Why are important Trainer rematches in this franchise consistently terrible?
Emerald: Prerequisites the game never tells you about, and even then, they don't use their strongest teams right away. You are the Champion: why do they go easy on you?
Platinum: Four Trainers generated randomly. This sounds like fun variety in theory, but in practice, I hope you aren't hunting for a specific Gym Leader because lol. Why couldn't they just all be there in a slightly bigger room, rematchable daily? They've been putting multiple important Trainers in a room since like...the Kimono Girls in the Ecruteak Dance Center in Gen II, but can't put 13 Trainers in a room in a DS game?
HeartGold/SoulSilver:
Scour the world to find these people at specific times in specific locations (granted, most places are related to them in some fashion, but I have no idea how you'd figure out the specific times without a guide), then you have to call them at specific times on specific days
again to rematch them (which the game thankfully
does tell you about, but it's needlessly complicated). Did you beat them and want to rematch them again for easy EXP? Well you better do that in the same play session because they arbitrarily have limited availability. This rematch system is so half-baked for otherwise fun teams.
Black 2 / White 2: PWT is obviously one of the better ones because of the specific leaders tournaments. It's hard to give a meaningful complaint here other than the possibility a competitive team may help...oh wait, you have to beat the
extremely luck-based (by virtue of having 40+ opponents) World Leaders Tournament
ten times to unlock the Champion's Tournament. I've done this before: it's tedious and not super fun. Why couldn't they just require you to beat the World Leaders Tournament once to unlock Champion's Tournament when you only have to beat the other regional tournaments once? This game is otherwise phenomenal with daily rematches too! Three battles may not take that long, but getting through World Leaders 10 times is just so unecessary.
X and Y: Absolutely terrible about this. You can only rematch important Trainers in the Battle Chateau in the higher ranks. Duke / Duchess requires 300 points, though you can at least start rematching Gym Leaders at Marquis / Marchioness... but there are several problems. Trainers are added every six minutes: you have 9 available as Marquis / Marchioness, but if you want to rise in rank with any efficiency you need to pay for the Silver Writ of Invitation to make them add every minute...which is $100,000... in a game that already breaks the bank with the boutique in Lumiose City. Granted, the writs expire at midnight so you'd likely earn back your cash (especially if you use the Gold Writ of Invitation - Increases battle winnings by 50% - combined with the Amulet Coin) but
why should I need to do all this crap in the first place? Just put the Gym Leaders / Elite Four / Champion in there after you beat the game, have them respawn when you leave / refresh the next game. The nobility stuff is so unnecessary!
The problems don't even end there either.
Ah yes, let me battle the Elite Four with
lower levels and less Pokemon than they have in their story fights (discounting Writs to increase levels). The Gym Leaders only have two Pokemon, like what is even the point of this feature by that metric? Like, c'mon, even Diantha's match here only gets
four Pokemon??? Then again, this is the same game released in 2013 that doesn't have the Elite Four / Champion levels upgrade upon beating the game, so lol. To call this system half-baked is an insult to the Johto games idea of good game design, which already bordered on nonexistent.
Omega Ruby / Alpha Sapphire: The Elite Four has souped up teams and Mega Evolve now, but lacks Gym rematches, which is kinda silly when this feature started in Emerald.
Sun / Moon / USUM: While you need to rematch the Elite Four for a random Title Defense challenger, honestly I don't mind this too much. It'd still be great to choose these people via a menu, but this mechanic is so awesome despite being random I don't really have many complaints. Also helps some of these guys randomly show up in the Battle Tree.
Sword / Shield: You can invite a sitting Gym Leader, your rival Hop, former Leader Piers, or former Champion Leon to the Wyndon Stadium tournament but they aren't guaranteed.
"After the player has completed The Crown Tundra story, the Galarian Star Tournament is opened. It allows the player to rematch all the present and former Gym Leaders, Hop, Leon, Peony, Sordward, and Shielbert in Multi Battle tournaments." - I have no opinion on this because I was bored enough by the base game to not bother with the DLC (yet, may do so someday).
Let's Go Pikachu / Eevee: Oh my gosh, an actually sensible rematch system? Beat the game, rematch the Gym Leaders once per day in their Gyms, plus the Elite Four upgrades.
Brilliant Diamond / Shining Pearl: Normal Elite Four rematches again. However, there are once per day Gym rematches...after getting the National Pokedex, which requires seeing all Pokemon in the normal dex. I guess that slightly makes sense given how they use mons from other regions (like Wake using Politoed). With both LGPE and BDSP I do again wonder why they can't all be rematched in the same location, but compared to most other games arbitrary requirements...
Scarlet / Violet: Mixed bag. You have to rematch all Gyms (non-renewable) to unlock the Academy Ace Tournament, which is fine...only for the DLC to force you to buy rematches for 200 Blueberry Points in the League Club Room every single time you want to battle them. This is
extremely annoying if you don't have access to multiplayer to speed things along: 200 points isn't a lot for just one leader but it adds up especially when a superboss is locked behind 10 trades (600 BP to unlock the trade as each opponent needs to visit you three times, you need to trade 10 times, so 6,000 BP). For goodness sakes, it is
2024. I am the Champion, I have saved the world, I have beaten some of the hardest postgame content in Indigo Disk to access all this garbage.
Why can't I just rematch these people for free? How is this game design so woefully outdated and inconsistent that it's not much better than what we were getting in the late 2000's and to some extent (like XY) beyond that time?
Bottom line, it should be:
I beat the game, I get all the Gym Leaders / Elite Four / whatever in a room, rematch them daily, no cost no nothing. It's 2024 and I'm still saying this stuff when it should have disappeared completely after 2010.