>>52278064I think they were trying to make Pokemon within a species feel as unique as two Pokemon species feel from each other.
This is evidenced by introducing variable weights / sizes + gender differences. The thing is, they did the whole thing with Japan autism - I'd didn't notice gender differences until I read the walkthrough book I bought, and even then I think it was a note in FR/LG. Same with IVs/EVs - alluded to in literature, discussed somewhat online, but really too nuanced to be a noticeably different pokemon in most cases. Then I think they left it in / doubled down since it's, again, japanese autism that lets them think "okay I need to breed 60 Pokemon to get the perfect one, by chaining them through a ditto farm. Maybe more if I want to breed in moves. Then I need to train against ONLY certain types of Pokemon to make mine the most min-max."
Don't get me wrong. I like the idea of different viable sets on Pokemon, and the breeding thing is a massive flavor win. But it took then until Gen 6 to get breeding right. Now I'd say they're in a better place, I think the only thing I'd request is in post-game you just get a machine to redistribute EVs / pay something like BP to increase IVs. This let's you keep breeding, but also you can grind your mons from your story run and keep them in the rotation if you're not too reliant on egg moves / natures.
I don't know, they tried to make Pokemon feel unique within the species but they just introduced another system to funnel sweaties to 'le optimal smoggo build'.
No other RPG just has a chance for your normally ok character to just have shit stats in the thing they're supposed to do - weak spots are introduced as part of balance, not via rng.
