People say Pokémon is just glorified Rock Paper Scissors as if that's a criticism. It's more like an observation that also happens to explain why Pokémon works.
The structural fact is accurate. Both games are built on a nontransitive logic: each option beats one thing and loses to another. In RPS, Rock beats Scissors, Scissors beats Paper, Paper beats Rock. In Pokémon's introductory Fire/Grass/Water triangle, Fire beats Grass, Grass beats Water, Water beats Fire. The loop is identical. The difference is that Nintendo then bolted eleven additional type matchups onto that loop, plus a second layer of resistances and immunities, plus six active Pokémon on each side, plus mechanics that have no RPS equivalent at all. Hazard control. Speed tiers. Setup moves. Pivoting. Team composition that your opponent can't see until the match starts.
What makes competitive Pokémon genuinely strategic is that the Rock Paper Scissors layer is just the foundation — and it's one you have to navigate with incomplete information. When you lead with your Water type against an opposing Fire type, your opponent can predict the switch and bring in Grass, which beats you. You can predict that prediction and hit it with an Ice move. They can predict your prediction and stay in. The recursion doesn't terminate cleanly; at some point someone commits and either reads correctly or doesn't, and the game continues six layers down from where the initial type matchup suggested.
In Rock Paper Scissors, you are the entire game state. There is no team, no held item, no speed tier, no residual damage. The prediction layer is the whole thing. In competitive Pokémon, prediction is maybe a third of it — the part that immediately resembles RPS — layered under positioning, resource management, and counterteam preparation done before the match even starts.
The insult version of "Pokémon is just RPS" misses that the RPS structure is actually why both games are compelling. Intransitive loops are psychologically difficult to optimize against because there is no single dominant strategy. Every correct play has an answer. That property, which is the entire mechanic of RPS, is also what keeps Pokémon matchups interesting at high level after thousands of hours of play. The similarity isn't a flaw. It's the design principle that makes both games function.
The honest difference is scope. Rock Paper Scissors resolves a decision in roughly two seconds. A competitive Pokémon game can take twenty minutes. Whether that additional complexity represents more strategy or just more variables depends entirely on what you want from a game. Both are legitimate answers.