Compare it to Tekken or Street Fighter then. They're better comparisons considering the Tekken team is making this game. It's not so much a safe roster as it's traditional.
Plus I'm having a hard time seeing something like Charizard, Pikachu or Sceptile as humanoid. Sure they're bipedal with arms, but we don't really have tails, wings or claws.
That being said, I agree with what you're saying in terms of design. I'm a big supporter of Ledian and Vespiquen for this game, but they don't seem to be very likely. However, design is nearly always secondary to gameplay in terms of fighters, and this is why the game is turning out this way.
What Im saying is this isn't Tekken or Street Fighter, its Pokemon and Pokemon doesn't comprise of bipedal humanoids. Sure BamCo is making the game but they need to respect the Pokemon IP since they are making the game. The roster does have some good choices when when you look at it, Suicune is the
only Pokemon on the roster that isn't bipedal and or humanoid. I do know a lot of Pokemon are bipedal and stand on two legs but a lot of them are birds and other species of Pokemon like Nidoking, Zangoose and a handful of dragon's like Flygon.
Charizard does have tekken moves on him, sure but Charizard does feel like Charizard. Pikachu on the other hand
is as tekken character. Both the Pikachu in the game
dont act like Pikachu as all. Pikachu (both) have a persona created for this game and if they can do this for Pikachu (in a interview, they said they had a problem getting pikachu to animate right so they had to redo it many times) then there isn't any reason they cant do this for other Pokemon with short stubby limbs and secptile just looks odd because again, it does things a secptile wont do.
I really want this game to feel like a Pokemon game. I'm a bird trainer, so I want to use birds. May are in fact. May are dragon trainers, bug trainers, etc so they should have that option here as well. Like I said some Pokemon get shafted just from a design/physic stand point (fish Pokemon floating out of water) but may Pokemon (birds, snake/serpents, quadrupeds, inanimates, bugs and kaiju) are perfectly usable but they pick the safe bipedal and/or humanoids. I want them to make good choices here and if your source is correct that the roster will
only be 20 Pokemon, 16 of which are known, this mean 15 of the possible remaining 4 will be bipedal humanoids.
You can see why I worry. A lot of others are also showing concern as well.
