POKEMON MYSTERY DUNGEON X MONSTER HUNTER

I say PMD Monster Hunter and not just Pokemon Monster Hunter because there are no humans here. The world is populated by pokemon, who form civilizations. Pokemon evolve when their bodies are approaching death, such as by disease, injury, or most commonly old age. When a pokemon evolves, their body typically grows much larger, but their mind becomes animalistic; they can no longer speak, and while parts of memory are retained, living in civilization isn't feasible. When a pokemon is nearing death (and thus evolution), a public ceremony is conducted in which they say goodbye before allowing themself to evolve and head off into the wild.
	Unevolved pokemon treat the evolved with respect; those are their friends, family members, people they once knew, just in a different form. While the evolved are more driven by instinct, they retain some personality from their time as an unevolved, and they can also recognize people from their past and will often be more trusting and calm around them. Visiting evolved friends and/or relatives is a common activity in places where there aren't predators or other threats.
	Most pokemon are omnivores or herbivores, even evolved ones, and unevolved pokemon typically eat a vegetarian diet. However, for some evolved pokemon, plants aren't always enough to keep up with their new body's energy demands. Predation is fairly common in the evolved world, and unevolved pokemon must make peace with the fact that sometimes your friend's grandpa kills and eats yours. It's nature.
	To evolve, a pokemon must be close to death for at least around 10 minutes; if a pokemon falls off a cliff or is attacked by a predator, they'll likely die too fast to evolve. Pokemon can also refuse to evolve, such as to hold out until they can receive medical treatment, but resisting evolution gets harder the closer they are to death. Resisting evolution is only common among unevolved pokemon; evolved pokemon that can evolve a second time, such as Wartortle, rarely delay evolution.
	In this setting, all pokemon (besides mythical and legendary) are part of evolutionary lines. Pokemon that currently aren't will be given an evolution or a baby form, depending on whether the pokemon is more suited to being a person or a monster; pokemon like Shuckle will have an evolution, and pokemon like Tropius will have a baby form. Mega evolutions and gigantamax forms can be repurposed into proper evolutions for pokemon that need them. There's also weird cases like Onix (which WAS single-stage and feels like a monster, but later got an evolution) and Pikachu/Jigglypuff (which WERE unevolved, but later got a baby form). I'm not sure what to do with these.
	While conflict is rare between evolved and unevolved pokemon, it can happen. Sometimes unevolved pokemon start the conflict, such as by trying to expand civilization into a populated area, or otherwise disturbing the evolved pokemons' habitat. But that's just people being stupid, nothing new. The cases that require hunters are when evolved pokemon start causing problems, such as by contracting pokemon-rabies, or developing a habit of ransacking farms. In these cases, killing is an absolute last resort; that's Jimmy's grandpa, after all! More common options include capturing to give medical treatment, or simply fighting the pokemon off to tell them "this is my turf."
	Some evolved pokemon, especially those that were hunters, enjoy fighting. While this caused many problems in the past, they were mostly resolved with the creation of the arena, a place where pokemon, evolved and unevolved, can fight safely for glory, satisfaction, and audience entertainment. Evolved pokemon that knew how the arena worked in their previous form quickly re-learn the simple rules, and it's built such that evolved pokemon can come and go more or less as they please. Just as unevolved pokemon are compensated with payment, evolved pokemon are compensated for their spent energy with food, regardless of victory or defeat; don't want them trying to eat their defeated opponents! The end of a fight is signaled with a gong, and in case of emergency, multiple hunters are there to subdue any unruly pokemon.

In terms of gameplay, weapon types are replaced by individual pokemon you can play as. In the hypothetical dream scenario, every single pokemon is in the game as a hunter or monster, but there's like 1000 of them. Putting every pokemon ever in one game would be absurd. Anyway, each pokemon would have a moveset similar to something like Pokken Tournament or Smash Bros.
	Armor and weapons aren't really applicable to pokemon, and types would be really boring if they worked like they do in pokemon, so here's the solution: There are two different charms you can equip, an offense charm and a defense charm. Charms have types (and some are typeless) that set your offensive and defensive types; equipping a fire defense charm makes you resistant to fire but vulnerable to ground. Equipping a fire offense charm makes you deal more damage to grass pokemon but less to dragon. The type matchup damage multipliers are much weaker, and charms also come with unique skills, so it's not as simple as picking the one that gives you the best type matchup. Typeless charms come with slightly more powerful skills. Dual-type defensive charms exist.
	As you progress, you unlock special moves for each pokemon, similar to hunter arts or silkbinds. You can only equip 2 moves. Like hunter arts, there are a handful of moves that are universal, able to be used by all pokemon.
	Middle evolutions, such as Wartortle, will play the role of small monsters. When "killed", they'll be knocked out like a kelbi, and will later get up and run off. Some quests might have you knocking them out, then using an item to, like, vaccinate them or something while they're unconscious. Other quests might have you just just beat them up in that "this is my turf" way to shoo them off if they're causing trouble for towns.
	While single-stage pokemon that have a mega evolution/gigantamax form with have those forms repurposed into normal evolutions, pokemon that are already fully evolved that also have a mega evolution/gigantamax will have that as a special variant; a rare extra evolution beyond the normal line, which is painful and causes aggression. By refusing death one too many times, these pokemon have fully lost themselves, and need to be killed. While gigantamaxes repurposed as normal evolutions will have their size toned down, true gigantamaxes would make great seige battles, Lao-Shan Lung style.
	Another idea for a non-lethal hunt goal: Infection. A particular part of the pokemon's body is infected by some Plot Fungus or something, and you need to break off the infection without "killing" the pokemon. Part break quests are actually already a thing as subquests and prowler quests, so this is just a variant of that. Which part is infected is predetermined and important; put it on the wrong part, and most of the fight will be spent waiting for it to do the one move where it's actually vulnerable.
	If you "kill" a pokemon in a quest where it's not supposed to die, it will run away like Ceadeus, except you'll fail the quest if the goal wasn't to repel. Part breaks in general might be removed, and so will materials; killing pokemon is NOT the default here, so making equipment out of their corpses doesn't fit, especially since you're just making little charms instead of full suits of armor and giant greatswords. Charms could instead be unlocked by clearing certain quests, or by defeating a certain number of a particular pokemon.