Hello everyone, I’m here today to recommend which starter you should choose for pokemon black and white.
I’ll go ahead and say that if you’re like me and you always pick a certain type when you start off, you can go ahead and ignore all of my advice. Just pick whichever type you always pick and you’ll be good. Now there are the rest of you, the ones who like a bit of variety in each playthrough. I’ve played through the game a few times in the Japanese version and have used every starter at least once. I’m here to share my valuable advise with you.
I’ll start by saying, unlike other games, no single starter dominates them all. You won’t find yourself with a lame duck that can never shine. That said, a few of them do have periods where they can lag behind the rest of the team, but those moments are quickly eliminated and made up for.
Snivy is the game’s grass starter. If you haven’t already heard, Snivy’s Treeko-like appearance is deceiving. It’s more of a wall on wheels then anything else. Decent HP, great defenses and fantastic speed make for an excellent package. Snivy performs very well in the early game, scarcely anything- even supereffective attacks- will OHKO him. If you want to, you can even beat the first gym alone with him. The two main flaws with snivy are its power and movepool. In exchange for not getting KOed very often, you won’t KO much yourself. You do get a 65 base power attack right before you evolve however, which will allow you to coast for a few levels. Snivy’s movepool is very, very limited. You’re essentially just limited to just Grass and Normal type attacks. The combination of very mild power and a shallow movepool creates a period of difficult training for the Snivy family from about level 25 to level 32. To escape this exhaustion, I recommend using your snivy, or servine at that period, to deal with team plasma and the 5th gym. It should haul itself out pretty quickly when it learns leafblade and later, the amazing boosting move currently translated as Coil. Buying the Return TM in the 4th gym city is also helpful, so you don’t have to rely solely on tackle for your normal type attack
Once Your Serperior, Snivy’s Final evolution, learns Coil, it is an absolute monster. One Coil and you’ll be able to decimate trainers’ entire teams. Very little can oppose you when fighting the Dark and Fighting Elite Four members with this awesome attack
Overall, Snivy is above average in usefulness. If I had to tier it with the other grass starters, it’d be third losing to torterra and Venasaur. It’s not spectacular, but it pretty damn good.
Next comes Tepig. Tepig’s evolutionary line is the third to be fire fighting, and beyond repetitive use, I’m not complaining. Unlike Snivy, Tepig’s final evolution, Emboar, has an Amazing movepool. You have every single fire and fighting stab you could wish for (minus close combat) and an amazing array of weirder moves. Solarbeam, Grass Knot, Gyro Ball, Head Smash, Wild Charge and even Scald! The brand new 80 base power WATER type move. Tepig is extremely useful in the 2nd, 3rd, and 7th gyms and can hold its own versus the dragon leader. It does have a large bit of competition from the games other fire types, in particular, Darmanitan and Chandelure. Darmanatan is probably the best damn pokemon you can use for an in-game run and although Chandelure can be somewhat hard to get off the ground, it will kill everything in sight once it gets a dark stone. Although I’d still take Infernape over Tepig in terms of fire type starters, this thing is a beast that holds up the line of amazing fire type starters.
Oshawott is all around reliable and can hit pretty darn hard off of its awesome stab and normal type attacks. Beyond disadvantageous gyms, there’s nowhere in the game where Oshawott seem weak or useless. Unlike Snivy and Tepig, it faces next to no competition for a slot on the team, as most of the game’s water types come either at a low level or are just not that useful. The only flaw I can see in Oshawott is that you end up with what is arguably the weakest of the bunch of elemental monkeys, but Simisear is easily replaceable. Oshawott is only second to the almighty god Swampert for best water starter. It’s a real solid choice and I can’t recommend it enough.
Overall, in terms of which starter you should pick for the swiftest ingame run, I’d have to recommend Oshawott first, followed by Tepig, and then Snivy. Don’t let this fool you though, this isn’t like HGSS. All three are really useful and dependable by the game’s end. You’ve heard what I can recommend, now follow your instincts and pick which one you like the best.