The saddest loss I ever witnessed

I'm 37. I've been playing Pokemon since I first got Blue for my original Gameboy. I've won a lot of trainer battles, and I've lost my fair share. Last night, my heart broke for the first time.

My nephew is 9. He got Pokemon Sword for his birthday. It's his first Pokemon game on his first game console. He's doing pretty well - with some guidance from his uncle, of course. He makes the usual little-kid mistakes like favoring a single type or not understanding the value of the grind, but we encourage him along the way. Since Sword is fairly easy and forgiving, he already declared himself "a master" after his 3rd gym leader win.

And then he got to Bea.

She's Fighting type and all of her Pokemon have "Revenge", which does 120 damage when it attacks second. It's brutal and it takes me back to fighting Sabrina before they properly balanced the opposition to Psychic types (for those who weren't there - there were virtually no actionable type advantages against psychic in Gen 1. I can explain in detail if you want).

He's lost against her 4 times and it's the first real uphill battle he's had in any game. For a 9 year old, it's devastating. I have Pokemon Shield and I spent the last week researching good matchups that I can raise up and trade to him. I needed to catch low enough levels that they'd obey him and I tried to get type advantages that worked in both directions (on the attack and with resistance). I settled on Alcremie (Fairy) and Woobat (Flying and Pyschic). I raised them up to level 35 - Bea's max level is a 35 Machamp - and traded them to him.

My wife and I watched as he got farther than he's ever gotten in the fight. Jumping up and down. Yelling, cheering, having a great time. The rest of his team is pretty good against Fighting but we hoped it'd be enough.

He lost with Bea's Machamp having 5 HP left. The smallest red bar you can possibly imagine. His last attack was an Air Slash from Woobat when Machamp had half health. I can't believe it failed. Type advantage. Resistance. EVERYTHING he needed to win. And it failed.

He laid on the ground and bawled. It doesn't help that we psyched him up thinking he was going to win. We wanted to celebrate with him! I wanted to show the value of working together. And I let him down. He kept yelling "It's impossible!" and "It's so unfair" and "She's unbeatable" and just crying and crying.

We salvaged the evening with a few rounds of Smash Bros where I helped him get a bunch of KOs. He ended the night on a high note. Still... it hurts to see a kid take a big L like that. 9 year olds are not good at managing emotion. Every emotion is huge and it hits them like a brick.

I'm going to raise a Xatu - again, Flying and Psychic - and trade him that. That's 3 type advantages. He's also using a Wobbuffet, a Boltund, and a Dusclops. I think the issue is that they're all ~Level 30. I swear he's making good decisions in the gameplay, but he took a hard hit when they were Dynamaxing that knocked out the Alcremie early and the Wobbuffet only got 1 kill before getting knocked out.

Wish us luck, y'all.