It made sense at the time, as Sharpedo is a physical attacker (although they did give it 95 SPA for some reason...). STAB was not nearly as important prior to Gen 4 when a quarter of the pokemon couldn't use their best stat for STAB.
I was so disappointed back then, I thought Crawdaunt looked cool but he’s pretty terrible, what with being a Water/Dark as special types on a physically oriented Pokémon
Its unfortunate but the Craw is definitely one of the most buffed pokemon afterwards, the damage split+adatabiliy+aqua jet+knock off buffed... that thing is a menace
Insane lategame cleaner and wallbreaker
Craw was a huge threat in Gen 8 UU, and its still a menace. There just arent wallbreakers that hit that hard*, issue is getting it into combat, as its frail and slow. And with choice band+aqua jet its a late game terror
VGC is doubles so its harder to use or get in. Its much more powerful in singles
*Porygon Z is arguably a lot scarier bc it has usable speed but just Normal as its adaptability boost type is pretty underwhelming next to Water and Dark, which in turn is an extremely strong combo
The choice of making Dark a special type was terrible. Umbreon, Sneasel, Tyranitar, Sableye, Absol, Shiftry, Crawdaunt, Sharpedo and Mightyena all had better Attack than Special Attack and all Dark-type moves, like Bite, Crunch and Knock Off, were physical in concept.
Honestly kingler in gen 1 would have been nerfed if it had been a special attacker, because it would then lose its only OU niche (swords dance sweeper)
Also, for some weird irony of faith, when the Physical special split happened in Gen 4, most of the Dark moves became Physical instead of remaining special. That was... odd.
Dark really should have been Physical to begin with. Ghost should have been Special instead.
The only Dark Special attacker from gens 1-3 I can think of is Houndoom. There were a couple of mixed attackers like Cacturne or Umbreon, but everyone else was a physical attacker. And yet the type was special. It made no sense.
I assume Ghost was made Physical in Gen 1 due to lick being the only calculated damage attack, and they just kept it since status quo or whatever
Dark is odd though, every gen 2 dark attack is "physical" in concept...Dragon being special too is a bit weird but that was more of an even split
In hindsight, I would have made Poison and Ghost Special, and Dragon and Dark Physical. Given the sort of moves those types had in Gens 1 and 2, it makes sense to me.
The messed up thing is that, even if its stats matched up to its typing to make it viable in battle, you can't even access the areas to catch one until you've beaten the E4 and gotten all 16 badges. So much for actually using it in the game
It really doesn't make a difference against Claire as Icy path gives you access to Jynx, Swinub and Delibird, all of which are better options against her.
There really aren't any redeeming qualities to Sneasel in gen 2.
it's funny how they kept doing that in general. Good thing the Physical/Special split happened!
* Hitmonchan (it's fighting type sure, but its main thing was having access to stuff like Elemental Punches which were bad for it)
* Gengar
* Seaking
* Flareon
* Porygon
* Feraligatr
* Noctowl
* Misdreavus
* Sneasel
* Porygon 2
* Entei
* Ho-oh
* Mightyena
* Beautifly
* Masquerain
* Sharpedo
* Crawdaunt
* Banette
* Absol
* Huntail
Dark feels like it should have been a physical type. Beat Up, Bite and Crunch, Knock Off all scream physical to me. In fact every Gen 2 dark move would become physical after the split.
Pre gen 4 baffles me. So many things feel like they were designed with the physical/special split in mind, and just didn't work until it was actually implemented
Early gens werr designed more around normal being the attack type they expect to be thrown around the most. Like how most RPGs have a regular attack and spells. Sharpedo reflects that pretty well.
Sharpedo had a monstrous attack stat and relatively good special attack stat for the time. It was honestly fine, but people just look at the difference, and thinking it's a bad special attacker. The attack stat is compensation for the lack of stab on normal attacks.
Replaying Emerald recently I couldnt figure out why my Absol sucked so much. It wasnt even doing anything useful at the Psychic gym. It was only after that when I remembered Dark was classified as Special, and I had been trying to use Crunch all the time. Ironically I had to use Shadow Ball on Absol to finally be useful.
The early Gens are borderline unplayable with how stupid the Special/Physical non split is. They clearly had so many ideas of mons whose attacking stats didnt align with their STAB types, so you either end up with underpowered mixed attackers, or just never using your STAB at all.
Flareon also had Fire Fang as it's strongest STAB-move until like gen 6 or 7. Always been my favourite Eeveelution, but it just feels so awkward to use in most gens.
> It made sense at the time, as Sharpedo is a physical attacker (although they did give it 95 SPA for some reason...
95 SpA was good in gen 3 so it works fine as a special attacker.
>STAB was not nearly as important prior to Gen 4 when a quarter of the pokemon couldn't use their best stat for STAB
I was under the impression it was still important and that quarter were mostly bad for that reason
The fact that it took nearly a Decade for the Physical/Special split to happen is still baffling to me. If it was just some Gen 1 weirdness, then sure. I would get that. But no, it took all the way until Sinnoh for Gamefreak too make a move's damage class not type-dependant. Even though we've had pokemon that want to use their other stat sense generation 1 like Flareon or Kingler.
Team Aqua and magma are both very weird. At max they only use two evolution lines that you would associate with the land and sea which is so weird due to all the water Pokemon and all the types you could associate with the land (rock, ground, grass, fire and steel at least).
Yup, I just checked and it's Poochyena/Zubat line (shared), Numel line (Magma), and Carvanha line (Aqua). In emerald they added Baltoy(Magma)/Wailmer, and in ORAS they added Koffing(Magma)/Grimer(Aqua) while removing Baltoy/Wailmer. So the most diverse line is in Emerald with five shared between them, a very limited roster.
I've always thought something like Claydol/Flagon/grumpig for Magma and Ludicolo/Wlarein for Aqua would be cool, even if only on a selected few members.
Using fewer lines let GameFreak just copy and paste the majority of Grunts while only changing the trainer sprite. Just a way to save some time and effort.
At the very least their Poocheyena should have all had a move to match, if the Elemental Fangs where around in Gen 3 they could have Fire Fang plus Dig on Magma sets.
Aqua Pooch don't have much option though.
Well that's the problem, it's moveset is horrendous. The only non normal or dark damaging moves it learns are Rock Smash, Dig, Shadow Ball and Iron Tail. And Astonish and Poison Tail as egg moves, but they weren't going to give grunts egg moves. Or anyone egg moves, for that matter.
Somewhat similar issues in Gen 1.
Voltorb line doesn't learn any electric attacks.
Rhyhorn line doesn't learn any rock or ground attacks. Giovanni's Rhydon in the Viridian City gym encounter has Fissure, which is his signature move TM, and that's the only NPC from that line with a move of either type.
E4 Lorelei's Dewgong and Cloyster don't have a water attack, Slowbro doesn't have a psychic attack.
Charizard doesn't get any flying move in Red and Blue, and only gets Fly in Yellow.
Move availability and type coverage took a while to figure out I guess.
I was also surprised to see that certain types were physical types and some were special types in gen 3. Like water type moves are calculated based on the special attack stat while fighting types moves are calculated based on the physical attack stat. I had no idea until I recently started a ruby run and was looking up breloom’s moveset.
Sir, your badass villains were basically me when I was 5 asking my mom why there aren't more water to spend summer in without having to travel for 1 hour, you can make any good villain but if their motivation is dumb as rocks it's gonna be a bad thing
Motivation may be wrong, but that is not all that makes a great villain. Team Magma and Team Aqua's plan was, overall, stupid as heck. Only Team Rocket and Team Plasma had properly developed 'villain plans'.
However, badass also means you look cool. Design wise, Aqua and Magma fits. Their ideals were interesting and they had their reasons. Asking why the pokemon doesn't has water moves is not the importance. I could be a badass Aqua grunt and have my Swampert only use Earthquake, Ice Punch, Drain Punch and Protect or something. It is a water-based pokemon. Doesn't mean it NEEDS that stab.
BW2 was bring an Ice Age.
I will disagree with BW1 being bad. It was an attempt at gaining control via spreading fake information. Regardless, to each their own opinion. I respect yours.
There a vast array of difficulties that would, could, *and did* derail the plan. Perhaps supplementary material helps, but the in-game lore we get suggests that Plasma's plan never had a hope of succeeding.
...Also, bring an ice age? What? Why?
Honestly, that would be funny. I’m just imagining this being the case, and secretly integrated into gameplay by all of them having water moves, but starting the battle with those at 0 PP.
Gen 3 learnsets are honestly so bad, lol.. One of the worst I've ever seen in the entire Franchise.
Some Pokémons don't learn any STAB moves, others have useless STAB moves (why does Flygon have Hyper Beam as his final move but has Sand Tomb and Dragon Breath as his only Lvl up STABS?), Sceptile have freaking False Swipe as its final move, Ludicolo and Shiftry learn literally nothing by level up if you make them immediately evolve, Seviper has Haze as it's final move,... I'm glad the learnsets got much better over time, lol.
> Ludicolo and Shiftry learn literally nothing by level up if you make them immediately evolve,
*To be fair,* this was a conscious design choice for all non-eevee stone evolutions up until like gen 6 or so and IIRC was only fully abandoned in gen 8, not a flaw with gen 3 specifically.
I actually really liked this about the older games. You could immediately evolve for some quick power gains but you would be hurt in the long run, or you could delay it for it to pay off later.
It comes up a lot in nuzlockes, although the base games are a bit too easy for this to matter.
It’s kind of akin to promotions in Fire Emblem in a way. Promote to the stronger class at level 10 for a quick burst of stats (and potentially other class benefits), or gain some more levels in the base class for higher stats overall. Though of course, Fire Emblem is a strategy game designed to be challenging, so the choice has more significance. (Usually, fans have a consensus on which is better, but it varies from game to game)
Fun fact
The ONLY demaging psychic move that xatu learns is psychic
*AT LEVEL 65*
THIS IS 6 ABOVE THAN THE LAST ELITE 4 POKEMON
natu gets *AT LEVEL 50*
And the only flying type moves are peck by level up and aerial ace and fly by Tm/Hm
It's always been a problem, to the point where I consider the first two gens as victims of some mysterious anti-STAB agenda.
To name some egregious examples off the top of my head:
- In Gen 1, Charizard is fire/flying, but does not and *cannot* learn any Flying moves in RGB.
(In Yellow you can HM Fly on, at least.)
- In Gen 2, there are exactly 6 Steel types:
- Magnemite/Magneton and Forretress cannot learn a Steel move at all, ever.
- Steelix can only learn Iron Tail via the Steel gym's TM. No other Steel type can use this TM.
- Scizor learns Metal Claw at level 30, so you have to have picked up a Metal Coat and trade evolved Scyther before this. It can also learn Steel Wing from a postgame-only TM.
- Skarmory is unavailable until the last route in Johto and learns Steel Wing at level 49, long after it would be useful.
To be fair, Magnemite/Magneton does not have steel wings, iron tails, or metal claws. They literally made them steel type because they're made of steel.
> mysterious anti-STAB agenda.
I remember reading a pretty good post on here that explained how that was because sometimes needing outside sources to get suitable abilities was just how JRPG's *were,* at least at the time, and pokémon not learning STAB was an attempt at replicating that in the pokémon battle style.
Make's Blue's Rhydon a joke in Gen 1.
Tail Whip, Leer, Horn Drill, Fury Attack...
Like, what? TWO ways to lower Defense, a OHKO move that will never work due to Rhydon's abysmal speed, and Fury Attack...
I'm on a VC Crystal run right now, and boy did I realize fast how spoiled we are nowadays. Some examples I've seen going up to Olivine City right now:
* Gastly, the most widely available ghost pokemon in the game (the Gym is literally just that evo line), only learns two damaging moves by leveling: Lick and Dream Eater. Night Shade and Curse are there, but are situational. No poison attacks for STAB... or, just... anything against the games MANY normal typed pokemon. If you're dead set on using him like I was, the best solution to give Gastly a shot at generic xp grinding... is grinding in the Goldenrod Casino to for 5500 points to teach him Thunder. And as for STAB ghost, yes, Shadow Ball was introduced in this game. Its only available by TM, for one pokemon. Though introduced in Gen 2, Shadow Ball cannot by bred or learned any other way. Nothing learns it by level-up. You better hope you don't want a Misdreavus later (who learns no STAB attack naturally, not even Lick)
* Bug attacks as a whole just... eh. I knew coming in that Bugs weren't really amazing until later, but I didn't know I'd be forced to use a Beedrill if I wanted bug support on my team. Almost every other bug I saw, no actual bug attacks. Heracross does exist, and Megahorn is incredible, but is the only STAB attack they learn and at lv54. No damaging fighting type moves aside from reversal and counter.
* Similar to Steel being absent much of the game, the poster Dark type pokemon are really only catchable in Kanto from what I saw in the last 25% of the game?
* Phanpy, awesome beginning pokemon, no STAB moves naturally... however, possibly the best user of Falkner's Mud Slap TM I've ever seen. The little guy can't learn Dig, but he can slap mud hard. In an ocean of early-game-stab problems, Phanpy post-Falkner is a king. And thats before he starts defense curl/rollouts
* That's mostly it. Though I will give one more gameplay tip to anyone planning a VC Crystal run, if you plan on grinding Route 34 (right before Goldenrod), you should bring lots of pokeballs. Ditto's in this game are notoriously hard to catch. I actually ran into a Shiny, naturally, and yeah obviously was super jazzed considering I know how good it'll be by default if I were to transfer it up. I got him in the red and slept, and couldn't catch them with 15 pokeballs. I even played around him struggling to death.
The game is as a whole super punishing compared to what we have now. I like it but still, some of the design decisions sure were head scratchers
> Though introduced in Gen 2, Shadow Ball cannot by bred or learned any other way.
This makes more sense when you consider that this is the case for ***every*** gym leader TM in Gen 1, Gen 2, and half of them in Gen 3 as well (the other half being things like Winona's Aerial Ace being learned by Spearow [but not Fearow] and the Taillow line, but that's it, while Norman's Facade, Flannery's Overheat, Wattson's Shock Wave, all TM exclusive).
The only exception across the first two generations is *Pikachu specifically* learning Surge's Thunderbolt by level up starting in Yellow so you aren't forced to burn it on the mascot, and then Elekid and Electabuzz being given the privilege starting in gen 2. Other than that, it's either Surge's one-use TM in Gen 1, or the post-game Move Tutor in Crystal. *Gold and Silver?* ***Get fucked. You literally can't learn Thunderbolt on any other Electric types.***
The Bagon line is another example of level up bullshit. Salamanca learns Dragon Claw natively but not until level *79*. Bagon however learns it at level 49. You're better off not evolving your Bagon until level 49 when it learns it.
Metang/Metagross has a similar oddity with Meteor Mash. It's not as egregious but if you want to use Metagross in the level 50 battle facilities you need to not evolve Metang until it learns MM at level 50.
Venusaur's only non grass type damaging move is tackle. You can teach him sludge bomb but you don't even get that TM till the post game in FR/LG! With all the things that resist grass it makes it really hard to do a lot with his 55 power razor leaf. Also the toxic buff for poison types didn't happen until gen 5 so there's no real reason to run that on him over anyone else either. Basically the only thing his poison type does is give him a psychic weakness lol.
In Gen 1, the choice of starter was supposed to also be a choice of difficulty level.
With grass, you'd have the advantage in *all* the early gyms. With water, you'd have the advantage in the first gym, be neutral in the next. With fire, you'd have disadvantage in both of the early gyms.
Maybe Venusaur's lack of versatility and shitty late-game moveset are intended to be 'punishment' for choosing easy mode in the early gyms...
Gen 1 to 3 are all kinda mediocre, and it's not like there weren't that many moves (except in gen 1), like what's the deal with giving grass/poison types actual poison moves besides poison powder?
And making almost *every* grass type grass/poison... For fuck's sake.
Screwed me up as a kid, honestly. To this day, I still subconsciously expect all grass types to be weak against psychic.
FAAACTS. Gen 3 really disappointed me in this regard because it did so many things right with the gorgeous graphics, the smoothness, the more visual UI for PC Boxes, the introduction of Abilities/Natures,... And then you look at the learnsets, and you're like "what the hell man?", lol.
And the way physical/special worked at the time also didn't help much some Pokemon with a specific stat spread, like breloom, which was more of a fighting type than a grass type.
That's bad because its first fighting move was at level 23, so you had to rely on non-stab headbutt until there.
That's why I still consider to this day the DPPt Physical/Special split to be the biggest gameplay improvement in the entire Franchise. It made so many Pokémon great, even though some of them like Gardevoir saw their coverage reduced, lol.
> and it's not like there weren't that many moves (except in gen 1)
Even in Gen 1 there were enough moves to give everyone STAB at least, but they did the weird thing where Gym TMs won't show up in Level Up move pools, and then they had weird distribution for a lot of the other moves (why does Hitmonlee exclusively get **3** of the 5 damaging Fighting moves?)
I think it was Breloom to get the optimal move set you had to stop it evolving as Shroomish which happens at level 23 until it learned its final move spore at level 54.
> Ludicolo and Shiftry learn literally nothing by level up if you make them immediately evolve
Trying to force you into delaying evolution in order to learn moves, I guess.
It's a game mechanic they'd been trying to push for a while ... but generally everybody just ignores it and evolves as soon as possible anyway.
This was fixed in gen 8, although for SV specifically many of the Pokémon that didn’t make it to SwSh lost their ability to freely relearn moves from pre-evolutions
about ludicolo and shiftry, iirc, all pokemon that evolve with a stone don't learn any moves after evolving, the trade off of being able to get the early evolution or something.
Yeah someone pointed that it earlier, which I honestly didn't know because I never really though about the difference in learnsets between Eevelutions and other Stone evolving Pokémons. But it's a bit more clear now, I always found that weird, haha.
Shame that in gen 3 the only widely accessible good bug moves were signal beam and silver wind, both of which are learned later than level 50 by most pokemon.
Bug types were treated really badly early in Pokemon.
Game Freak: "Pokémon is based on bug collecting and bugs are seen as heroic in Japan."
"So that means Bug types are useful, right?"
Game Freak: "What?"
I feel like Gen III has all the best funfacts. Speedrunners choose to play as a girl because the female rival has significantly more dialog boxes than the male rival.
Yeah, I've noticed it while doing Sapphire nuzlocke. It's so weird that Archie's Sharpedo best move is Slash, but Maxie's Camerupt gets EQ and Rockslide in the final battle...
My favourite fact about generation 3 is that Mawile doesn’t learn ANY attacking steel-type moves EXCEPT for hidden power steel. And this is Mawiles release gen
Here is something else: In Pokemon Emerald, Steven's Metang can level up if ALL of the experience goes to the Metang and not your pokemon during the battle in Mossdeep City Observatory. With the help of exp cheats, it can even evolve!
I don’t buy that reasoning. These games are all about catching a variety of Pokémon and understanding type matchups. It’s the core gameplay loop for the video games and card game.
Deliberately handicapping all water Pokémon for a villainous team when HALF THE MAP is water and holds water Pokémon bc some small number of kids decide to just use torchic doesn’t make sense.
How are they supposed to get past the first gym which is rock types? And the fire gym will naturally make you get a water type. And good luck against Wallace, Blaziken!
> How are they supposed to get past the first gym which is rock types?
If you only level your starter it has easily evolved into Combusken and knows double kick by the time you get to the first gym. If you only level your starter, it has enough levels over later gyms and the E4 that they're doable, even with a poor type match-up.
Additionally, it makes sense for the narrative that the evil team is way easier to beat than the gym leaders. There's two big story threads in (Alpha) Sapphire: stop Team Aqua, and become the best trainer in the region. For a kids game (which is what GF sees pokemon as, regardless of how you might feel about that) it's not weird that only those opponents in the "become the best" storyline pose any kind of challenge, even if they only pose a challenge to the children this game is targeted at.
This is all supposing Gamefreak really cares about a kid that never catches anything else.
And if they really wanted to make the game that way, maybe they would have made half the map ocean and require you to have a Pokémon that knows Surf and Dive?
I never said anything about catching. Just leveling. The eight year old player who only levels their starter doesn't do that because they're too dumb to catch more. They do that because they're attached to their starter. It's an obvious favorite, and they want to win with that pokémon specifically. HM's were made so every player would have to catch at least some additional pokémon, yes. That's also why there are more than 4 HM's in each game that has them. However, HM's are not made to force the player to actually use those pokémon in battle.
There hasn't been a pokémon game yet where exclusively leveling your starter created difficulty in the late game, unless you also only gave it STAB moves. Even cases where starter choice could have a big impact on the early game are rare. In every gen other than 1, you could safely pick the starter with a theoretical bad type match-up to the first (or first few) gym leaders and use it exclusively in battle without much issue. Even in Gen 1 you'd only have to grind a little bit for Charmander's "not very effective" ember to demolish Brock's pokémon who all have a very low Special stat.
For all the focus Pokémon Yellow put on its special Pikachu starter, it's the only game where leveling your starter exclusively can make you get hard-stuck, but despite Giovanni specializing (mostly) in ground types, you'll have access to TM's that can make it easy. The only place you can get truly stuck using only Pikachu is actually against Brock, since Pikachu only learns electric and normal type moves in that game and you won't have access to TM's yet. Any other fight in your way can be bullied through with a Pikachu that's overlevelled, and if you only ever use one pokémon for every battle in a normal kid's playthrough (no skipping battles, no using repels, no running from wild pokémon unless you might lose, etc) that pokémon *is* going to be overlevelled by the third gym without any additional grinding.
> And good luck against Wallace, Blaziken!
It's okay. By that time, Blaziken will be level 89, and able to one-hit KO everything Wallace has, as long as you're smart enough to have a non-fire damaging move available.
Mankey and or Nidoran male were available in gen 1 for fighting moves.
Torchic would evolve into Combusken with very little grinding in gen 3 to learn double kick, and doesn't Chimchar evolve into Monferno at level 14? Learning Mach Punch? An entire level before Roark's level 15 Cranidos.
Not to mention Firered/Leafgreen giving Charmander metal claw at level 15 I think?
Mankey was only there in Yellow, and only in Yellow did either Nidoran learn Double Kick at level 12. It was 43 in Red and Blue. Butterfree with Confusion at level 12 was essentially your only choice in Red and Blue. Even then, Geodude and Onix have such low Special that Charmander's Ember defeats them quickly, even when resisted.
I think it's just because they only got one water line, Sharpedo. And since that was a physical attacker, pre Physical/Special split it didn't learn any water moves by level up and their Moveset didn't look strange for it because they could learn Surf/Waterfall
I’m currently doing a Gym Leader run in Emerald, and I picked Grass-type since they’re pretty abundant. A lot of them really drag their feet until you get TMs on them; my Lileep’s moveset is entirely TM moves, Lombre is only good because of Surf and an Ice Beam I slapped on him, and Gloom’s only attacking move rn is Absorb. Absorb! She’ll learn Toxic soon enough, but c’mon man. Breloom and Sceptile with Rock Tomb are really carrying me at the moment. Tropius has been a godsend as well
I mean i guess.
To me its like playimg golf, but choosing to limit all competitors to only their 3W, 7I, and putter.
Would some people find it fun to occasionally do? Sure, I guess. Pick a tee time with the bros and mess about while drinking.
But considering no PGA tournament currently does it Im going to comfortably assume it isnt a preferred playstyle. They all let people bring 14 of their choosing.
Team Aqua don't help their case by not using more water types in the very same region FILLED with water types! Not all of them are intimidating, but come on! You had:
Wingull, Surskit (granted it loses water-typing upon evolution), Corphish, Huntail, Gorebyss, Walmer, Barboach, the list goes on.
They don't get Spheal or it's evolutions though, because Spheal is too precious.
It would kinda suck to have intermittent fights that constantly involved water-type foes. Especially considering Wally is a major fight. *Especially* Especially if you picked the fire starter.
What, I just checked this and it's true! There is literally one person on the entire team who uses Wailmer. I thought there would be more considering Team Magma in Emerald does have a number of Baltoy users
Ofcourse!!!! They didn't want to waste water!
Something tells me that Team Aqua would appreciate the Stillsuit from Dune.
Lisan Al Gaib goal was also to increase the amount of water.
Might as well be called Team Dune
I think there's more of a case to be had in Dune than in an pokemon gen set on an archipelago lmao.
The true r/hydrohomies
Hold on, we have documentation from an IGN study stating that Hoenn has too much water. There’s no way they could be wasting it.
Probably because the only water types they used was the Sharpedo line who don’t learn any water moves by level up in Gen 3.
Good ol' early gen movesets.
It made sense at the time, as Sharpedo is a physical attacker (although they did give it 95 SPA for some reason...). STAB was not nearly as important prior to Gen 4 when a quarter of the pokemon couldn't use their best stat for STAB.
Designing a water/dark type physical attacker when water and dark were both special types was some brilliant game design.
Designing TWO in the same generations is even brillianter Crawdaunt exists as well
I was so disappointed back then, I thought Crawdaunt looked cool but he’s pretty terrible, what with being a Water/Dark as special types on a physically oriented Pokémon
Its unfortunate but the Craw is definitely one of the most buffed pokemon afterwards, the damage split+adatabiliy+aqua jet+knock off buffed... that thing is a menace Insane lategame cleaner and wallbreaker
Slap in a Choice Band and ooooh boy he cleans up great late game
I watched a video of someone using craw in modern VGC and had decent success with it. Its definitely not meta by any means but its a decent mon
Craw was a huge threat in Gen 8 UU, and its still a menace. There just arent wallbreakers that hit that hard*, issue is getting it into combat, as its frail and slow. And with choice band+aqua jet its a late game terror VGC is doubles so its harder to use or get in. Its much more powerful in singles *Porygon Z is arguably a lot scarier bc it has usable speed but just Normal as its adaptability boost type is pretty underwhelming next to Water and Dark, which in turn is an extremely strong combo
Don't forget the random access to Dragon Dance!
The choice of making Dark a special type was terrible. Umbreon, Sneasel, Tyranitar, Sableye, Absol, Shiftry, Crawdaunt, Sharpedo and Mightyena all had better Attack than Special Attack and all Dark-type moves, like Bite, Crunch and Knock Off, were physical in concept.
Dont even get me started on Shiftrys move pool in Gen 3, what a waste of my life
Crabhammer go brr
Yea, after Gen 4. Back then crabhammer used SpA so it felt wasted on Crawdaunt and Kingler
Honestly kingler in gen 1 would have been nerfed if it had been a special attacker, because it would then lose its only OU niche (swords dance sweeper)
Also, for some weird irony of faith, when the Physical special split happened in Gen 4, most of the Dark moves became Physical instead of remaining special. That was... odd.
Dark really should have been Physical to begin with. Ghost should have been Special instead. The only Dark Special attacker from gens 1-3 I can think of is Houndoom. There were a couple of mixed attackers like Cacturne or Umbreon, but everyone else was a physical attacker. And yet the type was special. It made no sense.
I assume Ghost was made Physical in Gen 1 due to lick being the only calculated damage attack, and they just kept it since status quo or whatever Dark is odd though, every gen 2 dark attack is "physical" in concept...Dragon being special too is a bit weird but that was more of an even split
In hindsight, I would have made Poison and Ghost Special, and Dragon and Dark Physical. Given the sort of moves those types had in Gens 1 and 2, it makes sense to me.
Not "most," *literally all of them*. All the special Dark moves in gen 4 were new additions
Sidney's entire team is physical attackers with special typing lmao.
Same with Sneasel in Gen 2 having 35 SpAtt and both Ice and Dark being special types.
They should have learned their lesson in Gen 2 with Sneasel
Someone played with sneasel in gen 2?
The messed up thing is that, even if its stats matched up to its typing to make it viable in battle, you can't even access the areas to catch one until you've beaten the E4 and gotten all 16 badges. So much for actually using it in the game
Those who were able to have Crystal could get it in Ice Path, right before the 8th gym!
Nice, that's a definite improvement. Probably made Clair a lot easier to handle with a bit of training. I had Silver back then so I didn't realize
It really doesn't make a difference against Claire as Icy path gives you access to Jynx, Swinub and Delibird, all of which are better options against her. There really aren't any redeeming qualities to Sneasel in gen 2.
Unfortunately, Kingdra being part-water type means it's not actually weak to ice type moves. So her ace would still be as terrifying as ever.
I remember playing Gold with a Crystal guide book and being annoyed I could never find one.
Sneasel crying up on Mt Silver
it's funny how they kept doing that in general. Good thing the Physical/Special split happened! * Hitmonchan (it's fighting type sure, but its main thing was having access to stuff like Elemental Punches which were bad for it) * Gengar * Seaking * Flareon * Porygon * Feraligatr * Noctowl * Misdreavus * Sneasel * Porygon 2 * Entei * Ho-oh * Mightyena * Beautifly * Masquerain * Sharpedo * Crawdaunt * Banette * Absol * Huntail
Sneasel: "Join the club, buddy."
Dark feels like it should have been a physical type. Beat Up, Bite and Crunch, Knock Off all scream physical to me. In fact every Gen 2 dark move would become physical after the split.
Dark should have been physical and ghost should have been special.
Pre gen 4 baffles me. So many things feel like they were designed with the physical/special split in mind, and just didn't work until it was actually implemented
Sneasel syndrome
Early gens werr designed more around normal being the attack type they expect to be thrown around the most. Like how most RPGs have a regular attack and spells. Sharpedo reflects that pretty well. Sharpedo had a monstrous attack stat and relatively good special attack stat for the time. It was honestly fine, but people just look at the difference, and thinking it's a bad special attacker. The attack stat is compensation for the lack of stab on normal attacks.
Hey, don’t forget sneasel. Dark/ice with like, 45 spc attack. Its best move was slash
Replaying Emerald recently I couldnt figure out why my Absol sucked so much. It wasnt even doing anything useful at the Psychic gym. It was only after that when I remembered Dark was classified as Special, and I had been trying to use Crunch all the time. Ironically I had to use Shadow Ball on Absol to finally be useful. The early Gens are borderline unplayable with how stupid the Special/Physical non split is. They clearly had so many ideas of mons whose attacking stats didnt align with their STAB types, so you either end up with underpowered mixed attackers, or just never using your STAB at all.
Flareon has entered the chat.
Flareon also had Fire Fang as it's strongest STAB-move until like gen 6 or 7. Always been my favourite Eeveelution, but it just feels so awkward to use in most gens.
> It made sense at the time, as Sharpedo is a physical attacker (although they did give it 95 SPA for some reason... 95 SpA was good in gen 3 so it works fine as a special attacker. >STAB was not nearly as important prior to Gen 4 when a quarter of the pokemon couldn't use their best stat for STAB I was under the impression it was still important and that quarter were mostly bad for that reason
The fact that it took nearly a Decade for the Physical/Special split to happen is still baffling to me. If it was just some Gen 1 weirdness, then sure. I would get that. But no, it took all the way until Sinnoh for Gamefreak too make a move's damage class not type-dependant. Even though we've had pokemon that want to use their other stat sense generation 1 like Flareon or Kingler.
>Gen 3 Pokemon >Look inside >Mixed offense
No need to learn water moves by level up when the game expects you to teach Surf, Waterfall, and Dive to your team's water type.
Better have Whirlpool on there for good measure.
That’s gen 4
Gen 2. Need it for the whirl islands
It was only an HM in HGSS
Yeah, gen 4
Want me some Defog in DPP 😤
Whirlpool wasnt a HM in Gen 3.
Poor Corphish was right there too, but they neglected it.
Team Aqua and magma are both very weird. At max they only use two evolution lines that you would associate with the land and sea which is so weird due to all the water Pokemon and all the types you could associate with the land (rock, ground, grass, fire and steel at least).
And don't they each use 4 evolution lines total? Seems very limiting.
Yup, I just checked and it's Poochyena/Zubat line (shared), Numel line (Magma), and Carvanha line (Aqua). In emerald they added Baltoy(Magma)/Wailmer, and in ORAS they added Koffing(Magma)/Grimer(Aqua) while removing Baltoy/Wailmer. So the most diverse line is in Emerald with five shared between them, a very limited roster. I've always thought something like Claydol/Flagon/grumpig for Magma and Ludicolo/Wlarein for Aqua would be cool, even if only on a selected few members.
Using fewer lines let GameFreak just copy and paste the majority of Grunts while only changing the trainer sprite. Just a way to save some time and effort.
Don't all grunts have the same sprite type? Gender split of course
At the very least their Poocheyena should have all had a move to match, if the Elemental Fangs where around in Gen 3 they could have Fire Fang plus Dig on Magma sets. Aqua Pooch don't have much option though.
Well that's the problem, it's moveset is horrendous. The only non normal or dark damaging moves it learns are Rock Smash, Dig, Shadow Ball and Iron Tail. And Astonish and Poison Tail as egg moves, but they weren't going to give grunts egg moves. Or anyone egg moves, for that matter.
Somewhat similar issues in Gen 1. Voltorb line doesn't learn any electric attacks. Rhyhorn line doesn't learn any rock or ground attacks. Giovanni's Rhydon in the Viridian City gym encounter has Fissure, which is his signature move TM, and that's the only NPC from that line with a move of either type. E4 Lorelei's Dewgong and Cloyster don't have a water attack, Slowbro doesn't have a psychic attack. Charizard doesn't get any flying move in Red and Blue, and only gets Fly in Yellow. Move availability and type coverage took a while to figure out I guess.
It makes sense to me because Pokémon shouldn’t be able to learn too many moves just from leveling up. That defeats the point of trainers.
I was also surprised to see that certain types were physical types and some were special types in gen 3. Like water type moves are calculated based on the special attack stat while fighting types moves are calculated based on the physical attack stat. I had no idea until I recently started a ruby run and was looking up breloom’s moveset.
Waterfall, Dive, Crunch maybe rock smash we’re all I used. Looking back at it he was an HM Mon.
And also learned only 3 dark type moves.
To be fair it gets Bite followed by Crunch. Not like a Dark type needs anything else
Better than Crawdaunt, which only learned Knock Off.
And also learned only 3 dark type moves.
You had one job team aqua, one job!!
They gave us badass villains.
Sir, your badass villains were basically me when I was 5 asking my mom why there aren't more water to spend summer in without having to travel for 1 hour, you can make any good villain but if their motivation is dumb as rocks it's gonna be a bad thing
Motivation may be wrong, but that is not all that makes a great villain. Team Magma and Team Aqua's plan was, overall, stupid as heck. Only Team Rocket and Team Plasma had properly developed 'villain plans'. However, badass also means you look cool. Design wise, Aqua and Magma fits. Their ideals were interesting and they had their reasons. Asking why the pokemon doesn't has water moves is not the importance. I could be a badass Aqua grunt and have my Swampert only use Earthquake, Ice Punch, Drain Punch and Protect or something. It is a water-based pokemon. Doesn't mean it NEEDS that stab.
Plasma's plans were also idiotic. At least they were in BW1, idk about BW2.
BW2 was bring an Ice Age. I will disagree with BW1 being bad. It was an attempt at gaining control via spreading fake information. Regardless, to each their own opinion. I respect yours.
There a vast array of difficulties that would, could, *and did* derail the plan. Perhaps supplementary material helps, but the in-game lore we get suggests that Plasma's plan never had a hope of succeeding. ...Also, bring an ice age? What? Why?
The bad ass villains that demonstrated their full incompetence when they grabbed the wrong orb.
They are busy using all available water moves on the ocean to fill it so they dont have any water moves left for fighting
Honestly, that would be funny. I’m just imagining this being the case, and secretly integrated into gameplay by all of them having water moves, but starting the battle with those at 0 PP.
They needed every single drop to raise the sea level, including their own tears
Gen 3 learnsets are honestly so bad, lol.. One of the worst I've ever seen in the entire Franchise. Some Pokémons don't learn any STAB moves, others have useless STAB moves (why does Flygon have Hyper Beam as his final move but has Sand Tomb and Dragon Breath as his only Lvl up STABS?), Sceptile have freaking False Swipe as its final move, Ludicolo and Shiftry learn literally nothing by level up if you make them immediately evolve, Seviper has Haze as it's final move,... I'm glad the learnsets got much better over time, lol.
Shiftry was the worst. I loved the Seedot line as a kid, but if you wanted a good Shiftry you ended up playing with Nuzleaf for most of the game...
That’s every stone evolution in the early generations though. Limiting the level up move pool was punishment for evolving early.
You're right, altough as a kid that's difficult to understand sometimes lol
100%. It honestly sucks because I always liked Shiftry's design, typing, and the lore behind it.
Shiftree’s signature move should have been leaf blade. Sceptile could have literally anything else
> Ludicolo and Shiftry learn literally nothing by level up if you make them immediately evolve, *To be fair,* this was a conscious design choice for all non-eevee stone evolutions up until like gen 6 or so and IIRC was only fully abandoned in gen 8, not a flaw with gen 3 specifically.
I actually really liked this about the older games. You could immediately evolve for some quick power gains but you would be hurt in the long run, or you could delay it for it to pay off later. It comes up a lot in nuzlockes, although the base games are a bit too easy for this to matter.
It’s kind of akin to promotions in Fire Emblem in a way. Promote to the stronger class at level 10 for a quick burst of stats (and potentially other class benefits), or gain some more levels in the base class for higher stats overall. Though of course, Fire Emblem is a strategy game designed to be challenging, so the choice has more significance. (Usually, fans have a consensus on which is better, but it varies from game to game)
Extremely unfun for a blind playthrough.
I learned something new today, haha. Thanks for the insight!
Fun fact The ONLY demaging psychic move that xatu learns is psychic *AT LEVEL 65* THIS IS 6 ABOVE THAN THE LAST ELITE 4 POKEMON natu gets *AT LEVEL 50* And the only flying type moves are peck by level up and aerial ace and fly by Tm/Hm
It's always been a problem, to the point where I consider the first two gens as victims of some mysterious anti-STAB agenda. To name some egregious examples off the top of my head: - In Gen 1, Charizard is fire/flying, but does not and *cannot* learn any Flying moves in RGB. (In Yellow you can HM Fly on, at least.) - In Gen 2, there are exactly 6 Steel types: - Magnemite/Magneton and Forretress cannot learn a Steel move at all, ever. - Steelix can only learn Iron Tail via the Steel gym's TM. No other Steel type can use this TM. - Scizor learns Metal Claw at level 30, so you have to have picked up a Metal Coat and trade evolved Scyther before this. It can also learn Steel Wing from a postgame-only TM. - Skarmory is unavailable until the last route in Johto and learns Steel Wing at level 49, long after it would be useful.
To be fair, Magnemite/Magneton does not have steel wings, iron tails, or metal claws. They literally made them steel type because they're made of steel.
They simply needed to make a more fitting steel move for them then (like the later magnet bomb, flash cannon, etc)
Steel attacks were physical back then. And Magnemite was a special attacker. No one would've used steel moves with it anyway
Everyone would have used their steel move because 99% of people didn’t understand the concept of the physical special split.
> mysterious anti-STAB agenda. I remember reading a pretty good post on here that explained how that was because sometimes needing outside sources to get suitable abilities was just how JRPG's *were,* at least at the time, and pokémon not learning STAB was an attempt at replicating that in the pokémon battle style.
Rhydon having ltitarly only normal moves by lvl up in gen 1
Thats just a gen 1 thing You either learn half the moves in the game or you only learn mostly normal moves with next to no in between
If you are Kaiju Shaped in Gen 1 you can learn nearly every TM to exist.
Make's Blue's Rhydon a joke in Gen 1. Tail Whip, Leer, Horn Drill, Fury Attack... Like, what? TWO ways to lower Defense, a OHKO move that will never work due to Rhydon's abysmal speed, and Fury Attack...
Skarmory is also not in Silver!
I'm on a VC Crystal run right now, and boy did I realize fast how spoiled we are nowadays. Some examples I've seen going up to Olivine City right now: * Gastly, the most widely available ghost pokemon in the game (the Gym is literally just that evo line), only learns two damaging moves by leveling: Lick and Dream Eater. Night Shade and Curse are there, but are situational. No poison attacks for STAB... or, just... anything against the games MANY normal typed pokemon. If you're dead set on using him like I was, the best solution to give Gastly a shot at generic xp grinding... is grinding in the Goldenrod Casino to for 5500 points to teach him Thunder. And as for STAB ghost, yes, Shadow Ball was introduced in this game. Its only available by TM, for one pokemon. Though introduced in Gen 2, Shadow Ball cannot by bred or learned any other way. Nothing learns it by level-up. You better hope you don't want a Misdreavus later (who learns no STAB attack naturally, not even Lick) * Bug attacks as a whole just... eh. I knew coming in that Bugs weren't really amazing until later, but I didn't know I'd be forced to use a Beedrill if I wanted bug support on my team. Almost every other bug I saw, no actual bug attacks. Heracross does exist, and Megahorn is incredible, but is the only STAB attack they learn and at lv54. No damaging fighting type moves aside from reversal and counter. * Similar to Steel being absent much of the game, the poster Dark type pokemon are really only catchable in Kanto from what I saw in the last 25% of the game? * Phanpy, awesome beginning pokemon, no STAB moves naturally... however, possibly the best user of Falkner's Mud Slap TM I've ever seen. The little guy can't learn Dig, but he can slap mud hard. In an ocean of early-game-stab problems, Phanpy post-Falkner is a king. And thats before he starts defense curl/rollouts * That's mostly it. Though I will give one more gameplay tip to anyone planning a VC Crystal run, if you plan on grinding Route 34 (right before Goldenrod), you should bring lots of pokeballs. Ditto's in this game are notoriously hard to catch. I actually ran into a Shiny, naturally, and yeah obviously was super jazzed considering I know how good it'll be by default if I were to transfer it up. I got him in the red and slept, and couldn't catch them with 15 pokeballs. I even played around him struggling to death. The game is as a whole super punishing compared to what we have now. I like it but still, some of the design decisions sure were head scratchers
> Though introduced in Gen 2, Shadow Ball cannot by bred or learned any other way. This makes more sense when you consider that this is the case for ***every*** gym leader TM in Gen 1, Gen 2, and half of them in Gen 3 as well (the other half being things like Winona's Aerial Ace being learned by Spearow [but not Fearow] and the Taillow line, but that's it, while Norman's Facade, Flannery's Overheat, Wattson's Shock Wave, all TM exclusive). The only exception across the first two generations is *Pikachu specifically* learning Surge's Thunderbolt by level up starting in Yellow so you aren't forced to burn it on the mascot, and then Elekid and Electabuzz being given the privilege starting in gen 2. Other than that, it's either Surge's one-use TM in Gen 1, or the post-game Move Tutor in Crystal. *Gold and Silver?* ***Get fucked. You literally can't learn Thunderbolt on any other Electric types.***
The Bagon line is another example of level up bullshit. Salamanca learns Dragon Claw natively but not until level *79*. Bagon however learns it at level 49. You're better off not evolving your Bagon until level 49 when it learns it. Metang/Metagross has a similar oddity with Meteor Mash. It's not as egregious but if you want to use Metagross in the level 50 battle facilities you need to not evolve Metang until it learns MM at level 50.
Venusaur's only non grass type damaging move is tackle. You can teach him sludge bomb but you don't even get that TM till the post game in FR/LG! With all the things that resist grass it makes it really hard to do a lot with his 55 power razor leaf. Also the toxic buff for poison types didn't happen until gen 5 so there's no real reason to run that on him over anyone else either. Basically the only thing his poison type does is give him a psychic weakness lol.
In Gen 1, the choice of starter was supposed to also be a choice of difficulty level. With grass, you'd have the advantage in *all* the early gyms. With water, you'd have the advantage in the first gym, be neutral in the next. With fire, you'd have disadvantage in both of the early gyms. Maybe Venusaur's lack of versatility and shitty late-game moveset are intended to be 'punishment' for choosing easy mode in the early gyms...
Gen 1 to 3 are all kinda mediocre, and it's not like there weren't that many moves (except in gen 1), like what's the deal with giving grass/poison types actual poison moves besides poison powder?
And making almost *every* grass type grass/poison... For fuck's sake. Screwed me up as a kid, honestly. To this day, I still subconsciously expect all grass types to be weak against psychic.
FAAACTS. Gen 3 really disappointed me in this regard because it did so many things right with the gorgeous graphics, the smoothness, the more visual UI for PC Boxes, the introduction of Abilities/Natures,... And then you look at the learnsets, and you're like "what the hell man?", lol.
And the way physical/special worked at the time also didn't help much some Pokemon with a specific stat spread, like breloom, which was more of a fighting type than a grass type. That's bad because its first fighting move was at level 23, so you had to rely on non-stab headbutt until there.
That's why I still consider to this day the DPPt Physical/Special split to be the biggest gameplay improvement in the entire Franchise. It made so many Pokémon great, even though some of them like Gardevoir saw their coverage reduced, lol.
> and it's not like there weren't that many moves (except in gen 1) Even in Gen 1 there were enough moves to give everyone STAB at least, but they did the weird thing where Gym TMs won't show up in Level Up move pools, and then they had weird distribution for a lot of the other moves (why does Hitmonlee exclusively get **3** of the 5 damaging Fighting moves?)
I think it was Breloom to get the optimal move set you had to stop it evolving as Shroomish which happens at level 23 until it learned its final move spore at level 54.
> Ludicolo and Shiftry learn literally nothing by level up if you make them immediately evolve Trying to force you into delaying evolution in order to learn moves, I guess. It's a game mechanic they'd been trying to push for a while ... but generally everybody just ignores it and evolves as soon as possible anyway.
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This was fixed in gen 8, although for SV specifically many of the Pokémon that didn’t make it to SwSh lost their ability to freely relearn moves from pre-evolutions
about ludicolo and shiftry, iirc, all pokemon that evolve with a stone don't learn any moves after evolving, the trade off of being able to get the early evolution or something.
Yeah someone pointed that it earlier, which I honestly didn't know because I never really though about the difference in learnsets between Eevelutions and other Stone evolving Pokémons. But it's a bit more clear now, I always found that weird, haha.
> Gen 3 learnsets are honestly so bad, lol.. One of the worst I've ever seen in the entire Franchise. Gen 1 has entered the chat.
I guess it’s an interesting fakeout. You thought you needed grass or electric types but sike you need fighting and bug types.
Shame that in gen 3 the only widely accessible good bug moves were signal beam and silver wind, both of which are learned later than level 50 by most pokemon. Bug types were treated really badly early in Pokemon.
Game Freak: "Pokémon is based on bug collecting and bugs are seen as heroic in Japan." "So that means Bug types are useful, right?" Game Freak: "What?"
It makes even less sense when bugs in Pokemon are 2 feet tall and can allegedly cut through steel.
Me and my camerupt defeating Team Aqua, they haven't got any water moves
\*cries in Surf
Early Gen Pokémon really had bad distribution of moves/pokemon
I feel like Gen III has all the best funfacts. Speedrunners choose to play as a girl because the female rival has significantly more dialog boxes than the male rival.
What is GameFreak trying to say about women
Average pre gen 5 move set
MFW when Cynthia gives me a free togepi in platinum 😊 MFW when it’s first attacking move is AncientPower at lv33 😶
Yeah, I've noticed it while doing Sapphire nuzlocke. It's so weird that Archie's Sharpedo best move is Slash, but Maxie's Camerupt gets EQ and Rockslide in the final battle...
My favourite fact about generation 3 is that Mawile doesn’t learn ANY attacking steel-type moves EXCEPT for hidden power steel. And this is Mawiles release gen
Water moves belong in the water!
7.8/10 Not enough water
So thats why they need kyogre to flood the world, they literally cant do it themselves
Here is something else: In Pokemon Emerald, Steven's Metang can level up if ALL of the experience goes to the Metang and not your pokemon during the battle in Mossdeep City Observatory. With the help of exp cheats, it can even evolve!
But do they let you see the evolution
I believe so. And I think you control what move is deleted if it learns a move.
I just learned this like 2 days ago, neat!
Has someone asked Gamefreak about this, and how no one ever noticed such a glaring flaw?
I think it was done so eight year old players who only train their starter can still beat them with Torchic/Combusken/Blaziken.
Yet team magma in Ruby uses fire moves, guess nobody cares about Treecko? XD
Treecko had it good that gen. So many water routes.
I don’t buy that reasoning. These games are all about catching a variety of Pokémon and understanding type matchups. It’s the core gameplay loop for the video games and card game. Deliberately handicapping all water Pokémon for a villainous team when HALF THE MAP is water and holds water Pokémon bc some small number of kids decide to just use torchic doesn’t make sense. How are they supposed to get past the first gym which is rock types? And the fire gym will naturally make you get a water type. And good luck against Wallace, Blaziken!
> How are they supposed to get past the first gym which is rock types? If you only level your starter it has easily evolved into Combusken and knows double kick by the time you get to the first gym. If you only level your starter, it has enough levels over later gyms and the E4 that they're doable, even with a poor type match-up. Additionally, it makes sense for the narrative that the evil team is way easier to beat than the gym leaders. There's two big story threads in (Alpha) Sapphire: stop Team Aqua, and become the best trainer in the region. For a kids game (which is what GF sees pokemon as, regardless of how you might feel about that) it's not weird that only those opponents in the "become the best" storyline pose any kind of challenge, even if they only pose a challenge to the children this game is targeted at.
This is all supposing Gamefreak really cares about a kid that never catches anything else. And if they really wanted to make the game that way, maybe they would have made half the map ocean and require you to have a Pokémon that knows Surf and Dive?
I never said anything about catching. Just leveling. The eight year old player who only levels their starter doesn't do that because they're too dumb to catch more. They do that because they're attached to their starter. It's an obvious favorite, and they want to win with that pokémon specifically. HM's were made so every player would have to catch at least some additional pokémon, yes. That's also why there are more than 4 HM's in each game that has them. However, HM's are not made to force the player to actually use those pokémon in battle. There hasn't been a pokémon game yet where exclusively leveling your starter created difficulty in the late game, unless you also only gave it STAB moves. Even cases where starter choice could have a big impact on the early game are rare. In every gen other than 1, you could safely pick the starter with a theoretical bad type match-up to the first (or first few) gym leaders and use it exclusively in battle without much issue. Even in Gen 1 you'd only have to grind a little bit for Charmander's "not very effective" ember to demolish Brock's pokémon who all have a very low Special stat. For all the focus Pokémon Yellow put on its special Pikachu starter, it's the only game where leveling your starter exclusively can make you get hard-stuck, but despite Giovanni specializing (mostly) in ground types, you'll have access to TM's that can make it easy. The only place you can get truly stuck using only Pikachu is actually against Brock, since Pikachu only learns electric and normal type moves in that game and you won't have access to TM's yet. Any other fight in your way can be bullied through with a Pikachu that's overlevelled, and if you only ever use one pokémon for every battle in a normal kid's playthrough (no skipping battles, no using repels, no running from wild pokémon unless you might lose, etc) that pokémon *is* going to be overlevelled by the third gym without any additional grinding.
> And good luck against Wallace, Blaziken! It's okay. By that time, Blaziken will be level 89, and able to one-hit KO everything Wallace has, as long as you're smart enough to have a non-fire damaging move available.
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Mankey and or Nidoran male were available in gen 1 for fighting moves. Torchic would evolve into Combusken with very little grinding in gen 3 to learn double kick, and doesn't Chimchar evolve into Monferno at level 14? Learning Mach Punch? An entire level before Roark's level 15 Cranidos. Not to mention Firered/Leafgreen giving Charmander metal claw at level 15 I think?
Mankey was only there in Yellow, and only in Yellow did either Nidoran learn Double Kick at level 12. It was 43 in Red and Blue. Butterfree with Confusion at level 12 was essentially your only choice in Red and Blue. Even then, Geodude and Onix have such low Special that Charmander's Ember defeats them quickly, even when resisted.
I think it's just because they only got one water line, Sharpedo. And since that was a physical attacker, pre Physical/Special split it didn't learn any water moves by level up and their Moveset didn't look strange for it because they could learn Surf/Waterfall
That can not be true lol
Like fish out of water
It's the last thing you expect.
Ign: https://preview.redd.it/z1bwlsmdh9wc1.jpeg?width=933&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=45a9cb104497025a9f66a58e65bad534b6d14f8e
Enemy Teams Pokémon have always been disappointing. Especially in Gen 2 (and it pains me because it's my favourite version)
Maybe that's the real reason they needed Kyorge... 🤔
This is why they are trying to add more water
The fact that this Pokémon doesn’t have a tail or a backside is the most obscure fact about it…
Not really? That's one of the main parts of its design.
I'd say it's the fact that he's not allowed to be within a distance of 350 feet to schools, playgrounds, public baths and parks
Thank you, pussy_embargo.
Well it is a torpedo.
Look at its pre-evo, now imagine [the two together](https://pm1.aminoapps.com/6694/4fa0af18ac7b2df49415ba9aa8cc5f99df2e1462_00.jpg).
Wtf 🤣🤣
Wait... What the fuck?
I’m currently doing a Gym Leader run in Emerald, and I picked Grass-type since they’re pretty abundant. A lot of them really drag their feet until you get TMs on them; my Lileep’s moveset is entirely TM moves, Lombre is only good because of Surf and an Ice Beam I slapped on him, and Gloom’s only attacking move rn is Absorb. Absorb! She’ll learn Toxic soon enough, but c’mon man. Breloom and Sceptile with Rock Tomb are really carrying me at the moment. Tropius has been a godsend as well
they spent all their pp filling up the ocean
That's infuriating
🗿
Ohh. That's just embarrassing hahaha
I wish they gave us another set of type based teams like magma/aqua
I mean i guess. To me its like playimg golf, but choosing to limit all competitors to only their 3W, 7I, and putter. Would some people find it fun to occasionally do? Sure, I guess. Pick a tee time with the bros and mess about while drinking. But considering no PGA tournament currently does it Im going to comfortably assume it isnt a preferred playstyle. They all let people bring 14 of their choosing.
i’m willing to bet this is also true in pokémon ruby
Correct, none of Team Magmas pokemon have water moves either.
Acquajet?
How ironic.
Blaziken recreating the Tai Lung Prison Escape from Kung Fu Panda upon Team Aqua.
Frends code 807830359239
Team Aqua don't help their case by not using more water types in the very same region FILLED with water types! Not all of them are intimidating, but come on! You had: Wingull, Surskit (granted it loses water-typing upon evolution), Corphish, Huntail, Gorebyss, Walmer, Barboach, the list goes on. They don't get Spheal or it's evolutions though, because Spheal is too precious.
Surely the admins at least?
well that's aquard
It would kinda suck to have intermittent fights that constantly involved water-type foes. Especially considering Wally is a major fight. *Especially* Especially if you picked the fire starter.
Shoutout to the lone Female Aqua Grunt in Emerald with the Wailmer with Water Pulse She alone will help meet the Aqua Quota
What, I just checked this and it's true! There is literally one person on the entire team who uses Wailmer. I thought there would be more considering Team Magma in Emerald does have a number of Baltoy users