I'm kind of disappointed this isn't an option from the get go.

Can anyone verify if you can do the difficulty transfer online to another players game or does it need to be in person? If its in person, then that's sucks because I don't know anybody IRL that plays these games.

In person...sucks I know. I was hoping to play through the story in Hard Mode, but doesn't look like its going to happen.

your really not missing on anything its not even a challenge on challenge mode thats the dissapointment

Its kinda pointless once you beat the game and everything...

It comes in handy for grabbing extra exp. for beating the elites at a higher level. You can get you pokemon up to lv. 100 faster.

It's a ridiculous implementation by Game Freak. What use is a difficulty level if you can't really use it until you've beaten most of the game?

Even if you know someone else with the game, you'd have to sit around and wait for them to finish it before you even start if you want to play a different difficulty from the beginning. I honestly don't know what was going through Game Freak's head when they decided on that.

Honestly, I can see getting hard mode for beating a game. That's fine and dandy. What I don't get is why you unlock an easy mode for beating a game. Yeah, I guess you can give the key to a kid but it still seems a bit silly to me.