I'm Going on an (pokemon) adventure!!! Need Suggestions

[duckunlimited2]

Ookay, I just got me a copy of Heartgold to play with. However, I don't want to go through the same routine of finding the coolest pokemon EVARRR and teaching it the coolest strongest moves it can in order to simply sweep the npc competition and win the game easy. Nope, I wanted a bit more complexity to my team and their moves this time. So I did a bit of research onto competitive pokemon play and took some of their concepts to create an interesting well-rounded team of six. Here is the result of hours of research and balancing:

Format runs as follows:

Pokemon:Move 1, Move 2, Move 3, Move 4

Meganium: Light Screen, Toxic, Aromatherapy, Giga Drain

Ampharos: Rain Dance, Thunder, Thunder Wave, Focus Punch

Heracross: Brick Break, Mega Horn, Rest, Sleeptalk

Umbreon: Baton Pass, Substitute, Mean Look, Assurance

Starmie: Psychic, Surf, Recovery, Rapid Spin

Cloyster: Spikes, Ice Shard, Explosion, Clamp

I took alot of time thinking on what roles each pokemon will do and moves that best fit its role. Pokemon like Heracross and Cloyster are designed to be more independent so they were easy to choose moves for. However, support pokemon like Umbreon and Meganium were harder to choose moves for because I wanted their moves to reflect the needs of other members, but still allow them to be somewhat independent so that they are not completely dependent on other members to K.O. opponents. Anyways, their are some iffy moves that I'm not sure with. Ampharos's Focus Punch is a good example as i don't have a sure fire way of making it hit all the time. Other moves, like Starmie's Rapid Spin, I'm more concerned with my actual usage of its move due to the fact I'm not playing in the competitive field but in the story mode.

This leads me to my final concern: Will other moves not designed to maim the enemy end up not being used at all? In essence, will the difficulty level of the game be too little for my team's set up and will I end up just reverting back to my all sweeper attack ways and all my effort will be for naught? I think yes. So I Want some self imposed rules and restrictions to up the difficulty level.

So I ask of the space simulator community for some suggestions: What can I do to ramp up difficulty to make this team useful, but not too difficult to make it not fun. I'm thinking of keeping my pokemon under leveled would be the right path but I'm not sure on how. Also, again I'm iffy on some moves so if you can make a suggestion on a move change, that be great but please give me reasons why so I can better judge if its good or not.

Thoughts, suggestions, random nostalgic moments of your first pokemon game, all are welcome! as long as we stay loosely on the topics path. Thank You

[Specialist290]

Always have a Pokemon with Teleport or Dig.

Failing that, pack plenty of Escape Ropes.

[duckunlimited2]

Will do, but they will be on Hm slaves.

[ROFLCopter64bit]

I've played the original silver game and defeated it twice.

My only tip: Keep your starter as your primary pokemon and never let go.