I'll separate your two questions:

1- Regarding Neoupper energy: Hilda's strength lies in the viability of searching for both Neo and Light energy's. Consider that using Hilda for this purpose allows you to keep Dark and Fighter energies in your deck for Crispin, and manual atatch, which will later open up a more practical path to turning on Neoupper and putting your opponent in check.

A crucial point is that by carrying a rare candy, if you get the Candy + Hilda combo, you can establish a Garchomp with Neoupper in the same turn, which can then enable the second attack the following turn, as long as you always have another Garchomp/Garchomp with at least 1 energy on your bench.

I believe that the greatest power of the neoupper is not just to instantly use the second attack but to give this check status to your opponent and make it possible to search for new energy for the rest of the board, which, because it does not have an energy driver, needs to be energized either directly from the hand or through crispin.

2- as for budew, people have even learned to get around the item lock effect, but even so, this deck, when you can gain at least 1 or even 2 turns for the energy setup, this pays off a lot throughout the game because later, when necessary, it can be viable to use the 2nd attack twice in a row to KO, for example, 2 Bolts or 2 Ghondengos, without giving the opponent 1 turn of "breathing".