I remembered what Yuto had said.
-Pokémon battles weren't just about the Pokémon's strength. A trainer's knowledge, judgment, and insight also played a major part in deciding the outcome.
-How you read your opponent's hand from their Pokémon and their own behavior, how you dismantled it, and, conversely, how you kept your own hand hidden and steered the battle toward the outcome you envisioned. A trainer's ability mattered more than a Pokémon's strength.
-So narrowing your strategic options there made battles liable to become monotonous.
For example, you could paralyze an opponent with Thunder Wave. Paralysis hindered their movements, and if you built your offensive strategy around that opening, the battle could quickly swing in your favor. There were only a handful of ways to cure paralysis, making the possible responses easy to account for.
But suppose you introduced held items. With a Kebia Berry, for example, the Pokémon could use it without any risk, and the attacker's strategy of "paralyze first, then attack" would fall apart.
It wasn't easy to readjust a disrupted strategy-or rhythm. The defending side could exploit that gap in the attacker's disrupted plans to counterattack, tipping the seesaw the other way.
And while held items might not have been countless, there were still quite a lot of them. I knew of at least thirty kinds of berries alone.
You couldn't judge an opponent solely by their nature matchups, levels, and the power of their moves anymore. You also had to consider their held items, the tactics those might enable, and how to counter them.
I see. Just adding the option of "stocking up" made reading a battle and seeing through it that much deeper.
"Sometimes, a single held item can completely change how a battle unfolds. That means both sides, whether they're winning or losing,