Not to mention it would have made those Blissey bases a bit more effective too.ORAS secret base opponents only capping at 3 Pokemon. I want to battle everyone's full team of six.
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(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon
- Thread starter BriarRose
- Start date
The recurring tendency of a couple of the older games to have level jumps at the final boss, especially when combined with the final boss being hideously overpowered.
I'm glad the games have stopped doing level spikes at the final boss for the most part. It's silly artificial difficulty that kills the pacing at the very end and puts a bad taste in your mouth, as most games generally don't brick wall you out of nowhere earlier on save for the obvious (Misty, Whitney, Platinum Fantina).
You can see this as far back as Kanto, but Blue isn't too bad because his mons aside from Alakazam are easily handled with the proper type matchups. Same with the rest of the League.
Lance in Johto is just obnoxious. Sure you can Ice Punch him in GSC but. in HGSS almost nothing counters him (save Mamoswine Ice Shard and that's IF you feel like grinding it almost 20 levels when you get it) unless you waste your life for Ice Beam in the Game Corner. He's artificially hard, but I've already mentioned this before so I'm not going to spend too long.
Evice from Pokemon Colosseum is BY FAR the hardest final boss in the series. The average player will be in the high 40s and even if you have some of the better Pokemon in the game he just crushes you with his sheer power (Evice is in the 60s). I mean just LOOK at this team:
And then you look back at the Pokemon roster and remember there's only like, a dozen viable options out of the mountains of crap...it's just unfair. Slowking Skill Swapping Truant off Slaking is your cue to hit the Reset button, and you better hope to heck he does not boost Machamp or Salamence at all (Espeon isn't great here unless you're on par in levels, as Evice has random leads, so it's hard to send Espeon out to kill Machamp without it getting killed mid-turn).
It's funny, because Nascour would be a perfectly fine final boss as is. His Pokemon are a bit easier to hit their weaknesses, but he's still got the mid-50s and status spam to make him competent - I have lost to him before, and you have to redo the four Colosseum trainers if you lose.
Cynthia also sucks. Yes, you can setup on Spiritomb but if you do it the hard way without this exploit, then yeah, she's pretty hard.
Ghetsis is a surprise final boss that is actually done correctly, unlike Evice. His team is pretty rough, but anything can abuse the Substitute TM (Twist Mountain in Winter) on Cofagrigus, setup and sweep. While you can do the same thing with Cynthia more or less by setting up on Spiritomb, there's a distinction here - you still have a chance against him even if you don't do this. Even if you don't have Substitute, I consider Ghetsis challenging but fair. He doesn't arbitrarily level spike out of nowhere and the only huge threat you'd really struggle with is the Hydreigon, but even then that has counters (any pure Fighting type, or setting up Light Screen with a bulky Psychic type (as he lacks Dark Pulse) and then sending in your Hydreigon killer). His Pokemon have few weaknesses but it isn't too bad if you're playing on the default Switch mode. I consider Bouffalant his second hardest member - the coverage is just so wide and it's almost impossible to OHKO, though you can make it recoil itself to death.
The series really stopped doing this around Gen V, save for Leon, but I don't have much to say on him as I've only beaten SWSH like twice. Leon's a good fair challenge similar to Ghetsis, though I think I like Ghetsis more ultimately.
Lance in Johto is just obnoxious. Sure you can Ice Punch him in GSC but. in HGSS almost nothing counters him (save Mamoswine Ice Shard and that's IF you feel like grinding it almost 20 levels when you get it) unless you waste your life for Ice Beam in the Game Corner. He's artificially hard, but I've already mentioned this before so I'm not going to spend too long.
Evice from Pokemon Colosseum is BY FAR the hardest final boss in the series. The average player will be in the high 40s and even if you have some of the better Pokemon in the game he just crushes you with his sheer power (Evice is in the 60s). I mean just LOOK at this team:
And then you look back at the Pokemon roster and remember there's only like, a dozen viable options out of the mountains of crap...it's just unfair. Slowking Skill Swapping Truant off Slaking is your cue to hit the Reset button, and you better hope to heck he does not boost Machamp or Salamence at all (Espeon isn't great here unless you're on par in levels, as Evice has random leads, so it's hard to send Espeon out to kill Machamp without it getting killed mid-turn).
It's funny, because Nascour would be a perfectly fine final boss as is. His Pokemon are a bit easier to hit their weaknesses, but he's still got the mid-50s and status spam to make him competent - I have lost to him before, and you have to redo the four Colosseum trainers if you lose.
Cynthia also sucks. Yes, you can setup on Spiritomb but if you do it the hard way without this exploit, then yeah, she's pretty hard.
Ghetsis is a surprise final boss that is actually done correctly, unlike Evice. His team is pretty rough, but anything can abuse the Substitute TM (Twist Mountain in Winter) on Cofagrigus, setup and sweep. While you can do the same thing with Cynthia more or less by setting up on Spiritomb, there's a distinction here - you still have a chance against him even if you don't do this. Even if you don't have Substitute, I consider Ghetsis challenging but fair. He doesn't arbitrarily level spike out of nowhere and the only huge threat you'd really struggle with is the Hydreigon, but even then that has counters (any pure Fighting type, or setting up Light Screen with a bulky Psychic type (as he lacks Dark Pulse) and then sending in your Hydreigon killer). His Pokemon have few weaknesses but it isn't too bad if you're playing on the default Switch mode. I consider Bouffalant his second hardest member - the coverage is just so wide and it's almost impossible to OHKO, though you can make it recoil itself to death.
The series really stopped doing this around Gen V, save for Leon, but I don't have much to say on him as I've only beaten SWSH like twice. Leon's a good fair challenge similar to Ghetsis, though I think I like Ghetsis more ultimately.
I'm glad the games have stopped doing level spikes at the final boss for the most part. It's silly artificial difficulty that kills the pacing at the very end and puts a bad taste in your mouth, as most games generally don't brick wall you out of nowhere earlier on save for the obvious (Misty, Whitney, Platinum Fantina).
... It's the final boss...
Like, yes, the final boss should be fair and make sense with the level curve, but at the same time there isn't anything wrong with the level curve becoming a bit steeper to make the final boss test you a bit more. And this does sometimes mean you may have to grind a few levels before facing them.
To simply put, I like a tough final boss as beating them means I understood the game's mechanics & raised my team so they could take on such a mounting challenge. Of all the final bosses you listed, I'd say Evice a bit BS with him having two Late Bloomers (one you're expected to catch) and the Slowking Skill Swapping with Slaking. However, that said, I've seen enough playthroughs of Colloseum to know it's both possible to beat him and catch his Tyranitar so it's a tough challenge but not one that can't be overcome.
Yes, it’s the final boss. But I think Evice is just totally friggin ridiculous. At least with Cynthia you can use stuff like Gyrados. Evice? Unless you use the legendary beasts, Medicham, Espeon or Feraligatr, HAVE FUN GRINDING!
It’s just egregious because the admin rematches were in the 40s or so. I had to abuse TOXIC SKARMORY to beat the final bosses, and I hate it when I have to resort to cheese stuff unless I’m doing some in game tiering or suboptimal Pokémon where I have to use every option.
I’ve swept Cynthia with Bibarel one one occasion and Rhyperior on another.
I too greatly dislike level spikes, pretty much for the same reason. It's a very cheap way to increase difficulty, yes, but it's far from ideal or memorable (Kukui in SM is my favourite "champion" battle because he brings neither a level spike nor many of the highest BST Pokémon available in the game, but movesets that are actually surprisingly well-thought for a main story trainer) and it harms pacing because, unless you want a self-imposed challenge, you have to head back to the last training area, bringing the plot to a halt, for a noticeable amount of time just to get equal levels.
I want a competent final boss, one that feels like a challenge, but when the "challenge" is a level spike, it's way too boring.
(For this reason I also find Yellow to be the weakest Pokémon game. It has level spikes everywhere, even on places where there were none in Red and Blue)
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Any time an NPC leads with a Fake Out mon. The more important the NPC, the worse it is. It destroys any hype the battle may have had and accomplishes very little, since the move is weak as hell and it's most likely Singles.
"Oh man, I made my way to the end of Isle of Armor! Time to rematch Mustard! Let's do this!"
*Mienshao used Fake Out!*
*Volcarona flinched!*
"Ummm, okay. NOW let's do this!"
Protect is also bad, but at least in the context of a boss gauntlet or something it does something productive by draining your PP.
"Oh man, I made my way to the end of Isle of Armor! Time to rematch Mustard! Let's do this!"
*Mienshao used Fake Out!*
*Volcarona flinched!*
"Ummm, okay. NOW let's do this!"
Protect is also bad, but at least in the context of a boss gauntlet or something it does something productive by draining your PP.
Pokédex archetypes and design-by-checklist: why small regional dexes are so boring
Buckle up, 'cause this rant is a long one. I struggled a bit to find a place to post it, but I figure this thread might be as good as any. I feel like we should have a discussion about this somewhat under-reported implication of Pokémon generations being so small nowadays.
What are Pokédex archetypes?
You may have noticed that each generation of Pokémon tends to introduce a few Pokémon whose concept is very similar to Pokémon from earlier generations. The most notable example is the starter Pokémon, which are always a set of three three-stage Grass-, Fire-, and Water-type evolution families. Likewise, there are the "regional birds", a three-stage family of Flying-types that appears early in the game. I want to call these examples of archetypes in a regional Pokédex.
There are several other archetypes in the regional Pokédexes. Design concepts that are always included in each new generation of Pokémon, with some variations in execution but generally always following the same concept.
Which archetypes are there?
With very few exceptions, the following archetypes appear in every Pokémon generation. Recent generations have tended to skip the archetype of trio legendaries and played a little with the typings of the regional birds and cutesies, but the other archetypes have been played more or more formulaic since Gen V or so. The number in brackets signals the minimum number of Pokémon used to fill the archetype - in certain generations there may have been more.
What is the problem and what does it have to do with dex size?
If the designers play all the archetypes straight, they will fill 37 slots in the regional Pokédex. For the very smallest regional dexes, such as Gens VI and VII, this means around half the available Pokédex slots are spent solely to "tick the boxes".
Additionally, each typing will usually be represented by at least one non-legendary evolutionary family per generation. Assuming one two-stage family for each of the 9 types not strictly represented by an archetype, that's an additional 18 slots for a total of 55 slots. This could imply that 55 is the theoretical lowest number of Pokémon in a generation, although obviously they could represent all the typings and fulfill all the archetypes by letting them overlap. If each typing is represented in a two-stage evolution family in addition to the archetypes, we end up at 73 dex slots. You may notice this is more than the total number of Pokémon introduced in Gen VI.
And here's the crux: When generations have become smaller in the 3D era, the number of archetypal Pokémon has not been reduced, but the number of non-archetypal ones have. Thus, a larger portion of the Pokédex becomes "design-by-checklist", while the more outlandish, experimental, and, well, fun designs become limited in number. The "room for creativity", if you will, can be defined as:
(number of Pokémon in dex) - (number of archetypal Pokémon),
or if you want to use the example numbers above:
(number of Pokémon in dex) - 55.
You may notice that with the recent generations being rather small, this number for them is around two dozen. For generations I, III, and V, the "room for creativity" still numbers around 100 when the archetypes are taken care of.
I think the plummeting number of non-archetypal three-stage evolution families provides a good illustration of the "room for creativity" being smaller. Gen V had 13 of these families, while there were 2 in Gen VI, 1 in Gen VII, and 3 in Gen VIII. It's not like Gen V neglected its archetypes, what it did was have a ton of room to be creative after the archetypes had been taken care of. Scrolling through recent regional dexes, I get an increasing impression of seeing "one family of this type, one of that type, one of that other type ... Hmm ... haven't seen Steel yet - oh, there it is, and now we've come to the bloated "legendaries" section of the dex already."
In short, the drive to fulfill all the archetypes and represent each typing with at least one evolutionary family has left very little room to do anything else when the generations are so small. Additionally, a large number of legendary and mythical Pokémon (see all the Ultra Beasts in Gen VII, for instance), and lately regional evolutions, leaves even fewer slots for the non-conventional designs. Gen VII had an overwhelming number of single-stage Pokémon, and it's reasonable to say this is because they wanted to keep the generation as small as possible. Gen VIII fares slightly better, but most of its Pokédex still feels somewhat formulaic. That's not to say that the archetypal designs are necessarily bad - heck, many of them are outright awesome. However, it leaves you missing the different, and makes the regional dex feel lacking compared to those of earlier generations.
Ironically, the archetypes also exacerbate a problem that was meant to be reduced by making smaller generations in the first place: dex bloat. With so many of the Pokémon in each generation being there to "tick the boxes", and so few Pokémon being introduced overall, it means the fraction of "repeated" (or at least, "samey-feeling") designs is higher than ever. The Pokémon that feel like you've seen before take up a greater overall portion of all Pokémon designs over a span of several generations. Put another way: In Gen I, the starters and their evolutions take up ~1/16 of the Pokédex, while on average between Gen VI-VII they take up 1/9. It's not like each generation nowadays introduces more starters, but the number of starters has stayed the same while the Pokédex has shrunk around them.
Concluding remarks
I can see why the designers want to reduce the number of Pokémon introduced in one generation, but I think they are going about it the wrong way. They insist on following the same checklist as they did when each generation introduced 100+ Pokémon. However, this means that the room to do stuff outside the checklist is all that's being reduced. They won't ever cut the regional bird or the Pikachu clone, but they will readily cut the regional equivalent of Oddish, Axew, Sandile, or Spheal, or reduce their family to a single-stage Pokémon. This leaves those kinds of Pokémon endangered, and the overall diversity of a Pokémon generation becomes a lot poorer.
Or am I completely off the rocker here? What do you think?
Buckle up, 'cause this rant is a long one. I struggled a bit to find a place to post it, but I figure this thread might be as good as any. I feel like we should have a discussion about this somewhat under-reported implication of Pokémon generations being so small nowadays.
What are Pokédex archetypes?
You may have noticed that each generation of Pokémon tends to introduce a few Pokémon whose concept is very similar to Pokémon from earlier generations. The most notable example is the starter Pokémon, which are always a set of three three-stage Grass-, Fire-, and Water-type evolution families. Likewise, there are the "regional birds", a three-stage family of Flying-types that appears early in the game. I want to call these examples of archetypes in a regional Pokédex.
There are several other archetypes in the regional Pokédexes. Design concepts that are always included in each new generation of Pokémon, with some variations in execution but generally always following the same concept.
Which archetypes are there?
With very few exceptions, the following archetypes appear in every Pokémon generation. Recent generations have tended to skip the archetype of trio legendaries and played a little with the typings of the regional birds and cutesies, but the other archetypes have been played more or more formulaic since Gen V or so. The number in brackets signals the minimum number of Pokémon used to fill the archetype - in certain generations there may have been more.
- Starter Pokémon: Three-stage Grass-, Water-, and Fire-types (9 Pokémon per generation)
- Regional birds: Three-stage Flying-types, usually with a primary Normal-typing (3 Pokémon, except in generations II and III)
- Regional bugs: Three-stage Bug-types, usually appearing on one of the first routes, showcasing a larva - pupa - insect metamorphosis as an allegory for Pokémon evolution (3 Pokémon, except in generations II and IV)
- Regional rodents: Two-stage Normal-types, usually based on rodents, that appear very early in the game (2 Pokémon)
- Two-stage cutesy Normal-type: A less obvious archetype which nevertheless has been present in every generation. Two-stage Normal-types that appear early-ish in the games and tend to look adorable. Think Jigglypuff/Meowth, Teddiursa, Skitty, Buneary, Minccino, Litleo, Stufful, and Wooloo (2 Pokémon)
- Pseudo-legendaries: Three-stage Pokémon appearing in the late-game. Usually Dragon-type (3 Pokémon)
- Pikaclone: An Electric-type rodent with round cheeks and beady eyes, generally being an obvious attempt to replicate the feel and success of Pikachu (1 Pokémon)
- Cover legendaries: Legendary Pokémon appearing on the covers of the games. Tends to include a third member associated with the primary duo somehow (3 Pokémon, except in generations I and II)
- Mythical Pokémon: Special legendary Pokémon handed out during special events (3 Pokémon in recent generations)
- Trio legendaries: A set of three legendary Pokémon, forming a separate sub-plot from that of the cover legendaries. An archetype that hasn't been played by the book since Gen V (3 Pokémon, except in Gen VII. Not present in generations VI and VIII)
- Fossil Pokémon: Usually appearing as two sets of two-stage Rock-type Pokémon, although Gen VIII put a twist on the formula (4 Pokémon. Not present in generations II and VII)
- Stand-alone, non-evolving Normal-type. A one-stage Normal-type Pokémon that does not evolve. Usually found mid-late in the game. Ubiquitous in the earlier generations, less common nowadays, included here because there's still at least one Pokémon in every generation that fits the description if you count Indeedee (1 Pokémon)
What is the problem and what does it have to do with dex size?
If the designers play all the archetypes straight, they will fill 37 slots in the regional Pokédex. For the very smallest regional dexes, such as Gens VI and VII, this means around half the available Pokédex slots are spent solely to "tick the boxes".
Additionally, each typing will usually be represented by at least one non-legendary evolutionary family per generation. Assuming one two-stage family for each of the 9 types not strictly represented by an archetype, that's an additional 18 slots for a total of 55 slots. This could imply that 55 is the theoretical lowest number of Pokémon in a generation, although obviously they could represent all the typings and fulfill all the archetypes by letting them overlap. If each typing is represented in a two-stage evolution family in addition to the archetypes, we end up at 73 dex slots. You may notice this is more than the total number of Pokémon introduced in Gen VI.
And here's the crux: When generations have become smaller in the 3D era, the number of archetypal Pokémon has not been reduced, but the number of non-archetypal ones have. Thus, a larger portion of the Pokédex becomes "design-by-checklist", while the more outlandish, experimental, and, well, fun designs become limited in number. The "room for creativity", if you will, can be defined as:
(number of Pokémon in dex) - (number of archetypal Pokémon),
or if you want to use the example numbers above:
(number of Pokémon in dex) - 55.
You may notice that with the recent generations being rather small, this number for them is around two dozen. For generations I, III, and V, the "room for creativity" still numbers around 100 when the archetypes are taken care of.
I think the plummeting number of non-archetypal three-stage evolution families provides a good illustration of the "room for creativity" being smaller. Gen V had 13 of these families, while there were 2 in Gen VI, 1 in Gen VII, and 3 in Gen VIII. It's not like Gen V neglected its archetypes, what it did was have a ton of room to be creative after the archetypes had been taken care of. Scrolling through recent regional dexes, I get an increasing impression of seeing "one family of this type, one of that type, one of that other type ... Hmm ... haven't seen Steel yet - oh, there it is, and now we've come to the bloated "legendaries" section of the dex already."
In short, the drive to fulfill all the archetypes and represent each typing with at least one evolutionary family has left very little room to do anything else when the generations are so small. Additionally, a large number of legendary and mythical Pokémon (see all the Ultra Beasts in Gen VII, for instance), and lately regional evolutions, leaves even fewer slots for the non-conventional designs. Gen VII had an overwhelming number of single-stage Pokémon, and it's reasonable to say this is because they wanted to keep the generation as small as possible. Gen VIII fares slightly better, but most of its Pokédex still feels somewhat formulaic. That's not to say that the archetypal designs are necessarily bad - heck, many of them are outright awesome. However, it leaves you missing the different, and makes the regional dex feel lacking compared to those of earlier generations.
Ironically, the archetypes also exacerbate a problem that was meant to be reduced by making smaller generations in the first place: dex bloat. With so many of the Pokémon in each generation being there to "tick the boxes", and so few Pokémon being introduced overall, it means the fraction of "repeated" (or at least, "samey-feeling") designs is higher than ever. The Pokémon that feel like you've seen before take up a greater overall portion of all Pokémon designs over a span of several generations. Put another way: In Gen I, the starters and their evolutions take up ~1/16 of the Pokédex, while on average between Gen VI-VII they take up 1/9. It's not like each generation nowadays introduces more starters, but the number of starters has stayed the same while the Pokédex has shrunk around them.
Concluding remarks
I can see why the designers want to reduce the number of Pokémon introduced in one generation, but I think they are going about it the wrong way. They insist on following the same checklist as they did when each generation introduced 100+ Pokémon. However, this means that the room to do stuff outside the checklist is all that's being reduced. They won't ever cut the regional bird or the Pikachu clone, but they will readily cut the regional equivalent of Oddish, Axew, Sandile, or Spheal, or reduce their family to a single-stage Pokémon. This leaves those kinds of Pokémon endangered, and the overall diversity of a Pokémon generation becomes a lot poorer.
Or am I completely off the rocker here? What do you think?
I think what really gets me about a lot of these archetypes is that there’s an easy solution. Regional variants.
Having an early bird, bug and rodent early on has an important role, true enough, but it gets a bit weird when every landmass seems to have its own completely new unique one. That said it would get a bit boring to have the same old Pokemon used for this role over and over... but there’s 8 gens of these things now, so why not have variants of Ledian or Pidgey that go in wildly different directions to show this off? The past two gens even done this with Rattata and Zigzagoon but then just made a new rodent anyway! Regional variants are a perfect opportunity not just for creative new takes, but also for common tropes and archetypes to strike a balance between worldbuilding cohesion and having something new. Countless dex entries have talked about certain species being in many regions and having slight behavioural, aesthetic and biological differences; so maybe it’s about time we saw more of that!
If Pokémon insists on keeping around its vast legacy of creatures - and many people in the past year and a half have quite passionately agreed that they should - then they should get a bit smarter about using it rather than insisting on completely redoing every creature they have.
Having an early bird, bug and rodent early on has an important role, true enough, but it gets a bit weird when every landmass seems to have its own completely new unique one. That said it would get a bit boring to have the same old Pokemon used for this role over and over... but there’s 8 gens of these things now, so why not have variants of Ledian or Pidgey that go in wildly different directions to show this off? The past two gens even done this with Rattata and Zigzagoon but then just made a new rodent anyway! Regional variants are a perfect opportunity not just for creative new takes, but also for common tropes and archetypes to strike a balance between worldbuilding cohesion and having something new. Countless dex entries have talked about certain species being in many regions and having slight behavioural, aesthetic and biological differences; so maybe it’s about time we saw more of that!
If Pokémon insists on keeping around its vast legacy of creatures - and many people in the past year and a half have quite passionately agreed that they should - then they should get a bit smarter about using it rather than insisting on completely redoing every creature they have.
Dex archetypes are just as boring as starting out in a grassy field every generation and if they want to have smaller numbers, they absolutely try to put a new spin on, or outright omit "the rat," "the bug," etc.
Having different early commons could not only get the team's creative juices flowing (what commons would you find on a beach? A mountainside?), but it could also bring more hype to the generation. Tropes aren't bad, of course, but variety's even better.
Having different early commons could not only get the team's creative juices flowing (what commons would you find on a beach? A mountainside?), but it could also bring more hype to the generation. Tropes aren't bad, of course, but variety's even better.
I have a bit of an odd relationship with these archetypes, since I consider many of my favourites to be similar in concept across generations. So on one hand, I have reason to want archetypes to continue to be used, on the other hand "midgame objectmon I find cute" (magnemite, baltoy, bronzor, litwick/klink, klefki) is apparently not solid enough to persist into gens 7 & 8 so I want the base animals out of the way to maintain space for my preferred styles.
I don't mind level spikes but I wish Gamefreak could just put together a competent move-set for the final bosses. We have decades of competitive formats for them to use as examples. Like, does Leon's Dragapult really need Dragonbreath when it could just get its signature Dragon Darts? Special attacking Rillaboom + Cinderace? Leer + Snarl Haxorus?
The AI is terrible so for the bosses to be a challenge you either need a level spike or competent moves on strong Pokemon. Could they just like, put Dragon Dance on Haxorus or something?
Edit: also why is it so hard to give all the final bosses 6 Pokemon?
The AI is terrible so for the bosses to be a challenge you either need a level spike or competent moves on strong Pokemon. Could they just like, put Dragon Dance on Haxorus or something?
Edit: also why is it so hard to give all the final bosses 6 Pokemon?
His cinderace and Rillaboom are both fully phisical, and his Haxorus while doesn't have DDance is still pretty scary if you don't outspeed him (it'll almost always use outrage or iron tail)
While I can agree that they could have made his dragapult phisical or mixed, his set is pretty solid with neat coverage outside of his dragon stab being awful
Honestly as I wrote in this post, of all the things you can hate of SwSh, I think Leon's boss battle is not one of them.
It's one of the best Champions if not the best Champion fights we have had so far.
(Even regarding the level spike, it's high but not high enough that you can't deal with it, even excluding Eternatus on regular gameplay the player's pokemon should be around the same level or just slightly lower than his)
He runs special Cinder + Rillaboom in masters league battle tower. Putting DD or SD on Haxorus would be fair as for the most part you can just sweep him with the busted Dynamax ability.
I just used Leon as an example but as far as bosses go he's fairly competent. But I was talking about champion move-sets as a whole. Cynthia's Milotic for example doesn't even learn Recover or Kahili's Braviary using Air Slash + Brave Bird. There's just a lot of ways they could tweak move sets to be stronger without drowning us in level bonuses.
I agree Leon is overall pretty strong as far as Pokemon champions go.
The battle tower has him run like 6 different cinderace set, it's a different beast, and you can actually easily lose to his weird shit when you're expecting the phisical ace and get nuked by scarfed focus blast (yes, it has that).
And fuck mr Rime seriously. Several of his Haxorus sets also have Dragon Dance and it's one of the scariest pokemon there
To be a bit of a devil's advocate, there would technically be nothing wrong with these "archtypes" if they didn't play them as these archtypes. Let me explain by going down the list (red I agree with, blue I disagree with):
Starters: Of the archtypes that has this problem, Starters is a strong one due to both their role in game and marketability. It would be very hard to break them out of any of their two famous traits: being a Grass/Fire/Water triangle & being a 3-stage family. Sure, there are other Type Triangles. Sure, they could do maybe a 2-stage, a form gimmick, maybe have one Starter you can evolve into 3 different Pokemon, etc.. But even if GF were interested in doing that I'm afraid the marketability side may strongly object or may even have the power to outright veto the idea ("Hmruph, what be this balderdash? Don't mess with the Starters! You can take that idea and do what you did with the Elemental Monkeys in Black & White. You'll have parallel Starters... and not mess with our profits"). So, yeah, this one is very likely a lost cause.
Regional Bird: It used to be a case where the regional Flying-types were boing, based on common birds and being Flying/Normal, but this hasn't been the case in common gens. Infact, recent gens have been recycling the older gen birds as early route fodder so they could make the "regional bird" more interesting. This is one archtype where I feel it has likely already been broken to where, instead of being a "regional bird", it's more just a new bird-based Pokemon for that region. The only tradition of it that remains are being available early and sometimes being 3-stage, though at the same time I've think they've even taken that design aspect and done a unique twist with it. The most recent three "regional birds" (Fletchling, Pikipek, & Rookidee) are technically a hodgepodge of many different birds and that sometimes changes upon evolution. Fletchling, Pikipek, & Rookidee are a robin, woodpecker, and tit/chickadee which more-or-less common birds which fits the "regional bird" identity of previous. BUT when they evolve things change. The middle-stage are usually bird species you likely never heard of, sort of GF's sneaky way of getting those in and having the player ask "but why this it's own Pokemon?". They also connect to the final stage which is a big departure from the first stage, had these Pokemon been introduced inearly gens they would have been their own Pokemon and not a regional bird: a hawk, a toucan, and a raven (combined with a black knight). They have their cake and eat it too, a early normal bird but later on a unique bird (sometimes with a unique Typing among other traits). I wouldn't be surprised if a "regional bird" will one day not have the Flying-type, maybe based on the ground bird species (here hoping for a Ground-type Kiwi/Cassowary/Ostrich!).
Regional Bug: Honestly same situation above, though to a lesser extent. The two most recent bugs, Grubbin and Blipbug (or rather their final evos) bring in some interesting designs that past gens wouldn't be associated with the "regional bug". However, they still stick to other traits associated with the archetype like using common known bugs & being 3-stage. But the "regional bug" has the potential of breaking away from these traits, there's many bugs and not all have the same life cycle. Another thing they could work on is doing what they've been doing with birds is combining certain species together and have that morph as it evolves. Not I can see why the "regional bug" doesn't do this normally as bugs are a group which appearance rapidly change as they grow up, but once again there are plenty of bugs and they can find ones which aren't as complex in their lifecycle (or just look the other way for sake of creating an interesting Pokemon design).
Regional Rodent: Sadly this is one where they're sticking with the archetype for particularly no reason. They've began evolving the the regional bird and bug, they need to start with the rodent. We have enough basic Normal rodents now of all the common rodents you'll see, like with the above just start recycling those and if they ever make any new rodents try to be more unique.
Cutesty Pokemon: I'm not sure how much this is an archetype, like if you count this you might as well also include "Cool-looking Pokemon". Yeah, I know you included the "they're also Normal-type", but honestly this sounds like it's just picking on cute Pokemon which have their places as much as any other design aesthetic. I'm more thinking this isn't an archetype but more of a problem that cute Pokemon have, GF is more focused on making them cute rather then giving them a strong Type association they end up making them Normal-type.
Pikaclone: All I can say is that its at least one Pokemon and they do try something different with it each time.
Mythical Pokemon: Now that Pokemon has moved onto doing DLC I don't think this is much of an issue anymore as the Mythical Pokemon are being added on after the game's release. No longer do GF have to pretend those three additional Pokemon in the code with a high BST aren't there, now they aren't and can be designed later which opens up a space for a new com mon during main development.
Cover Legendaries: Same issue as Starters. While a bit more free what they can do with them like giving them an alternate form, Pokemon Company ain't not going to have at least two cover Legendaries. They want a pair of strong and impressive looking Pokemon on the cover and I can't argue against that. Honestly what makes this more annoying is dependent on the game story, if the Legendaries aren't really a big part of the story and feel more shoved in (or their role in the story was meant to be a surprise yet hard to hide them when they're the first Pokemon you see) then you kind of question why are they on the cover. And of course this then goes back to an even bigger archaic decision: to release two versions of the same game. Was done when Pokemon came out to give players a reason to trade, but nowadays the only reason we have two versions is cause they can make two times the money... and even then they're now holding tranfers and the GTS hostage behind a paywall...
Trio Legendaries: They sort of tossed those out starting Gen 6, instead more wanting to opt for Legendary Hunts for all the past Legendaries which kind of shows how bloated they made the "Legendary" group.
Fossil Pokemon: Not in every generation, might as well make Eeveelutions a Archetype if you're going to make this one. Also I (generally) like seeing new Fossil Pokemon as GF do their best to not just making them all dinosaurs but various prehistoric animals. They could also easily extend this group to include more recently extinct animals. Only major issue with Fossils is that up until recently they were all Rock-types but looks like they're willing to break that tradition... too bad the Fossil Pokemon they started with was the Galarian...
Mono Normal-Type: Like the cutesy Pokemon, I don't quite think the issue is that they're Normal-type but rather these Pokemon have a gimmick to them and GF had assigned non-Type specific gimmicks to being Normal-type (notably ones which has a Type changing gimmick).
Okay, sure, roughly 37 Pokemon are going to follow the above pattern, but as I mentioned that doesn't mean they're wasted dex spots. At the moment maybe the rodents are, but the Bird and Bugs have improved these past generations. The Cutsey and Mono Normal-types you mentioned don't have to be Normal-type, it's just circumstance that makes many of them Normal-type, they also may have a gimmick which takes center stage in their design. Pikaclones are expected but as long as they keep doing interesting things with them I'm not going to say they should stop, same with Fossil (especially now they've moved on from being part Rock-type, or if they "go back" maybe they could do a twist like having them all part Ground or Steel). I like the idea of the Late Bloomers, but they need to move on from Dragon-types. Also the Cover Legendaries are usually a batch of different Types so while expected they're not boring (it's just their heightened importance in games where they're not as involved which is the problem people have with them, not that they exist). The Starters I would also like to see some new ideas from that break the mold, but I won't lie and say I get excited when they're announced when the new games are (though I wish the final stages would stop being anthropomorphized to the extent they more look like humans in exaggerated animal costumes).
Great post overall, though this highlights an annoyance I have with the Pokemon fandom at large: giving Pokemon the Ground type not because they're masters of earth-bending, but because "well they live on the ground so they must be Ground-type".
Well who else would be the master of the Ground? Infact I would say a bird that has forgone it's ancestry skill of flight to be a ground dweller would, in the Pokemon world, probably make it more of a Ground master then just an animal that for its entire species existence has lived on the ground. Heck I still don't know why the Gligar family is part Ground-type.
Wait this is a thing?
Genuine question, but I can't think of mons that do this. I might have not noticed this, but this sounds like the crap bad fakemon creators would do.
I dunno, maybe it's just a Pikachu thing. I remember they once retyped every mon on the hypothetical that the Normal type never existed, and Ground basically became the new Normal.
Excuse me? Why am I personally being attacked?
the second half of the post, i imagine
which reads less of an attack, personally
Actually, I do remember some Mega Typhlosions (I think one of them was from foofootoo?) that made it Fire/Ground just because it's a badger.
to be fair, so far as ground types go, a badger kinda makes sense to go with. Since its known for making burows. Obviously not everything that digs gets to be a ground type, but as a mega, it would also be in prime position to get a type change/addition since it'd be exaggerating features and whatever. Like how Sceptile got to be a dragon (because Lizard) or how Gyarados got to be dark (because Atrocious) or how Altaria got to be fairy (because just look at it). Probably lean into being a volcano, too, so you got that connection.
Okay, I found the post. Yeah, a lot become Ground-type, but just as many became Fighting and Psychic and I really tried to expand what Types Pokemon could have access to. Granted there does seem like a few I kind of just "defaulted" to Ground, but being the practice was that the Normal-type didn't exist and such Pokemon didn't have any other Typing affiliation (nor seemed like a strong physical Fighter or mentally powerful Psychic) it was more out of desperation. But Ground didn't become the new "Normal-type" and some had good reasons to be made Ground.
I'd imagine that probably has to do with it having a perceived (this being the key word here) connection with volcanoes. Quilava & Tyhplosion are the "Volcano Pokemon", their names has to do with volcanic material, and notably learns Lava Plume and Eruption (though oddly not Earth Power, though it gets a few Ground-type moves all Pokemon get).