I don't really see the problem with Devolved = rookie -> Human and Beast = Adult -> Fusion = Ultimate -> Transcendant = Mega -> Susanoomon = Lv. 7
The problem is basically all of the official media describing Hybrids. let's start at the bottom:
Strabimon's profile states that Wolfmon's power was halved. It also states that its power surpasses that of "typical" adult level Digimon. The same is stated in Flamon's profile This means Wolfmon'a and Agnimon's full power is
already beyond that of most adult Digimon, and I would argue that this would reasonably extend to the rest of the Human Hybrids as well.
And there is nothing inconsistent about that, we have
seen human spirits defeat Perfects. We have seen them evolve from Adult Digimon as well as Child Digimon. But Beast forms have, besides clearly outmatching the Human forms in the anime, been shown to evolve from Adults or even Perfects, but never directly from Child Digimon (until the Pendulum Z), putting them consistently at least at Perfect class.
The classification of the Fusion spirits as Perfects instead of Ultimates is a clear downgrade because having reunited both spirits, their power should be equal to that of the ancient Warriors (the profiles confirm this, stating in each case that they inherited "all the might" of their ancient counterparts) the ancient warriors, of course being Ultimates, not Perfects and not even especially weak Ultimates at that (AncientGreymon is even said to have power
surpassing "current Ultimates").
The Transcendent forms were capable of taking on Royal Knights, who are often established to be on the higher tier of Ultimates, both in Frontier itself and the following media like Savers where Burst Modes were needed to keep up with them.
Again, I don't think any of this is inconsistent. There wasn't anything illogical going on. The inclusion of the transcendental forms was strange back in 2002 when anything beyond ultimate was usually reserved for the very final conflicts and not something that happened after two thirds of the story. But that was back then.
The irony is that the franchise is in a place now where we have quite a significant number of number of Digimon with forms beyond Ultimate, so anything from Fusion Hybrids up being Ultimates wouldn't really be a serious balance concern when including them in games and such.
So it's strange that
right now they decide to downgrade them for the card game.
So in general: mapping the levels down works "in isolation" but I would argue that it is not keeping with the precedent the franchise has set so far (And I definitely argue that precedent is still valid even when sourced from media that are not 100% consistent with each other)
(one being strictly better than the other just seems pretty dumb tbh especially since both humans and beasts were supposed to be in a war? If they weren'tequal that wouldn't be a war it'd be a massacre).
No one ever argued that all beast and humanoid species of Digimon in general follow the same pattern of strength the spirits do, so that doesn't prove much either way.
But I guess it could be argued to be the case, massacre included, since after all, Cherubimon, the only representative of the beast tribe among the great angels very handily overthrew whatever forces Seraphimon and Ofanimon had at their disposal, before the beginning of the main story of Frontier.
Just say that the human ones are a lot more stable and intelligent and that makes up for the power difference so one isn't strictly better
That is completely missing the point since while strength is a very obvious indicator of higher levels, intelligence, or the lack thereof, is not. It's like arguing that two cars are equally fast because the one capable of reaching higher speeds has better handling.
Isn't there also the argument that some people view levels as referring to stage of growth and not strictly power?
Advancing to the "next stage of growth" comes with a very explicit increase in power in about 95% of all evolutions. Attempting to separate the two tends to be either a result of willful ignorance and/or not understanding statistics. This argument also completely falls apart when you realize that most unnaturally strong child level Digimon for example also tend to evolve into unnatural strong adults and so on, so the progression from weak to strong through evolution is not actually violated from that frame of reference either.
And it is be true that Beast Hybrids are stronger than Human Hybrids, but then again, this is Digimon, where power level is not homogenous across all Digimon of the same stage, so that doesn't really matter.
I'd say it clearly matters, if it is done consistently throughout an entire group. If strength didn't matter why not have the transcendent forms be adults as well?
In fact, the finale of Frontier confirms this by having the Human Spirits speak to the Chosen through their D-Scanners.
And I would take that as an argument against your interpretation of them being different entities, because of they are, why do half of them
never manifest? I would argue because there's only one actual warrior per spirit pair and the human spirit is the preferred way of communicating.
In the anime, the Spirits are two separate objects, each holding only half the power of the Ancient Warrior who created them.
It was never stated that the strength was distributed evenly between the two spirits.
It's also shown that the Spirits can be separate entities as, iirc, there was a Digimon, I believe it was either Sepikmon or Shamamon, that was taken over by the Beast Spirit of Flame causing it to Evolve into Vritramon and run wild before Takuya got it, forcing the Chosen to fight it and extract the spirit. So, yes, they can function as distinct creatures.
However, the beast spirit in those moments did not possess any signs of sentience or personality. And him simply existing means little in the digital world where data can be spliced up and manipulated.
That Agnimon and vritramon exist separately doesn't disprove that they are are part of the same entity, just like Just like Mercuremon could use Seraphimon's data for what was basically a pseudo fusion-spirit evolution while Seraphimon's actual soul was already reborn in Patamon. One source of data, multiple physical manifestations.
