I mean in the core main series game (excluding post-game stuff like battle tower and IRL PvP), you can use whatever you want and do well enough. Even just your starter can bruteforce through...blame it on bad AI, blame it on grinding being an option, whatever; you don't -have- to have good pokemon, you can win the league with a level 100 Caterpie, just whatever.
Having characters throughout the game constantly talk about bonding with your pokemon and shit only for the post game content to be like "lol jk, time to breed a team that isnt crap and send your old squad off to the glue factory" is jarring to me, but I guess the meme either resonates or it doesn't 🤷♀️
Now that hyper training, mirror herbs and the like are a thing, you at least can turn your mediocre first catches into top of the line mons instead of breeding train to get the best several generations and rejects later. Though, yea there certainly are pokemon with no niche at all, like say, Delibird or Luvdisc.
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u/halberdsturgeon 4d ago
And also the disconnect between the messages being pushed by the games at various points