But then youre trying to correct for 8 generations of expanding movepools and feature creep.
Every Pokemon may be "less useful" in an absolute sense but in a relative sense, they have more identity, idiosyncracies, and reasons to be used relative to each other. You picked Arcanine because it had better stats? I picked Ninetales because it had Will-o-Wisp and Confuse Ray. See what I mean? The game benefits from having a spectrum of movepools and versatility, from Unown all the way to Smeargle.
I think either way you slice it trying to correct 8 generations of changes is going to be a mess be it going backwards or forwards. Adding two abilities for example would massively complicate any sort of balance alongside stats, typing, or movepools.
I feel a large chunk of pokemon can with some tweaking (hidden abilities, improved stats for embarrassingly bad pokemon, an evolution that doesn't suck) or do have an identity, just the games' enemies are so basic bitch that you don't get to see any of it mattering or it is locked by post game. Using your Arcanine vs Ninetails, Arcanine is a phys. attacker with extremespeed while having Intimidate and Ninetails has Drought while being a special attacker. These are vastly different traits that do different things (phys vs special, Intimidate vs Drought).
But really, who cares if you use Intimidate properly or if you run a sun team in the average pokemon game experience? The AI kind of sucks, the movesets suck, the pokemon used also sort of suck (especially none E4 or Gym Leaders) so these traits don't matter. So without those factors mattering Ninetails and Arcanine can be boiled down to just single type fires that have flamethrower, instead of Intimidate pivot vs sun setter or having Extremespeed vs having Confuse Ray.
Hard rom hacks tend to fix this because they give random trainers some pretty baller movesets, threatening pokemon, and more then 3 pokemon is a constant. In a nuzlocke (especially without items) for example your run can just randomly end to some random sailor because he has Gyarados with Dragon Dance, you didn't one shot it, and now you're dead because Gyarados outspeeds everything in your team and it uses Waterfall to one shot kill you. You ever had to deal with Dragon Rage at say level 15? That shit is scary because it very nearly 1 shots all your mons due to the forced 40 damage and potions can't keep up with that damage.
You also have exp curves like with Gible who is a colossal pain in the ass to get to Garchomp in a timely fashion, so even if Garchomp is awesome Gible and to an extent Gabite are pretty whatever by comparison and you're using those two for most the game. Same with every psuedo legendary really, but these traits don't matter because most people just care about the endgame because the early game is almost always a joke unless you play with hard nuzlocke rules or something. Pokemon is a game with potential to be engaging as-is, but the game is far too soft ball and afraid to challenge literally anyone that it doesn't matter which is why nuzlockes are a thing.
