Has anyone ever tried any self-imposed challenges in any Pokemon games? Nuzlockes, monotypes, or any other type of restriction you place on yourself to make the game more difficult. Right now I'm doing a Nuzlocke of Platinum. It's the first time I've attempted a challenge and honestly, it's not that much more challenging - though I'm still before the second badge and I'm grinding a lot to be cautious (though still reasonably leveled - I was 14 for the first gym when I'm usually 11-12). Criticals terrify me though.
Monotype, Color, Single, etc. I've done them all. xD I've even done stuff like, what comes in a booster set from the TCG's gym leader decks. I beat my Emerald version with a Skitty, once. It was awesome. But currently I'm doing a Pink run in Platinum, where all my Pokemon are pink (shiny and normal sprite). It isn't so much of a challenge, as it is just really fun.
I started a Nuzlocke once in Gold and got to the fighting gym before realizing I'd have to go through 16 gyms before I'd be able to call it finished and I was already bored out of my mind because I was grinding so much out of paranoia so I stopped. I'm not good at Pokemon, nor do I even like battling in it, so I don't know why I thought a challenge would even remotely be a good idea for me. :(
The only restrictions I place on my playthroughs is that I never ever never use legendary Pokémon, and I also don't use any event Pokémon. The only time I'll use event Pokémon is if I want to breed them, so I'll put them in the daycare with a Ditto. Otherwise, I never use them in battle. I think the one time I broke that rule in recent years was when I fell in love with Zekrom in my first playthrough of White and used it towards the end to battle Reshiram. That's it, though.
Updating this two years later - I abandoned the Platinum Nuzlocke not long after that last post...mostly just got distracted and never returned to it. But! This summer I completed a Nuzlocke of Y with five deaths and recently I've been doing a FireRed one - though I've kind of lost interest since encounters in that game are horrifically boring. Pokémon distribution was terrible in Kanto. :/
I've done a monotype run on Black 2, a couple variations of the Nuzlocke challenge (one on Heart Gold and the other on X), and a solo run with Serperior on Black 2. Let me tell you, getting through the first few gyms where you have Poison and Bug was challenging with only Serperior. But I did it, and without a single death. I don't replay games very often, though, so it's rare when I do one. I did all of these a couple years ago where I didn't have unlimited internet and these things were much more appealing.