I played when it first came out, then again around 2018. Felt like a huge waste of potential to me. Unless there's some legal reason, I absolutely cannot comprehend why a normal pokemon battling system wasn't included.

Unless doing something besides just reskinning their other game (Ingress?) was too much work.

[–] kadu 14 points 9 months ago

I'm not surprised that something carrying the Pokémon brand is somehow both extremely lucrative but also unwilling to dedicate the minimal effort necessary to add obvious features

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I absolutely cannot comprehend why a normal pokemon battling system wasn't included.

Because it doesn't fit the design of the game.

Pokemon Go is meant to be played while walking around outside. This means you can't have a lot of text because glare from the sun will make it too hard to read. The real battle system also requires more congnitive load than most people can handle while walking and takes too long which will lead to people stopping for extended periods of time at which point you're no longer playing a pedometer game.