Some of the
original concept art had a battle view like that.
I like the idea with the grass. It could substitute the arrows (and not break budget) since the grass or terrain line establishes the "plane" the figure is on. Decided to draw my own Pokémon and then I realized I could as well have a little fun using it for this activity.

Small icons could be used for temp status changes like attack nerf. No clue how many would be needed though.
Might be possible to do a 4w*8h font for shorter strings if the tiles are streamed into video memory when needed, but it's sort of awkward.