I don't think they sat down and said they wanted to ripoff Pokemon, no, but yes, I do felt like it felt like another "Pokemon-esque" game, sorry if you don't like that, but as Pokemon is the most popular and afaik sort of the king of the arena in those sort of games...

I'm sure there are plenty of people on both sides, but I've never really met anyone who didn't feel it was a pankration.

and yes Dragon Quest Monsters is the same sort of game, I didn't care for it much, I vaguely remember having some sort of monster that was a bunch of vines at some point.