Came back to the game and thankfully whatever the issue with the level scaling was seems to have been resolved (whether due to leveling the team to 6+ or not). However, I found a small bug while exploring Mt. Moon. I encountered a wild sandshrew and had my mankey use karate chop with the intent to weaken it. However, it seemed to register this as a super-effective hit rather than a neutral one. If alolan sandshrew exists in the game, it may have somehow mixed the two up, but otherwise it is somehow treating kanto sandshrew as something weak to fighting.
Edit: The Pokedex is displaying the wrong Type for all Pokemon. This appears to just be a visual glitch, however, as they work properly everywhere else.
After checking out a Meowth I discovered outside of Mt. Moon, I have come to the realization that perhaps the Sandshrew I bumped into in Mt. Moon was the alolan version, but displayed the Kanto (standard) Sandshrew sprite in battle. The Meowth in question displays the Alola sprite in the PC box, and claims the appropriate Dark typing on the status screen, but the status screen also shows the normal (Kanto) Meowth sprite. It's a tad confusing.
Clearer message: All Pokemon with an Alola Form (Sandshrew, Meowth, Diglett, Vulpix, Geodude) are being registered in battle and on the status screen as their alolan variants rather than the standard ones, but display the non-alolan sprites in these same places.
Edit 2: Minor nitpick again; when you have a fainted Pokemon at the front of your party (the follower slot), it will keep trying to bring the pokemon out to follow you every few seconds, complete with the animation of a pokeball opening behind you.
Edit 3 (Follow-up to Edit 1): I encountered another sandshrew in Mt. Moon and used water gun on it. This, too, was considered super-effective, which it should not be if it was an Alola Sandshrew. Therefore, I am led to believe that either the game somehow thinks steel is weak to water or both forms of Sandshrew/Geodude/Meowth/Diglett/Vulpix are located in the same areas, and the only way to tell the difference is to test moves and see what hurts it most.
Edit 4 (Further follow-up to Edit 1): Found a Vulpix inside of Mt. Moon again and once again it was treated as if it was Alola vulpix for type advantage/disadvantage. However, it then used Ember while I was weakening it for capture. If it were truly just a sprite error and this was an Alola Vulpix, it should have used Powder Snow instead. Additionally, when captured, as with the Meowth mentioned previously, it displayed/unlocked the regular pokedex entry (don't know if alola form entries exist in this game or not).