Damn I was gonna say 'ah maybe he got the Leftovers through Munchlax's Pickup', but I checked and his Munchlax has Thick Fat.
Still, a very neat thing for you to notice!
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The Best and Worst Boss Fights in Pokemon
- Thread starter Yung Dramps
- Start date
Still, a very neat thing for you to notice!
I mean, Munchlax just comes with Leftovers regardless of ability.
prepare yourself to be livid now then, i'd say.
yeah i'm aware i sat through the bdsp pre-release and leak cycle
On apparently episode 2 of me finding cool hazard-related things in my playthrough of BDSP (what prompted me to look into the rival movesets was him using Stealth Rock), Cyrus at Spear Pillar decided to compensate for his Stealth Rock weakness by running Defog on his Honchkrow, and is smart enough to use it only when hazards are up. Several trainers previously have run hazard-setting leads, but this is the first time I'm aware of an NPC expecting the player to use hazards against them and preparing accordingly. This could potentially be constrained to Sinnoh since having a hazard as a TM forced on the player and learnable by all three starters is an unusual situation, but I'm glad ICLA made the most of it regardless.
I'm going to unleash a big time hot-take, but here's another boss I think is, if not best, then really good:
Petrel Heartgold/Soulsilver, Koffing Level 30 X5, Weezing Level 32.
... Hear me out here. Is this an epic battle, going up against the best Johto has to offer? No. Is it a thrilling conclusion to an evil team that's throwing everything it has at you? No. This battle isn't any of those. What it is is hilarious.
Consider your average evil team. Many of its grunts and lower-level employees will have common mons all over the place: your Raticates, your Grimers, if they're lucky a Muk or an Arbok. The higher-level members are the ones with unique mons. Ariana, for instance, has Murkrow, Arbok and Vileplume.
Thus, Petrel's choice sticks out like a sore thumb. Then you look at the moves. And you realize every single one of his Pokemon have an explosive move.
It feels like a deliberate choice by Game Freak. And in story, of COURSE the evil team is going to deploy six Pokemon that can and will explode in your face. They're an evil team! What do they care about morals or good Pokemon?
So, Petrel. I salute you, you glorious troll you.
Petrel Heartgold/Soulsilver, Koffing Level 30 X5, Weezing Level 32.
... Hear me out here. Is this an epic battle, going up against the best Johto has to offer? No. Is it a thrilling conclusion to an evil team that's throwing everything it has at you? No. This battle isn't any of those. What it is is hilarious.
Consider your average evil team. Many of its grunts and lower-level employees will have common mons all over the place: your Raticates, your Grimers, if they're lucky a Muk or an Arbok. The higher-level members are the ones with unique mons. Ariana, for instance, has Murkrow, Arbok and Vileplume.
Thus, Petrel's choice sticks out like a sore thumb. Then you look at the moves. And you realize every single one of his Pokemon have an explosive move.
It feels like a deliberate choice by Game Freak. And in story, of COURSE the evil team is going to deploy six Pokemon that can and will explode in your face. They're an evil team! What do they care about morals or good Pokemon?
So, Petrel. I salute you, you glorious troll you.
And now for the worst.
Falkner: Level 7 Pidgey, Level 9 Pidgeotto
Not even a single double digit leveled Pokemon. The desperate use of Mud Slap for a move. Using a Kanto Pokemon and an evolved Kanto Pokemon without showing off anything new beyond freakin Mud Slap.
The verdict?
Oh Brother, this guy stinks! - YouTube
Falkner: Level 7 Pidgey, Level 9 Pidgeotto
Not even a single double digit leveled Pokemon. The desperate use of Mud Slap for a move. Using a Kanto Pokemon and an evolved Kanto Pokemon without showing off anything new beyond freakin Mud Slap.
The verdict?
Oh Brother, this guy stinks! - YouTube
Falkner is especially annoying for me because the fact that his team is so low-levelled is actually what makes it difficult if you're doing certain self-imposed challenges, e.g. not levelling past the gym leader's ace, using the same number of Pokemon as them, and never using bag items in-battle. If you don't use Totodile he can be extremely (if arbitrarily) tough to beat for a lot of teams.
Cyndaquil, Geodude and Onix are all stuck with Tackle for damage, you can't get Butterfree/Beedrill, and pretty much everything else really struggles 1v1 against the much stronger Pidgeotto. Mud Slap just adds to the frustration.
Having said that, theorycrafting how to beat him with two Level 9 Bug-types in my mono-Bug run of Crystal and then successfully executing the plan on attempt 2 was very satisfying.
I’m not fond of this team composition but I can tell he is pulling “I am taking you with me” themed team, so if you don’t heal up, you’ll regret it.
He do a little explodin’.
They've been said before, but upon reflection I think I would continue to put the Sinnoh E4, including Platinum, for worst. Lucian is sort of passable but Bertha and Flint are victims of how many solid Water, Ground, and Grass-types there are on offer in Sinnoh. As for Aaron...remember that discussion from earlier about how many Ice gym leaders/late-game bosses kind of suck because every option in the region can hit them hard? At least Ice can hit hard back. Aaron actually has a solid team composition but it feels a little useless when you're playing against at least a broken bird (and even without Staraptor, Crobat does just as fine, maybe Drapion and Scizor get a little scarier). It just feels like a weird type lineup for this E4, but to be real with so many good Gym Leaders, I was kind of struggling to think of replacements that had adequate Sinnoh dex material.
Spoilering PLA stuff just in case, but...
Spoilering PLA stuff just in case, but...
Volo. Man, what a fight! As a disclaimer, I didn't check out any mechanics or anything before, so I definitely didn't use "optimal strats" and my Pokemon were roughly around his level or 3-4 levels higher. I will concede that part of the reason this fight was tense was PLA's weird battle mechanics that tbh I am not a fan of, although I appreciate the concept. But I feel like if you put his team on standard mechanics, it would still be a really fun fight-after all, it's Cynthia's team -Milotic + Hisuian Arcanine (which is still cool, it would've been weird for the final boss to not have a Hisuian Pokemon). Giratina is also a fantastic Pokemon for a final boss and honestly this achieves what BW2 Ghetsis couldn't, in having a bonkers legendary tacked on to the big bad. Maybe it's cause Giratina has a fear factor Kyu-B can't match, maybe it's the ridiculous bulk, maybe it's the right amount of hax with Shadow Force raising evasion. But I had enough trouble that I brought in the alpha Gardevoir from the Highlands and paired with an alpha Goodra I evolved from the Sliggoo in the Mirelands to pull through. Great way to end a surprisingly fun campaign.
Respectfully disagree. Sinnoh was the first Elite Four to have all its members not overlap species within their own teams. Now DP was obviously a train wreck despite this (*cough* Flint *cough*) but Platinum fixed that and produced what I believe might be the best Elite Four, discounting champions (though the gap would be even wider if I included champions). As I said, every other Elite Four till that point (Kanto, Johto, Hoenn) had at least one member who overlapped species, which is a pretty big transgression in my opinion. And I'm not sure Unova didn't take a step backward by shaving the initial Elite Four rosters from five to four.
Platinum Sinnoh's Elite Four isn't perfect, but its flaws are far less egregious in my view. Maybe Aaron could've dropped Drapion for Scyther and made Yanmega his ace. But the Drapion pick isn't completely outlandish on account of Skorupi being part Bug.
And say what you will about the ease of Bertha and Flint, their quality of mons is fairly solid. You couldn't do much better choosing five mon Ground and Fire boss rosters. Even if any decent Water cuts through them with ease, you couldn't design their rosters to be much better. A good Water type would've done that regardless, and most people run Water types on their in-game teams anyway.
And lastly Lucian. Really disagree on this one as I find him to be one of the best Elite Four members ever. Mr. Mime to set up screens. Zam and Espeon flexing the archetypal power of Psychics with their high Special Attack and Speed. Bronzong with none of the traditional weaknesses of Psychics, throwing a wrench in plans. And lastly Gallade as a complete subversion of Psychics focused on physical attack, plus removing two of the main Psychic weaknesses on account of its typing. Just a really well designed boss as a perfect leading act for Cynthia.
If I had to nominate a worst Elite Four, I would go with either Kanto or Hoenn's. Just an absurd number of overlapping species across both. It's legitimately hard to pick which one is worse as after the first member of each (Lorelei and Sydney, respectively) it goes completely downhill in quality from there. Gun to my head I'd probably choose Kanto as the worst, as the omission of Poliwrath from Bruno's team just makes zero sense to me.
Well, they put the Poliwrath in LGPE. Still no idea why no Primeape, though. It's not as if Onix is a better Pokemon, or a good one at that.
Giovanni is so anticlimactic. Supposed to be this super boss for a big part of the story but you just sweep his team with anything that can use surf, which you would have had to have used by that point in the game.
Gen 1/3 Giovanni is genuinely kinda hilarious as far as climactic boss fights go (except in Yellow). Teambuilding for a lategame Ground specialist in Kanto was always gonna be a little rough since every single Ground mon in RBY is weak to both Water and Ice, but even still the way things ended up for Giovanni was super rough.
The only two Ground moves on his RB team are Dig on Dugtrio (his weakest but fastest mon) and Fissure (which honestly doesn't even really count as a Ground move) on Rhydon. For those unaware, OHKO moves in Gen 1 failed if used against a faster opponent, rather than a higher-level opponent as in later gens. As a result, Giovanni's signature move will only ever work 30% of the time against opponents with no more than 53 Speed. On top of that, it also has Horn Drill anyway, so the only extra utility his signature move provides is against Ghost-types, all of which are virtually guaranteed to outspeed Rhydon anyway. Every other attack he uses is either Normal-type or literally Poison Sting.
In Yellow they gave him several excellent buffs. Swapping Rhyhorn for the Persian he uses throughout the game is mostly whatever, but it least it's something that'll get one hit off before crumpling to Surf. Fissure has been moved from Rhydon to Dugtrio, meaning it actually has a chance of going off. All of his Ground mons know Earthquake now and his Nidos both have Thunder to at least acknowledge his severe Water weakness. The level buff balances the fight out better too, even if the curve in Yellow can be a little frustrating overall.
Then in FRLG they took away the fun coverage moves and unevolved his Rhydon (???), which to this day still genuinely feels like an accident rather than a conscious design decision.
Well at the very least, while not a gym leader, Giovanni proved to be a threat in USUM. Although that's probably only mainly due to his Mega Mewtwo. Without Mewtwo just about any hard hitting water/grass types spell his end.
Also, anyone else feel he should've used Pokemon outside of Gen 1? Keep the Nidos, but add Pokemon like Gliscor, Gastrodon/Quagsire, or Torterra to name a few.
Also, anyone else feel he should've used Pokemon outside of Gen 1? Keep the Nidos, but add Pokemon like Gliscor, Gastrodon/Quagsire, or Torterra to name a few.
It would have made the battle more challenging, sure, but I think it was a sensible design choice to have all the mons used by Giovanni and the Team Rocket Grunts be from Gen 1. The whole Rainbow Rocket episode was a bit of a nostalgia trip and it doesn't really feel like a classic Giovanni battle if he's using a competently-constructed Ground team that covers its weaknesses lol.
This decision (or mistake) still irks me to this day. I like to think of the eighth gym battle in games to be a fairly climactic moment. Your last such battle completing an important chapter of your journey, that being the Gym challenge, before embarking on your final, most difficult chapter - the Elite Four gauntlet. It's supposed to be a pretty dramatic and momentous occasion. And most other (good) games deliver on this...except FRLG. Ending this chapter with a whimper against a Rhyhorn, which is not only NFE but most likely easily exploitable with a 4x weakness you're almost guaranteed at this point of the game to have a Pokémon with STAB on (Water).
A black mark on an otherwise pretty solid game.
I have mixed feelings about Ultra Necrozma. On the one hand, its difficulty is wholly deserved and creates an amazing climactic battle. But I feel like it might be difficult in the wrong way. Unlike, say, Cynthia, it’s not hard because of tactics or coverage, it’s hard because of the sheer power of it. This might be fine under a different battle system, but base stats as ludicrous as Unec at +2 everything necessitate either dumb hax like Zoroark or banging your head against it until the RNG favors you. You beat Cynthia by building the perfect balanced team and outsmarting her; you beat Unec by filling your team with Dark types and then hoping for crits/friendship/whatever. The totem battles also have this problem to some degree, but they are more bearable due to less raw power and the tactics of their SOS allies. Unec could be the perfect bossfight but it just falls a little short in crucial ways.
Edit: about the “dumb hax”, this is really something that plagues a lot of single-Pokemon bossfights, where Toxic wrecks it even without Potions, Encore and Disable bother it, Thunder Wave makes it significantly easier, etc etc. PLA’s antagonist strikes a stellar balance by sending you against a balanced team to weaken you and force you to play strategically before unleashing the OP legendary. Giratina is just one part of his team, and any tools you had to cheese it specifically may well be defeated by the time it comes out.
Edit: about the “dumb hax”, this is really something that plagues a lot of single-Pokemon bossfights, where Toxic wrecks it even without Potions, Encore and Disable bother it, Thunder Wave makes it significantly easier, etc etc. PLA’s antagonist strikes a stellar balance by sending you against a balanced team to weaken you and force you to play strategically before unleashing the OP legendary. Giratina is just one part of his team, and any tools you had to cheese it specifically may well be defeated by the time it comes out.
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Thing is, they don't have to be useless. If GF wants to make Ice a late-game gym*, include a Water/Ice type or two, a Thick Fat Piloswine, a couple other useful secondary types, maybe a TR setter, and it'd make it a reasonable challenge.
Melony's at least an attempt, compared to, say, Wulfric. Eiscue will live one hit, and Aurora Veil Lapras is a fight. And even that wasn't a great team. But most other Ice specialists are just bad.
*I'd make it like gym 3. And make it overleveled or with pokes that are known to be OP. Make it a challenge that specifically tells the player "Learn your type chart". Change the number of weaknesses from a downside of the gym into a strength.
That is quite frankly not a good design at all.
Tangentially-related PSA to all the rom hackers reading this thread for ideas, people don't actually wanna grind a competitive team in Pallet Town. Grinding is boring. Actually have strategic value on your bosses instead of stat gate bosses that rely on levels or BST. Do better. Make games that are actually fun to play and promote thinking instead of holding the fast-forward button on your pad.
Back on topic... Ice leaders just don't work late-game. Candice is a great example why. Ice has so many weaknesses that you will have a lot of options to handle them. It would be interesting to see what one would look like mid-game though.
It cannot be understated that over the past 25+ years of this franchise the amount of times they did an Ice gym leader/Elite 4 right can be counted with half a hand. And that was with Lorelei, Pryce, and Ruby/Sapphire Glacia, wanna know what they all had in common? They all had Ice/Water types with water type moves to counter your fire type starter/fire type of choice. No other ice type boss, Candice, Brycan, Wulfric, Gaeric, Grusha and even Emerald Glacia, who actually got rid of all of her water moves on her two Sealeos, did that much in almost 20 years now, the closet we got was with Melony's Lapras setting Aurora veil.
Anyway for my choice of worst boss fight, it's the low hanging fruit right now but its Geeta.
As a fight it's almost insulting how easy she was despite being the top champion of Paldea, carrying both some of the weakest and most boring mons with over half her team. Gogoat, Avalugg and Veluza are all really weak with some combination of bad stats, types, and abilities you can find on fully evolved pokemon in Paldea. And she straight up has nothing to stop the incredibly popular Skeledirge and Ceruledge, from straight up 1v6ing her team without breaking a sweat. Best she has to stop them is Veluza, who is certainly not doing anything worthwhile
But what disappoints me the most is how she actively sabotages herself, Kingambit gets sent out far too soon to be at it's full strength and Glimmora is a mon built to set up hazards and then die, but is instead sent out dead last.
And I know she's 'supposed' to be easy because Nemona is the real final boss of her route, but so was Ghetsis for BW and N was still a pretty hard fight anyway.
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"Ice has so many weaknesses that you will have a lot of options to handle them. "
That's why I said it. Make an ice-type gym in the midgame, stick more powerful mons than you'd expect there, but because it's Ice, the player will likely have multiple SE options against it.
The Team Star leaders were an interesting challenge this time around. Not hugely impressive, but after the letdown of all the non-Iono gym leaders, their Starmobiles actually managed to put up a fight.
Back to being annoyed at Scarlet and Violet. Geeta gets a lot of (deserved) criticism for her team but the Elite Four shouldn't be ignored, either. A full third of the two latter member's teams have a 4x weakness to Ice, and one speedy Ice type rampages across their teams in general. Rika tries with her typings, but Whiscash and Camerupt weren't great options in Gen 3, and they look even worse now.