“That One Pokémon You Just Have Beef With”

[bdt2002]

I despise Calyrex Shadow Rider with every bone in my body. I don't think its particularly interesting design wise, but I hate the way its designed gameplay wise.

It has the offensive stats of a glass cannon, but not terrible defensive ones. The only thing holding it back defensively is its typing, which can be solved by tera. It just feels so braindead to fight with and against because it's just lets out speed and ohko both pokemon with my 165 spatk 120 bp spread move that has no downsides.

I just don't like what it represents balance wise, I think ice rider is better designed because it has a bigger drawback that can't just be solved by tera, its low speed. But that can also be played around with strategically with trick room. I think it requires more thought put into playing it, and is a lot more interesting and fun to fight against.

Calyrex-Shadow is emblematic of a lot of the problems with Pokémon’s core game design. The structure of battle is by nature biased towards offensive threats that can make progress against the opponent as opposed to defensive play that is actively discouraged and cannot keep up with offensive power creep. Even the strongest and most controversial stall teams can be broken through with cores consisting of broken offensive threats like these whereas it is much, much harder for the other way around to happen.

Speed has always been a hilariously overturned stat in these games and I think it’s that Ghost typing, Astral Barrage paired with As One and specifically that base 150 Speed that makes Calyrex-Shadow so dominant. Similar to Dragon-Types, being a fast Ghost-Type means you can threaten opposing Ghosts which can lead to decreased parity between the amount of viable Pokémon in the metagame. Calyrex-Shadow is the fastest Ghost-Type in the game and gets the jump on even Zacian-Crowned’s base 148 and almost all other manner of restricted Legendaries and stuff like Paradox Pokémon, and it can still hold an item unlike Zacian-Crowned. That Speed and Ghost’s lack of resistances outside of Dark are what allow Astral Barrage spam to spiral out of control too quickly. What this also means is that you have to play the mental guessing game of what item the opposing Calyrex-Shadow has if you’re also running one, since if it’s Scarfed and yours isn’t, you can’t try and reliably use it as an offensive check to the rest of your opponent’s team. And if both of you are Scarfed and/or if you’re an Imposter Ditto against one that is also holding Choice Scarf, it goes back to being a Speed tie anyway. There’s a reason Gen 8 Ubers runs through this and the Big 3 and it’s banned outright in Gen 9.

The idea of Calyrex-Shadow not looking as overpowered as you might think it is reminds me a lot of Zacian-Crowned and the Paldea mascots relative to a Mega Rayquaza or something like that. Koraidon and Miraidon bother me for a few reasons but that high Speed and strong typing is something they all have in common, leaving little to no room for anything else to surpass them in viability. Should Primal Groudon make a return that could help with and against those two, but it’s also going to be just another Astral Barrage magnet, since I don’t see Primal Kyogre or the Dark-threatening Xerneas (for Calyrex teams) being good if they make it to Champions. All of this while ignoring Mega Rayquaza, who probably won’t be able to use Max Airstream to help in the Speed-centric effort to get rid of Calyrex-Shadow early and often.

And I STILL haven’t mentioned that Calyrex-Ice is weak to Ghost just to make things even worse around this thing. This and Lunala are both popular in modern Trick Room teams in VGC and Calyrex-Shadow requires those teams to play on the back foot until they’re absolutely certain they can set up.

 

[Castersvarog]

I despise Calyrex Shadow Rider with every bone in my body. I don't think its particularly interesting design wise, but I hate the way its designed gameplay wise.

It has the offensive stats of a glass cannon, but not terrible defensive ones. The only thing holding it back defensively is its typing, which can be solved by tera. It just feels so braindead to fight with and against because it's just lets out speed and ohko both pokemon with my 165 spatk 120 bp spread move that has no downsides.

I just don't like what it represents balance wise, I think ice rider is better designed because it has a bigger drawback that can't just be solved by tera, its low speed. But that can also be played around with strategically with trick room. I think it requires more thought put into playing it, and is a lot more interesting and fun to fight against.

Calyrex Shadow, and honestly Koraidon, Miraidon and Flutter Mane to, feel like a 5 year olds idea of a strong pokemon. Just put a ton of stats into attack and speed and win, there's no balance or nuance of anything interesting behind it beyond Giagantic unga bunga damage

 

[Ironmage]

Should Primal Groudon make a return that could help with and against those two, but it’s also going to be just another Astral Barrage magnet, since I don’t see Primal Kyogre or the Dark-threatening Xerneas (for Calyrex teams) being good if they make it to Champions.

Koraidon, Miraidon, and Calyrex-Shadow are all currently banned in Natdex Ubers where Primal Groudon never left. As the resident Bulky GroundTM of the format, it already has its hands full. Though I wouldn't be that sure Xerneas is out, it also managed to get itself banned.

 

[pika pal]

For me the things that bothers me are regional variants themselves. They just take an existing Pokemon and make a similar looking one but usually just better instead of improving the original. The worst ones for me are ones from Galar again due to Gen 8 onwards being pretty much everything that prevents me to get into new Pokemon.
With the Beta Pokemon of Gen 2 being revealed with the Spaceworld 97 demo, we saw for example Farfetch'd should have gotten an evolution Madame. After 6 generations, we finally got what Farfetch'd should have gotten... only turning out it is for the alternative regional form of Farfetch'd (pretty much a new Pokemon). Regional form exclusive evolutions are really annoying. Not only are the regional forms often better, they also get even more buffs with an evolution on top of it. At least Galarian Linenoon doesn't have Espeed I guess.

The Galarian Regional Evolutions infuriate me similarly because it feels like such a transparent way to say "we give up" on the Old Pokemon's design without wanting to totally abandon its branding for marketing (because, you know, most of them are Kanto Pokemon).

Cross Gen evolutions were some of the hypest shit to see when it could bring an old mon back into the limelight, maybe complete its design in gameplay if it was just missing "that one thing" like Honchkrow giving Murkrow's line offenses to justify its glassy build pre-Prankster. They were still great in Gen 9 whether they were amusing "bigger" versions like Dudunsparce, or legitimate game changers like Annihilape's added Ghost Typing or Kingambit's Supreme Overlord.

Now have fun having the old mon you liked just replaced by it. My only solace is that it SEEMS this method wasn't very popular, considering GF stopped doing it in Gen 9 (unless one counts Dipplin exclusively evolving to Hydrapple, which I do take issue with despite enjoying said Final Evo) after Gen 8 seemingly experimented with it in SwSh and a few in LA (Overqwil and Basculegion).

I'm mixed on regional evolutions for the "same" form like G-Weezing or Alolan Marowak ("one is a better version" cases no withstanding) since stemming from the exact same base should entail giving it an identity beyond what the original bore, but still has that "replace the old version" issue they keep hitting. I think the Gen 9 Convergent/Similar Species are their best take on it (Wugtrio's typing and ability distinguishes it far more than 90% of Type-Changed Regionals even with a shared stat line), followed by Regionals with Evolutions that are separately named but essentially a regional variant of the original Evo (Clodsire, Sneasler).

 

[Hugin]

I'm mixed on regional evolutions for the "same" form like G-Weezing or Alolan Marowak ("one is a better version" cases no withstanding) since stemming from the exact same base should entail giving it an identity beyond what the original bore, but still has that "replace the old version" issue they keep hitting. I think the Gen 9 Convergent/Similar Species are their best take on it (Wugtrio's typing and ability distinguishes it far more than 90% of Type-Changed Regionals even with a shared stat line), followed by Regionals with Evolutions that are separately named but essentially a regional variant of the original Evo (Clodsire, Sneasler).

I'd argue the Convergent mons are the ones I hate the most. Because that's a real-world concept and it's definitely not what they're doing. Actual convergent mons are stuff like "normal-type burrowing rodent that hits it's peak at lowish levels" or "small rodent mons are electric types to protect them from birds". Or all of Gen V.

At least regional variants make sense and teach kids something, convergent mons are just them going "hey, a mushroom and a jellyfish look like each other, isn't that weird" and expecting people to care.

 

[Samtendo09]

From what this forum gave so far, and power creep in Gen 9’s case aside, standard cross-gen evos are rarely complained about nowadays, though one I argue to be most divisive of the newer ones is Archaludon… though it’s not really a Pokémon I have a beef against, but rather be amused and respect it for improving Duraludon’s viability… or lack thereof in VGC either ways.

Now, one cross-gen evo I personally have a beef against is Lickilicky and, and is what I believe examplifies why GF is better off with “less is more” when it comes to cross-gen evos.

It may have improved stats to be viable and no longer make Lickitung a weak one-stage per say, but it is another wall that may not be enticing to players in-game, not enough good stuff to make it stand out or viable back in Gen 4, and it’s design doesn’t really expand much on the concept aside of the babs that felt too subtle.

Even the likes of Dusknoir and Probopass were clearly tried with much more distinct concept and expansion of what their pre-evos did, while Porygon-Z make up for oddity of evolving from Porygon2 and it’s 515 BST by being more offense-oriented and having much higher Special Attack. Lickilicky ends up having the misfortune of not brining much to the table nor having high in-game viability to justify catching Lickitung as far as cross-gen evos goes.

 

[mertyville]

From what this forum gave so far, and power creep in Gen 9’s case aside, standard cross-gen evos are rarely complained about nowadays, though one I argue to be most divisive of the newer ones is Archaludon… though it’s not really a Pokémon I have a beef against, but rather be amused and respect it for improving Duraludon’s viability… or lack thereof in VGC either ways.

Now, one cross-gen evo I personally have a beef against is Lickilicky and, and is what I believe examplifies why GF is better off with “less is more” when it comes to cross-gen evos.

It may have improved stats to be viable and no longer make Lickitung a weak one-stage per say, but it is another wall that may not be enticing to players in-game, not enough good stuff to make it stand out or viable back in Gen 4, and it’s design doesn’t really expand much on the concept aside of the babs that felt too subtle.

Even the likes of Dusknoir and Probopass were clearly tried with much more distinct concept and expansion of what their pre-evos did, while Porygon-Z make up for oddity of evolving from Porygon2 and it’s 515 BST by being more offense-oriented and having much higher Special Attack. Lickilicky ends up having the misfortune of not brining much to the table nor having high in-game viability to justify catching Lickitung as far as cross-gen evos goes.

Gen 4 added a lot of evolutions with half of them looking fat and goofy to me. In regards to Likylicky, I was not that upset until I saw the beta Licketung evolution design (which I refer as Licking because that sounds awesome).

To me the final evolution downgraded the defining feature of that Pokemon, it's tongue. Generally changing it up isn't a bad thing but for a Pokemon like Licketung that was such a mainstay at the time, it was a big deal for me.

 

[RocketSurgery]

This Pokemon should be in jail:

It carries a pendulum-like device. There once was an incident in which it took away a child it hypnotized.

Call Chris Hanson, get Kendrick Lamar back in the studio, it's been nearly 30 years, it's time to finally put this creep where it belongs.

 

[DrrT]

Damn I was going to reply when the thread was new but got distracted.

I have already discussed other times what my problems with Rhyperior are, in general I consider it the worst example of the issues that the Gen 4 cross-evos have design-wise. It's a complete mess, I know people probably dislike Magmorrar too but Rhyperior is way worse for me. I don't understand how they though it was okay for the literal very first Pokemon created to evolve into that.

I also dislike Grumpig because it takes away literally everything awesome that Spoink has without giving anything, and it's pretty unremarkable in any way so I can't even hope for a split evo for Spoink even trough it deserves one. Walrein is also somehow generic, but it's a decent trasition from Sealeo who already ñost the roundness og Spheal. Grumpig just took the entire pun of Spoink and decided for some weird reason to underplay it as much as possible, also making it not use the tail at all so it can be just a generic pig on two legs.

 

[pika pal]

I also dislike Grumpig because it takes away literally everything awesome that Spoink has without giving anything, and it's pretty unremarkable in any way so I can't even hope for a split evo for Spoink even trough it deserves one. Walrein is also somehow generic, but it's a decent trasition from Sealeo who already ñost the roundness og Spheal. Grumpig just took the entire pun of Spoink and decided for some weird reason to underplay it as much as possible, also making it not use the tail at all so it can be just a generic pig on two legs.

I think this is a failure of communication by the art teams, because if PoGo is any indication, Grumpig is supposed to use its tail to bounce forward or rebound from impacts, but its body structure means it's not conducive to general usage or its idle animation like Spoink obviously displays.

 

[pokemon4eva]

Hey, imagine Charizard if it were boring and lacked the cool factor that made it, at the very least, somewhat appealing!

It's just a completely dogshit, watered-down version of what is already not that great of a pokemon to start with. The fact that this has the exact goddamn stat spread as Charizard is outright insulting and lazy - you seriously fucking mean to tell me that they couldn't come up with anything, ANYTHING new for this guy? Meganium, while mediocre, at least TRIED to do something new, and Feraligatr instead eschewed the defensive spread of Blastoise in favor of a more physically offensive one. Why not try to make it a slow, bulky special attacker? Why not try to make it at least somewhat of a midrange option, with more balanced defenses and not completely unreasonable speed?

But no, they just had to copy-paste the goddamn stat spread from Charizard. Fucking lazy, what were the devs doing when they cooked up this turd?

Its movepool is also barren and not particularly impressive, yet another straight downgrade from Charizard. Eruption doesn't do enough to make it stand out from the crowd, even if it isn't horrible at utilizing it, and the rest of its movepool is completely fucking worthless outside of that.

It's a garbage pokemon for the simple reason that it does nothing other Fires can't do. Even Emboar at least TRIES to be unique with being a bulky Fire, and I genuinely fucking hate it for being unoptimized and overall just a poorly-designed pokemon.

Oh well. At least the Hisuian form is somewhat interesting and has things to stand out from the crowd. Johtonian Typhlosion is not only shit, but it's also bland shit, and for that, I harbor an unrelenting hatred towards it.

Another reason that added to my Typhlosion dislike is related to its sprite, and people complaining about not being in fire all the time, despite Typhlosion lighting up during its attack animations. So it's just people getting mad over nothing and makes the Pokemon more annoying to me.

And speaking of which...
View attachment p321f1015.webp
Wailord is a similar case. Another generator of annoying discussion, this time related to its ingame size. Now, this one is more justifiable to criticize than Typhlosion because...yeah, Wailord is supposed to be the biggest Pokemon and the mainline games do a poor job representing this. But also, I just find Wailord boring. I think it's a very unremarkable Pokemon, it's literally just a blue whale and that's it. Wailmer, for example, has more personality in its design than Wailord does (kinda like Spoink and Grumpig), and having to see it a lot because of the size discussion just soured me more on Wailord. It doesn't help that it's so mediocre in game too, with it's horribly distributed stats and poor movepool.

 

[Omastar68]

Damn I was going to reply when the thread was new but got distracted.

I have already discussed other times what my problems with Rhyperior are, in general I consider it the worst example of the issues that the Gen 4 cross-evos have design-wise. It's a complete mess, I know people probably dislike Magmorrar too but Rhyperior is way worse for me. I don't understand how they though it was okay for the literal very first Pokemon created to evolve into that.

I also dislike Grumpig because it takes away literally everything awesome that Spoink has without giving anything, and it's pretty unremarkable in any way so I can't even hope for a split evo for Spoink even trough it deserves one. Walrein is also somehow generic, but it's a decent trasition from Sealeo who already ñost the roundness og Spheal. Grumpig just took the entire pun of Spoink and decided for some weird reason to underplay it as much as possible, also making it not use the tail at all so it can be just a generic pig on two legs.

Grumping is a wonderful call out, I never thought about the springy tail thing before! Like spoink needs it to survive, after Evo it barely has it:|

I've nearly liked grumpig in the past, but it's so plain stat wise. Plus I actually DO like spoink. Meh. Idk how that got past dexit when stuff like crobat got the axe.

Edit: before crap hit fan this gen, if I strain I can think of dugtrio. It can trap and delete you in diglett cave if you are unlucky and find high level, but the mon is basically useless. You trap electrics with it cause trapinch loses arena trap on Evo. That is all. No bulk, low power, etc.

 

[Arcticblast]

out of the entire Pokédex there is exactly one that I dislike and it is this dumbass owl

 

[VividBunnie]

I'm lousy at articulating my feelings so I rather just leave this one image here to explain why Walrein is one of the few Pokemon I have less than positive feelings towards. Oh, also I despise Umbreon too for similar reasons. Have a nice day~

 

[Jungle cruiser]

Honestly, gamefreak's shill mons by now have fell into a lot of hate these days, to the point were whenever any of pikachu, charizard, lucario and/or greninja get heavily featured in something, it's usually met with heavy eye rolls. Now, I do think this can get a little overblown to certain extent, but whenever the subject gets brought up, I can't help but feel bugged since, more often than not, I notice another BIG offender just casually skipped over.


Maybe it's personal bias speaking, since I've never really cared for gengar to any extent. But like, really think about it. They've appeared in basically all of the mainline games (barring the hoenn games. Huh, I actually didn't know that! The power of research!). They've made frequent playable appearances in several spinoffs, got TWO gimmick forms (mega and gmax form) and several spotlight moments in the anime to the point Ash even had one despite not being from Galar! In fact, I'm sure that if they were willing to consider older gen options, they'd even be high on the consideration list for Super Smash Bros! By and large, they have become THE ghost type pokemon.

And through it all... they've received absolutely no flack for it. People simply don't include them in the same league as the 4 I mentioned above, despite arguably having as much special treatment. Gengar stays an awesome creepy ghost gremlin.

Again, maybe this is just a combination of my inherent indifference towards them and burnout from seeing them everywhere, but it'll always puzzle and bother me.

 

[pika pal]

Honestly, gamefreak's shill mons by now have fell into a lot of hate these days, to the point were whenever any of pikachu, charizard, lucario and/or greninja get heavily featured in something, it's usually met with heavy eye rolls. Now, I do think this can get a little overblown to certain extent, but whenever the subject gets brought up, I can't help but feel bugged since, more often than not, I notice another BIG offender just casually skipped over.


Maybe it's personal bias speaking, since I've never really cared for gengar to any extent. But like, really think about it. They've appeared in basically all of the mainline games (barring the hoenn games. Huh, I actually didn't know that! The power of research!). They've made frequent playable appearances in several spinoffs, got TWO gimmick forms (mega and gmax form) and several spotlight moments in the anime to the point Ash even had one despite not being from Galar! In fact, I'm sure that if they were willing to consider older gen options, they'd even be high on the consideration list for Super Smash Bros! By and large, they have become THE ghost type pokemon.

And through it all... they've received absolutely no flack for it. People simply don't include them in the same league as the 4 I mentioned above, despite arguably having as much special treatment. Gengar stays an awesome creepy ghost gremlin.

Again, maybe this is just a combination of my inherent indifference towards them and burnout from seeing them everywhere, but it'll always puzzle and bother me.

I think besides personal preference/bias, Gengar is a bit below the line those mons tend to be at (Charizard had some major feature in Gen 6-8, plus special treatment like Ash's being brought back repeatedly for other regions). Gengar is shilled no doubt, but it's not to the degree of shouting "hey, here's Pikachu, don't you remember liking Pikachu?!" in any media that didn't have it for 5 minutes. Smash appearances for those 4 mons represent a sort of line given it extends outside the Pokemon franchise, this is what they want shown for a game a different company than TPC is in charge of (to a degree, Nintendo/Sora/Namco vs Nintendo stake in TPC).

Consider that Ash getting a Gengar was the first prominent Anime role it had had in years compared to what I mentioned with Zard. Gengar and Dragonite were basically paying off several years of popularity in the season that they had decided to be Ash's finale, as opposed to Charizard which they never really gave a break in prominence (Ash's throughout Kanto and Johto, Battle Frontier reappearances, the late Unova arc, Alain's Mega Zard, Kiawe's Ride Charizard, Leon's Ace being Charizard in Galar and doped up on something with that win record, and even extends to Horizons if you count Friede's role). Gengar feels much more a case of paying off popularity for a Pokemon that they give attention but not usually center the screen on, as opposed to Pikachu just being on everything no matter how tired people may get of it (it is popular, but even if it wasn't I feel like TPC would keep it up to maintain a Brand Image).

No doubt Gengar is heavily marketed, but I think "arguably" is doing a LOT of the heavt lifting when comparing the special treatment levels in main line marketing and media.

 

[Ironmage]

While I don't have much of a source, I remember hearing that Gengar was a popularity poll inclusion in Pokken rather than it being something the devs were going to include as a matter of course. The same poll is given as why Magnemite is doing the in-universe camera work (though Pokken did also come out before using Rotom for this sort of thing was standardized).

 

[CTNC]

I'm kind of surprised no one has said Emboar yet. Three Gens in a row of Fire/Fighting Starters! Oh, and all their stats are suited for being mixed attackers, so the only thing that made this one stand out was it's slow. I didn't have a problem with any of that when BW came out though. That said, I have issues with Shiny Emboar for being by far the biggest eyesore Shiny IMO. Ice blue is such a hard color to go wrong with, but the way they combined it with orange and black... In a way, it is kind of imprerssive how they managed to go so wrong with such a pretty color.


I think half my posts in the Pokemon TCG Pocket thread have me complaining about about "Flip a coin until you get tails." You might want to skip to the TL;DR if you're tired me complaining about coin flips...

Misty's card makes you flip a coin until you get tails. You get to put a Water Energy on a Water Pokemon for each heads. You usually only get 1 Energy per turn and you don't get an Energy on your first turn if you're going first. Anyway, Misty on Turn 1 means there's a 1/16 chance Palkia EX is dealing 150 Damage before you can even take a turn. Luck based instant wins are fun for everyone, right? It's not like anyone will get 19 Heads in a row, right? (Nope. That happened against me.) I'm sure lots of people have beef with Articuno, Gyrados, Palkia, and Wugtrio because of that card. Especially Wugtrio because its attack is random. I like the first three of those Pokemon outside of TCG Pocket enough to not hate them and it helps that Palkia has the best Immersive Art card in the game, but I don't blame anyone for hating them. Especially Wugtrio.

Team Rocket Grunts is another card that makes you flip a coin until you get tails. After Misty, I hated it as soon as I read that... Then I read the rest of the card. You discard a random energy from your opponent's active Pokemon for each heads. That's far more insulting because it takes away what you took you need and multipule heads means it will take multipule turns to get them back. If you're 1 Turn away from victory and there's 2 or more heads, that can instnatly lose you the game. I'm fine with most losses, but luck based "strategy" based on litteral coin flips? The only good news is Trainer cards can only be used once. (That said, you can have 2 of a card in your deck. I faced someone who got to use Misty and 2 Team Rocket Grunts. I won, but I extremely annoyed.) If you haven't played TCG Pocket, you may be wondering where I'm going with this because it doesn't turn any Pokemon into an instant win. If you have played within the last few months, you'll already know that Guzzlord EX has an attack that deals 30 Damage and has the same effect as Team Rocket Grunts. It's a repeatable Team Rocket Grunts... WHY?! Also, because that wasn't "fun" enough, there's card that makes your next coin flip guarantee to be heads! (The card is Will, the Gen 2 Psychic Elite Four member.) I'm a shamless stall fanatic, but I have standards. Guzzlord feels like griefing.

TL;DR: Screw Guzzlord, screw Water types, screw Guzzlord, screw coin flips, and screw Guzzlord! Screw! Guzzlord!

View attachment 770305

I'm lousy at articulating my feelings so I rather just leave this one image here to explain why Walrein is one of the few Pokemon I have less than positive feelings towards. Oh, also I despise Umbreon too for similar reasons. Have a nice day~

As much as I'd like to defend a Pokemon I'm nostalgic for, nope. I am not arguing. This is the perfect reason to hate a Pokemon and I fully support your hatred of a Pokemon I love. Infact, I'd even be glad to get you torches and pitchforks for you.