Yeah, I think the main point with N understanding Pokémon and other people not is that he claims to be able to directly understand them and not just get the basic gist of their body language, which we definitely know most people can't do in the games. Mind you, in the anime trainers can learn to understand their Pokémon's language over time, and Pokémon often use miming and so on to try to make themselves understandable, which doesn't seem to be a thing in the same way in the games, and obviously it has many Pokémon that do simply speak human, both Meowth and various telepathic ones and legendaries, which doesn't happen the same way in the games (until now with the Rotom Pokédex), so the anime definitely has Pokémon be more communicative to humans than the games (they clearly are separate canons). That doesn't have to indicate anything about sapience in the games, though, just that they're a bit more animalistic in behaviour and usually not capable of complex communication with humans.
