Neat, I recently got back into this series after an almost ten hear hiatus.
The battle mechanics and online capability of this game are far superior to anything like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, etc.
Anyone can get into this game and beat the single player mode, but very few actually understand the competitive aspects.
For example, you can just spam attacks with your starter pokemon and outlevel all of your encounters.
However, playing against other people is a different story entirely. Take this thread for example :
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=85403
If you understood any of that shit, congratulations you might be decent at pokemon. As for me, I feel woozy and need to lay down after reading a few sentences of that.