YMMV / Pokémon Shuffle

• Annoying Video Game Helper: The game tends to give hints when left alone after a second. Gets annoying for players who prefer to take their time thinking up a move. Sometimes, there is a better move than the one shown, making hints a lot less useful.
• Awesome Music: Courtesy of Tsukasa Tawada, who also composed the music for several other Pokémon spinoff games including Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness and Pokémon Battle Revolution.
  • The music for the hard stages is one of the fan favorites, with its catchy bouncy feel and bass line. It makes players forget that they are actually playing on a hard stage. (We're looking at YOU, Tyranitar.)
  • The Legendary Pokémon theme has an epic quality to it.
  • The rare Pokémon theme has a mysterious air about it.
  • Also of note is the first boss battle theme, which is usually played during Mega Evolved Pokémon stages.
• Breather Level:
  • Weekends include limited battles with Victini/Magearna and a special Meowth, relatively trivial battles that exist largely to provide an easier source of experience and coins than other levels. (Assuming you aren't out to actually catch Victini/Magearna...)
  • Certain Escalation Battles contains a handful of levels, usually spaced in intervals of 20, in which the board is a pattern of coins.
  • Mewtwo, interestingly, when it came back for the 5 million downloads event. Not only is its health fairly low, but every item is free. Its capture rate is also very high, meaning you get a Psychic-type with 80 base power even early on.
  • Mission Card #17 is much easier than the torture that is Mission Card #16. There are only three missions, which are all done in early-game stages Expert stages. The objectives are rather simple (one involves removing Barriers in a Barrier-infested stage, two others involve activating Mega Effects of early-game Mega Pokémon).
• Broken Base:
  • This game shattered the Pokémon Trozei! fanbase when it was revealed to be a free-to-play game. Some fans think its free-to-play model is perfectly tolerable, while others think it paves the way for abusive microtransactions.
  • Whether the 3DS version or the mobile version is superior. Fans of the former point out the mobile version comes with several drawbacks, such as online-only gameplay, increased item price, overall harder difficulty and massive battery drain. Fans of the latter version defend it by saying that it's a good alternative for those who don't own a 3DS, the visuals look more crisp, and overall is much more convenient due to the use of cloud-based save.
  • Blau Salon having levels with Pokémon from past areas, albeit more difficult and with the possibility of dropping Personalized Skill Boosters. On one hand, players are fine with this idea because they can finally raise the (mostly) forgotten mons' Skill gauge without having to spend stored Skill Boosters, and the area acts as a breather after previous updates each introduced 50-60 stages worth of Pokémon to catch and S-rank. On the other hand, some other players are irked by the idea of fighting the old Pokémon again with their difficulty cranked up. This sentiment was worsened when each subsequent update started to feature more and more stage repeats, at the cost of having only a handful of new Pokémon to catch.
  • The increased emphasis on skill levels and Stat Grinding. Is it a nice way of extending the game's lifespan, rewarding dedication, and letting the player use things with a lot of power without giving it to just anyone, or is it a boring excuse to minimize the amount of effort needed to put into the game and punishes players who either don't have enough time to constantly grind or don't want to waste hours making one Mon be better than the others?
  • A certain Good Bad Bug involving Cross Attack/T-Boost/L-Boost is so horribly broken if done right (though only possible in timed stages) that it shatters this game's playerbase into pieces, with one side thinking that it can be used to break timed stages easily by skilled players and the other thinking that it's a cheap tactic that bridges skilled players and less skilled players further.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • More or less enforced on the player by the game mechanics and natural progression of the stages. A vast majority of Pokémon have less than 60 Power. Not counting any Pokémon 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 Pokémon as they appear, a good number of them are likely to be stronger already by that point in the game.
  • In every competitive stage, Mega Gengar and Mega Rayquaza are very popular due to their combo potential, while tap-based Megas like Tyranitar are alternatively used if the stage in question is disruption-heavy.
  • In competitive stages, the usual strategy was to bring a single-type team (plus Mega Gengar or Mega Rayquaza) in order to make use of Skills that boost damage done by Pokémon of a certain type (Pyre, Sky Blast, Dancing Dragons, etc.). However, these skills were later power crept by Typeless Combo (boosts any damage regardless of type), allowing for more diversity in team building.
  • Starting in late 2016, competitive stages have started running alongside events containing Pokémon that happen to be part of the competition's disruptions, essentially forcing players to catch that Pokémon and add it to their team for the competition. It started with Electivire and Magmortar, but has since grown to include a large number of late-stage catches and legendaries from the Expert stages. Though as an added bonus, these events also allow these usually-useful Pokémon to grind for skill boosters.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • Mega Ampharos. The stage is 90% frozen tiles, and they're refrozen as quickly as you can thaw them.
  • Mega Gengar as well. While it copies the primary mechanic that the standard Gengar stage before it used (keeping the middle two columns frozen nearly at all times), in this stage there is also a 5th ineffective support added in the form of Eevee, and Mega Sableye is the only Mega Pokémon at this point who's super-effective against Gengar. His Mega ability is unable to touch the middle 8 barriers of the board.
  • When it comes to Safari events, Safari #5 is marked as this. Unlike previous Safari events, you go with a full team of 4. Despite the recommended type to use^note Water-type, which is justified as Rock-types deal neutral damage against the Roggenrola line (and outright resisted by the Numel line), Ground-types aren't effective against Fletchling, which is the only Flying-type in that event, and inflict neutral damage against the Numel line, Grass-types are resisted by both Fletchling and Fletchinder, while Ice-types are only useful against 3 out of 7 Pokémon featured in this Safari, the wild Pokémon can throw casual Safari hunters off like including extra Pokémon that can only be removed by Complexity-1 (and thanks to how the Safari system work, using said item may not be Worth It). Notable offenders include Boldore (has Normal-type Meowth as an extra) and Camerupt (has Poison-type Zubat as an extra).
  • The EX stages in general. For the first few, up to Yveltal, you only need like 5 S ranks to unlock the next one. However, starting at Mewtwo, you need a fluctuating amount of S-Ranks to advance. And they're all HUGE. And some aren't even worth it! What do you get for perfecting all 600 stages? Serperior, the supposed worst of the Gen V starters, Dugtrio, a 60 BP mon, and Shiny Genesect, which is still, you know, SHINY, which are incredibly rare normally, but it has Last-Ditch Effort, a nerfed version of Swarm.
    • Now that there are 700 stages, completing the S ranks on all of them unlocks the 90-BP Primal Groudon and its Omega Barrier Shot skill, which wipes away seven barriers and deals absurd damage. However, its stage basically demands you've powered up Primal Kyogre and its Alpha Rock Shot to their final stages.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Pokémon with Swat as its ability will do super-effective damage against Flying, Bug and Fairy type opponents. One of the Pokémon with this Skill, the Psychic-type Reuniclus, has a learnset that allows coverage against those three types.^note Reuniclus can use Rollout to take down Flying and Bug Pokémon and can benefit from TMs to gain Steel-type moves to destroy Fairy-types.
  • Players usually associate Paralyze and Shock Attack with Electric-type mons for obvious reasons. However, some mons have the same ability because they can learn a stunning move in the main games. For example, Quilladin and Lapras can induce paralysis via Body Slam, Qwilfish, Togetic and Porygon-Z can use Thunder Wave, Paras and Bellossom have Stun Spore, etc.
  • Resistance-wise, the Poisoned status problem is the only one that makes sense when compared to the main games. Outside of Steel and Poison which are obvious already, Ground, Rock, and Ghost are the only other types that take less damage from Poison-type attacks, which explains the complete resistance when adapted to Shuffle.
  • Sleeping Pikachu, fittingly enough, has Sleep Charm as its Skill. Yawning is contagious.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Mega Gengar only takes three to four matches to mega evolve, and its effect removes all Mega Gengar icons from the field. While not happening instantly is somewhat less than ideal in the timed stages, it still has a temporary Complexity -1 effect, which is something that costs a massive 9000 coins otherwise. The removal of all Gengar icons also almost certainly causes a large chain to happen, which in turn results in fewer Mega Gengars showing up until the end of the chain.
  • Mega Rayquaza power crept Mega Gengar, removing up to ten non-Dragon icons from the field whenever it's matched. While it's an extreme case of Awesome, but Impractical normally, giving it the maximum amount of Mega Speedups turns it into this on stages that don't have single digit move counts.
  • Shiny Mega Gyarados is a Water-type equivalent to Mega Gengar. However, Shiny Gyarados is even quicker to Mega Evolve than Mega Gengar if fully-candied, and its Water-element is useful against three other types, compared to Gengar's two.
  • Mega Tyranitar joins the ranks of overpowered Megas. It can erase icons (in a "+" formation) based on which spots you tap (up to 3). When deciding which spots to tap during timed stages, the timer even freezes momentarily. Since other Mega Effects either rely heavily on RNG or a fixed pattern, this Mega Effect is incredibly useful for clearing groups of disruptions easily. The only catch is that if you do nothing within the 3 seconds time limit, the Mega Effect will resolve without doing anything. Also, achieving this Mega form takes 30 icons (half of that if fully-candied), making it suffer from being Awesome, but Impractical like Mega Rayquaza.
  • Landorus-Therian. Its superb Ground typing gives him a large amount of types he's super effective against, and he has a great base power of 80. However, what really makes him this is Risk Taker. With the introduction of Skill Booster, Risk Taker was changed from a mediocre skill to the skill you want something to have, as leveling the skill increases both the minimum and maximum damage, leading to a massive 8x multiplier at max level.
  • Same goes for Hoopa-Unbound. It has a superb 90 base power and the same ability, only made less interesting because its Dark-type offers less coverage. Still, it is a must-have against endgame Psychic or Ghost-type Pokémon.
  • Mega Beedrill's Mega Effect mechanic works similarly like Mega Tyranitar's (albeit affecting one spot and with a 3x3 range). Despite the average base power of 60 and having less coverage compared to Tyranitar (Poison-types being only super-effective against 2 types), it's still very useful to clear disruptions without using regular Skills. Its main draw is that, if you max out Mega Beedrill's Mega Speedup count, you'll only need one move to trigger its Mega Evolution! It got to the point where a fully-candied Beedrill is considered to be a perfect candidate for an itemless run of Survival Mode.
  • Giving Machamp a Skill Swapper unlocks Risk Taker. While it's slightly weaker than Landorus-Therian, it more than makes up for it by reappearing in special stages, enabling players to easily grind for personal skill boosters. Additionally, Fighting is one of the best types in the game due to its super effective spectrum, meaning it ends up viable in a lot of situations.
  • Ash-Greninja has Unity Power. At first glance, it's like a carbon-copy of Nosedive (damage x5 at Skill Level 1) except it's good, as it has higher activation rate, is easier to upgrade, and becomes much more powerful with each level up. Ash-Greninja's typing gives him good coverage (against Fire, Rock and Ground) and his attack power at max level is solid.
  • Shot Out is a godsend for stages that feature non-support Pokémon, especially in Survival Mode, where Complexity-1 can't be bought and team switching isn't possible. Its utility is between Eject and Eject+ (Shot Out removes up to 2 of those icons per activation), but its free damage boost (double damage at Skill Level 1) makes up for it, and it can be triggered easily from at least a match-four (60% on match-three). If you decide to invest on this Skill, however, the damage multiplier can go upwards to x8 at max Skill Level.
  • Psyburst, which can be easily unlocked and maxed out during a special Mewtwo event. The ability works like Unity Power, but has a whopping 12x multiplier at Skill Level 5 if it activates.
  • Typeless Combo. increases the damage done by any types in a combo. It carries a stunning 2.5x multiplier, and triggers 75% of the time, regardless of the size of your match.
  • Final Effort multiplies the damage by 36 when there are no moves left. It's pretty cheap to invest in, too, only taking 70 points of skill experience rather than the usual 120. Many stages become way easier if you have an easy 10k+ damage lifeline to fall back on, but it won't help much for S Ranks.
  • In the game's final updates, two long-awaited megas were finally implemented - Shiny Mega Charizard X and Mega Pinsir. By sacrificing one of the taps from Mega Tyranitar, they become blisteringly fast to Mega Evolve, only needing two matches apiece. They're usually the first mega any new player should invest in, because they're just that nuts.
• Genius Bonus: One sneakily slipped in Decidueye's Escalation Battle event of all things. The early levels in said event that give out EXP Booster S items actually follow a Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21). Fridge Brilliance too, since Fibonacci is frequently associated with nature "patterns", like branching in trees, leaf arrangement, etc., which, considering Decidueye's typing, makes sense.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • In the 3DS version, after using up Coins for a Great Ball, you may close the game before you're taken back to the map if you happened to fail during a capture. Turn the game back on, and the Coins you used before will come back, though you still won't recover your used Heart. This happens because the game only ever saves immediately after using a Heart or after viewing the results screen.
  • During the 3DS version's early days, by performing certain actions involving searching for Pokémon in the list, you can use any of ALL available Pokémon during that time. This was patched two days after the game's launch.
  • The 3DS version's 1.3.0 update introduces the Mission Card system, where players can complete tasks to earn bonus items. But during a brief moment after that feature's debut, players can end up earning double the intended amount of rewards, giving a small window of opportunity for players to take advantage of this exploit. But alas, the less-informed players who chose to Check In after the getting the update from eShop end up not joining the fun as said bug was immediately patched.
  • Very few days after the update that introduces Zygarde 10% Forme and a new Pokémon Safari, mobile players noticed the lack of Rock disruptions in the main Meowth's stage and began praising Genius Sonority for finally balancing Money Grinding capability between both versions. However, their joy was short-lived, as a sudden update "patched" this "issue". Cue fans complaining.
  • The 1.3.0 update had a glitch where some games counted the current level someone is at as completed and unlocked the next one, provided they didn't already finish all the main stages. Though this only happened once after checking in after downloading said update.
  • It requires a near-perfect timing, but a bug involving scrolling to the leftmost part of an area, pressing the Survival Mode button at the right time during said scrolling, and then accessing a timed stage (and clearing it) will allow you to play Survival Mode with 99 moves left. Sadly, this has been patched.
  • The April 5, 2017 update applied various buffs and Nerfs, but it also left a bug normally not present in previous versions. The Brute Force Skill, which normally only boosts "not-very-effective" damage, ended up tripling^note double damage pre-patch damage regardless of whether it's a "not-very-effective" damage or not. This rendered this Skill outright broken if it's combined with super-effective damage on top of that. A patch was issued two days later, which reverts Brute Force to its pre-patch state. It was so bad that Genius Sonority removed that Skill from the list of powered up Skills applied in that update.
  • A programming oversight causes shape-based Skills (Cross Attack/T-Boost/L-Boost) to keep the multiplier flag if the second match required to trigger the appropriate Skill is cancelled (this requires near-perfect timing and is only possible in timed stages), meaning that as long as your next matches don't result in combos, the damage inflicted will be always boosted by that Skill's multiplier. This oversight also makes it possible to stack the aforementioned multipliers (up to four if all Pokémon have shape-based Skills), meaning you can reach an insanely high score by keeping up with this exploit.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Sandshrew and Sandslash were added to the game as part of a safari released on February 14, 2017. At the exact same time, Google finished their long-running annual Valentine's sketch campaign of "Pangolin Love", a tribute to the endangered mammals that directly inspired their design.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Mega Pokémon:
    • Mega Banette, despite sharing the same Mega effect as Mega Mewtwo Y, is sadly not really reliable as a Ghost-type Mega. Its effect is overshadowed by Gengar's, and it takes several more icons to Mega Evolve, even if it's stuffed full of Mega Speedups.
    • Mega Abomasnow is like Mega Lucario in terms of functionality, but with less coverage (4 weak to Ice vs. 5 weak to Fighting). Problem is, Abomasnow is a late game mon, and its Mega Stone can only be obtained from an even later-game stage. By then, when it comes to fighting Dragon, Flying, Grass or Ground Pokémon, there are simply far better alternatives for Megas.
    • Mega Venusaur and Mega Gardevoir share the same Mega effect and are considered unreliable due to how they work (erasing by column, when Mega effects that clear rows like Mega Lucario are more effective at combo-building).
    • Both Electric-type Megas, Manectric and Ampharos, are slow to Mega Evolve if not fully-candied and are heavily RNG-based.
    • Mega Aerodactyl. Its Mega effect is so situational that only stages that heavily abuse Rocks and Blocks make it somewhat useful. Thankfully, its mega effect is one of the few where its low 60 base attack power doesn't hold it back too much.
    • Mega Scizor. While fans are glad for an alternate Bug-type Mega at last, its Mega effect is identical to Mega Latios, which erases Pokémon in a jagged line horizontally and isn't reliable in combo-building nor disruption-cleaning.
    • Almost every Dragon-type Mega. Latias and Latios discourage combo-building (removing icons horizontally is borderine worthless); Mega Charizard X cannot build combos reliably, is horrible at disruption cleaning and starts out as a Fire-type in its base form; and Altaria only has 60 base power and an effect that is a marginally better version of Mega Audino's. All of them have extremely limited coverage, only being effective against Dragon-types, and are overshadowed by the game-breaking Rayquaza and Shiny Mega Charizard X.
    • Mega Sableye, as expected for an early Mega Pokémon thanks to its low base power. Its main problem is the O-shaped formation for clearing icons, which is never a good choice for easy combo-building and cleaning up disruptions efficiently. Its usage is excusable during the early game since you had a limited choice of Mega Pokémon , but once you get into the late game and unlock more Mega Pokémon, Mega Sableye is bound to be forgotten.
    • The Normal-type Mega Pokémon have low base power, have no super-effective coverage at all, are resisted by three types (Rock, Steel, Ghost), and their presence only serves as an early introduction to Mega Evolution and its basic Mega effects. Winking Mega Audino, however, is passable - having a similar effect to the likes of Banette, but being combinable with Silvally and Arceus for immensely boosted combo damage.
    • Mega Metagross suffers from the same problem Mega Charizard X's disruption does, in that it's an X that has practically zero use. It faces competition with Steelix, whose ability is designed to eat through metal blocks; Mawile, whose effect destroys icons in a much more useful formation, has access to Raise Max Levels to gain respectable power, and can be Skill Swapped for Risk Taker; and its own Shiny form, which boasts a Banette-like effect that only takes six icons to put online 'AND' the almighty Hammering Streak.
  • Expert stage Pokémon:
    • Malamar is a Dark-type mon with 70 base power and Quirky+ as its Skill. Quirky is already rather difficult to trigger to begin with unless it's a match five (also, removing only two icons of itself in the case of Quirky+ is rather underwhelming). But the fact that there are still better 70 BP Dark-types out there with better Skills makes Malamar easily outclassed.
    • Porygon-Z shares the same base power as Porygon-2 (70), though instead of Crowd Power (an easier-to-activate version of Crowd Control), it has Shock Attack, which is a better version of Paralyze. Unfortunately, being a Normal-type, it won't see much use (unless it's forced).
    • The regular Rotom (other Rotom forms are event-only) is an early-game Expert mon with 60 base power. Quite literally, as it'll soon be outclassed by stronger Electric-types as the player progresses through the game.
    • Electrode is an Electric-type with base power of 60... which was introduced in a much later update. It's the first Pokémon to have Rock Break++ (may remove five Rocks on the board), but the average base power makes Electrode more than likely to be forgotten after being caught.
    • Much like the mainline games, Entei got the short end of the stick with the Johto legendaries. While it was originally outclassed by many things (including Moltres, which is obtained earlier) that share its type due to its mediocre ability, Skill Swappers arrived and gave it...Rock Break+. Rocks are considered to be an annoyance, but nothing worth fretting over unless there's so many that it makes it hard for abilities (such as Rock Break+) to activate. While it's still better than the rest of the mediocre abilities from Expert stages, the Skill Swapper that would be used to change Entei's skill would be put to far better use elsewhere.
    • Honchkrow forgoes its Flying type for Dark in this game, but brings 70 base power and the skill Power of 5+. However, it's unlocked pretty late in the Expert stages, which only serves to hurt it... because it's a long time after the player has battled the other big name Dark/Flying expert stage, Yveltal, who has base 80 power, can use RMLs, has received a skill booster stage, and can swap its Power of 5 to the far superior Block Smash+.
  • Skills:
    • Cheer. Useful in theory, useless in execution. It boosts the probability of a Skill being triggered in the next move by 5%, way too small to be useful. Also, trying to make a match-three to trigger this Skill is not a good option, having 60% activation rate, for a Skill that affects activation rate.
    • Opportunist, obviously, is a bottom-tier skill. It's only available on early-game mons and functions basically as a plain Critical Hit.
    • +/L/T-Boost. Sure those three Skills have 100% activation rate as long as the formation requirement in the match is met, but it's much harder to match in one of those formations than in a straight line, especially if the board is full of disruptions. Even the Skill buff^note 2x damage pre-patch (introduced on April 5, 2017) that made it on equal footing with the likes of Power of 4+ and other free triple-damage skills isn't enough to justify its use.
    • Both Heavy Hitter and Dragon Talon result in 1.5x damage if triggered, with Heavy Hitter being less reliable due to its much lower activation rate (20% less). Hyper Punch is the worse version of these two Skills: it results in triple damage when triggered, but even match-four and match-five still have a lower-than-average activation rate (50%).
    • Prank is rarely utilized by players because using this Skill pretty much means you have to gamble with Random Number God. Prank sets the target Pokémon's disruption countdown randomly (between 1 and its possible maximum). The fact that it's also Nerfed along with Mind Zap to make it unable to take effect on Pokémon with a status problem just makes it worse.
    • Counterattack^note Damage +20 times the number of disruptions on board and Counterattack+^note Same thing, but +100 instead of +20. Players would rather clean up disruptions rather than take advantage of them for extra damage. Just stick with Power of 4+, Dragon Talon, and the like for free damage boost.
    • Swat. It's free super-effective damage against Flying, Bug, and Fairy Pokémon! But good luck trying to trigger it in the first place if you're not going for a match-five. It's intended to give Psychic-type Pokémon, normally neutral to those three types, some advantage (and possibly new team varieties), but the low activation rate (match-three and match-four) just ruins it^note Boosting its Skill level just boosts damage instead of activation rate. It's often in the players' list of never-used Skills for this reason.
    • Brute Force. What's the point of bringing Pokémon whose type normally inflicts not-very-effective damage on certain types just so they can inflict neutral damage? It used to be a never-used Skill until an update gave it a Good Bad Bug in the form of triple damage on any damage, including super-effective ones... only for said bug to be fixed shortly after, reverting it back into its pre-patch state.
• Memetic Mutation: "Satisfying". Genius Sonority changed the mechanics of Survival Mode during one of their major updates, incorporating more difficult fights more often and making it considerably harder to sweep the mode without items. This was heavily opposed by many players who didn't want Survival Mode to be an expensive challenge and preferred the old form as the most cost-effective way of farming experience for their Pokémon. The rationale given by GS, to make the mode "more satisfying", came to be coopted as a derogatory term for any unpopular decisions GS made with the game, especially regarding events that existed to make players spend coins and jewels more frequently.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Despite being practically useless 99% of the time, it seems to be unanimously agreed that the noise Mega Diancie's effect makes is amazing.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: An item called Skill Swapper allows certain Pokémon to be more viable by allowing them to possess an entirely different Skill:
  • Mew has a variety of useful alternate Skills if one uses Skill Swapper on it. Instead of being a rather weak mythical Pokémon with a rather difficult-to-trigger Power of 5, you can either make it remove Blocks easier (Block Smash+), erase non-Supports more conveniently (Eject+), break Barriers (Barrier Bash+) or have a better alternative to the default Skill in the form of Power of 4+ (triple damage if triggered).
  • Ampharos is infamous for having Dancing Dragons as its default skill. As it's an Electric-type, there is little reason to ever choose it when fighting against Dragon-types. Skill Swapper can change its skill to either Mega Boost, making it Mega Evolve much faster, or Paralysis Combo, which can be easily triggered in an all-Electric team.
  • Eevee and two of its evolutions (Jolteon and Leafeon) can have Eject+ as their alternate Skill. A perfect irony considering their notoriety for being a forced fifth Support (which Eject can now affect) in pre-expansion late-game stages.
  • Luxray used to have very little use despite its promising base attack power of 70, thanks to its highly situational Cloud Clear+^note May clear three Black Clouds, which are second only to Coins when it comes to least frequent disruptions in stages. When the June 27, 2017 update rolled out, it enabled Luxray to have its skill swapped for Cross Attack +. Quadruple damage from activation is no joke, especially if it involves a pattern-based burst damage like this one.
  • When Noivern debuted, it had an unimpressive Base 70 power Flying type with the near useless Cloud Clear++. In a later update, Noivern not only got a Raise Max Level boost (10 for a 125 AP cap), but also skill swapped to the powerful Shot Out ability and had a personal stage. Shot Out at max level has a multiplier that outperforms the infamous Risk-Taker's power on its highest roll, and with much better trigger rates (60/100/100 for 3/4/5 matches). The balancing factor in theory is the dependence on a forced Support or a disrupted Pokemon icon, but leaving a free slot when starting the stage automatically fills it with a non-support Pokémon, allowing Noivern to trigger this powerful Burst damage every turn regardless of disruptions.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • "One chance a day!" battles. The premise is that players only have four chances to capture a certain Pokémon, ever, and most would probably botch their first try out of not knowing the stage, effectively leaving them with three. Worse yet, the first Pokémon to appear in such a level was Pinsir, whose capture rate cannot be maxed, making it very possible for anyone to permanently miss it no matter how well they played. The mechanic returned for Jirachi, but the general response was less negative due to a much more forgiving stage and capture rate.
  • The Pokémon Safari event due to being a pure Luck-Based Mission when it comes to fully completing it.
  • The Facebook integration on Shuffle Mobile. Due to lacking Streetpass feature, the mobile version relies on your Facebook friends to obtain Hearts more easily without resorting to Jewels. In practice, however, it turns out that you don't actually gain a Heart from your Facebook friends. Instead, they give you mini-Hearts, and when enough of them are obtained they will form a single Heart. Thankfully, the "friend" system had been overhauled to use Friend Codes.
  • The 2-Heart cost for certain stages, for amping up the game's cash-grab potential.
  • In the mobile version, Victini having irregular appearances instead of simply appearing every week like in the 3DS version. Since Victini mainly serves as a convenient way to gain loads of EXP every weekend and Victini itself is a pretty good Psychic-type Pokémon (80 base power at level 1), mobile version players are understandably frustrated.
  • Mega Venusaur's event in the mobile version marks the debut of the "Fast Match" format, where players are encouraged to make moves as quickly as possible to gain a bigger score. Obviously, if you stop to try and find the optimal move or use Shuffle Move, you'll lose the 1.5 multiplier for the next match, and there's no indication or timer to let you know when the bonus is about to be lost. The system rewards quick, unplanned matches instead of strategic ones, increasing the luck component of the game and enforcing Complacent Gaming Syndrome.
  • A mechanic introduced for the Ultra Beasts event involves limiting battle attempts, offering no items, having an extra requirement of already completing 300 Main stages... and enforces an attempt fee of 20,000 COINS. This was somewhat remedied when later Ultra Beast stages changed the number of attempts from 20K coins to 10.
  • Ultra challenges require about 20000 coins for a full item run but have terrible catch rates.
• That One Boss:
  • Mega Mawile (stage 90) is likely to be the first brick wall the player hits. It likes to freeze rows every two turns and has Eevee as a fifth support to prevent long combos. Contrary to what the optimization may suggest, using Mega Sableye is not optimal, as it takes a lot of time to Mega Evolve and is horrible at clearing Mawile's disruptions. You need powerful Pokémon like Lucario and Charizard to make a dent on it, and purchasing items is pretty much mandatory at this pont in the game. It's even worse in Survival Mode, where you're restricted to using a fixed team for the whole run until you run out of moves, and Mega Mawile always appears as the 17th stage.
  • Mega 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. 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.
  • Mega Glalie is even worse than Mega Mawile by tossing two extra not so effective mons (Glaceon and Snorunt) into the mix. Oh, and of course it likes to freeze rows very often.
  • After Glalie comes Gengar and Mega Gengar, who like to freeze the two center columns and clog the remaining spaces with Haunter and Eevee. At this point in the game, Mega Sableye is likely to be your only super-effective Mega, and it unfortunately takes a long time to Mega Evolve and is useless at clearing the disruptions. You need to bring along Dark-type powerhouses like Yveltal and Zoroark or try to use the disruptions to your benefit by sticking Haunter on your team, and even then you'll likely need a Mega Start and/or Disruption Delay to even have a chance of beating the ghostly juggernauts.
  • Both incarnations of Mewtwo only exist to force you to spend more than 9,000 Coins. The event-only Giratina can mitigate the pain, but even then purchasing Disruption Delay and Moves +5 is advised.
  • Mega Gallade serves as the boss in the first half of Prasino Woods, and his stage is pure aggravation if you want to S-rank it. His stage starts with the middle columns being filled with Blocks, and albeit Shiny Mega Rayquaza works great here, you will still need a Mega Start to deal with the Blocks quickly. However, once the blocks are destroyed, another set will fill those same columns. Not helping is that Gallade's disruption itself fills the board with barriers, and a forced fifth support in the form of Gallade is also present, making purchasing a Complexity-1 pretty much mandatory. While full-item runs in late-game stages like this are inevitable, this is one of the instances where even full-item runs won't guarantee an S-rank.
• That One Level:
  • Mega Garchomp's first two competitive stages contains Phione as one of the obstacles, which can only be obtained in the third Safari event (where it only has 1% appearance rate) and doesn't go away if Complexity-1 is bought.
  • Albens Town's appearance itself is a Broken Base on its own (it re-uses the background from Puerto Blanco, the very first Main stage area), but what pushes the area into this territory is the ridiculously low catch rate of the Pokémon there, with even the basic form of main series games' Com Mons like Starly and Scatterbug barely passing the 20%-mark. The Pokemon also have ridiculously high HP considering the number of moves given to beat them (Spewpa (a 3-move limit mon) has a staggeringly high 7,776 HP), so move bonus tends to be inaccessible or negligible.
  • Mega Steelix's second competitive stage. It has rocks added to the skyfall in addition to its disruptions both creating rocks and occasionally encasing nearly half the board in glass. While it's obviously an attempt to use a Skill Swapper on Entei (who would get Rock Break+), doing so gives you a very subpar Pokemon for everything but that one event.
  • Ampharos in Survival Mode is a move sink and will always show up on stage 35. It has huge HP and half of the starting board is covered in barriers in a checkerboard pattern.
  • In the Expert stages, Blaziken in Stage EX12. The stage starts out with the middle two columns filled with metal blocks and 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, items are pretty much mandatory to beat this stage. Mega Aerodactyl can easily deal with the metal blocks and make this stage much easier, but is only obtainable much later in the main stage route.
  • Braviary in the mobile version. The 3DS version gives him 11,008 HP and requires 8 moves at maximum (without Moves +5) to defeat him. It's still challenging but fair as you only carry 3 Pokémon, which if the ones with anti-disruption skills (at least something with Rock Break) are included, they will make the level much easier. The mobile version, though, pretty much triples his HP but doesn't change anything else, including the number of moves. Defeating him is one thing, but trying to S-rank his stage will take multiple Hearts... and more likely a lot of Coins in the process. In the harder UX mode, the HP triples again, leaving it with a six-digit score requirement.
  • 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.
  • Gardevoir is another stage that practically requires that you start out with all items available, due to the starting barriers making it impossible to do any combos and its ridiculous amount of health.
  • Ditto. At first glance, 10,080 HP in 15 moves doesn't seem much, but the stage begins with a puzzle involving predetermined weak Mons, so you'll have to waste five moves before you can even use your set supports. Once that's done, be ready to be surprised as Ditto is a forced fifth support with a useless ability and very low attack power. Your only hope is a Risk-Taker Machamp or Shot-Out Hitmonlee (either requiring a Skill Swapper), but even then its usage is hindered by the larger-than-normal number of Pokémon on the puzzle area. To make matters worse, like everything else in Prasino Woods, Ditto's catch rate is garbage.
  • Defense Forme Deoxys is plain Luck-Based Mission to S-rank (and near-impossible to win itemless) even with a full-power super-effective team and all necessary items used. The default board layout has most of the tiles covered in Barriers, so you have to clear them quickly to proceed with the big combos... only to find out that the first column, once the Barriers are cleared and skyfall ensues, contains several screens' worth of Blocks with some Defense Forme Deoxys icons slipped between them, which ignore Complexity-1 because they're part of the preset layout. Defense Forme Deoxys' disruption will also produce Rocks, barriers and Attack Forme Deoxys. Tap-based Megas are the only definite solution to clean up the board, but even then you have to be very skilled with their abilities, and of them, only Pinsir holds a type advantage against Deoxys.
  • From the Expert stages, Speed Forme Deoxys. The stage layout presents several problems: It's preset with several Deoxys (Speed and Normal) covering two columns on the left and right for several screens. This cripples the Mega you want to use unless you use Mega Start. Its disruption involves lots of Barriers which can cover up the preset icons or even spawn either Deoxys inside them. If that wasn't enough, rocks are a forced 5th support in this stage.
• That One Sidequest:
  • The first mission you'll more likely to have trouble with is scoring a combo of exactly 7 matches in Audino's stage, which is pure Luck-Based Mission.
  • Mission Card #16 is filled with sadistic missions that can test a player's patience in completing it (or simply be a massive Coin sink):
    • You thought beating Roserade the proper way is hard enough? How about beating it without using Mega Evolution?
    • Trigger Eject+ in Snover's stage 15 times. Sounds easy thanks to Snover constantly disrupting with non-Support icons, until you realize that Snover's default move limit is 15. This forces you to try to activate Eject+ at exactly one activation per one move (and it'd better be a match four or five, as it has a 50% activation rate otherwise). And that's before considering how to clear the stage itself, because very few Eject+ Mons are super-effective against Snover (and those super-effective candidates are mediocre at best despite the effort for getting them^note They're either Skill Swapper-exclusive (Flareon) or event-only (Winking Cyndaquil, Cradily)...)! You'd better hope that Random Number God has mercy on you... or you can bribe yourself with Coins/Jewels for the extra moves.
    • Beating Abomasnow with 20 moves remaining is asking for frustration. Abomasnow's stage has a default move limit of 25. A Moves+5 isn't enough to beat this monster unless you're extremely lucky. Hope you like wasting 9,000+ Coins just to clear this mission...
    • Simisear's stage isn't too hard if you use the proper Pokémon to clear it, but how about if you're only limited to using Normal-types? You know, the type that has no super-effective coverage at all? Unless you have Arceus (its Skill pretty much makes Normal-types' damage in a combo to be the equivalent of super-effective damage, but good luck triggering it constantly), you pretty much have to resort to items to clear the stage.
    • Triggering Last-Ditch Effort isn't too difficult to do in move-based stages. But for a mission involving this Skill: First, make it take place in an Expert stage (thus, a Timed Mission). Second, make you trigger said Skill 4 times. In the last 10 seconds of the stage. And make sure you beat the target Pokémon after activating Last-Ditch Effort the required number of times or else the mission won't be cleared. Match five and speedy shufflin' are your key to success.
  • For an example not involving Mission Cards, pretty much trying to complete any Safari event for completionists due to it being a complete Luck-Based Mission. Special mention to the Safari event featuring the rare Phione and a later one featuring the elusive Shiny Magikarp and Gyarados, the first Shinies in this game. They only have 1% chance to appear. Even worse, Phione at that time was a secret, and Genius Sonority didn't even acknowledge said Pokémon in a repeat event much later, leaving even veteran players unsure if that small annoying Pokémon is actually included or not.
    The "two 1%-appearance Pokémon in one Safari" thing is brought back in the repeat of the second Safari event (the one that features Manectric) where for this updated repeat, Winking versions of Pikachu and Raichu join the fun.
  • From the Special stages, we have Pirouette Forme Meloetta. The preset board consists of several Barriered Rocks and Pirouette Forme Meloetta icons which can be cleared in one move, breaking the Rocks surrounding it and clearing the rest of the Meloetta icons. Simple enough, but this leaves only two open columns for skyfall. In only very few moves after the stage starts, Meloetta will start disrupting with Rocks as well as Barriered Rocks. The worst disruption is the one where rows 2-4 are filled with nothing but Barriered Rocks plus a couple of Blocks and Meloetta icons between them, making it difficult to cause combos, let alone gain decent score. Mega Diancie is a must-have (both Diancie and its Mega Stone are event-only, natch) for this challenge because of this. But even then, Random Number God is more likely to be against you, even if you used Attack Power ↑. Being an Ultra Challenge stage, difficulty like this is expected, but the way its disruptions work borders on annoyance and pretty much forces players to bring a fully-candied Pokémon as well as items.