is that they're useless unless they evolve, often into something less cute. The whole point of cutemons is to attract little girls. What little girl is going to want to evolve their cute Teddiursa into an ugly Ursaring? You can beat the game with a full team of babies and NFEs, but what little girl is going to do that over steamrolling the game with strong shillmons?

tldr mainline games need to make babies and NFEs useful and endgame capable and have a good reason not to evolve them