You choose your pokemon, and you can slightly edit their stats, but not to the degree where it's like, over 9000, but maybe an extra 10 or 15 points in a stat. It has all pokemon from all the generations. You just go to a lobby and battle people, you can set it to have it in a cup style. Which is where you and your opponent are given random pokemon at random levels with random moves, also on that note I should add you can give your pokemon any move they can possibly learn along with a hold item.