Elite Four: "Courses" vs. "Selections"

While on the subject of new fifth-generation paradigms, there is another notable one, and it concerns the penultimate portion of the game, which is none other than the Elite Four. Ever since the first games, the Elite Four has served as a test of skills prior to the exit from the main storyline, pitting Trainers against the hardest Trainers in the region. For the first four generations, these Trainers were sequentially arranged in a certain order, forcing all Trainers to battle them in that order like a "course". In the fifth generation, this was changed; the Elite Four could be battled in any order, removing the "course" aspect and making it selective. This might seem like a trivial change, but it still has some implications.

With a course, the order is set; however the Trainers are arranged, they must be battled in precisely the order given. This might pose a problem for teams of certain compositions, and as a result for those teams, a strategy needs to be precisely structured so that the Elite Four members can be defeated most efficiently while still coming away relatively unscathed after battling with each in order. Like it or not, there's only one path for how things must be done, and any adjustments must be done along that path. It is a real challenge in that way.

The change to a selective approach means that the members of the Elite Four could be selected and battled at will in whatever order is desired. In fact, since there are four members, this means one of 24 possible orders. This also means that strategies can be more loosely adapted for efficiency, though in the end everyone needs to be battled anyhow, necessitating particular strategies depending on team compositions. With so many orders and possibilities, the challenge could be mitigated or increased in different ways.

Neither approach is completely right or wrong, nor is either approach completely easy or hard. They're just "the way things are done", which may be the reason the former approach persisted in the third generation remakes. What is clear is that the Elite Four remains a challenge to go through regardless of the approach. A Trainer needs to know how to deal with the challenge of the Elite Four and then actually realize it so that they can say they have been fully tested for Pokémon battles - a paradigm that hasn't changed.