See, there's someone using words to explain their thoughts with sound logic! I now have respect for your opinion regardless if I agree with you or not!
But I would say this: My argument wasn't about FF vs Pokemon, it is Castlevania vs Pokemon, did you really pay attention to what I said? However, I will touch on this. Battle System is one of pokemons quality parts, but you can't compare the VS mode portion if you want to judge FF vs Pokemon, you have to use the 1 player mode, because the fun of the game depends on if you have good players to play against, much like smash. I find that junctioning materia so I can walk into a battle and **** without pushing single button is more strategic than planning on using my water based pokemon after I beat his electric monster. I find abusing the limit break against the Omega Weapon to be more tech skill filled than spending endless hours trying to complete your collection of worthless beasts, some that you have to do stupid, menial tasks to evolve. If you want to include FFT in this discussion, that game requires planning rounds ahead of time, especially if you want to beat one of the tribes of 20 monks. FF has better music/graphics/story/dungeons. In an RPG, you want a good Story, Battle Engine, epic music and intriguing dungeon layouts, in that order. Pokemon only has the silver medal imo, music is debatable.
Point at hand.
If you look at platformers the most important thing about them are interesting and well done punishing level design, smooth controls and replay value which castlevania owns on, especially after NES in regards to controls. Castlevania 3 has multiple paths and multiple characters to replay the game with, so games including and after C3 qualify here. The music is a bonus.
I enjoyed Earthbound a lot, btw, and I find that if you want to argue that I don't like pokemon because it isn't emo enough and I can't just have fun with a game without any serious, hard hitting issues in the plot, well, you're right most of the time, but Pokemon's light hearted attitude isn't presented well enough to warrant me playing through it again.
Furthermore, my name isn't castlerobvania, I'm not a fanboy of Castlevania in the least bit, but you should show it some credit, especially if you want to call me out for not showing pokemon respect, a game series that has hindered the gaming world more than helped it, but still hard to ignore the (negative) impact the game has had on the gaming world.