Hardest postgame facilities?

Hey all, I wanted to ask experienced players how they would judge battle facilities against each other! I'm in the process of going thru every generation with the goal of beating every postgame challenge. I've done Stadium and Stadium 2, and I would definitely say Stad2 is harder than Stad. I'm pretty sure they are both easier than anything that comes after though, besides maybe SwSh Tower?

So, does anyone have any input on this? I want to plan ahead for what will be most challenging to complete for trainer card levels and such! Thanks!
 
I'll bite: Emerald's Battle Frontier is the hardest in terms of time, effort, and variation involved. The styles and restrictions of each facility vary more significantly than any other facility since the player is forced to use only two Pokemon in the Dome, cannot switch in the Arena, and is forbidden from selecting their moves in the Palace. It is, of course, entirely possible for the same team of three to beat all six facilities but the different requirements of each make this highly impractical and realistically most players will use at least more than three Pokemon overall. In all of Gen IV's facilities save the Battle Hall players use 3 Pokemon (4 in doubles and 2 in multi, but they're irrelevant for the purposes of formal completion) and are allowed to switch and choose their moves, making the facilities feel much more standardised.

Moreover, only one facility is required to raise the player's trainer card level: 100 wins in the Battle Tower is all that is required. In Emerald, the player has to win the gold symbol from all seven facilities, for which the thresholds for winning are on average harsher. Gen IV's Frontier requires 21 and 49 consecutive wins for the silver and gold prints respectively in all of its facilities except the Hall, whereas in Emerald two facilities require 21 and 42 consecutive wins, but one requires 28 and 56 while another requires 35 and 70 (the Pyramid, Pike, and Dome have their own methodology).

It's debateable whether FRLG's Trainer Tower really counts as a facility because it's not required for any aspect of game completion like trainer card levels, and there are no restrictions on teams or healing. Similarly, the Black Tower/White Treehollow in B2W2 does not have any team restrictions and is not timed.

The Battle Subway is of similar difficulty to Gen IV overall, requiring 49 consecutive wins in both single and double modes for the trainer card level to be raised. A small. but significant, quality of life change is that ties do not always result in the player losing - double knockouts are decided based on which Pokemon fainted first, making certain strategies potentially more viable. The Champions Tournament is required for a trainer card level in B2W2 instead of the Subway, which is of a far lesser difficulty given the relative predictability of opponents and the ability to select the mode of battle.

The Battle Tower in Ruby and Sapphire is without a doubt the easiest of all, since opponents are limited to an incredibly small pool of Pokemon species, often with terrible movesets, and the AI is effectively random; 50 consecutive wins are required here for a Trainer Card star. Crystal's Tower can be difficult, but each level category has its own pool of foes and it doesn't measure streaks. XYORAS's Maison is probably the easiest battle facility outside of these in terms of completion since it only requires beating one of the Chatelaines to obtain a star. The Battle Tree requires 50 consecutive wins in Single, Double, and Multi but the ability to pause the streak at any point makes it slightly easier than earlier facilities.

I haven't played SwSh's Battle Tower so can't comment but I'm given to understand the difficulty level is lower.
 
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I haven't played SwSh's Battle Tower so can't comment but I'm given to understand the difficulty level is lower.
It is by far the easiest Battle Tower in any game, as restricted legendary Pokemon like Zacian are not banned, and only a small number of opponents use Dynamax. The same special Trainer, Leon, also appears with the same pool of Pokemon every tenth battle in Master Ball tier. The pitifully low difficulty is why people have leader boards with self-imposed rules, like the banning of restricted legendaries or forbidding the use of Dynamax. SWSH Battle Tower represented the end of Game Freak caring about post-game facilities, sadly.
 
Been meaning to reply to this thread, but I have forgotten about it.

I have experience with most Battle Facilities, the sole exception being the BD/SP Battle Tower which I have never tried (I don’t have BD/SP), so I don’t know how hard it is. From the rest, I think the following are the hardest:

First out is the Crystal Battle Tower. It is one of the few Battle Facilities I have battled in but never beaten. I find it hard because of many factors. The game mechanics in Gen 2 are different from in the newer generations, with DVs/Stat Experience instead of IVs/EVs. TMs are also limited in most cases, which limits teambuilding. In addition to that, some good items like the MiracleBerry can only be obtained through Mystery Gift. I have admittedly never tried the Crystal Battle Tower with a serious team, but when I tried it with less-than-optimal teams (both during my childhood and a little last year), I found it really tough. That said, I'm planning to make a good team and give it a more serious try at some point in the future, maybe my opinion will change then.

From Gen 3, I think the Emerald Battle Factory is one of the hardest Facilities. The reason being that you don’t have full control here. Being forced to use rental Pokémon means you’ll never know what you get, you might end up with a bad draft and a hard first battle in the round. Elevations also require more swaps compared to in Gen 4, and team preview is much worse than in Gen 4 (though I don’t think it matters that much). That said, there’s an IV glitch which makes things easier, and you “only” need 42 wins to get the Gold Symbol. But it is still hard. The Gold Symbol from the Factory was the last one I got in Emerald.

Another hard Facility from Emerald is the Battle Palace. Just like in the Factory, you don’t have full control here. The Palace lets you choose your Pokémon, moves and items, but you can’t pick which moves they use in battle. Fortunately, you can still influence what moves will be picked by using Pokémon with specific Natures and movesets (like the popular strategy of using a Hasty Natured Pokémon with 3 attacking moves and Protect). I never tried with any such strategies though. I just went with normal Pokémon, and it worked as I beat the Palace in just two tries. But that might have been more luck than skill. I guess I find the Palace harder in theory than in practice, and I’m glad I won’t ever have to battle at it again.

A honorable mention from Emerald is the Battle Tower. I’d say it is the third hardest, mainly because it requires 70 wins just to get the Gold Symbol. That is quite a lot compared to the following generations which only require 49 or 50 wins. I guess the Tower is a lot easier if you can RNG abuse in Gen 3 (which I have never learned), or if you are willing to replay games multiple times to get multiple of the one-off Move Tutors, allowing you to create much better teams. I had to try many times before I got the Gold Symbol in the Emerald Tower, less than in the Factory but more than in any other Facility.

From Gen 4, I think the Platinum/HG/SS Battle Factory is the hardest. It is another Facility which I have never beaten, even if I have tried many times. Like the Emerald Factory, you don’t have full control over which Pokémon you get. While there are some aspects that make it easier (better team preview in the earlier rounds, and elevations appear much quicker), other things make it harder. Notably, it requires 49 wins instead of 42 to get the Gold Print. There’s no IV glitch to take advantage of, and you have to face Silver Thorton every single time during battle #21, compared to in Emerald where you won’t face Silver Noland if you have the Silver Symbol, but not the Gold Symbol.

Moving on, I have always found the Gen 5 Battle Subway to be really hard. There are many reasons. Gen 5 in general is a very powerful generation with many hard-hitting attackers, the power creep was arguably bigger than in previous generations. I also feel that this is the generation where opposing sets started to be geared more towards strategy than luck/hax (though there are still a lot of the latter). The AI is better as well, opponents will switch out if they get locked into a non-damaging move. In addition, you don’t have that many advantages over the opponent, the only real one is that you can use Hidden Abilities, which they won't have. That said, the Subway does have an “easy mode” for Singles in the form of TruAnt, which is an auto-win in most battles. But without TruAnt, and for Double/Multi, I thought the Subway was really hard. I beat it, but it was tough.

Last out is the Gen 7 Battle Tree. This is similar to the Subway. You don’t have any big advantages here since opponents will use both Megas and Z-moves. The only advantage I can think of is that you can use Tapu and Ultra Beasts, which aren't used by opponents. The AI is way better and will sometimes switch out if they expect a move which is resisted by a backup, and there are many powerful opponents. Sun/Moon also made the regular line unreasonably hard for some odd reason (notably the Multi line) but this was changed in US/UM. I beat the Tree, but it was tough and took a lot of tries in some cases.
 
oh hey I meant to respond to this too now that I can do so properly

I agree with earlier posts that the gen 3 frontier is the hardest from an in-game achievement / Trainer Card level lens, but that's also speaking almost entirely off theory and the common sense of seven gold symbols being a steep requirement, I don't actually have experience with those facilities other than grinding some quick BP for a couple tutor moves with in-game mons. In generation 4 I ended up getting the 100 wins for the Trainer star in Platinum plus all the non-Factory gold symbols; I got my 100 streak on my second attempt but did find the roster pretty difficult to handle compared to more recent facilities since a ton of enemies run the entire rainbow of elemental coverage plus hax-focused sets are more common than later, not to mention that of course this is the longest streak requirement any game puts out for a Trainer Card upgrade which inherently adds to the difficulty level compared to elsewhere. The Factory is inarguably the hardest facility in the franchise, but the other Frontier facilities are not really relevant; gold print Hall is pretty free if you use Garchomp like "everyone" does, and (unless you're running a Trick team I guess due to those not functioning outright without their items) Castle and Arcade are close enough to "Tower with an asterisk" at least for a simple gold print run that you'll be just fine there with the same team (I think; at least I was).

For longer streaks, I can comment on gens 5-7 and BDSP. Subway/Maison/Tree go together in the sense that the rosters for the more recent ones are edited/updated versions of the Subway roster rather than redone from scratch. To get the Maison out of the way first, there's two big dynamics here affecting difficulty level, namely players having access to Megas while the AI doesn't, and also predictable enemy rosters, in the sense that other than legendary Trainers and a few specific classes the vast majority of the opposition will use only one set, which after battle 40 will also be only the fourth set out of the roster for every species. The Megas thing is a big reason why people say the Maison is the easiest facility of these three, which obv nothing to argue there; the same goes for the lack of set ambiguity, but I should add that this is more of a thing that makes longer streaks easier when it reduces the pool of Pokemon to prep for in the long run when the other sets stay contained to battles 1-40, so for a simple trophy run it's more of a wash.

The Tree is really weird to assess here. There are a handful of factors that make it harder than the Maison, namely the presence of Megas and Z-Moves, and I'm also working on a post elsewhere rn where I'll be mentioning that "every Tree Trainer is a speciality Trainer"; one thing here is that the very vast majority of them will be running sets 3 and 4 for every species by default (though iirc that's less of a thing in the earlier rounds so once again more relevant to longer streaks than to the in-game achievements), and there's also a heavy increase in e.g. Trick Room specialists as well as new archetypes such as Trainers that only run Pokemon with (very) high Speed stats. This makes it much easier for the AI to roll multiple threats especially to shakier teams at the same time where in Maison (and Subway but I'll get to that) such clusters were less likely statistically, making it a more punishing experience overall. From a Doubles lens specifically, the AI was also changed to make its moves harder to predict, which comes with a few issues as well. The Megas / Z-Moves point does warrant a few more words, since while people commonly say they level the playing field, that's of course true to an extent but at the same time we still have access to the Tapu / Ultra Beasts / USM-only Z-Moves, which the AI does not, and a look at the Doubles leaderboard (read: 95% of 200+ teams use at least one of these) should make it clear that that's actually a really significant leg-up for us. A better way of putting it would be that it makes for a massive powercreep that results in the player-exclusive elements being all but mandatory in Doubles, which is exacerbated by the occasionally drunk AI forcing you even more into using the strongest elements possible to keep a leg up momentum wise, and Singles being extremely hard to build a half consistent team in, because thanks to Tapu and friends being much more middling here we no longer have the same advantage in tools over the AI. The Tree is certainly difficult, but it's much more in the builder than elsewhere; actually on the field the singles AI in particular is benign enough to read and play around, hax sets are probably less prevalent than ever and crits having been nerfed twice is something that can't be understated, and even with the Maison Doubles board being rather obviously undercooked I'm quite convinced at this point that even with the extra advantages we have there a "good" Tree Doubles team should still put up more or less equivalent scores as a "good" Maison team, of course in no small part due to how good Tapu Koko and Z-Kommo-o et al really are. Just, "good" teams over here are harder to put together in the first place.

The Subway is the one facility out of these three that gets closest to putting the AI and us on a truly level playing field, with HAs being the only real advantage we have over them. Roster-wise, it strikes an (imo) great middle ground between Maison and Tree, where Trainers with set ambiguity still do exist and also do run all four sets of their species, but with the majority of them we do know exactly what we're facing, except there's also Trainers running set 1 or set 2 or set 3 exclusively, meaning the old sets are never taken out of the rotation. There are a few specialty Trainers with very threatening rosters (Bikers, Sand Workers, Ice Workers) but the fact that A Lot of the time we do know exactly what we're facing and are not forced into midground plays helps a lot with pacing and makes it really pleasant to play. The main thing worth mentioning about the Subway is the "illusion of fairness"; optically it's a genuine good attempt at putting up an actually engaging challenge between us and the AI (rather than being focus on haxing us into the ground) where we also have a good range of options we can choose to run ourselves, but certain old mechanics still have a habit of ending runs earlier than they should and making us lose battles we have no business to, think double Protects having a 50% success rate and crits still being 2x damage. It's a reason why there tends to be major variance between scores and why it's really not out of the ordinary for a really good team to fail to break triple digits on back-to-back runs. From an in-game achievement pov specifically, it's also worth mentioning that the "real" Subway starts pretty early; while Maison and Tree wait until battle 40 to roll up with the rosters we'll be facing into perpetuity and are running 31 IVs across the board, for the Subway this too happens after 4 "sets", except this time that's as early as battle 28.

The BDSP Tower is entirely different in the sense that the teams we're facing there are fully preset, which makes for a weird dynamic where you're actually building to counterteam individual Trainers (especially Palmer, who appears every seven battles on long streaks). This has its ups and downs, since of course it gives us the obvious leg-up that we can plan around their backups as well and don't actually have to preserve our Pokemon once they're no longer useful in a matchup; on the other hand, while attempts to make enemy lineups synergistic are hit or miss, this does mean that you really do have to beat everything no questions asked or you're just playing catch-up with the lineups you do lose to. The last point is what it almost always boils back down to, since in practice this ends up being a more extreme version of the narrow roster threat stacking I mentioned with the Tree; while in conventional facilities you do get a long way by just hoping x scary threat won't be paired with another threatening enemy, over here, well, either it is or it isn't no two ways about it and you can bet the creators have at least tried to make it so, and if you're not properly equipped to deal with certain teams where they do get stacked then it's a matter of time until you lose. In Doubles, a few teams have actually gotten close to solving every matchup like this, but in Singles, where you have fewer tools and the creators probably did the best job creating demon teams anyways, there's extremely few people that can even begin to make that claim, to the point that I'm quite comfy calling BDSP Singles the hardest mode of these facilities outright. The good news is that for the Trainer Card level you can also play in the regular mode that is mostly just used to unlock Master Class and is all but unloseable with a good team, but yea for ribbons and for grinding BP Master Class is probably where you should be.

thanks for bringing this one up, I have for the most part not directly answered it oops since I think a lot of the time it's also a matter of perspective but thinking through all the dynamics in play everywhere is good!
 
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