Radical Red is kicking my butt, is it meant to be this hard?

the thing that helped me most was accepting it plays like a person, not like the old ai. it switches out of bad matchups, predicts, and punishes setup. so bring something with Intimidate, something with priority, and a pivot, and save before every leader because you'll be resetting a few times.

yeah it's meant to be. trainers have proper competitive teams with real movesets and held items, so you can't just overlevel your starter and spam one attack like in the original. what helps is looking up the next trainer's team before the fight and building around it instead of going in blind. which gym are you stuck on?