Final results!
100/100
And so the baby squad won every rematch against the Gym Leaders, and therefore we unlocked the Academy Ace Tournament. We participated in the tourney a couple of times, winning every single match. Admittedly, not without its clutch moments, but still a lot of fun and immensely satisfying. The babies have proven that even if they're small and have lower stats than they normally would have, had they reached their final evolutions, they can truly overcome any challenge.
Here's a summary on how I completed my baby only challenge run and general observations:
Strategic use of Battle Items: leading with Sylvia, we boost her stats up and pass them along to another party member in waiting. Most of the time, either Sushi or Polterpup, as their abilities helped them tank hits. Sushi, with the Shell Armor ability, blocks all critical hits unless the opponent has Mold Breaker (this has happened VS the Pokémon Veluza) or uses a move that changes abilities, such as Gastro Acid or Worry Seed. Polterpup, with the ability Fluffy, takes half damage from moves that do direct contact, at the cost of taking twice as much damage from Fire-type moves. I was careful to never sent him out against Fire-types, but sometimes we would encounter a non-Fire-type foe that knew something like Fire Fang or Flamethrower.
Absolutely NO exp. candies or rare candies were used during the challenge: we did all our training and leveling up through battling other Trainers, Gym Leaders, Team Star Bosses and Titans, and we would also battle boss mons aka Pokémon of a high level that can Terastallize, such as the wild Garchomp, Lucario and the Eeveelutions. And if we ever came across one, a Chansey, simply because the more exp. points the babies received the better they could handle the tougher challenges.
Oftentimes, the main problem we had was getting outsped by the opponent and surviving that initial attack before we could launch ours. The solution I found to this was to lead with either Mangorita or Nabnut and have them scout out threats by using Protect, which has higher priority and ignores speed. Then I would switch them out accordingly.
One thing that made this challenge slightly easier is that opposing Trainers simply do not switch out their Pokémon during battles and they do not heal at the appropriate times. I cannot emphasize this enough. I've noticed that in the newer games, during important battles such as VS Gym Leaders or the Elite Four, Trainers do not possess the smart AI that they used to in the older games. Here's an example: you have a Starmie and the opposing Trainer has an Arcanine. The AI knows your next move will be Surf, and suddenly they switch out Arcanine and bring out something that can better handle your Starmie, such as the Grass-type Exeggutor, who also happens to be part Psychic and can also take your Starmie's Psychic attacks and counter with a move like Giga Drain.
Another example: you bring the enemy Pokémon's health down to the red zone, and suddenly the opposing Trainer uses a Full Restore on them. Remember how frustrating that was? But that's what an RPG should be like. Enemies can damn well restore their HP, too, if you're not careful. I mean, they ARE trying to win too, right? Champions especially do this, but Geeta apparently does not believe in this. This is a serious pet peeve of mine when it comes to the newer games. Whatever happened to the smart AI?
I set a personal rule for this challenge as well to add an extra layer of difficulty. No Terastallizing during battles and no healing at Pokémon Centers or picnics. Scarlet/Violet hands out tons of restorative items, and I mean TONS, everywhere you look, every corner you turn. Boom! A Full Heal and a Revive here, Boom! A Hyper Potion and Elixir there. I was never short on healing items, and so whenever my Pokémon needed patching up, I would strictly use only items I found myself. That's right, no buying from the Marts, either. It definitely made the challenge more fun and interesting. As a Trainer, it's my responsibility to be resourceful during hard times.
But the absolute main advantage the baby squad had was the simple fact that the
Exp. Share cannot be turned off. This, together with the fact that
there is no longer an option for Battle Style Set, meaning the game tells me what Pokémon the opposing Trainer is going to send out next, completely and utterly wipes out all difficulty from Scarlet/Violet. Having a team of all babies really did make playing through the game a second time about 10x more fun in terms of challenge, but it definitely requires a lot of dedication and patience, and of course, crucial knowledge of Pokémon moves and abilities, held items, etc. and also,
X Items such as X Attack and X Defense raise stats by two stages now rather than one stage as in previous games, so that definitely made a HUGE difference as well.
In other words, I certainly would
NOT attempt a baby only run in a game like FireRed, Black & White, HeartGold, ORAS or even Sun & Moon, as handholdy as those games are. OMG especially not Platinum
The DLC for ScarVo is coming out this year, so there won't be a new game until probably next Nov if you are itching to give this gen a try. It has it's faults (a lot of them), but was a really fun game, the story was unique and great, I don't regret picking it up and do want to play through it again sometime (especially now that I can have a legal Oshawott lol).
