For all intents and purposes, the main experience appears very similar to Red and Blue, as you take on the role of a budding champion who collects badges to challenge the final Elite Four, but exploration is stripped down to a bare minimum
For instance, your first Common WC should be transformed into Fanatical Firebrand, but while you dont have them, you can use Nest Robber or Raptor Hatchling
It's essentially the same mechanic as entwine, the only difference being that escalate lets you pick individual modes, whereas entwine is all-or-nothing (see Kaya's Guile as an example of an entwine spell with more than two modes)
However, keeping every card ban after introducing a more threatening adversary only keeps the cycle going.
When these explicitly say return it means that its moving those cards from zone to zone
Incapsula incident ID: 421000750004614542-19821493141967569