PSR manip difficulty tier list

S rank
-HGSS
What makes this one hard, in my opinion, is that everything needs to be done in one take and making one mistake means you don't get pokerus which makes Whitney and Red impossible. Not only that but the movement to get pokerus is tricky to learn and getting consistent at this is *immensely* difficult. Not only that but your movement in the rain route needs to be perfect (not nearly as hard as the pokerus movement although nerves can really ruin you) and if you take too many extra steps, Raikou location manip won't work. HGSS glitchless is probably one of the least beginner friendly categories, in stark contrast to HGSS glitchless manipless
A rank
-BW2
-Platinum
Platinum is hard for similar reasons to HGSS, the pokerus movement needs to be done in one take and one mistake will ruin it. However, the movement is far less difficult than HGSS. Regarding BW2, having to route drilbur manip all by yourself is one thing, but the timer0 inconsistencies are another. Not to mention psyduck and pidove manips are also tricky to route. While I would overall say that manip execution is easier than HGSS and even Platinum (especially since routing manip paths means you know the manip paths pretty well which can make you less likely to make mistakes), routing them can be a pain.
B rank
-BW1
BW1 is similar to BW2 in that it's hard because you need to route out manips all by yourself. However, it's overall far easier in BW1 especially since there's no dust clouds that you need to worry about. Minnow's filter also helps a lot with this (BW1 would probably be A-rank if not for minnow's filter so thank god for Minnow). Also, in my experience, timer0 is more consistent for BW1 than BW2
C rank
-Gold
-Emerald
The hardest part about both of these speedgames are that you need to hit frame perfect manips at 60fps. However, overall, I find it much easier and less of a headache to have to hit frame perfect at 60 fps than the shit you need to do for the DS games manips. Gold's manips can definitely be difficult to understand and are very intimidating for beginners, however once you're past that obstacle, it's not *that* hard to get consistent, or at least semi-consistent with them.
Emerald, on the other hand, has the advantage of having manips that are ridiculously easy to understand (except for the abra manip, admittingly, but that's not required and honestly easier to understand than Gold's manips)

Unranked for now (cause I honestly can't decide where to put this):
-Crystal
I have learned the route for Crystal but it was so boring and unfun, that I just went to Gold and never really came back to Crystal (which is a shame because casually, Crystal is an objectively better game). Crystal's manips are a weird story for me: the Totodile manip should theoretically be easier due to it being a 2-frame window but i've had *much* more success with Gold's Totodile manip. I've done at least 100 attempts at Crystal's toto manip and didn't get it once, while I got Gold's totodile manip twice in like, half those attempts. I don't know if it's just me, or textboxes are harder in Crystal, but i've seen some new players get Gold's Totodile manip relatively quickly so I don't think it's just me.