>>55053937Kind of more a meta headcanon than an in-universe one
When you run into things like Lance and his underleveled evolved Dragonites, its not a case of the game cheating.
Its because the levels pokemon evolve at are just benchmarks for you (the MC) training them personally. And in every game you're a training prodigy, which is also why you'll commonly run into lesser trainers with unevolved pokemon who are past the level you would need to make them evolve.
But characters like Lance or some of the gym leaders through the series are better than the MCs in their own narrow niche fields; basically Lance is a better Dragon trainer than Gold and can get Dragonite to its full potential faster than the player.
