Hopefully Pokemon don't have a four move limit, too. It never made sense to me.

Though, there was one fanfic I read once that said the limit was part of the rules of competition, to make it more fair for 'mons that couldn't remember too many moves. Trainers had to register what four moves they were going to be using ahead of time and restrict themselves to those four moves, but the pokemon would still actually know more than four.

Personally, I sometimes toy with the idea of making a fan game that's an RPG with a battle system along the lines of Breath of Fire 4. You have a team of six, you swap ones into "front row" vs "back row" at will, the front row can attack this turn and the back row regains a little bit of health/PP. I've never been able to find the combat in main line games engaging, because of how fast you out-level everything and how strategy is practically useless. "I can use a move that lowers their defense so it takes 5 hits instead of 6 to knock them out. I'm still taking 6 turns to knock them out." Or, more likely, "I can use this move to knock them out in one hit, or I can use a stat move I have no need to use." In my imagination, I picture party members having slots moves are equipped to, and can only use equipped moves in battle. Perhaps gaining additional slots through levelling/equipment/items. (I also picture this game having the pokemon as the main character, instead of a trainer. Don't know whether it's a world of only Pokemon, like the Mystery Dungeon games, or if there are humans too. Post-TF would also be ideal, a main character turned into a pokemon and going on an adventure, but that's because it appeals to me specifically. ^_^;; )

Well no, no four move limit. There are a lot of mechanics that mainline pokemon games have that are really archaic by today's standards. Like they don't even use ATB mechanics and that first came out 5 years before gen 1 pokemon. However as a trade-off it'll also mean they don't just automatically learn new moves. They have to train and practice on learning how to use their powers in a particular way. As for battles in this universe, though one on one battles with a team would be done, it'd run into the same problem as non-team events in that fighting pokemon just outperform by default. It'd be far more viable if they almost treated it like battles from my Orelai story, where you have one or two that would be in back trying to control the field (you may note that Michael's (the glaceon) specialty is "Area," meaning they're good at affecting a really large environment to their advantage), some in the front doing the actual fighting and maneuvering that way. Not sure how to dictate who wins, though i imagine boxing/mma rules might apply. And since we have 8 people, there's no reason you couldn't have an reserve bench that people can sub out like in hockey when they need a breather.