I totally respect your decision.
To me rejuvenation's intense mode (especially on V13) is the most interesting difficulty level I have played so far. It does not rely on over levelling or on busted legendaries and the game seems to carefully give us items and pokemon so that the player never become too powerful. Although terrain mechanics + seeds (and valarie's whishcash with its crest) felt a bit unfair I think they were necessary to raise the difficulty at some point.
There are almost 900 hundred pokemon that can be played with different movepools, abilities and items the pokemon game is very rich in term of possible strategies. Most of the time either the game is too easy and it is not worth it to think about a strategy either there are a few strategies that are overpowered and they are not that hard to find. While playing Rejuvenation on intense mode, I felt like I had to dig deeper than usual : using pokemon I had always overlooked, trying to get eggmoves, finding synergy with the terrain mecanic, and when the team was ready I still had to carefully plan the boss battles and perfect my strategy through several attempts.
I do not know if it was the way I should have played but I was trying my best, making full use of all the tools I was given just to be able to go further in the game and it felt so rewarding. After beating each boss you unlock a new part of the quiet cool story, and you get access to new items/pokemon (with enough exploration) which makes it all the more rewarding. I newer got this mid-game feeling when I am bored and try to rush to the end game where things are going to be interesting again. In fact, the game surprised me regularly (with boat that get teleported, time traveling, crests, aevian forms....) and I was always gathering as much tools as I could in each new zones to prepare for the next boss battle.
To sum this up, thank you for making this Intense mode until V13, it made the most entertaining pokemon experience I have had for some years now.
