Pokemon X and Y multiplayer Question

Hi

I am adult in my late 20's that has never played a pokemon game before. From reading review I see that the single player story line is nothing to write home about. How is the online community for this game like?

Can you have fun online without having to grind and breed the perfect team?

How important is strategy over stats? In other words are you screwed if you don not lvl 100 pokemon or can good strategy compensate for this ?

Is matchmaking skill based or random?

Do people hack?

thanks

Most of the online play consists of battling. You do kinda need to grind and breed good Pokemon if you wanna have a good time online, since everyone else does, so you have to as well in order to not get owned every single match. Both strategy and stats are important. You can't walk into battle with under-trained Pokemon, but you'll never win unless you have at least some vague idea of a strategy either. Levels aren't so important, since one of the standard battle types sets all Pokemon above level 50 to level 50. What is important as far as training is concerned is EVs, IVs, natures, and moves. Matchmaking, as far as I know, is still random. Hacking is almost non-existent in online battles; the game generally won't let you use hacked Pokemon, assuming you're playing under the "Flat Battle" rule set.

Does this help?