Samtendo09
Ability: Light Power
I dunno I think shoving out their best Pokemon the millisecond they can is kind of....dumb?
Like oh okay I guess the finale of this battle will be your weaker Pokemon. Great.
It just makes sense from a gamefreel perspective to put the best for last.
IMHO this only works in non-game stories or if the non-ace Pokémon are also good team members and not fodders to take care off quickly, because if the players can snowball with a mechanic, they can and will do it, running risk of losing their own immersion since they were never explicitly told of an old tradition that the Gym Leaders and the likes send their trump card last.This sums up my thoughts, and I agree with this.
In SwSh and SV especially, I like that they send out their ace that uses Dynamax/Terastal last especially because environmentally, the game has a special final showdown theme for the Gym Leader in both cases with crowds cheering.
I like to think of the battles in-game there that I do as a performance of sorts, so I save my Dynamax/Terastal use for that very moment: both me and my opponent unleash the super mechanic and do a showdown between two Dynamaxed/Terastallized Pokemon going at it.
It's why I find Brycen's tendency to practically never send out his Beartic last in BW1 to be frustrating that nowadays I grab a Stoutland to force it to be last using Roar. In Gen 5 that final Pokemon Gym Leader theme is epic as hell and I just think it feels right to keep the ace as that final Pokemon from an environmental storytelling standpoint.
That said, being games for kids isn’t a valid excuse for excruciatingly easy difficulty, because a game aimed for children can still educate them in a way of putting various challenges by putting decent synergy of Abilities, moveset and their types from the opponents’ part, encouraging them to put a good synergy to their team as well. Nothing stops them from using the mechanic earlier, at risk of losing them against the boss’ last Pokémon.
It doesn’t need to be 1-to-1 to competitive movesets, moreso a subtle “puzzle” and a theme, beyond just monotype for sake of doing it, where using just super effective moves isn’t going to help you as the boss put in hazards or other field-changing effects like Tailwind. Having more than one token Double Battle would also help a lot to make the kids more familiar with how VGC works, as that format uses Doubles with small but important difference in “bring six, pick four” rule.