JOEbob

I can also confirm that the AI responds to the specific move chosen in addition to whether a move is chosen; Upon reaching the Melia vs Erin battle during the training period- where Melia uses only... Gardevoir, I believe, against Erin's Absol, I saved before the battle started and began attempting to win the battle, as one does. So, first try, attacking. Erin's Absol defeats the Gardevoir in one hit with sucker punch, naturally. Not unreasonable, of course I would attack first turn. So I switch to calm mind. Erin uses night slash, which keeps me from doing anything because a further night slash will knock out the Gardevoir and healing will just lead to it being hit again. Long story short, I try... probably a hundred, two hundred times? it's not like each attempt takes long... and while Erin doesn't react to my decision 100% of the time, Sucker Punch is always used if Gardevoir attacks. What I mean by doesn't react to my decision 100% of the time is Erin does, occasionally, choose Sucker Punch when I use Calm Mind, around... one third, maybe a quarter, of the time (not that it helped, since any attempt to capitalise on the calm mind boost is stopped by Sucker Punch*). Based on that, I concluded that the battle would be winnable if I attempted it in parallel roughly 3^5, or 243, times using a strategy of 'only use calm mind until all sucker punch PP is exhausted', or possibly 1024 times; I was rather tired of the battle by that point, though, so I didn't continue on another 200+ attempts. I haven't experienced the same problem in other battles, but that's probably down to a fairly consistent and unchanging strategy of 'shuckle uses power split, heal if necessary, use accupressure 21 times with healing as necessary, wrap or rollout as appropriate' on all battles that doesn't give much room for the AI to be reacting to my moves on a specific turn as opposed to what I've already done. *I was sceptical of my conclusion at first, so I repeatedly opened game copies and went through the first turn until I had 8 open on the second turn. 4 attacked, 4 used calm mind, all attackers were punched, most calm minds slashed. 4 and 4 isn't a large sample size but it corroborates what I'd seen previously and is as extreme a split as it can be while remaining consistent with my not having been 100% sure immediately. Post script: the difficulty setting is intense; I don't know if that affects the AI in this regard. I still had access to items due to selecting to opt into them when I transferred my save from V12.