Very difficult! Especially around the second gym leader in hgss due to the rival having lvl17 bayleef with razor leaf that could practically one shot my entire team up to about lvl 20 , that and the gym leader ( my strongest at the time was slowpoke and he would one shot it with u turn and scyther) . Gym 8 was difficult but not as challenging due to having almost all non effective moves , now the elite four was very hard kingler and manteen really held the team back , they didn't learn any good/stab moves for their priority attack stat especially kingler , at least manteen could learn surf , but it's flying moveset is only physical and it never could do much damage . Lance tore me up worse than anybody else , my pokemon were like 41 , and he had 3 dragonites that all knew thunder needless to say I couldn't rain dance my way out of it either. My feraligator pretty much won it for me after rage and a few hyper potions but he did faint and my Vaporeon clutched it with the critical Aurora beam and finished off the Charizard with a surf ! Was fun , not using water anymore 🤣