Unpopular opinions

What do you think is the worst in-game Pokemon of all time, counting any game that uses battling as its main mechanic? GSC Ledian? RBY Onix? EoS Phanpy? Whatever you think it is, you're probably wrong. Any Pokemon that has access to Struggle is leagues better than what I consider to be the worst in-game Pokemon in the entire franchise: Pokemon Conquest Musharna.

This is a Pokemon that uses Dream Eater as its only attack. It exists in a game where:

-there is a strict turn limit and 99% of the time, you lose when it hits 0
-slow Pokemon suffer an accuracy penalty, and Musharna is literally the 2nd slowest fully evolved Pokemon in the game
-any attack can potentially wake up a sleeping target, including Dream Eater
-most good units hit multiple tiles. Dream Eater is single target
-every Pokemon is a mono-attacker and it happens to be gen 5 so there are Dark-types everywhere. Also the most common Fighting-type family is part Dark, lol fuck you
-Struggle does not exist

The intended gameplay was that Musharna could send enemies to sleep with its ability, which has a certain chance to inflict sleep on a random nearby enemy each turn. And by a certain chance, I mean 10%. Or... you could bring its pre-evolved form Munna as a backup sleeper, except it's even slower than you, and it's using Hypnosis with base 60% accuracy that will be multiplied by whatever penalty it suffers from being that slow yeah you're not gonna do this.

A fair take, but I do sort of want to come to Musharna's defense for a second.

There is no denying that Musharna is absolute ass, its attacks is by far one of the most absolutely terrible in the entire game and easily among the worst pokémon in pokémon conquest by far. But I really would not call it the worst in-game pokémon of all time, im pretty sure there must be a mon in a sidegame or something that must be just as bad, and its competition in conquest is actually quite fierce for worst pokémon of all game.

First, lets talk about the main thing that makes Conquest different from the main game: The map. Your pokémon aren't just fighting tools, you move them across the map and in many maps your objective isn't just to kill pokémon; its to also archieve the objectives in the map. There are two main modes: simple battle and flag battle. For simple battle, sure, Musharna is one of the worst possible options to bring in the entire game.

For flag battles however, Musharna is actually quite a decent sponge for the flag map. Flag battle maps require you to capture and protect flags. This often means that you have to leave a mon behind to capture the flags, which put you in a specific spot in the map. This is hell for a ton of mons, since its practically impossible for a lot of them to fight their attackers due to bullshit move conditions. Look at Ampharos and Luxray, the two are stuck with the abysmally dogshit thunder, meaning that unless their opponent is exactly 3 squares away in a straight line, and given most mons attack either in front of them or two squares awyas make them sitting ducks.

Musharna meanwhile is not only extremely fat, with a high hp stat and defenses, but the passive healing of the flag means you can tank a lot of hits. Combine that with the passive ability to put things to sleep and I can assure you Musharna can flag defend more than 60% of the game's entire mon selection.

Hell, If you wanna use it in a defense map, Musharna can be used like a fucking asshole. Range 3 speed is good enough to put enough distance between you and invaders, allowing you to outrun an invading mon that the game deemed would be enough to beat you, and if they try to catch you getting sleeped as you run makes it even harder to be caught. Get yourself somewhere like Avia or the ice map and you are never getting caught.

Here's examples of mons I actually think to be the absolute worst in the game in conquest, whose strength is almost as bad as musharna:

Rhyperior: 2 range speed is horrifically terrible for when you are facing a map, but combine that with a 3 tile attack that can't hit anything in the squares in the middle, that can't be fired on repeat, and a double weakness to grass and water attacks, and if this isn't the actual worst mon in the game its by far the most obnoxious one.
Ampharos and Luxray: Have fun hitting that 3 tile thunder, oh and have fun being helpless against ground, grass, dragon and electric types anyways.
Forretress: Excellent in defense, your primary is doing so little damage however it might as well do less damage than Musharna in a game.
Gothitelle: Two tile attack with a huge range, but can fire on repeat and its very likely your opponent escapes or heals itself enough in the two turn it takes for it to hit. Hope you had enough turns left buddy!

Hell, id argue having 3 range movement makes it automatically a hardcounter to anything stuck with 2, even something like zard is near imposible to get moving since it has 2 tiles of movement and can't use shortcuts.
 
The sort of thing that makes me wonder if some mandate came down to shoehorn in specific things for the sake of making it more consistent with the anime or other media.

Not...really? Anime Cyrus is far more expressive than in Pokemon Generations, which follows the games more closely and implies Cyrus acts and talks like an emotionless robot. Then there's two manga adaptations in which he changes his ways and redeems himself. Doesn't seem there was much consistency with him.

Same with his admins:
-Mars and Jupiter in game: two smug valley girls
-Mars and Jupiter in the anime: uh...I dunno lol
-Mars and Jupiter in Adventures: silly and stoic henchmen-uh women respectively
 
Last edited:
There is no denying that Musharna is absolute ass, its attacks is by far one of the most absolutely terrible in the entire game and easily among the worst pokémon in pokémon conquest by far. But I really would not call it the worst in-game pokémon of all time, im pretty sure there must be a mon in a sidegame or something that must be just as bad, and its competition in conquest is actually quite fierce for worst pokémon of all game.
First of all, thank you for the post. It is wonderful to see that there are other people who are this willing to yap about Pokemon Conquest!

Out of the Pokemon you mentioned, only Forretress is a serious contender for the title of the worst Pokemon in Conquest. Make fun of the other Pokemon all you want, but the final calculated accuracy of their move is usually more than 10%. Oh, Thunder only has a 52% hit chance? That's still 5 times higher than the chance that Musharna will be eligible for combat!

Forretress is meme-worthy itself because lol 1 damage, but it does have some targets that it is guaranteed to beat, such as Meowth, Jigglypuff, Minccino, and Gastly. And you can paralyze yourself with Discharge from an ally, which allows Gyro Ball to actually deal damage, and if you multiply the 30% paralysis chance with the accuracy of a move used by a paralyzed Forretress, and then by 75% to account for full paralysis, the final value is still almost certainly higher than 10%.

Flag utility is the most common argument I see in defense of Pokemon that suck. Flag utility is not a useful role; flag utility is the role you assign to mons like Jigglypuff because they can't do combat anyway and somebody's gotta do it. The flag defender is basically the garbage boy. And Musharna, a grounded 3 range unit, is not even the best at claiming and defending flags. Crobat does it better. Heck, Golbat does it better. And you know what? In many situations, I would rather use Zubat. At least it can try to fight back!

If we expand the parameters to include other spinoff games, then we should talk about RRT/EoS Ditto, which has 1 PP Transform as its only move, and transforming doesn't change anything other than its appearance, so you essentially have a Pokemon with Struggle as its only move. Despite how comically bad this is, it is still better than Conquest Musharna because Struggle is a move that deals damage. Quite a lot in fact, since they gave the move insane base power.
 
While yeah, worst fully-evolved mon is still worth discussing, I feel like we should at least mention Magikarp as a contender for worst total mon in Conquest since its move has a 0% chance of doing anything and it doesn't get a combat-useful ability.
I mean the obvious difference here is that Magikarp is Magikarp: Being utterly unusable has been the whole point since day 1. Musharna and Forretress are fully evolved Pokemon that are intended to function but just don't
 
the pokemon world felt more rewarding to go out ad explore in previous games with the hidden machines then it does now with riding pokemon
Gen wunner here. No, this is not true to me. I thoroughly enjoyed Scarlet and Violet and much of that came from the ride Pokemon mechanics. I felt how it worked with the whole Titan storyline was really well done too.

I don’t get the hate for SV. Yes, it has its issues, but its also had some of the best storylines and development we’re ever seen in the games. Now that I’ve also seen it running on the Switch 2 in the flesh, I am convinced its biggest problem was the hardware, not the ambition.

After replaying the Gamecube Pokemon titles, I’ve come to the conclusion that SV represents a high line in the series in a number of different ways. It’s great fun. Flawed, yes, but still great fun.
 
There isn't a single antagonist until you get to Area Zero.
I do not see why this is an issue lmfao. Like, gen 7's "antagonists" are incredibly goofy and yet they are probably some of the best evil teams to date. Like sure, are antagonists in the Pokemon series cool? Yes. But half the time they do not matter for the story until the very end.
 
the pokemon world felt more rewarding to go out ad explore in previous games with the hidden machines then it does now with riding pokemon
Gen wunner here. No, this is not true to me. I thoroughly enjoyed Scarlet and Violet and much of that came from the ride Pokemon mechanics. I felt how it worked with the whole Titan storyline was really well done too.

I don’t get the hate for SV. Yes, it has its issues, but its also had some of the best storylines and development we’re ever seen in the games. Now that I’ve also seen it running on the Switch 2 in the flesh, I am convinced its biggest problem was the hardware, not the ambition.

After replaying the Gamecube Pokemon titles, I’ve come to the conclusion that SV represents a high line in the series in a number of different ways. It’s great fun. Flawed, yes, but still great fun.
I personally like the idea of what HMs represent and the Metroidvania-esque backtracking they encouraged, but they were also implemented horribly. They ironically felt like shackles a lot of the time due to being bad moves that were mandated in your movesets to use them.

There isn't a single antagonist until you get to Area Zero.
This is not inherently an issue. Not all stories need an antagonist.
 
Last edited:
I'm just having a hard time buying "best storylines and development" for a game in which the designated rival character insists on babying the player for literally the entire stretch of the game, and the villainous team is one of the most contrived executions of the awful "I just can't be bothered to talk to my friends to straighten out a misunderstanding" trope I've seen in recent memory.
 
I personally also prefer HMs to ride mons simply because with HMs, it actually feels like i'm adventuring with my team using their skills to get past obstacles. With ride mons, it just felt like "hey there's gonna be an obstacle in your way, take this pokemon you have no connection to and you'll get past it". Same issue with BDSP where the usage is fulfilled by literal random wild pokemon that can use the move

HMs could have been implemented better, but for the sake of actually feeling immersed in the world they were easily my favorite way of doing it until Scarlet and Violet.
 
There isn't a single antagonist until you get to Area Zero.
Good! I am fed up of antagonists. I would rather have a Pokemon world that focused on the battling, the breeding and catching mechanics and generally just did a good job of exploring a huge open world.

I'm just having a hard time buying "best storylines and development" for a game in which the designated rival character insists on babying the player for literally the entire stretch of the game, and the villainous team is one of the most contrived executions of the awful "I just can't be bothered to talk to my friends to straighten out a misunderstanding" trope I've seen in recent memory.

I dunno that it was really “babying” but bear in mind, it’s not aimed at us old hats who’ve played and replayed the previous games to death.

Each one of the storylines and the fourth, final one, felt fresh and well worked to me. Having had dogs in my life growing up, the Herba Mystica/Titan storyline was phenomenal in writing and feel.

Could it have all been improved with good voice acting? Yes, a thousand times yes. I will be amazed if Gen 10 doesn’t take that forward.
 
the pokemon world felt more rewarding to go out ad explore in previous games with the hidden machines then it does now with riding pokemon

I actually agree in the case of Poke Ride, but Koraidon and Miraidon are implemented so seamlessly into the game that I have no idea where GF is going to go from them. They already mastered the perfect method of open world transportation on their first go. I have mixed opinions on SV overall, but Koraidon and Miraidon feel so good to control (especially when you get flight in Indigo Disk - eat your heart out, Braviary), their progression via the Herba Mystica is satisfying, and they even get their own good character arc in The Way Home. The main problem that I have with Poke Ride is that there isn't really a sense of progression as there is with HMs - you just rent a random 'mon to do it for you - but the 'dons avoid this.

I'm just having a hard time buying "best storylines and development" for a game in which the designated rival character insists on babying the player for literally the entire stretch of the game, and the villainous team is one of the most contrived executions of the awful "I just can't be bothered to talk to my friends to straighten out a misunderstanding" trope I've seen in recent memory.

The problem that I actually have with The Way Home is that it's very much the end of Arven's story, alongside Koraidon/Miraidon, and Nemona and Penny are just kind of... there. Everyone does become friends by the end of it, and it leads nicely into the post-game stuff at the Academy which I enjoy, but as much as I like The Way Home overall I wish it had more to do for Nemona and Penny. Penny opens a few doors, Nemona gets to fight a few Paradox 'mons, but there isn't much material overall for either of them.
 
I'm just having a hard time buying "best storylines and development" for a game in which the designated rival character insists on babying the player for literally the entire stretch of the game, and the villainous team is one of the most contrived executions of the awful "I just can't be bothered to talk to my friends to straighten out a misunderstanding" trope I've seen in recent memory.
So first and foremost, Team Star do by definition count as antagonists. They are opposed to and obstruct the player's objective which is to disband Team Star on Cassiopeia's behalf. Whether or not one considers Antagonist figures necessary to the plots, saying the game lacks them as if it's an objective, self-illustrating problem is patently false.

Also, did you read the dialogue? It's laid out that Penny-as-Cassiopeia did tell them to disband after she took the fall for the Bully confrontation and cover up, and They still chose not to despite her word. This isn't "I can't be bothered to talk to my friends" it's "I talked to my friends/subordinates and they didn't listen to me." More to the point, why is this contrived and awful in execution? The context is that this comes from someone they should be expected to listen to and did not, Penny herself is very bluntly depicted as being bad with people as a character flaw for her, and the stakes themselves are small scale enough (students being expelled from a school) that you can't exactly call it an emergency or irresponsible to not press the matter before handling it internally.
 
Last edited:
idk why there being antagonists in a pokemon game would matter bc almost every single antagonist we've had in these games is "one note rival that exists to be a roadblock" or "one note evil team that exists to be a roadblock". you actively have to treat them as just some guys because theres no value they bring to the games if you try to analyze this game
 
Yknow from time to time I've seen suggestions for another wholly Doubles-centric Pokemon game like Orre but recently I've been thinking that a really fascinating spin on this would be having the rival equivalents and other notable characters constantly accompanying you for multi battles like a traditional JRPG party. Maybe you can make choices throughout the game that affect the NPC partners' Pokemon selection and strategy which you can build around in turn: for example, maybe one your rivals is a Charcadet user trying to become a Gym Leader and you eventually get to choose which type they specialize in between Ghost, Psychic and a third option with an accompanying new Charcadet evo.

If this series wants to keep expanding its storytelling potential and get people more and more attached to the human characters an idea like this seems very much worth exploring even if in a more limited capacity
 
Yknow from time to time I've seen suggestions for another wholly Doubles-centric Pokemon game like Orre but recently I've been thinking that a really fascinating spin on this would be having the rival equivalents and other notable characters constantly accompanying you for multi battles like a traditional JRPG party. Maybe you can make choices throughout the game that affect the NPC partners' Pokemon selection and strategy which you can build around in turn: for example, maybe one your rivals is a Charcadet user trying to become a Gym Leader and you eventually get to choose which type they specialize in between Ghost, Psychic and a third option with an accompanying new Charcadet evo.

If this series wants to keep expanding its storytelling potential and get people more and more attached to the human characters an idea like this seems very much worth exploring even if in a more limited capacity
If it were up to me for a doubles game, that would be a significant part of it. Or rather, switching between traditional doubles, multibattles, and other alternate multi-mon modes. And then you could combo it with the Aggressive/Friendly rival structure they have currently to have one rival who is entirely about support moves and one who is all-out-offense, making the player adapt their team depending on which they're partnered with.

With the switching, you could keep different sections of the game from feeling repetitive, and even use which battle style you're in as a way of specifying which part of the story you're progressing. Meanwhile, the different rivals can work as a training method for the player on how different battle styles actually function.
 
I do not see why this is an issue lmfao. Like, gen 7's "antagonists" are incredibly goofy and yet they are probably some of the best evil teams to date. Like sure, are antagonists in the Pokemon series cool? Yes. But half the time they do not matter for the story until the very end.
So nice, they had to do it thrice.

I'm ready for some actual antagonists again instead of this nonsense. They prompty ran the idea of Team Skull into the ground with Team Yell. Star isn't any better either.

Yknow from time to time I've seen suggestions for another wholly Doubles-centric Pokemon game like Orre but recently I've been thinking that a really fascinating spin on this would be having the rival equivalents and other notable characters constantly accompanying you for multi battles like a traditional JRPG party. Maybe you can make choices throughout the game that affect the NPC partners' Pokemon selection and strategy which you can build around in turn: for example, maybe one your rivals is a Charcadet user trying to become a Gym Leader and you eventually get to choose which type they specialize in between Ghost, Psychic and a third option with an accompanying new Charcadet evo.

If this series wants to keep expanding its storytelling potential and get people more and more attached to the human characters an idea like this seems very much worth exploring even if in a more limited capacity
Persona with mons would be fire ngl.
 
I'm ready for some actual antagonists again instead of this nonsense. They prompty ran the idea of Team Skull into the ground with Team Yell. Star isn't any better either.
See this is a funny statement because I also kinda agree thanks to Team Star, not because they suck but because in terms of battle-readiness they actually take a gigaton dump on basically every "serious" evil team other than maybe Plasma

Throw out levels and other game mechanics, think purely from an in-universe power perspective and it's no contest. We had a mafia and three different demented terrorist organizations and 99% of their ranks were worthless jobbers (in Magma/Aqua's case, 100%!) throwing the same half a dozen shitmons at you. Their higher-ups aren't much better: Every admin not named Mars, Jupiter or Colress has the team compositions and charisma of paper mache.

And then Team Star swoops the fuck in and shows these absolute CHIMP CHUMPS who the real TOP BANANAS are. They may have not filled out a job application, but they filled out their grunts' arsenals with an immense variety of Pokemon collectively covering just about every type, many of which are fully evolved. Meanwhile their bosses get to ride in with personalized Revavroom tanks wielding signature moves they invented, and those are just the backup to their actual Pokemon teams which also roflstomp most of the bozo failed world reforgers that came before them.

If they were to make another attempt at serious villains that are this stacked that'd rock, but for now it's literally just this meme
1750039979642.png

"Saturn, status report... Did our forces defeat Cassiopeia?"

"Master Cyrus... That was the Navi Squad Star Barrage"
 
So first and foremost, Team Star do by definition count as antagonists. They are opposed to and obstruct the player's objective which is to disband Team Star on Cassiopeia's behalf. Whether or not one considers Antagonist figures necessary to the plots, saying the game lacks them as if it's an objective, self-illustrating problem is patently false.
Not really.

This is where SV's open world structure lets it down just as much as its writing. Because the three questlines (Pokemon League, titans, Team Star) are completely separated--with the player allowed to tackle them in any order--this means that it's impossible for Team Star to have an impact upon the rest of the world in the ways that prior villains did. Team Star doesn't do anything like the Silph Co takeover or the Spear Pillar climax because they literally can't. The game is simply not structured in a way that would allow for it. So, whereas previous villains got to present themselves as reoccurring roadblocks in a greater story, Team Star just kind of exists off to the side not interfering with anything that you do unless it directly involves them. This sticks out to me especially because I did happen to ignore Team Star until I basically had the rest of the other questlines taken care of, which really underscored how little they matter.

The stakes have never been lower.

Yknow from time to time I've seen suggestions for another wholly Doubles-centric Pokemon game like Orre but recently I've been thinking that a really fascinating spin on this would be having the rival equivalents and other notable characters constantly accompanying you for multi battles like a traditional JRPG party. Maybe you can make choices throughout the game that affect the NPC partners' Pokemon selection and strategy which you can build around in turn: for example, maybe one your rivals is a Charcadet user trying to become a Gym Leader and you eventually get to choose which type they specialize in between Ghost, Psychic and a third option with an accompanying new Charcadet evo.

If this series wants to keep expanding its storytelling potential and get people more and more attached to the human characters an idea like this seems very much worth exploring even if in a more limited capacity
I feel like putting a ton of focus on multi battles would just be taking away control from the player for not much benefit. Kind of blunts the strategic appeal of double battles if you're constrained by your CPU partner's team selection and AI.

Like, this concept kinda sorta already exists in the Emerald Battle Frontier with the whole apprentice training bit, and in the grand scheme of things, it'd still be on the lower end of worthwhile activities even if it didn't take an eternity to "train up" all of the potential apprentices.
 
I feel like I could sum up some peoples’ problems with SV as “they strayed too far from the known formula” at this point.

Again, been here (in terms of fandom, not Smogon) since Red/Blue and we’ve never had a Pokemon game with three very clearly distinctly storylines, every other game has been at best maybe two overlapping stories that focus on the “evil team/big bad” and the gym campaign (see also: totems).

SV’s three concurrent storylines are designed to make you take everything at your own pace, Team Star especially. It’s not fully and exhaustively optional, but you can pick it up when you want in relation to the rest of the game.

It’s the difference between a more rigid structure for storyline and gameplay and a more relaxed one.

Now, the point Sixfortyfive makes about the urgency (stakes) of it all has merit, for sure, but I think that’s deliberate: I wonder if we’d be saying Game Freak had made the game too rigid if Team Star had portions of the game where you had to physically drop everything you were doing and go sort them out (ala Silph Co - you physically cannot continue Red/Blue without completing Silph Co and that was always a big roadblock - look at how speedrunners deal with it online).

***

Re multiple battles - in the last two months I played Colosseum and XD (currently trying to figure out a team for the Ho-oh Mt Battle challenge) and I’d welcome a double battles only game. I thoroughly enjoyed my play though back in the Orre region. I will say this though, it was much harder than I remember it being, overall.
 
tbf i dont think a mainline doubles game would be anywhere as hard as orre, since orre has the double whammy of dogshit pokemon availability with awful power scaling and cheese strats you have to fight against
The bad availability and strange level curve I'll accept, but stuff like Dakim's Earthquake/Protect, Ein's Rain/Lightningrod, and Evice's Skill Swap/Slaking are why you might choose doubles when putting an emphasis on the battle mechanics.
 
The bad availability and strange level curve I'll accept, but stuff like Dakim's Earthquake/Protect, Ein's Rain/Lightningrod, and Evice's Skill Swap/Slaking are why you might choose doubles when putting an emphasis on the battle mechanics.
i dont have an issue w doubles games using doubles strategies, its just that the game ramps up on how effective they can use those while giving you very mediocre options yourself
 
Back
Top