I feel this could have been fixed with better Terastalization usage from the various Paldea gym leaders. I think them using it on older Pokemon that have vague qualities that match their character is pretty cool - like Iono using Mismagius - and I think it works well enough for her battle and I suppose the early gym leaders. That said, since the Tera usage isn't dynamic (i.e. Kofu not Terastalizing if the player has a Grass-type out), I don't think the mechanic adds as much depth to the battle as the devs expected it to, espicially if the player already knows that the gym leader will instantly Tera their Pokemon.
As for Pokemon having smaller movesets, I am somewhat mixed on this change. I don't like it, but ideally if the gym leader is just packing strong attacks, then it shouldn't be too big of an issue. That said, in SV, I feel that giving Kofu's Crabominable nothing but shitty attacks barring Crabhammer wasn't the play either. Why is bro using Slam and Rock Smash when Crabominable should learn Ice Punch and Brick Break by then? Many more examples of this as well. Part of me gets more frustrated by this more than the usual Pokemon issue of "Pokemon using the 4 latest moves in its learnset" issue that plagues most games because there is active design and thought being put into these movesets and they decide to make the trainer just suck.
IDK, Ideally Pokemon as a series should not be extremely difficult because it limits the number of possible strategies and Pokemon that the player can run, but it should also not be extremely easier to make it worth considering those external strategies beyond intrinsic motiviation. I'm sure more playtesting goes into a lot of these than we'd expect - particularly around unforseen circumstances we wouldn't normally consider - but it is still a bit unfortunate that these difficult snags always exist.
