That One Level/Pokémon

Catching 'em all would be a lot easier if it weren't for these levels.

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• Five generations of games and the developers still haven't figured out just how horrendously boring the caves are? Repetitive scenery, little sense of direction, and the possibility of being attacked by those Goddamned Zubats at any time.
  • Surfing on water routes isn't much better, but they did seem to learn their lesson as there were far less in the fourth generation compared to the third.
• The third and fourth generations also brought in weather areas which sound cool in theory, but having a battle paused every turn to remind the player than it is still raining/sandstorming/hailing doesn't just slow down the battle, it starts to get a little insulting...
  • Fixed in Black and White. The message has been replaced with an icon on the touch screen.
  • The snow routes, though not difficult, are infuriating because when you're not in grass, you're in deep snow. At times the snow lets you move at a normal rate. But most of the time the snow slows you down and doesn't let you run. Particularly infuriating are the portions that slow you down to something that the term "snail's pace" would be too kind to be used for. And then you get in battle and, since you more than likely won't have any ice Pokémon, the constant Hail will whittle your HP each and every turn, but do nothing to the resident Snover and Sneasel.
  • Any part which involves sliding around on ice. Especially Candice's Gym.
    • Candice's Gym is just ridiculous. It's a big icy pit where you have to slide down towards the center while building up enough momentum to smash through the snowballs at the bottom. But there are trainers, snow patches, and stairs positioned just right to prevent you from just, y'know, sliding down normally; instead you have to circle around the gym finding the most obtuse paths possible to get enough momentum. It's not unknown for first-time players to spend up to an hour solving this puzzle.
  • Worse is the route (and part of Mt. Coronet) in fourth generation that features fog. Fog that lowers your accuracy, making your Pokémon miss nearly every single time but has almost no effect on your opponent. Add to this the fact that Defog is just about the most useless HM ever (and only Pokémon with wings can learn it, preventing you from giving it to a common Pokémon like Bibarel).
  • Another from the Gen. IV: the muddy terrain around Pastoria and inside the Great Marsh. There's a good chance of getting stuck when walking into a marsh tile, in which case the player must press different directional buttons repeatedly to become unstuck. This has to be done at practically every single step. As if that wasn't excruciatingly slow enough, each of those little wiggles to free oneself can result in a wild Pokémon encounter.
    • Stare closely at the screen and you can see that the sticky tiles are slightly darker than the ones that aren't. Nintendo always makes this trick in Pokémon games, like Koga's invisible wall Gym.
    • This was made far more obvious for the Platinum release as well.
• What about the one Trick House in Gen. III with all the arrow floors that only let you go one way? I still haven't figured that one out. Thank God it's optional. (The one Gym with similar floors is almost as tough.)
  • Worse yet is the setup with the barriers that rotate every time you pass through them.
• Mt. Mortar in Gold/Silver. It's the largest cave in the entire series, it's basically an enormous maze, it's pitch-black inside, it has countless Strength puzzles, and, to top it all off, it has the highest possible Pokémon encounter rate, so when you inevitably get lost you'll spend five times as long getting out as you would otherwise. Thankfully, it was made a little easier in Crystal and the Video Game Remake, but it's still rather annoying.
  • What's especially annoying is the whole point of going into Mt. Mortar is to get a rare Pokémon, and if you have all six party spots full you have to leave, ditch the extra Pokemon, then go through it again. But the game doesn't tell you that until you actually get to the character who gives it to you. In fact, the game doesn't even tell you that you'll get a rare Pokémon by entering the mountain.
    • Fortunately, you can also get that rare Pokémon by trading a Hitmonchan or Hitmonlee from R/B/Y and breeding it with a Ditto.
• On the same note, Victory Road in Diamond/Pearl/Platinum. And Seafoam Islands in Red/Blue/Yellow.
  • EVERY Victory Road is a pain in the backside, but the fourth generation ones are just the only ones where some fat guy will just sit in front of a door, refusing to let you through, until you beat the game. It's a pretty blatant Broken Bridge and quite a slap in the face.
• One of the annoying bits of Pokémon is that the Fire starter is usually the strongest, but your rival, the Water Gym, the Rock Gym (hi Brock and Roxanne, That One Boss) all do double damage to it and have your strongest moves halved or negated. Also, the early wild Water Pokémon usually suck pretty badly. There are three solutions. Get a Magikarp, level it up to a Gyarados, and give it some Water move. Get a Geodude/Diglett and let it learn Earthquake or Magnitude, which are super effective against Rock-types. Or, majorly level up your Fire Pokémon until it can take out every enemy in one hit (or teach it Solar Beam if it is compatible with the move).
  • This is fixed in the Black/White games, where the first two gyms ensure that you have the same advantage no matter what your starter is. Which is to say that no matter who you pick, you will be at a disadvantage in the first gym-- that's why you receive the Elemental Monkey in the Dreamyard.
• Another contender is Diglett's Cave in FireRed and LeafGreen. You need to go through it to get Flash, and it's full of lightning-fast Diglett. It wasn't too bad in Generation I, but by the time you reach the Generation III remakes, half of them are imbued with a particularly frustrating ability called Arena Trap, a vicious little skill which prevents you from fleeing. So, unless your first Pokémon is a Flying-type, you have to take on every second one of the vicious buggers. And then go back. It's just a minor thing, but it's a maelstrom of Goddamned Bats.
  • Forget the Diglett, it's the Demonic Spiders that are the resident Dugtrio that are the worst part. They are brutally strong for this stage in the game, possessing high attack and insane speed, plus powerful moves like Magnitude and Slash. And they are several levels higher than the local gym leader's strongest pokemon. It's not uncommon for entire teams to be swept and knocked out by one wild Dugtrio, especially if you didn't choose Bulbasaur or Squirtle.
• Mt. Silver from HGSS is a major competitor too. It got a major revamp from the original version and is quite long, and requires Rock Climb to ascend--which means the game forces you to face the True Final Boss with an HM Slave in your party, or waste one of your mainstay's move slots with it.
  • Though at least Rock Climb isn't a completely atrocious move--for an HM, anyway--it's got fairly decent attack and can cause opponents to become confused.
• Not quite levels, but the Battle Frontier and Safari Zone could definitely count. The Safari Zone cranks the Luck-Based Mission aspect of catching them all Up to Eleven, and you'll easily spend quite a bit of time there trying to catch a specific Mon (it's worse in HGSS thanks to the objects system). And the Battle Frontier pretty much puts up Help Wanted ads that say "If you're a God-damned cheating bastard, come sign up for the Battle Tower/Hall/etc. challenges today!" And it's not bad enough that the Frontier is a difficult challenge on its own: it's actually vital to spend hours upon hours grinding up BP (Frontier currency) for the good items, especially the ones required to evolve certain Pokémon.
  • In every game with BP it is possible to get one of almost all the rare evolution items through fully exploring each area.
  • In Heart Gold and Soul Silver: Those helpful Move Tutors that you had to work for but not too hard in the past games? Yeah, you need BP in order for your Pokémon to learn moves from them, too. You need to go through several cheating battles many times over before you have enough money to teach your bugs how to bite things.
• Pinwheel Forest in Black and White. The sign outside more or less says "Pinwheel Forest: Hope you remembered some Antidote."
  • Chargestone Cave. The wild 'Mons are annoyingly tough, especially the Ferroseed, which on top of being a Stone Wall with only two weaknesses has an ability that costs you health every time you hit it. While most of them are slow enough that running away is easy, there will be a lot of encounters, and they will get very annoying very quickly. The cave is long and packed with Trainers. Also, the Doctor trainer is located somewhat off the beaten path. At least he's right before the start of the Team Plasma gauntlet, making healing much more convenient.
  • The worst part, for Hundred Percent Completionists looking to complete the Pokedex, is Tynamo. There is a 1 in 50 chance of this mon appearing (unless you go to the bottom floor, in which case it's 1 in 12, but of course going to the bottom floor is quite annoying in itself). Even going through the entire dungeon, it's quite possible to never see a single one, meaning you will have to stay there for quite a while searching. And Tynamo has very poor defenses, so unless you brought False Swipe, good luck weakening it without killing it. Granted, Tynamo eventually evolves into the devastatingly strong Eelektross, so the difficulty was probably intentional.
• The scrappy level for Red/Blue Rescue Team would be Purity Forest. It's 99 floors long, you can only bring one Pokémon, said Pokémon is reduced to level 1, and all of your money and toolbox contents are destroyed. You're pretty much at the random generator's mercy here.
  • While not as bad, there's also Western Cave. 99 floors, no food items not in Kecleon Shops, and Tyranitars swarm the middle floors and activate Sand Stream. This dungeon will throw everything at you, including the kitchen sink, if you aren't high leveled. And your reward for making it to the last of those 99 floors? Mewtwo (who should be a complete joke compared to some of the bosses you've faced, especially after making it past those previous 98 floors. Also, he won't join you the first time. That's right, you have to go through the cave a SECOND time to recruit him. But on the plus side, the wild foes give LOTS of EXP points. Expect to gain at least ten levels per one go through to the end. Have fun (see that whichever way you will).
  • In the main story mode, Sky Tower can be a tough climb. Early floors have you dealing with ghosts, who can travel through walls and attack your Pokemon there, while most Pokemon cannot attack into walls. There are also floors that activate different weather, including Hail, which drains your health faster than you can heal it off, forcing you to scramble for the exit. Enemies also start getting nastier, featuring lots of enemies with the PP-draining Pressure ability, foes like Venomoth who use Silver Wind to hit anyone in the same room as it, and Aerodactyl, who can use not only Supersonic to confuse you, but also Agility to make all the enemy Pokémon in the same room move at double speed. And in these later levels, it isn't uncommon to stumble into a Monster House, which dumps ten or so Pokemon at you all at once. Arceus help you if two or more Aerodactyl drop in, as their combined Agility will mean you'll be ganged up on all sides by Pokemon moving at quadruple speed while Venomoth in the back spam Silver Wind on your team.
• Aegis Cave in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Time/Darkness. It's not a hard dungeon-- there are ample oran berries and the Unown aren't that tough at all. But you have to find stones that Unown drop, of their own letter-shape, to spell out I-C-E, R-O-C-K, and S-T-E-E-L. Not every type appears, and even then, the stones are dropped maybe a quarter of the time. And you have to keep repeating a three-floor section until you get all the letters you need so you can go on and fight the appropriate Legendary Golem (who, thankfully, aren't that tough). And did I mention you can't save in between, so you HAVE to do this all in one go? Fortunately, much of the annoyance can be simplified, thanks to an inherent quirk of the Legendary Golems. Simply put, bring a Fighting type.
  • Explorers of Sky brought us the ultimate dungeon: Destiny Tower. Like Purity Forest, it has 99 floors, you're only allowed to bring in your leader and its level will be lowered to 1, and you're not allowed to bring in any items or money. It also prevents you from using your IQ skills, and keeps traps hidden when you step on them. Worst part? Some of these traps are absolute cruelty, with the worst one being the "Grudge" trap, which gives a PERMANENT grudge status to EVERY SINGLE POKEMON ON THE FLOOR. Good luck getting to the top.
  • Dark Crater. Just when it seems that everything's going fine, suddenly something screws up by either Cresselia failing somewhere, or one of your teammates getting hit by an overpowered move (multi-hit moves say hello!). At this rate, Reviver Seeds are important, but suddenly there is none of these for a lot of levels.
    • YMMV but when this troper got to the bottom of dungeon for second time, he gained so much power that Darkrai was nothing when compared to cruelty of dungeon.
• Escorting the bug-phobic mechanic in the first Pokémon Ranger game. He freaked out and made you start over if he - or YOU, for some unfathomable reason - touched so much as a single bug. Oh, and you have to escort him through the most bug-infested area of the game, with loads who will either just float around randomly but quickly, or CHASE AFTER YOU - many of the latter being FASTER THAN YOU ARE.
  • That one temple where you have to first fight a Kingdra, Charizard and Flygon and then use Pokemon to get through an irritating maze and THEN fight a Salamence at the end without saving. It's a complete Luck-Based Mission, because you can't use your Plusle-- even though Salamence isn't immune to electricity.
  • Hippowdon Temple in the second game. The constant, damage-inducing sand balls were downright obnoxious. It doesn't help that all that hard work goes to waste since you lose the Yellow Gem to Heath.
  • The second time you go through Boyle Volcano is a real pain in the butt. You got lava geysers spraying up from the ground, and Hot Boulders flying around as if launched from invisible cannons. Then there's the tendency of EVERY Pokémon to have some way to attack you and send you flying. And then, if you survive, you have to go up against Lavana and her Infernape, and then HEATRAN.
  • In the third game, Mt. Sorbet. Most of the level is fine, but then you get to the part with the avalanches. Every few seconds, there is a long drawn-out cutscene where an avalanche happens. You have to be behind a big pillar to shield yourself from the avalanche, or you'll be back at the bottom. The game is picky about whether you're behind it or not. It doesn't help that the game slows you down in these areas. And there are two of these areas. And you will probably come back to that area again. Also, Mt. Layuda, specifically the parts where all the agitated Electric Pokémon are attacking you so you fall into the pits.
• Empoleon's Snow Slide in Poke Park Wii, especially when you're trying to get all the bonuses by beating the required time limits. Your worst enemy isn't another Pokemon, but rather the wall. That's right, walls are your worst enemy in this minigame. They slow you down, you will always hit them when you make a turn (Yes, even if you slow yourself down deliberately beforehand), and they are everywhere. It's especially bad when you're using a particularly fast Pokemon such as Empoleon or Glaceon, who seem to be magnetically attracted to hit every single wall in existence.
  • The "Obstacle Hop" skill game in which you befriend Machamp. Remember how easy the first one was with Spearow? Well, welcome to Pokemon's version of Platform Hell. Complete with bad camera angles, surprisingly difficult jumps, and Machamp hurling boulders at you that are impossible to dodge.
  • The Lava Zone has one notorious side-quest that's bot frustrating and difficult. Long story short, you have to bring some iron ore (that you get via drill) down to where Camerupt is so that you can use it to make a new lever for the furnace (the old one broke). However, not only do you have to deal with the shoddy camera angles in the game (causing you to get stuck in areas that you think you can walk on), but you also have to deal with Torkoal. A lot of Torkoal. A lot of very angry Torkoal that will constantly ram into you causing you to drop the iron you need to fix the furnace and advance in the game. Did we mention that any time you carry an item, you move at about one-fourth of your normal speed, you can't dash, and you are unable to use Thunderbolt? Good luck getting past all those angry Torkoal.
    • Oh, and did we mention that the Torkoal will chase you all the way to where Camerupt is and will still ram into you afterwards?