XY Most Difficult Gym Leader from Each Region

Seven is a Color

Seven is a Color

Spinda Doctors
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Which Gym Leader was the hardest for you in each region? Mine were:

Kanto: Misty. I've played through with all three starters, and no matter which one I pick, Misty is always the hardest for me. Even with Ivysaur, it takes a few tries and/or level grinding to beat Starmie.
Johto: Clair. In addition to having powerful attacks, her Kingdra also knew Smokescreen, and I had to switch out almost constantly because my moves wouldn't land. I also tend to be a few levels below her when I get to her gym, around 37-39ish.
Hoenn: Brawly. Makuhita + Bulk Up spam. I'm never able to beat him while in Dewford Town. I always have to grind on the Trainers at the beach in Slateport and evolve my Pokemon. But a majority of my difficulty here is from him using Super Potions, which heal Makuhita and give it more opportunities to use Bulk Up and Vital Throw. If he didn't use healing items, I'd probably be able to beat him right away.
Sinnoh: A tie between Gardenia and Volkner, specifically in Platinum. Gardenia because of my starter choice (I usually only have my starter and one other Pokemon at this point in the game), and Volkner because of Electivire and not having a Ground type.
Unova: Lenora. So much power for that early on in the game.
Kalos: Valerie. None of the Kalos leaders were particularly challenging for me, but this battle was the longest. I one shotted Mawile with Flamethrower, but I didn't have any moves that were super effective on the other two. Mr. Mime prolonged the fight a lot by setting up barriers.

Over half of the ones I have the most trouble with are the 2nd Gym Leaders.
 
Kanto:
- Sabrina
When I played Blue, Venusaur was my mostly trained (despite having other Pokémon in my belt) and so Sabrina and Blaine were devastating. In LeafGreen...Sabrina. By then I would already used my full team but I still founded it hard.

Johto:
- tied between Falkner and Pryce
I can't remember my walthrough in Gold, but in HG I had a rough time with Falkner because of my Chikorita and Mareep was only being available after Violet, I didn't bother to venture in Dark cave and training a Bellsprout to trade with Onix by that time was very hard because the trainers were already defeated and used in leveling other Pokémon. Despite having a Growlithe I didn't evolved it since I don't like it (nor Fire-types for that matter) and so I had a rough time too and I don't know how I beated him (the same goes for Bugsy but this one with a Flying type almost for sure).

Hoenn:
- Wattson
In Hoenn, I didn't had any trouble in Sapphire but in Emerald, Wattson gave me a hard time in a recent playthrough made just a couple months ago and I had pure luck with Norman because I used a Breloom with Stun Spore and coupled with Vigoroth's ability I could land hits and damage slowly but steady.

Sinnoh:
- Candice
My memory fails me completely on this one. I didn't liked the region that much. (*check the gym leaders' list in my head*) Oh, I remeber now. Of course, one of the usual problems for a Grass-type trainer: Ice, so yeah, Candice.

Isshu:
- Cheren
I thought this guy would be easy like...like the easiest of things but I had to soft-reset four times because of losing to him and only my Mareep with Thunder Wave helped me after leveling up my whole team a bit (2 levels for each). I had luck with Elesa because I stocked up on some items and because I trained a Sandile in anticipation for her! Had I not known the gym leaders' types beforehanded even before starting the game and I would've lost many more times because I don't like the region.

Kalos:
I have yet to play XY, if ever. Though it seems it's easier than usual.
 
Leaf_Ranger said:
Mareep was only being available after Violet
Click to expand...
You could get Mareep before beating Falkner. Most of the route isn't available with that guy blocking it, but there's one area of grass you can go in that comes before him. I caught Mareep before going into the Sprout Tower.
 
Seven is a Color said:
Leaf_Ranger said:
Mareep was only being available after Violet
Click to expand...
You could get Mareep before beating Falkner. Most of the route isn't available with that guy blocking it, but there's one area of grass you can go in that comes before him. I caught Mareep before going into the Sprout Tower.
Click to expand...

Now that you mention it, I remember that patch with the guy that offers the Miracle seed...but I can't remeber if I forgot to do that or If I caught it didn't had the patience to train it because of not having trainers to battle. By Arceus, I spent the last three years palying HG so I don't remember most of my story walkthough! Aside from that, I've been playing B2 so my memory is slowly erasing names and memories from HG and previous games except from Kanto (mostly LeafGreen). -_-
 
Kanto: Misty in gen 3, because of Water Pulse confusing my Pokémon 100% of the time.

Johto: Whitney because of Miltank.

Hoenn: Tate and Liza, because I thought Solrock and Lunatone were Rock/Ground Types and I only had a Mightyena which was SE against them, which I stupidly used last because Mightyena sucks.

Sinnoh: Candice, as it takes me a lot of effort to get up there.

Unova: Burgh because it takes forever to grind your Pokémon at that point of the game.
 
Kanto: Sabrina, at least in R/B/Y because at that point psychic Pokemon were all but invulnerable. They were weak to bug moves (not existent) Ghost (only one avaliable and Gengar was weak too, plus catching and evovling it was a pain) and no dark types.

Johto: Whitney because Miltank was a pain and Normal is only weak to fighting, a type I've never been fond of, and back then there were no real interesting fighting types imo.

Hoenn: A tie between Norman (see above with Whitney, replacing Miltank with Slaking) and Brawley, as mentioned by Seven is a Color.

Sinnoh: Can't say there was one.

Unova: Drayden/Iris: This was pre fairy so all they were weak to is dragon (which are hard to train if you don't find them early) and ice, which is fairly rare. Never got far enough in B2/W2 for this one.

Kalos: Valarie simply because this is the first time we see fairy types and are learning about them. First time in my mind that Poison has been valuable to a team.
 
Kanto - Blue (HGSS) or Misty. Misty was really hard, no matter what. Starmie would WRECK my team. Blue was hard, but I forgot my HGSS run, so I cant really detail it. I remember some troubles though.

Johto - That girl with steel pokemon. Not only was the little quest annoying, but she also had steel type, the bulkiest pokemon. Considering I was in a nuzlocke, I lost to her.

Hoenn - The region I love so much. Easily, no doubt, Winora (or the flying one), Altaria had so much coverage, swept me countless times.

Sinnoh - I dont know. Never played in a long time.

Unova - Clay (BW2) or Drayden (BW2) because I hate earthquake, and Dragon dance+Outrage is outrageous!

Kalos - They were all easy. I had trouble in my pokemon Y run (With random pokemon), on Cliff badge man, Tyrunt bites me, and I flinched too much.
 
Kanto - I've never played a G1 game, so I can't comment on this one.
Johto - Even though it's a remake, I guess it counts. Morty was probably the hardest, because G4 gave the physical/special split, which allowed his Gengar to wreck your whole team with STAB Shadow Ball.
Hoenn - Juan. There are very little to no Dragons available at this point, barring Rayquaza, since I'm talking about Emerald. Kingdra was a pain to take down, because it likes to spam Double Team and Rest.
Sinnoh - I was fairly well prepared for then, so it wasn't too bad I guess.
Unova - Probably Burgh. If you have no Fire or Flying moves, Leavanny could easily wipe the floor with you. Another mention goes to Clay and the already threatening Excadrill.
Kalos - Clemont. His Magneton loves to wreck most of my team with Thunderbolts, which more or less, prolonged the fight if anything.
 
I moved the thread to the VG forums, since it's about the gym leaders in the games. :)

For me (I was still very young the first 3 generations and didn't know as much as I do now):

Kanto: Brock. I always go with my favourite Pokémon, Charmander, in Kanto. It was tough to beat Brock for me due to the type disadvantage and I had to make sure to level up enough.

Johto: I really had issues beating Whitney. Miltank could recover with Milk Drink and I didn't think about power-up moves to OHKO it. It was a long battle.

Hoenn: Flannery was tough to get to and once I arrived she was tough to beat. It was more difficult because I had to battle many trainers on the way and got weakened quite a bit; I didn't want to go back to the Pokémon Center, since I would have to find the way back again.

Sinnoh: I really don't think I ran into any issues with the gym leaders here. I had a Chimchar that evolved into Monferno then Infernape and due to its move pool it could easily cover its weaknesses. Of cours I also had other Pokémon.

Unova: I guess the first one was most difficult. I played through it several times and sometimes had issues stopping a sweep after the leader set up with Work Up. It didn't help you always fight the one that has an advantage against your starter. I didn't pick up the other monkey that would give me the type advantage.

Kalos: Grant was a bit difficult for me. The fossils had a type advantage against most of my Pokémon, but luckily I was faster so I managed to win without too many problems.
 
Kanto: Misty. Her Starmie can just wreck entire teams by itself if they're not properly raised
Johto: Morty. His Ghosts are fast and can hit a ton.
Hoenn: Juan. He and his DT-spamming Kingdra can just fade out of existence. Tate and Liza from Emerald come in second because of their freaking EQ-spamming Claydol.
Sinnoh: Volkner. If you don't have a Pokemon like Gastrodon, the battle can be difficult.
Unova: Elesa. Not having a Ground-type can make this battle REALLY difficult.
Kalos: They were all relatively easy TBH, although I had some difficulty with Korrina because I wasn't completely prepared for Hawlucha, but managed to take it down.
 
Kanto: Definitely Misty since you have to be properly leveled to defeat her.
Johto: Clair because I didn't have any good ice Pokemon.
Hoenn: Winona. That Altaria was brutal to try and KO. It had Dragon Dance + Earthquake so even electric Pokemon weren't safe.
Sinnoh: I had no issues with any leaders.
Unova: Definitely Cheren. Work Up that early in the game made things tough.
Kalos: Due to Exp. All, I never really had trouble.
 
Man all the gyms were easy for me in my games. Every heard of cloning your level 100 team and transferring it to each new game after beating the first gym? If you use this trick the gym leaders are a cakewalk. It is doing the puzzle inside the last 2 gyms that is or was the hardest part. Especially the Snow Point City Gym in gen 4. That was annoying and the 7th gym in X version was annoying as well as the 7th gym in B/W. Those were usually the most annoying puzzles but I did get them eventually but took like an hour just to get past the puzzle.:)
 
Having done a number of playthroughs in each game and each time has been different, with different pokemon and struggles, it's difficult to choose just one leader but if I had to these are who it would be:
Kanto: misty- like the general consensus so far, you couldn't take her on with under levelled mons.

Johto: hard to say... Whitney for obviously miltank reasons, rollout was always frustrating in most playthroughs, but in my most recent youngster joey challenge, morty and jasmine's teams were the two struggles due to typing,

Hoenn: definitely either Tate and Liza or Winona... The twins and psychic was frustrating every time, even with swampert. Winonas earthquaking Altaria was another bane of my existence.

Sinnoh: had no problems with any of these leaders... If I had to say one maybe fantina? But I honestly cannot remember any of them standing out as annoying...

Unova: from what I remember here I think the most frustrating gym leader was elesa with her volt switching and me always activating static and being paralysed, always conviently being paralysed and never attacking...

Kalos: like Sinnoh, had no problems... If I had to say one for arguments sake, probably Korinna... Having just evolved into greninja and gaining the dark type (which I hadn't realised / forgot) her hawlucha OHKOd me, nothing a little grinding won't fix though.
 
In Kanto, I always had a problem with Sabrina. The only pokemon with any kind of type advantage that I could use was Magneton (or Haunter, I guess, since I never had access to trade with people) so you're kind of forced to just overpower her, which is hard to do since she has the jacked-up Alakazam.

In Johto, it was ALWAYS both Whitney and Claire. Rollout is a really dumb attack, and it took me forever when I was young to figure out it was a rock-type move. Claire was always obnoxious to deal with because her 3 Dragonairs had Ice Beam, Surf, and Thunderbolt, so you had to switch your pokemon and pray to jesus that you guessed correctly. There's nothing like switching your Sandslash in expecting a Thunderbolt followed promptly by eating a Surf.

In Hoenn though, it always depended on what my starter was. If I started with Torchic, then the twins in Mosdeep always gave me problems. If I started with Mudkip, it was usualy Brawly. If I start with Treecko, then Watson is stupidly hard to beat. As if his Magneton isn't hard enough for a grass-type starter, they even gave him a Manectric in Emerald. e.e

I also just want to say that if you start with Chikorita in G/S/C or HG/SS, literally EVERY gym leader is the hardest to beat, lol. You have a type disadvantage against 6 of 8 gym leaders (Flying, Bug, Ghost+Poison, Steel, Ice, Dragon), with the only exceptions being Whitney (who's stupidly hard anyways) and Chuck. Anybody who runs through those games with Chikorita is definitely doing it on hard mode. EDIT: lol I just realized, you're also disadvantaged against the entirety of Team Rocket, and FIVE OF SIX on your rival's team. lol what.
 
For me?

Kanto: Blue/Gary in Crystal, just by sheer team size and coverage.

Johto: Jasmine. Oddly, I beat Whitney with only Rollout Sandshrew. Jasmine, meanwhile, beat my Arcanine with Magnemite. Her Steelix also proved tough to take down.

Hoenn: Brawly.... He hits hard, very hard, with those early-game, high-power Fighting moves.

Sinnoh: Candice. Snow Cloak Double Team Froslass is not fun to face.
 
Guys. If you want to make the gyms easy cary a Fire and or Dragon type on your team This solves almost every problem if you have 1 fire move 1 water move 1 electric move and 1 Dragon move. Specifically Outrage with a confusion healing berry attached.:)
 
Kanto [Red / Blue / Yellow] | Lt. Surge | Pokemon: Raichu

I cannot tell you how annoying his Raichu was in the original. Even if I had Ivysaur he would alway paralyze me and I could NOT even attack lol. I was like Ivysaur pls!! Eventually though I got through.

Johto [Gold / Silver / Crystal] | Morty: Pokemon: Gengar / Haunter

Gengar was the upmost annoying one of them all. His gym was annoying cause you had to watch your step ir you would start over. Plus, when you battle him you're greeted with entire Gastly family. [even though his trainers had them as well.] Nothing like Hypnosis spam + Shadow Ball to ruin you.

Kanto [Gold / Silver / Crystal] | Blue | All of them.

I can't even LOL.

Kanto [FireRed / LeafGreen] | Koga | Muk

Muk use Minimize! Muks evasion increased. Nuff said.

Hoenn [Ruby / Sapphire / Emerald] | Tate & Liza | Solrock & Lunatone

I am a 1v1 kind of guy. When I found out this was a double battle.. I kinda cried. I suck at Doubles lol even in game lol. But, these two was hard for me. Even with my Sharpedo who got OHKOd by Solrocks solarbeam.

Sinnoh [Diamond / Pearl / Platinum] Candice | Froslass

The same reason as all of you.

Johto [HeartGold / Soulsilver] | Bugsy | Scyther

I really hated the U-Turn streagedy she had with Scyther. Leads uses U-Turn, 1 pokemon dies comes back and does U-Turn again.

Kanto [Heartgold / Soulsilver] | Blaine | Rapidash

Sun boosted Flare Blitzs that is all.

Unova [Black / White / Black 2 / White 2] | Drayden | Haxorus

I like how he was like Lance and had a Haxorus at 44 when it evolves at 50. not even bad. Unlike, Clair. If Haxorus set up to much then it would be GG. You had to kill it fast.

Kalos [X & Y] | Nobody | Blank.

Nobody was really hard in Kalos. :/
 
Kanto- Sabrina, although this was really more because there were no good counters for Psychic in RBYFRLG as opposed to any genuine difficulty.
Johto- Whitney or Morty
Hoenn- Norman
Sinnoh- Volkner I guess?
Unova- Tie between Lenora and Cheren, both of them were insanely difficult.
Kalos- They were all pathetically easy.

All in all, most of the difficulty in the gym leaders arises from not having a good counter at that point in the game, not so much that they're stronger or use a better strategy. I can think of many examples in the games where I struggled with a particular gym leader because I simply wasn't given good options at that point in the game (Brock in RB if you chose Charmander, Sabrina in RBYFRLG, Whitney, Morty, Brawly, Wattson if you didn't chose Mudkip, Cilan/Chili/Cress, Cheren, Drayden in BW2) or because I needed to grind to win (the first gym leader in just about any game, Misty, Koga/Sabrina IIRC, Norman, pretty much anything in 5th gen). There's been too few gym leaders that truly offer a legitimate challenge.

Seven is a Color said:
Leaf_Ranger said:
Mareep was only being available after Violet
Click to expand...
You could get Mareep before beating Falkner. Most of the route isn't available with that guy blocking it, but there's one area of grass you can go in that comes before him. I caught Mareep before going into the Sprout Tower.
Click to expand...

That was only in HGSS, they added a patch of grass before the guy that blocks the rest of the route. In the originals, you couldn't catch anything on Rt. 32 until after beating him and you only had access to Rock types for Falkner (either by catching a Geodude in Dark Cave or trading for the Onix in Violet City).

For that matter, you can only get Growlithe in Crystal too, like with Rt. 32, there was an extra patch of grass added in that game that allowed you to catch Rt. 36 Pokemon before fighting Sudowoodo. Not that it's much help against Falkner anyway (although it is quite helpful against Bugsy).
 
Gen 1: Probably Sabrina I guess? Misty was pretty tough without a dedicated Grass or Electric either.
Gen 2 (GSC): Whitney
Gen 2 (HGSS): Morty
Gen 3: Norman
Gen 4: Candice
Gen 5: Lenora
Gen 6: No one was really challenging at all here. If I had to pick one... maybe Grant? His Amaura was pretty annoying with T-Wave and its Refrigerate Take Downs.
 
Bolt the Cat said:
That was only in HGSS, they added a patch of grass before the guy that blocks the rest of the route. In the originals, you couldn't catch anything on Rt. 32 until after beating him and you only had access to Rock types for Falkner (either by catching a Geodude in Dark Cave or trading for the Onix in Violet City).
Click to expand...
Oh. I didn't remember this because in the original GSC, I just plowed through everything with my Cyndaquil/Quilava/Typhlosion, not paying attention to the grass or which Pokemon appear where.

But Leaf_Ranger did mention HG.
 
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