I ' ve already been recommended to remove experience shareYou mean you haven ' t played through a Pokemon game without it so far ? That ' s why they were too easy for you . You didn ' t even need to know Rock Paper Scissors to beat the game with them on . But now that Showdown has taught you about EVs you ' ll now probably have this problem even with Exp Share off and Battle Style Set . Those were basically the 2 difficulty options of Pokemon . Don ' t limit yourself to only 2 or 3 on the first islands . That should actually make the game a lot easier , as they ' ll all be overleveled . Its pretty known that trying to train 6 Pokemon right off the bat is comparatively hard . Try out a nuzlocke if you find the games too easy .