RS's Cooltrainer Jennifer was another surprise, especially with rain making Milotic's Water Pulse the equivalent of Surf.

Obligatory mention goes to Misty. Dear lord.
 

Its_A_Random

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RSE has a few random wtf trainers that make people weep...Like that Cool Trainer on Route 120 with the Milotic...God that thing is a fucking bitch...

Norman with his Slaking & Winona with her Altaria were also pretty bad too, although in RS, Norman's Slaking was easy to exploit due to its tendency to spam Focus Punch...While Altaria tended to go wtf Earthquake on your Rock-Types, & the lack of Ice-Types at that point made her a lot more difficult. Emerald Liza & Tate get honourable mentions, since they have a tendency to take forever to kill with the wrong Pokemon.

Misty in RB was also a bitch to kill, having such a powerful Pokemon so early in the game, likewise Lenora in BW, who was ridiculously difficult unless you had a Roggenrola/Timburr/Throh/Sawk. Finally, Ghetsis' Hydreigon gets a mention - That thing has to be EV'd in Speed & Sp. Attack, right?

Fantina in Platinum was also in a similar boat with her Mismagius, but the real killer in Platinum is Crasher Wake (In Nuzlockes, that is), where if you had nothing to check or counter his Pokemon, he will just Brine you to death...Diamond & Pearl force you to grind heavily for the E4, given their levels are so much higher than all other trainers...Lucian's Lv 63 Bronzong...Cynthia's Lv 66 Garchomp...

Of course, Whitney & her Miltank get an obvious mention...Attract! Rollout! Milk Drink! Stomp! Man that thing is a bitch...
 
Norman And The Slakings: I had to Grind My Butt off To get my level 28 Marshtomp to a Level 36 Swampert (I saved my Rare Candy from Dewford's Cave). Was Still Pretty Hard, even if I did had protect, It had Crazy Bulk, I was Able to Take It Down with a Combination of Swampert, Manectric's Parahaxing Thunder Wave, and Swellow's Wing Attack Spam.

Lucy in Battle Frontier: Darn that TSP Strategy, and that Milotic is Bulkeh. My Manectric's Modest Magnet Boosted Thunder did overhalf, but Sadly, TSP killed it off, allowing her to Recover. I never won the Luck Symbol Since then. Too Bored.

TSP= Toxic, SandStorm, Protect, From her Shuckle.



HG SS Red:This Deserves a Mention, Dat Light Ball Pikachu is a Forced to Be Reckoned with, Along with having 31 IV's in Every Pokemon on his team, Blizzard Assaults can also wear you down, He also has a Ton of Full Restores, and you have to grind a Tyranitar to remove Hail Itself. (While Having your Weather). I saw a Team with Ho-Oh and Mewtwo, The guy still had a rough time.(Guy= Video Owner)
 
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Cynthia: Holeee crap her entire team is OP. And they all have perfect IVs, and her Garchomp ._.

Also, HGSS Lance after game. He's insanely difficult, considering he has Garchomp AND Salamence, and he just shits on you if you dont have a bulky/fast pokemon with ice beam. Or a steel.
 

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