Since my last post, I have continued with the Trainer Hill on Emerald. Yesterday, before trying the next mode, I went outside and battled a few trainers for money. However, I got bored of it quickly and ended up battling only two trainers. Got a little money at least. Went back to Trainer Hill to buy some healing items... only to find that I already had several Revives and Full Restores. Should have checked my bag better instead of just assuming I had nothing. Anyway, I bought a few Max Potions at least as I didn't have any of those.
Then I entered the challenge again, Variety Mode this time. This time, I found the trainers to be much easier compared to Normal Mode, but some of the puzzles were harder. The first puzzle in particular took me a while to figure out, which costed me a bit of time. However, all of the battles went very fast, and because of that, I was able to complete it faster than Normal Mode. I got an Elixir from the owner this time around. Two of the trainers here had hilarious teams which consisted of nothing but Unown. That battle was also the only one where any of my team members got damaged, so this mode was very easy battle-wise.
Today, I made another try, Unique Mode this time around. I could complete it rather quickly, the puzzles were not as difficult as the ones from Variety mode, but could still feel frustrating at points. One floor was really interesting because it had notes placed which played melodies when stepped on in order, I am pretty sure the two melodies were Pallet Town from the Kanto games, and Route 101 from the Hoenn games, which is fitting considering the Gen 3 games take place in Kanto and Hoenn.
I managed to beat most trainers with ease, the sole exception being the trainers on the last floor which gave me a bit of trouble and caused two of my Pokemon to faint. I was also surprised to see that some trainers here used legendaries, I saw Moltres, Articuno and Entei, which was pretty cool. There was also one trainer who had a team consisting only of Smeargle. It would have been cool to see what movesets they had, but as I managed to defeat them all easily, I only got to see that one of them knew Lock-On. I suspect its other moves were OHKO moves. After beating all trainers and going through all floors, I arrived at the top once more, got an Ether from the owner this time around. Got a quite good time this time around as well. Went down to the bottom again afterwards. Tomorrow, I will continue with the final mode here.