Why aren't there other major franchises centered on capturing wild creatures and training them to fight? I'm not talking about something like digimon or monster rancher where you just get a partner and sit around powering them up with friendship while they do all the work. I mean something with the strategic flexibility and variety of pokemon.

At this point it seems like adults only like pokemon because of nostalgia and the fact that there's nothing else in its niche. They barely change the gameplay each generation, the stories are a joke, the dialogue is full of never-ending friendship bullshit, they constantly remove features people want and leave features everyone hates, the ai/npc teams are shit, and spamming nukes with type advantage is more effective than any strategy you'll set up before postgame. You could beat any battle in these games by following a flowchart. (And don't tard out about how if you want meaningful combat you should play online. I play pokemon for the exploration and discovery and I'd like to experience that with not-shit combat.)

And this isn't even getting into more subjective stuff a lot of people dislike like the new super cartoony artstyle and haunted object/clothed humanoid pokemon.

You'd think someone would come along and make an adult oriented pokemon ripoff. Something with more complex/deep battles, less braindead dialogue, etc. I don't understand why no one has.