>>36567079>No hold itemsThis isn't a competitive game, so for the most part those held items aren't really going to be that useful. Do you really need Life Orb to defeat a Gym Leader or Elite Four member? Do you need Leftovers, Safety Goggles, Protective Pads, Flame Orb, Toxic Orb, etc. in this game? Not really. Furthermore, there is this very special item known as the Light Ball that can pretty much make your already powerful Pikachu into an overpowered breaker. Game Freak was probably wary that Light Ball on a variant Pikachu with base 80+ attacking stats will be too busted for this game, so they decided to avoid this. The no held items feature also makes these games align with the Gen I titles and GO.
>No AbilitiesAgain, this is not a casual game, so for the most part Abilities are only going to do so much for you. As for why they were removed, however, my guess is because of Megas. Many Mega Evolutions don't just have amazing base stats; they also have really powerful, or in some cases, overpowered Abilities that will drastically affect gameplay. Game Freak wants to reward players by making their Pokemon become stronger through continuously capturing Pokemon. Getting a Mega Charizard and making it sweep the game for you with Drought-boosted Flamethrowers or Tough Claw-boosted Flare Blitzes, or something along those lines, is going to drastically undermine Game Freak's core challenge in this game. You are supposed to go out there and catch wild Pokemon, which in turn will make your own Pokemon stronger. This is why GF integrated the candy system and GO transfers; your Pokemon get strength not from beating wild or trained Pokemon, but from catching wild Pokemon. Game Freak determined that giving Megas their powerful Abilities would ruin LGPE's original purpose.
