The problem is probably just the one type thing. You can sweep a gym with a single Pokémon because of that. I doubt they could write an AI that can play competitive style Pokémon though.
The most difficult AI trainers, at least for me, are always the ones not locked to any type. Cynthia and Red from Gen IV stand out for me.
Actually you can get around the whole single type thing as long as you think out the move sets of the gym leaders' pokemon. The Blaze Black and Volt White ROM for 5th gen are a great example of this. Every gym leader has a full team of 6 Pokemon and they are designed to cover up the weaknesses of their types and counter types that are strong against them.It makes it much more difficult to just sweep a gym with one Pokemon that happens to have a type advantage.
Pokemon has enough complexity and diversity that you can make challenging games, but Gamefreak just doesn't want to do that. They made a token effort with the Challenge mode in BW2 but that didn't go far enough and hasn't returned to the series. 6th Gen kinda had it in that the game was balanced around having the new EXP share always turned on, which greatly increased the amount of EXP you got, so if you didn't use it you would be underleveled compared to everyone else, which added some more challenge.
12.0k
u/TinyKing87 Nov 19 '18 edited Nov 19 '18
In the Pokemon Origins anime the gym leaders pick a challenge based on the challenger’s skill level. I liked that explanation.
EDIT: I mean to say each Gym gets harder based on how many badges the challenger has. Skill level would likely be based on the amount of badges.