While Pokémon isn't a franchise known for achievements, a couple of the games had their own equivalents, with several arguably falling under That One Achievement.
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Core-series Pokémon games
- Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 introduces the Medal Hunt, which is this game's version of achievements. There are quite a few that will be accomplished just in the course of playing the game (like taking 5,000 steps), and several more that require very little effort on the player's part (like reading a certain number of billboards with basic player tips - not difficult, but something experienced players are likely to overlook). But then, there are a host of ones which require an insane amount of dedication and planning to get (such as earning over a million experience points in a single calendar day), will require much grinding or massive experience to get (or, if you go for all seventeen mono-type challenges, likely both), or simply come down to luck. The worst is the one for catching the Pokérus - sure, it can be imported from all the way back in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire or later if you managed to get it, and some folks are kind enough to deliberately trade it along via online trades. But if not, you have less than a one in 32,000 chance of seeing it. Medals centered around the game's online multiplayer would be practically impossible to get nowadays if not for preservation services like RiiConnect 24 and Poké Classic Network
.- The "Heavy Traffic" medal is probably the worst for anyone not living in Japan. It requires you to tag 1000 players with the C-Gear, which can only be done with people you pass by playing the game in the real world. Good luck finding that many, and it will only get harder to get as time passes and less people play the game.
- Another nasty set of achievements are the "X-type Champ" medals, which require you to beat the Elite Four and Champion using only mons of a certain type (dual-types count for both). For each type. That means 17. The amount of time and effort it takes to train one team alone is ridiculous, and it takes a high level and good movesets to beat them since they've upgraded massively (levels in the mid 70s and full teams). If you're trying to take out the E4 member that's strong against you... good luck (especially against Marshal). Of course, you don't really need a full team, but given the Elite Four, it's a really good idea. The "One and Only" medal is worse; you better have a Game-Breaker or a legendary at very high levels to stand a chance, and Arceus help you if you're playing challenge mode while doing this considering the Elite Four and Champion have powerful Pokémon with levels in the late 70s to early 80s to face off against you.
- Ice-types have it the worst. They have the worst defensive typing, being weak to Fighting, Fire, Rock, and Steel, all except Steel of which are common move types, and only resist Ice-type attacks. The number of Ice-type mons are few, and good Ice-types are even fewer. They have quite a hard time against Marshal, and several other Elite Four and the Champion have mons with moves that can slaughter Ice-types by the dozens. You're going to really have to know what you're doing to make such a team work- especially considering all the Pokémon League battles are Single Battles, which Ice-types perform poorly in because defense is emphasized.
- Fortunately, if you achieve "One and Only", you also achieve all the medals relating to that one's type; so if you beat the Pokémon League with only a Keldeo, you'd get the Water-type Champ and Fighting-type Champ medals along with it if you hadn't already obtained them. Doesn't make it any less difficult.
- On a similar note, "Mightiest Leader", "World's Mightiest", and "All Types Champ", which require some pretty difficult feats in the Pokémon World Tournament. "Mightest Leader" requires you to beat the World Leaders' Tournament, which is Nintendo Hard even by PWT standards. "World's Mightiest" requires you to beat the Champions' Tournament... and the less about the Champions' Tournament, the better. "All Types Champ" is basically a smaller version of the aforementioned "X-Type Champ" medals; they require you to beat each of the Type Expert Tournaments. Essentially think the Elite Four, but only three, and up to the insane difficulty of the rest of the upper-level PWT stuff. Oh, and you can't use items at all (except held items), there's no saving, the opponents are random, you're stuck with only a few mons that can be only the particular type, and you're level-locked to 50 (so much for outleveling, eh?). Don't bother trying for this one until you've obtained the X-Type Champ medals.
- "Diamond Dust", which is obtained by... seeing the diamond dust weather. Where it occurs is a big Guide Dang It!, since it appears in exactly one place, on exactly one date: Iccirus City, December 31. It's easy to manipulate the internal clock, but if you don't want to do that, you have one shot at this each year.
- Pinpoint: Hard and Quick Clear: Hard. Both of them are very luck-based, as they require you to beat the lower five levels of the Black Tower or White Treehollow within 6 battles or 1,000 steps, respectively. You have to get majorly lucky to even locate the trainer that will open the way to the boss within six battles, and the boss itself counts as one. And trying to find the boss is difficult in itself, as you have to wander all around, avoiding trainers to find them. You don't have to do both at the same time, obviously, but it's still incredibly luck-based.
- Ruins Raider, for reaching the bottom floor of the Abyssal Ruins. This entire area is on a step limit, and getting down there within that limit requires following a map to the letter.
- 30 People Funfest, which requires you... to hold a Funfest with 30 participants. Unless you lived in Japan when the game was new, or unless you're someone like Chuggaaconroy, it's extremely difficult to even find 30 such players in real life. It was nigh-impossible to arrange such an event even during the game's run, but nowadays the chances of obtaining this medal are nil.
- With the release of Pokémon X and Y, access to the online Pokémon Dream World with the Black and White games was removed, making certain medals that can only be gotten using the Dream World completely impossible to get. On a related note, there are X and Y medals that are being given out for accomplishments done with the Black and White Dream World that naturally won't be able to be gotten either after a certain point.
Pokémon GO
- Pokémon GO has medals for various in-game tasks, with several being well-known for causing frustration.
- The ones most prone to causing frustration are the medals for catching a certain plateau (with a gold medal being 200) of each Pokémon type, because these medals also give a catch rate boost for that type. While variance in local spawns means that some of the type medals are only locally an issue, three in particular were known for causing fits regardless of the player's location - Dragon Tamer (Dragon types) simply had all of the qualifying Pokémon (or the item to evolve one out) be rare; Depot Agent (Steel types) similarly has rarity issues, particularly the fact that only two of the qualifying types in the first two generations were unevolved; Rocker (Electric types) also faced the same problem as no qualifying types are common finds everywhere; and Delinquent (Dark types) wasn't available at all until Generation 2 was launched, with all of them in Generation 2 having atrocious catch rates (so while finding them was easy in some areas, catching them was aggravating). With Generation III updates, Rocker, Depot Agent and Delinquent got their issues addressed by making Electrike, Aron and Poochyena some of the common, easier-to-catch spawns.
- Youngster and Fisherman are rewarded for catching Rattata and Magikarp, respectively, but only if they have the appropriate size tag on them. Even though both are Com Mons, only about 10% of spawns have the appropriate size tag and each gold medal requires 300 appropriately tagged catches. Not helping is the fact that as more generations of Pokémon are added in, the odds of finding any Magikarp or Rattatanote outside of events that boost their spawn rates decreases.
- There's a medal for catching Unown shapes, with gold being all 28. There's usually a similar quest in the games, but that's made easier by an area where they are the only spawns. In Pokemon GO, Unown spawn less frequently than Psuedo-Legendaries like Dragonite or Tyranitar, they never appear in nests, and there are many players who haven't even caught one, let alone 28 unique shapes.
