History YMMV / PokemonShuffle

** Ampharos comes between Mawile and Glalie, and the stage is a pure NIGHTMARE. All but two rows are frozen, so you have limited moves to begin with, and the disruptions switch between giving you Flaaffy tiles or undoing your hard work by refreezing tiles, most times at the worst places or to screw up potential moves. A Mega Start and Mega Slowbro is advised, and even then you need to PRAY you have enough Slowbro tiles when you start to get a mass de-thaw.

* ComplacentGamingSyndrome: More or less enforced on the player by the game mechanics and natural progression of the stages. A vast majority of ComMons have less than 60 base power. Not counting any pokemon from the special or expert stages or who can mega evolve, you will find yourself using Aurorus, Zoroark, Ninetails, Nidoking, Scyther, Conkeldurr, Sawk, Meinshao, Bronzong, and Tropius fairly often. Most of these have a lot of type advantages over others, and the game's progression has you fighting certain types far more often than others. Even if you capture all the special pokemon as they appear, a good number of them are likely to be stronger already by that point in the game.

** Another one from ''Shuffle Mobile'': Paying Coins instead of Hearts for a stage (so far it happens to Keldeo's returning stage, which is the first time this happens). Cue people complaining how it makes them even more prone to running out of coins faster.

** And then there's the mega evolution stone competitions. Want Mega Lucario, Mega Blastoise, Mega Banette, or Mega Venusaur? Not only were they only weeklong events, but players needed a sufficiently high score in their regional competition to get it. In short, only 80,000 players worldwide have each stone, annoying many fans who were, late or didn't have sufficiently strong Pokémon at the time, or didn't want to spend coins on power-ups--not to mention the fact it's possible to cheat for those coins! Additionally, Mega Lucario, Mega Blastoise and Mega Venusaur are the ''only'' Fighting, Water, and Grass Megas currently available in the game, so if you need them desperately to beat infamously hard bosses like Mega Mawile, Mega Aerodactyl, Yveltal, etc., sucks to be you.

** Vivillon practically requires starting with a Mega Evolution right from the start. Unless you got lucky and have a Blazikenite, you're most likely going to be using Mega Aerodactyl, whose attack power isn't too high, but its skill finally proves useful once wooden blocks start showing up. If you get past the ice blocks, you can get the combos going, which you will need, because Vivillon has a frustratingly huge amount of HP.
** Klinklang ''requires'' you to buy 5 extra moves just to complete it. The entire stage is encased with steel blocks, leaving an 8x8 grid (minus one space) with Klink, Klang, and Klinglang to work with. If you clear the board properly, it'll reset and you have to do it again, and then one more time after that. You're given 5 moves, but it requires 10 moves to get an S rank and a 23% capture rate.

** Vivillon practically requires starting with a Mega Evolution right from the start. Unless you got lucky and have a Blazikenite, you're most likely going to be using Mega Aerodactyl, whose attack power isn't too high, but its skill finally proves useful once wooden blocks start showing up. If you get past the ice blocks, you can get the combos going, which you will need, because Vivillon has a frustratingly huge amount of HP.

** Albens Town (introduced in version 1.2.12) in the same game is considered this (more like a Scrappy Area) by several players, even the very skilled ones. While visually it causes a BrokenBase on its own ([[CutAndPasteEnvironments it re-uses the background from Puerto Blanco, the very first Main stage area]]) but on the other hand fans are glad to see more new Pokémon, the main issue with this area is the ridiculously low catch rate applied to the firstly-introduced Pokémon there, even the basic form of main series games' ''ComMons'' like Starly and Scatterbug. None of them can reach the ''20%''-mark, and that's before applying the bonus from moves left and [[CriticalHit Super Catch Power]], but the mons there tend to have ridiculously high HP when compared to the number of moves required to beat them (Spewpa (a 3-move limit mon) has a staggeringly high ''7,776 HP''), so move bonus tends to be out of the way (they give low % for those mons anyway...), while the latter bonus's occurrence is [[RandomNumberGod decided randomly anyway]]. The difficulty in defeating the target Pokémon is quite fair at least, as it's a later area expected to raise its difficulty curve, but it's the low catch rate overall that gives it a [[TheScrappy Scrappy]] trait. As for S-ranking all of the stages there though... it's another story, as doing that is either easy as pie or [[NintendoHard considered nightmarish]].

** Now for more competition woes, there's the BribingYourWayToVictory issue. In early competition events, usable items were merely restricted to Disruption Delay and Complexity-1 (and Mega Start for "repeat" competitions), the former of which is cheaper and is used frequently by players in such events. While players can also resort to the latter item (or using both), even players that can go itemless and score decently still has a chance to obtain the Mega Stone as a prize. However, later competitions finally added in Attack Power ↑, which doubles damage inflicted (and thus, your earned score) and ends up shattering the playerbase further. Combined with the recent number of players that can earn the Mega Stone[[note]]Early competitions usually capped it to 20,000 for NA, 10,000 for Europe, and 50,000 for Japan. The only notable exceptions was during the first competition for Europe, which capped the eligible players at the same number as NA's, and Mega Manectric's event, which doubles the cap on all regions. On later competitions, the cap is decreased to 18,000 for NA and increased to 12,000 (but later decreased to 11,000) for Europe, though Japan stays the same. The cap for NA region is then back to 20,000 for Mega Absol's event, while the cap for Europe region reverts back to 12,000.[[/note]], the addition of items as prizes (''especially'' the coveted Mega Speedups, which can only be earned from special events), and the rise of blatant cheaters (as in, the ones who hack their game to give themselves an advantage ''even over players who admitted to'' ''[[BribingYourWayToVictory Bribing Their Way To Victory]]''), this usually results in either players giving up the game, resorting to [[BribingYourWayToVictory Bribing Their Way To Victory]] as well, simply accepting their lower chance at earning the prizes, joining the cheaters, or simply complaining.[[note]]However, for the "cheating" part, it's rather pointless now as Creator/GeniusSonority is capable of [[NoFairCheating banning]] such players.[[/note]]

** While nothing in the main stages is inaccessible to those who don't pay money, the game also has a high reliance on "event" Pokémon. The five alternate Rotom forms, the Hoenn legendary trio and Keldeo were only available to catch for at most two weeks, and it's entirely possible that latecomers will never be able to have them at this point.

* TheScrappy: Phione is this to many players, because it can only be encountered at [[LuckBasedMission a specific event]] that is already scrappy enough on its own, where it has the lowest possible encounter rate, and it being a ''still'' mandatory obstacle you face in Mega Garchomp's stage (granted, the stage lasts longer than usual competitive stages, but still) if you want to stand a chance, as if those Gible obstacles aren't enough for you... (that is, unless you used a Complexity-1)

* TheScrappy: [[MakingASplash Phione]] is this to many players, because it can only be encountered at [[LuckBasedMission a specific event]] that is already scrappy enough on its own, where it has the lowest possible encounter rate, and it being a ''still'' mandatory obstacle you face in Mega Garchomp's stage (granted, the stage lasts longer than usual competitive stages, but still) if you want to stand a chance, as if those Gible obstacles aren't enough for you... (that is, unless you used a Complexity-1)
* ScrappyLevel: Mega Garchomp's competitive stage. The stage contains Phione as one of the obstacles (fortunately, [[MakingASplash its type]] is super effective against the [[DishingOutDirt Ground-type]] Mega Garchomp), which can only be obtained in the third Safari event, where it only has 1% appearance rate, the first Safari Pokémon with this rate. If you don't have it, don't even bother using Complexity-1 there, because Phione isn't affected by that item. Many fans, especially the less lucky ones, feel that this competitive stage is simply unfair because of the above problem.
** Albens Town (introduced in version 1.2.12) in the same game is considered this (more like a Scrappy Area) by several players, even the very skilled ones. While visually it causes a BrokenBase on its own ([[CutAndPasteEnvironments it re-uses the background from Puerto Blanco, the very first Main stage area]]) but on the other hand fans are glad to see more new Pokémon, the main issue with this area is the ridiculously low catch rate applied to the firstly-introduced Pokémon there, even the basic form of main series games' ''ComMons'' like Starly and Scatterbug. None of them can reach the ''20%''-mark, and that's before applying the bonus from moves left and [[CriticalHit Super Catch Power]], but the mons there tend to have ridiculously high HP when compared to the number of moves required to beat them ([[BigCreepyCrawlies Spewpa]] (a 3-move limit mon) has a staggeringly high ''7,776 HP''), so move bonus tends to be out of the way (they give low % for those mons anyway...), while the latter bonus's occurrence is [[RandomNumberGod decided randomly anyway]]. The difficulty in defeating the target Pokémon is quite fair at least, as it's a later area expected to raise its difficulty curve, but it's the low catch rate overall that gives it a [[TheScrappy Scrappy]] trait. As for S-ranking all of the stages there though... it's another story, as doing that is either easy as pie or [[NintendoHard considered nightmarish]].

** In the Expert stages, Blaziken in Stage EX12. The stage starts out with the middle two columns filled with metal blocks and [[InterfaceScrew the middle two rows partially obscured by black clouds.]] Blaziken loves to regenerate the metal block columns almost immediately after they disappear, eliminating the ability to make horizontal matches, and the black clouds serve to slow you down. The topper is that you have only thirty seconds to beat this guy. Even with a fairly strong team of super effective Pokémon, you will have trouble in this stage unless you spend in-game or real money to get items...or if you wait it out and get Mega Aerodactyl on your team to easily deal with the metal blocks and make this stage much easier. However, Mega Aerodactyl is encountered much later in the main stage route.

** Now for more competition woes, there's the BribingYourWayToVictory issue. In early competition events, usable items were merely restricted to Disruption Delay and Complexity-1 (and Mega Start for "repeat" competitions), the former of which is cheaper and is used frequently by players in such events. While players can also resort to the latter item (or using both), even players that can go itemless and score decently still has a chance to obtain the Mega Stone as a prize. However, later competitions finally added in Attack Power ↑, which doubles damage inflicted (and thus, your earned score) and ends up shattering the playerbase further. Combined with the recent number of players that can earn the Mega Stone[[note]]Early competitions usually capped it to 20,000 for NA, 10,000 for Europe, and 50,000 for Japan. The only notable exceptions was during the first competition for Europe, which capped the eligible players at the same number as NA's, and Mega Manectric's event, which doubles the cap on all regions. On later competitions, the cap is decreased to 18,000 for NA and increased to 12,000 (but later decreased to 11,000) for Europe, though Japan stays the same.[[/note]], the addition of items as prizes (''especially'' the coveted Mega Speedups, which can only be earned from special events), and the rise of blatant cheaters (as in, the ones who hack their game to give themselves an advantage ''even over players who admitted to'' ''[[BribingYourWayToVictory Bribing Their Way To Victory]]''), this usually results in either players giving up the game, resorting to [[BribingYourWayToVictory Bribing Their Way To Victory]] as well, simply accepting their lower chance at earning the prizes, joining the cheaters, or simply complaining.[[note]]However, for the "cheating" part, it's rather pointless now as Creator/GeniusSonority is capable of [[NoFairCheating banning]] such players.[[/note]]

** Now for more competition woes, there's the BribingYourWayToVictory issue. In early competition events, usable items were merely restricted to Disruption Delay and Complexity-1 (and Mega Start for "repeat" competitions), the former of which is cheaper and is used frequently by players in such events. While players can also resort to the latter item (or using both), even players that can go itemless and score decently still has a chance to obtain the Mega Stone as a prize. However, later competitions finally added in Attack Power ↑, which doubles damage inflicted (and thus, your earned score) and ends up shattering the playerbase further. Combined with the lowered number of players that can earn the Mega Stone[[note]]Early competitions usually capped it to 20,000 for NA, 10,000 for Europe, and 50,000 for Japan. The only notable exceptions was during the first competition for Europe, which capped the eligible players at the same number as NA's, and Mega Manectric's event, which doubles the cap on all regions. On later competitions, the cap is decreased to 18,000 for NA and 12,000 (then later 11,000) for Europe, though Japan stays the same.[[/note]], the addition of items as prizes (''especially'' the coveted Mega Speedups, which can only be earned from special events), and the rise of blatant cheaters (as in, the ones who hack their game to give themselves an advantage ''even over players who admitted to'' ''[[BribingYourWayToVictory Bribing Their Way To Victory]]''), this usually results in either players giving up the game, resorting to [[BribingYourWayToVictory Bribing Their Way To Victory]] as well, simply accepting their lower chance at earning the prizes, joining the cheaters, or simply complaining.[[note]]However, for the "cheating" part, it's rather pointless now as Creator/GeniusSonority is capable of [[NoFairCheating banning]] such players.[[/note]]

YMMV entries for ''Pokémon Shuffle''. Its fans and community praise the addictive quality of its gameplay, but express concerns over its free-to-play business model and the stage designs of stages added in later game updates.
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** Now for more competition woes, there's the BribingYourWayToVictory issue. In early competition events, usable items were merely restricted to Disruption Delay and Complexity-1 (and Mega Start for "repeat" competitions), the former of which is cheaper and is used frequently by players in such events. While players can also resort to the latter item (or using both), even players that can go itemless and score decently still has a chance to obtain the Mega Stone as a prize. However, later competitions finally added in Attack Power ↑, which doubles damage inflicted (and thus, your earned score) and ends up shattering the playerbase further. Combined with the lowered number of players that can earn the Mega Stone[[note]]Early competitions usually capped it to 20,000 for NA, 10,000 for Europe, and 50,000 for Japan. The only notable exceptions was during the first competition for Europe, which capped the eligible players at the same number as NA's, and Mega Manectric's event, which doubles the cap on all regions. On later competitions, the cap is decreased to 18,000 for NA and 12,000 (then later 11,000) for Europe, though Japan stays the same.[[/note]], the addition of items as prizes (''especially'' the coveted Mega Speedups, which can only be earned from special events), and the rise of blatant cheaters (as in, the ones who hack their game to give themselves an advantage ''even over players who admitted to'' ''[[BribingYourWayToVictory Bribing Their Way To Victory]]''), this usually results in either players giving up the game, resorting to [[BribingYourWayToVictory Bribing Their Way To Victory]] as well, simply accepting their lower chance at earning the prizes, joining the cheaters, or simply complaining.

** When the mobile version of ''Shuffle'' was finally released, fans quickly noticed that they can't transfer data from the 3DS version, only from other mobile devices. This makes it frustrating as they have to start all over again. But to be fair, the mobile version is at its first release version, meaning that it only ends in Jungle Verde just like its base game in the 3DS version, which explains the absence of the feature, and the feature might be added in via a patch (which might be extremely unlikely considering how ''far'' the version difference between the mobile version and the 3DS one, unless the former somehow gets its updates fast enough to catch up). Because of this, there are some fans who don't mind this issue. Aside from that, however, there's also the higher prices for items in the mobile version...[[note]]It's "somewhat" balanced out by making you easier to win items (particularly from the Mega stages) though, but still...[[/note]]

* ThatOneBoss: The bosses are in the form of Mega Evolved Pokémon battles, which are '''brutal''' compared to the typical main route stage.

** Ampharos comes between Mawile and Glalie, and the stage is a pure NIGHTMARE. All but two rows are frozen, so you have limited moves to begin with, and the disruptions switch between giving you Flaaffy tiles or undoing your hard work by refreezing tiles, most times at the worst places or to screw up potential moves. A Mega Start and Mega Slowbro is advised, and even then you need to PRAY you have enough Slowbro tiles when you start to get a mass de-thaw.

** Vivillon practically requires starting with a Mega Evolution right from the start. Unless you got lucky and have a Blazikenite, you're most likely going to be using Mega Aerodactyl, whose attack power isn't too high, but its skill finally proves useful once wooden blocks start showing up. If you get past the ice blocks, you can get the combos going, which you will need, because Vivillon has a frustratingly huge amount of HP.
* ThatOneLevel: Any stage in which the opponent Pokémon toss disruptions (wood blocks, metal blocks, ice, black clouds, trash Pokémon) with regular frequency.
** Mega Mawile. Same goes for every Mega afterward if you didn't come with a Disruption Delay and some good supports.

* MostAnnoyingSound: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg2AjG2IyvY The Mega Evolution theme]] receives a lot of negative feedback for overriding the music of certain stages, especially over boss battles or any stage that plays music highlighted in the AwesomeMusic entry. Most of the criticism comes from its off-the-wall composition compared to the rest of the game's soundtrack.

** From the original game, every boss after the first. They all have a special blackout attack that makes it so you can only see the silhouettes of the Pokémon. This becomes a bigger problem when the fight with General Aquarella comes around, and several of the Pokémon have almost identical shapes. So you're sitting there, unable to see what you're trying to Trozei aaaaand I just threw my DS out of the window.