1/5 for artificial game lengthening in the repeated fights and being a manipulative means making money with energy and bonds. Good game design though, it's a decent, basic card game.
Bullshit, even if the switching direction bit weren't built into the animation, that's not actually what the left and right side of the brain are used for, read some actual psychological papers, not wikipedia.
Pseudo, I apologise for being a bit of a dick before (I made the "confident in your own brilliance comment). I think the best solution would be to just change the names, maybe change it to Normal, Intermediate and Expert, that way people will actually start on the easiest difficulty without letting pride get in the way.
People are aware of the difficulty levels, however, you have to realise that they will not try these out and decide what one is best, they will just hop on whatever they normally pick in these games. Stupid as it may be, your job as the developer is to work around gamers' stupidity and have the difficulty pretty standard, not just scathe them for it and sit back confident in your own brilliance.