I don't get the dex autism. How many people really give a shit about Lickitung or Rowlet? If the story of them needing to redo all the models for the lighting engine is true that's a lot of work to redo things. It's not as simple as just importing the model and textures as uninformed people think. It's a shit load of testing in every environment it can appear in if nothing else.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Pokemon needs a hard reboot. Make all the current pokemon legacy pokemon and take forward only what is really valuable. If you want Charizard in as a fire starter that's fine, but go the same root Digimon did where it was willing to redesign classic designs to fit their current needs. Digimon Savers Agumon has different evolutions to the Adventure one. Similar to how the Alola forms work. Instead of shoe horning these awkwardly into the game as 1 game gimmick pokemon just wipe the whole slate clean, set out 250 pokemon and make those pokemon awesome. Give them real animations, improve the move pool and refurbish everything. If nothing else clean out the damn move pool. We don't need every type to have the same exact attacks. How many versions of swift do we need? Or hyper beam? Give types some actual identity.

The entire battle system likely needs a revamp at this point too. It's showing it's age and isn't very tactical. Making 2 v 2 be the default battle mode like in XD would be a good way to shake things up. Makes the move pools more interesting and you care more about type coverage and combinations of your types. Could even make it so moves of some types can become dual type attacks. A pokemon uses hydro pump and another uses thundershock and it combines into hydro thunder which is both a water and electric attack with some additional effects.