>>55253651If the game does a good job of teaching the player its mechanics then it can and should introduce the more complex stuff as it goes. The problem is pokemon front loads the most basic stuff with long, heavyhanded tutorials then everything else is glossed over later and tucked away somewhere you only visit once or is completely optional.
At no point in gens 1-3 did they tell the player that certain types are physical and some are special. Despite playing every game in the series at least once before gen 4 came out and being the type to speak to every npc I could find I didn't know that until somewhere during gen 4's pre-release corocoro promotion when they announced the physical/special split. Many people on this board have admitted to not even knowing the stat buffs/debuffs were temporary effects when they were kids and releasing pokemon who got growled and leered at too many times on early routes fearing they'd be too weak, so that probably needed better explanation than it got up front. Gen 3 introduced doubles and instead of peppering them throughout the game as a regular feature kids would have learned how to handle through exposure and having a few npcs say things about move combinations and strategies like earthquake/protect, you had like 5 in the whole game outside the battle tower, including the gym battle against the twins. Gen 5, 6, and 7 are all guilty of addition new battle formats and just never using them, let alone to their full potential by making those formats their regional specialties and creating those unique experiences they're so desperately trying to capture with other gimmicks. The fact they keep slapping new gimmicks on top of singles is also proof they aren't afraid to have kids new to the series play with something different and non-standard that probably won't return anyways, so why not teach them the deeper parts of the battle system?
