Like Pokémon Reborn before it, Pokémon Rejuvenation was designed to be much harder than the average Pokémon game by the designers with every major battle. From the leaders of both Team Xen and Team Bladestar, to the Gym Leaders, to your rivals, to several minor characters.
And here are the toughest of them all.
- Valarie, the Water-type gym leader. While her team is nothing to sneeze at, the real challenge comes from the field effect she uses—the Water Surface. The field triggers Swift Swim, and boosts the power of Water-type moves immensely; this means that her Pokémon are pretty much always going to be going first, and her first signature move, Tidal Wave, hits like a truck. Not only that, but she covers her weaknesses very well. Try using a Grass-type to tank her Water-type moves? Most of her Pokemon know Ice-type moves. Try using Water-types to bypass the slowing effect of the field? Most of her Pokémon know Electric-type moves, which also get boosted by the field. While there are Pokémon who can Take a Third Option by virtue of their typing (such as Ludicolo and Abomasnow, which take at least neutral damage from all of the aforementioned type moves), most Pokémon are not going to have a good time. To top it all off, several of her Pokémon have Whirlpool, which doesn't sound that bad... until you find out the field gives it a confusion effect ON TOP OF the power boost from the field and trapping effect Whirlpool had already, meaning you can't switch out your now confused Pokémon that is now taking constant chip damage. This went to the point that even the devs behind the game consider her broken, and later replaced her Signature Move Tidal Wave with the less threatening (by itself) Aquabatics (which raises both speed and special attack by one stage).
- Additionally, the double battle with Zetta and Geara atop Valor Mountain. Not only do they each have a full team of Pokémon (with Zetta having a freaking Dragonite to boot), but you fight them alongside Melia. Seems like she would help you, right? Well, you'd be wrong, since she only uses three Pokémon, leaving you already outnumbered. Not only that, but they're mostly fragile speedsters that are weak to Poison-type moves, and Geara and Zetta both lead with partially Poison-type Pokémon. The worst part is that if your partner's Pokémon all faint, then you're stuck in a two-on-one fight, which is pretty much an instant loss unless you've managed to take out all of one of the executive's Pokémon. The only saving grace is that Geara doesn't use his Giratina, which you fight as a separate boss before the encounter. The fight has been altered to be easier in later versions, though, with Melia getting a nearly-full team to use.
- The Final Boss of Chapter 11, Magenta and Neon, easily qualifies as this. Similarly to the Zetta and Geara example above it's a 12-on-12 double battle, this time with Aelita. As for their strategy: It essentially involves Neon using very bulky Pokémon to set up Barrier, Light Screen, Trick Room and residual damage while Magenta handles all of the offense with Pokémon that are just as bulky, their strongest one being a Mega Medicham that can get really strong really fast if Neon is allowed to set up. Thought you could cheese this fight with a Dark-type? Too bad, it takes place on the Psychic Field, meaning that Dark-type moves have reduced power. Good luck if you plan to tackle this fight on Intense Mode. The fight was later scaled down in difficulty in V13, however, by letting Dark moves do full damage and replacing their signature move Psyche Terror with Bunraku Beatdown. In V13.5, it was nerfed further, so you alone fight them 6v6 in a double battle, with three Pokémon on each side (potentially letting you focus one side down).
- Souta, the Reserve Flying-type Leader. Dear God, Souta. He fights you on the Sky Field, a field that is almost solely designed to be advantageous to his Flying-type Pokémon, and gives you not that many ways to counter them. For starters, his team's first Pokémon is Skarmory—a Skarmory with Sturdy and the Elemental Seed, specifically, which gives his team both a Tailwind (doubling their speed) and Strong Winds (meaning that he no longer has to worry about Flying-type weaknesses). One of his Pokémon also happens to be a Dragonite with Multiscale—and a Weakness Policy, meaning that if you hit it with a super effective attack, it's suddenly capable of ripping through your team like paper cups. And his Mega Evolution also happens to be his Signature Mon and highest leveled Pokémon, Pidgeot—a Pidgeot with the Big Pecks ability, giving it a defense boost. And his Signature Move, Heavenly Wing, besides being boosted by the field, has a built-in Haze effect, meaning setting up on him is not a good idea, considering how fast Flying Pokémon tend to be (even without Tailwind). Oh, and half his team has it.
- Ryland, the Ground-type Gym Leader. Well... here we go. For starters, there's his Nidoqueen, who spends her first turn setting up Toxic Spikes around your team (and bringing a Poison or Steel type to soak up or bypass the spikes, against the Ground Leader... is ill-advised). Second, there's the Aevium Golisopod (A Bug/Ground type you've likely never seen before, which doesn't have Emergency Exit, instead wielding the far more threatening Skill Link, and a moveset to make full use of it) Next, there's the Telluric Seed Gliscor, which gets its Defense, Special Defense, and Speed all increased by one in exchange for getting briefly trapped by Sand Tomb—and which has Roost to heal itself. Then you get to deal with the Sand Rush Excadrill with a Life Orb (Sand Rush is activated by the Desert Field itself even without a Sandstorm). Finally, he has two Crested Pokémon: a Claydol that can now spam Hyper Beam with impunity thanks to said Crest, and a Torterra that is now only weak to Rock and Ground attacks. Oh, and the Desert Field boosts the Special Defense of all Ground Pokemon by 50%. And reduces the power of Water attacks by 50%. If you feel like cursing, go ahead.
- Your battle with Melia at the start of Chapter 15. It's determined that due to how you received your Normal-type gym badge from Marianette, and the fact that Marianette has never been a gym leader in the Aevium League, but somehow still gave you a badge with the chip all gym badges in said league have to prove they're authentic, the validity of the badge is questionable... so, since Melia has just been named the Reserve Normal Leader, Alexandra and Damien have you fight her to prove yourself. Don't think this will be easy, by the way—you fight her on the Fairy Tale Field, and she comes at you with a team designed to take advantage of it. Half of her team is Fairy-type, and as for the rest... For starters, there's her Hydreigon, Unity, (who has Speed EV training, perfect IVs, and gets the damage of her Dragon attacks doubled on this field). Then, she brings out her Zoroark - carefully made to look like Justice, and which has Swords Dance - and a Crest. Lastly, she carries her Aegislash, Justice - a Pokémon the Field was practically designed for. And no, it's not just you... This Is Gonna Suck. Even after being nerfed in 13.5, the battle can still be very frustrating.
- The gym battle against Saki at the end of Chapter 15 quickly turned into a massive exercise of frustration. Not only does it take place on the Glitch Field (which basically reverts all game mechanics back to their Generation 1 iterations), for some reason it also has a permanent Wonder Room effect on it that won't vanish unless you use the move yourself. Her entire team is extremely bulky and due to the Glitch Field effect combining both their Special Attack and Defense into a single stat, they can also hit you extremely hard on top of that. On top of that both her Aggron and her Bronzong are holding Synthetic Seeds, which increase their defenses further and makes them both typeless, meaning that they'll only take neutral damage from whatever you throw at them. And that's without going into her signature move: Super U.M.D. Move, which has a base power of 100 and alternates between lowering both your attack and defense stats every time you get hit by it. It was bad enough that they reworked the battle for v13.5 to be more manageable.
- Karma Files brings us the long-awaited battle against the dreaded "Space hags": Tiempa and Spacea, who both take the forms of Dialga and Palkia respectively for the fight. In the Paragon Route specifically: While Tiempa is not too bad, Spacea, however, is a nightmare due to a particular gimmick her half of the fight has: Once you knock down her first shield, she will steal whatever Pokémon you had out at the time and make it assist her instead. She doesn't just make a copy of it: She outright removes it from your team, leaving only 5 Pokémon for you to work with. That Lightning Bruiser sweeper you were using to knock her out? It's her sweeper now. The Stone Wall you were using to set up defenses so she didn't oneshot you with her field-boosted Spacial Rend? It's setting up her defenses now. Thankfully, once you knock it out it ends up returning to your team, but it's still a nasty surprise that's guaranteed to cause multiple wipes (unless she knocks it out with, say, Surf - in that case, it stays knocked out). Oh, and whenever you break a shield, she does it again on top of morphing into Origin Forme Palkia when she's down to her last health bar, and boosting her own attack stats even further. While the fight itself is climatic and extremely cathartic after everything these two characters did on both routes, expect many attempts until you can finally defeat them.
