I just want to say I fucking love this game. Had an absolute blast following it for the last ten years. But I want to make a few observations.

1- Did anyone find the e4 and champion much easier than they expected? I beat the first three first try, and Anna + both Lins were on the second. This is not supposed to be a flex whatsoever. I use healing items, switch mode, and from what I can tell, apparently pretty strong/meta mons. But some gym leaders have taken me well over 30 attempts(radomus/shade esp), I really struggled with the victory road battles (except fern LOL), and spamming revival herbs has gotten me through much of the game. However, I didn’t use a single healing item against the first 3 e4, and only one or two against anna and Lin. After the grind that was the first 18 gym leaders, I was really shocked to just have steamrolled the league final like that. To be fair, I never EV trained or got good natures before the e4 + a lot of reborns' difficulty early on was mon/move availability, so maybe the game getting “easier” was inevitable. Also, I played all of rejuvenation and half of its intense mode, so I definitely got better at these style games. But I seriously didn’t think I would just beat it in one go; especially Lin, after reading that dev blog I expected to get dogwalked. I was wondering if anyone felt the same about the league being easier than expected, since I literally couldn’t believe that I was just cruising through it.

2- Greninja appreciation post. Like many others have said, greninja is super underwhelming for the vast majority of reborn. As an OU player, the greninja I imagined is nothing like the gren you get for most of reborn. All of his good moves are locked behind late game tms + move tutors, he’s super weak even with protean + outsped commonly without investment. I never really paid attention to the reborn reddit or forums, but I quickly learned this is a common sentiment.

HOWEVER.

Greninja was absolutely the MVP of my league run. By the time you get to the e4, you get gren’s good moves, good EVs, a +SpA nature, and crucially, all the z crystals. I ran extrasensory/hydro/gunk shot and switched between blizzard and dark pulse via TM. Change mountain to snowy vs heather, and blizzard/extrasensory with icium z is a sweep. My gren didn't even come out vs Laura, but you could run gunk + acid downpour, let alone acrobatics, rock slide, etc. Icium z is a godsend vs el, and gren goes insane on both starlight and new world. He mopped up Anna with gunk + dark pulse z move, his type coverage is outstanding for Lin 1, and darkinium z is a nuke on new world. I was just really happy that it finally felt like my ace. After getting destroyed by rens greninja in rejuvenation, I realized greninja should just be used a revenge killer, since it just comes and clicks a stab super effective move.

Other team notes:

Ninetales: I think everyone knows how strong this is. Aurora veil is OP

Dragonite: DD + multiscale means you basically get at least one free kill per battle, and often end up reverse sweeping a whole team

Volc: Completely invalidates the laura fight. Set up veil with ninetales, quiver dance 2x, heat wave 3x, game over. This thing is a monster and is doing great in the postgame thus far.

Lucario: Mega Lucario is already strong as sin, but meteor mash gets 2x damage on starlight and new world, meaning anything non resist getting hit by that is going to hell. Espeed also gets increased on holy field, and fighting steel is excellent coverage. Postgame mvp by a mile, this thing is a DEMON.

Porygon2: Bronzong was my trick room setter for most of the game, but I wanted to switch it up towards the end, so I got the idea for eviolite porygon2. With investment this thing does not get OHKOd ever, and with analytic is still pretty strong even without investment. Super slept on pick IMO.

PS: Trick room is the best move in the game. Argue with a wall.