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Notes -
Funny anectdote on that. In the original Red, Blue, and Yellow games the early version of Effort values meant if you leveled up your Pokemon the standard way, just constant battles, its 'under the hood' stats would actually be higher than if you cheated it with rare candies to reach level 100.
So one time I battled my cousin using the Gameboy link cable (how's that for old school) and his team of straight level 100 'mon, and me, my strongest being a level 98 Mewtwo, and it turned into a surprise stomp in my favor, although it did come down to both of our Mewtwos in a slapfight to end it. I had NO CLUE about the hidden stats, I just chose to believe that because I had raised my pokemon with more care and attention as opposed to just pumping them with chemicals, they wanted to fight harder.
So the lesson is that yeah, sometimes pure effort does win over mere pedigree and performance enhancing drugs.
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