Combat's anything but barebones it just has a simple formula but it has layers. It may seem like you just click a button and you do an attack but at its simplest when you attack there are several factors that will affect when and what the attack will do. Firstly double battles are way more indepth than singles and its why official tournament rulesets (vgc) are doubles and not singles like smogon is, pokemon is more or less balanced around it because a lot of moves that are useless in singles become really really good in doubles (
EX). Your OP isn't wrong about the fact your ideal gamestate is being to OhKo your opponent but that doesn't open up a lot of the time unless its like a choice specs 252 SpAttack STAB draco meteor on another dragon type. Your speed is also important because having a higher active speed stat will let you move ahead of your opponent unless trick room is set up, which would allow the slowest pokemon to move first (this is a relatively common strat in vgc with strong and bulky but slow mons who have sweep capability). Speed is ignored by priority moves like quick attack and roar but that's another can of worms that's not worth getting into. I mean you meantioned the stype chart in the OP and the type relationship between pokemon is anything but set in stone too because a strong STAB (1.5x attack boost if the move is the same type as your own) move is often better than the 2x buff of a weaker move so its actually good if you turn on your brain (
watch this video) although that's no excuse to run a swampert anywhere near grass. A big part of why people like pokemon though is the teamcomp/building aspect though and trying to breed perfect pokemon (some psychos love the daycare) not hard pressed to find people who find the work of getting that 6x 31 IV, optimal ability and nature whateverthehell fun and its kinda mandatory if you wanna like play the battle frontier, but the relationship between the 6 pokemon you have on a team is massive too, I already mentioned trickroom strats but there are other fun archetypes like rain, sand, and sun teams which try to maxx the power of one sweeper who plans to decimate the battlefield (sandstream exca + tyrannitar is one famous combo) and tbh that barely scratches the surface because there are old antiquated strategies like flichmaxxing or new ones not discovered yet that people like doing. I could drone on about this for a while but I'm sure you didn't even read this far so I'll wrap it up and assume you get the point.
TL;DR The core is simple but the nuances and vast amount of choice you get in the system is what keep people coming back to play randbats on pokemon showdown
Pokemon plot usually fucking sucks lmao can't defend it that hard but collecting them all is fun if you have a good amount of time to burn (finish the nat-dex for even more fun).
