Ive made my way through most of the Aether Paradise story section. The mooks and Faba were fairly easy, but then I got to the part where Team Skull shows up, and it took me a couple of attempts and some experimentation to beat Guzma this time. I led with Magnemite against his Golisopod and attacked with Discharge, which did enough damage to trigger Golisopods Emergency Exit ability and force out Pinsir. I switched to Mudbray (holding the Eviolite for this battle) and Mudbray was able to tank enough hits to eventually KO Pinsir with Rock Tomb. Then he sent out Vikavolt, I switched to Gastly, and I just had Gastly use Destiny Bond to cheese Vikavolt. Finally, I switched back to Magnemite, who KOd Masquerain and then finished off the weakened Golisopod to get me the win.
After another quick and easy battle against the weird Ultra Recon Squad people, Im currently saved in front of the next major battle against Lusamine, who I am
terrified
of. She has a team of five fully evolved Pokemon at level 47 (so they're only slightly lower leveled than my team of unevolved Pokemon) including some very bulky ones in Clefable, Milotic, and Bewear.
My current team:
(asterisk = getting boosted experience for being past its evolution level)
Lv49 Popplio*
Lv50 Magnemite*
Lv49 Cutiefly*
Lv48 Gastly*
Lv48 Crabrawler
Lv51 Mudbray*
On a random side note, completely unrelated to the playthrough: I totally forgot how much the story of the gen 7 Pokemon games reminds me of
Kill La Kill. Both stories involve a psychotic, beauty-obsessed mother trying to harness aliens to gain power, while her two children (one of whom is a total edgelord) rebel against her and try to stop her plot in their own ways.
https://i.imgur.com/PmF1p9q.jpg