I understand why we don’t battle when catching Pokémon in Pokémon GO. We’re walking and it is simpler to attempt to throw a ball than go through a full battle. But it would be cool to have a version where we walked and had a chance of getting a random encounter and have to do a turn-based battle just like the characters in the main series. And if Gym encounters were the turn-based battles too. Maybe even being able to set what our Gym Leader/Trainer AI is like.

I think something like BotW crossed with Dark Souls.

Skip out on having a trainer. You play as a ditto, battling different pokémon which have their own movesets in battle, and traverse the environment using their techniques.

Eventually word gets out about the ditto which can freely transform and trainers begin trying to hunt you down.

Battle consists of managing your stamina. Stamina drain depends on the pokémon and the type of move.

Heavy pokémon have a large stamina drain on dodge. Nimble pokémon are great for preemptive strikes, but lack the attack power of the bigger guys.

Saving your stamina for breaking the enemy’s weakness means an opportunity to transform into your charizard form and let loose a barrage of attacks, then swapping back before the enemy recovers.

Obviously elemental powers are in play, fire can be used to set grass on fire (like farcry 2), electricity can be used to shock enemies in water (like BioShock).

Defeating trainers means you can take their items, and transform into them. You need to be careful about navigating cities, as your ditto-face will alert people to your presence.

The objective of the game is to reunite with your ditto clan on the other side of the map, because you’re a horny ditto, and you want to have fuck with another ditto and have a hundred babies, so you can have a hundred friends, and nobody can say no to being your friend.

I want Pokémon with the world travel and graphics of palworld. Don’t need the guns and such or the mining building aspect, but the freedom and graphics would be epic

First a world that’s larger and more connected but not open world (open world is a meme that needs to die). Something like Monster Hunter Stories 2 (MHS2) 's connected map.

Have Pokémono use actions to interact with the overworld depending on their level and moveset, such as flying, swimming, digging, or say using vines to latch to a tree the other side of a chasm to cross over. So something like MHS2’s overworld actions.

Have an engine that allows for a decent combat flow with turns or something like ATB, with better indicators for actions and statuses, and with a proper HUD to log turn events. So something like MHS2’s battle engine.

Have a plot that, like, at least pretends your character is pivotal somehow for the adventure rather than playing a spot that any nobody can fill. So something like MHS2’s plot.

Drop the attempt at hi-fi / realistic rendering of Pokémon and instead turn to models that are simple, kinda toy-ish and easily recognizable by focusing on what makes each Pokémon distinctive. Not to mention more varied efficient so you can actually have a Pokémon with claws use those claws and be watchable at above 15 fps. So something like MHS2’s models.

Overall, basically just do MHS2 but with Pokémon. There’s a reason my official statement before PLA came out was that MHS2 was the best Pokémon game for the Switch (play as a Trainer, collect and train 6 mons, deal with elemental powers and stuff, complete a champion challenge, etc).

One of my favourite pokemon experiences is playing through Red/Blue (or G/S/C or later) on an emulator and using gameshark codes to catch a pokemon you really like on route 1 and effectively using that as your starter. It’s quite fresh to play through from start to finish with a pokemon that isn’t a traditional starter. If they did some kind of new game+ feature where you could choose your starter from among the game’s entire dex, that would be pretty neat.

Also, a pokemon conquest sequel/remake because that game was amazing.

The game would have to acknowledge that Pokemon can do things other than fight. Could be something like the GBA last Airbender games where there were puzzles to figure out using the different Pokemon abilities. Or a point and click adventure game with multiple solutions like Mage’s Initiation.