(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

[QuentinQuonce]

K so I'm watching the "Emerald's Victory Road trainers" video today and it reminded me that Emerald inexplicably moves Wally to the beginning rather than the end of Victory Road. In a game which largely makes changes for the better this one is baffling. Wally's team is objectively decent by NPC standards and having it come at the end feels so much more sensible, especially as the trainer immediately after him has possibly the worst team in there: a single Roselia (which you've literally already just defeated because Wally has one as well!). Granted Emerald has a pretty brutal tag battle at the end of Victory Road RS doesn't, but that fight is actually skippable.

 

[DrumstickGaming]

the fact that these two albums of music have very similar titles

 

[Cobalt Empoleon]

K so I'm watching the "Emerald's Victory Road trainers" video today and it reminded me that Emerald inexplicably moves Wally to the beginning rather than the end of Victory Road. In a game which largely makes changes for the better this one is baffling. Wally's team is objectively decent by NPC standards and having it come at the end feels so much more sensible, especially as the trainer immediately after him has possibly the worst team in there: a single Roselia (which you've literally already just defeated because Wally has one as well!). Granted Emerald has a pretty brutal tag battle at the end of Victory Road RS doesn't, but that fight is actually skippable.

It seems like the beginning of a philosophical shift away from attrition as a form of difficulty, despite Wally's power level working quite well for an end-of-dungeon boss where your team maybe isn't at 100%.

If nothing else, I think he should've gotten a small level bump in Emerald to compensate for the bump from RS Wallace (43) to Juan (46). As it stands, Emerald has the added anticlimax of him having a lower-levelled ace than the 8th Gym Leader (although he has higher levels overall).

One positive change: in Emerald he gets two Full Restores instead of two Super Potions (lol).

 

[Worldie]

One positive change: in Emerald he gets two Full Restores instead of two Super Potions (lol).

Some trainers having items often just doesn't work as difficulty anyway. By the end of the game the player, even a newer one, usually has somewhat mastered the type chart and is probably just hitting things for supereffective damage / probably 1shotting or 2shotting enemy pokemon.

The opponent goes "hah, you brought my pokemon to 10% hp with that hit, but i'll full heal it!" only for you to just... do it again... doesn't exactly create for any difficulty, only annoyance.

 

[Cobalt Empoleon]

Some trainers having items often just doesn't work as difficulty anyway. By the end of the game the player, even a newer one, usually has somewhat mastered the type chart and is probably just hitting things for supereffective damage / probably 1shotting or 2shotting enemy pokemon.

The opponent goes "hah, you brought my pokemon to 10% hp with that hit, but i'll full heal it!" only for you to just... do it again... doesn't exactly create for any difficulty, only annoyance.

All I meant by that part of my post was that lategame Super Potions tend to be actively detrimental for an AI trainer, whereas Full Restores are at least turn-neutral.

Also 7yo me playing Sapphire for the first time definitely didn't master the mechanics and was always very underlevelled, so Full Restores undoubtedly made things tougher. You can certainly argue that it's not a good kind of difficulty, but that's a separate issue.

 

[Sixfortyfive]

The opponent goes "hah, you brought my pokemon to 10% hp with that hit, but i'll full heal it!" only for you to just... do it again... doesn't exactly create for any difficulty, only annoyance.

As stupid as this always has been, there's some part of the "gotta soften him up first so that the ~90% damage move KOs instead of triggers Full Restore" process that tickles my lizard brain. Like it's kind of engineered to make the player think that he or she is "outsmarting" the opponent despite this being the simplest "read" of all time.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Gorgeous cover but literally who tf signed off on that Jolteon/Dedenne artwork because-

 

[Yung Dramps]

Yknow I kinda had an epiphany about an actual big issue with SWSH's DLC that not only feels ludicrous in hindsight to be just now realizing but also amazes me that I have seen nobody else bring up.

Why did they all but completely drop the Galar Gym Challenge as the central thrust?

I mean, you have Klara and Avery as Gym Leaders in training, sure. Mustard and Peony are also former champions. But that's pretty tangential considering what we're talking about, no? They made a whole game about competing in a Pokemon battling professional sports league with massive stadiums and stars laden in corporate sponsorships and then its expansion packs have basically nothing to do with this. It's not like the base game didn't leave room for doing more with this concept, either: On the contrary, they repeatedly establish the existence of a minor league and let you buy Gym Leader uniforms for all 18 types and yet by the end of the content output a full third of the type chart doesn't have any leaders assigned to it.

I can't really do a big diatribe on prescribing a fix to this without veering into wishlisting but SV's DLC was able to satisfactorily elaborate on the school setting and Area Zero mythos* so it shouldn't be that hard

*Admittedly this is mostly left up to Indigo Disk but I always interpreted Teal Mask as a "summer vacation" DLC in between the main school year and an exchange program, although I can't actually confirm this as the developer intention

 

[R_N]

Yknow I kinda had an epiphany about an actual big issue with SWSH's DLC that not only feels ludicrous in hindsight to be just now realizing but also amazes me that I have seen nobody else bring up.

Why did they all but completely drop the Galar Gym Challenge as the central thrust?

I mean, you have Klara and Avery as Gym Leaders in training, sure. Mustard and Peony are also former champions. But that's pretty tangential considering what we're talking about, no? They made a whole game about competing in a Pokemon battling professional sports league with massive stadiums and stars laden in corporate sponsorships and then its expansion packs have basically nothing to do with this. It's not like the base game didn't leave room for doing more with this concept, either: On the contrary, they repeatedly establish the existence of a minor league and let you buy Gym Leader uniforms for all 18 types and yet by the end of the content output a full third of the type chart doesn't have any leaders assigned to it.

I can't really do a big diatribe on prescribing a fix to this without veering into wishlisting but SV's DLC was able to satisfactorily elaborate on the school setting and Area Zero mythos* so it shouldn't be that hard

*Admittedly this is mostly left up to Indigo Disk but I always interpreted Teal Mask as a "summer vacation" DLC in between the main school year and an exchange program, although I can't actually confirm this as the developer intention

I assume it was just experimentation with the concept. You can do them at any point (well, Crown Tundra has a couple caveats, but mostly sticks to it) so they decided to try and make them mostly unrelated side-stories that focus on very different things not just from the primary story's aesthetics but from each other. I can easily see how they got to that point from the brainstorming session to final product

With SV they decided to do something that hues closer to the main thrust of the game, as well as having both parts connect to each other. Likely this too was just experimenting with the DLC conceit and purposely deviating from how they functioned in the previous game.

For gen 10 who knows, maybe they do a mix of both ideas or try experimenting even more!

 

[DrrT]

Okay, long post incoming because I meant to post random thoughts here sooner but didn't have the chance to:

1. This is extremely late but I got reminded about it by my brother playing trough the Indigo Disk: the Tapus would have been so perfect for the Terrarium. They wouldn't be any more lore breaking than Reshiram and Zekrom chilling in Paldea, and I still don't buy GF thought Koko would be such a problem in competitive. Similarly, while it's probably just because it will be avaliable anyways in ZA, Diancie would have been so much more fitting as the hidden mythical rather than Meloetta. The Underdepths are full of Carbinks and that area was just asking to have more secrets than a random Tera Garchomp and some shards.
2. I know people usually find the Tao's shinies disappointing but you know what is even worse? Kyurem's. Black Kyurem fits perfectly with shiny Zekrom. White Kyurem for whatever weird reason looks like a mix of shiny Kyurem and regular Reshiram. No other fusing mon has this weird mismatch and it looks way worse than it could.

Yknow I kinda had an epiphany about an actual big issue with SWSH's DLC that not only feels ludicrous in hindsight to be just now realizing but also amazes me that I have seen nobody else bring up.

Why did they all but completely drop the Galar Gym Challenge as the central thrust?

I mean, you have Klara and Avery as Gym Leaders in training, sure. Mustard and Peony are also former champions. But that's pretty tangential considering what we're talking about, no? They made a whole game about competing in a Pokemon battling professional sports league with massive stadiums and stars laden in corporate sponsorships and then its expansion packs have basically nothing to do with this. It's not like the base game didn't leave room for doing more with this concept, either: On the contrary, they repeatedly establish the existence of a minor league and let you buy Gym Leader uniforms for all 18 types and yet by the end of the content output a full third of the type chart doesn't have any leaders assigned to it.

I can't really do a big diatribe on prescribing a fix to this without veering into wishlisting but SV's DLC was able to satisfactorily elaborate on the school setting and Area Zero mythos* so it shouldn't be that hard

*Admittedly this is mostly left up to Indigo Disk but I always interpreted Teal Mask as a "summer vacation" DLC in between the main school year and an exchange program, although I can't actually confirm this as the developer intention

This is something I already complained about concerning the Crown Tundra, it's just so hilariously disconnected from the base game you can literally do everything on it except battling Rider Calyrex because suddenly, in one of the most ridiculous and hilariously bad artificial blocks in the entire franchise, you are apparently too "weak" to even throw the Master Ball at it. Extremely anticlimatic and a way to kill the mood if the player got to that point...which then you shouldn't have made possible in the first place!

As baffling as some of the story choices in The Indigo Disk are (and while it's still stupid you can visit the Terrarium without clearing the previous content), it builds up from both the base game and The Teal Mask perfectly. It actually feels like an extension of the story that is even better than what old third versions did, which if you ask me should be the entire point of Pokemon DLC. SWSH's DLC is a bunch of random side stories that they were for some reason so scared of actually tying up with the base game they even leave the whole relationship between Calyrex and Eternatus extremely vague despite the huge implications it should have- and that a player that has not seen Eternatus yet will never pick up. They couldn't make up their minds about the DLC being exclusive post base game content and it being completely unrelated. Playing it after the Teal Mask was such a huge disappointment for me.

I get it, it was the first DLC they tried, and it isn't anything awful on itself (and Dynamax Adventures are very fun). And I know people like these little self contained stories just fine. The thing is...the Indigo Disk is the walking proof you can have a DLC that has both its own subplots but also feel like actual proper extra content connected to what came before. The Crown Tundra is a bunch of random experimentation barely hold together by a barebones story (hello random living prehistoric Pokemon just chilling around) which, while obviously gave them the foundation needed for SV, is not what I would ever want from a third version or DLC. And the Isle of Armor is...there I guess. It's such a nothing burger in almost every aspect to the point I find it lame you can't just buy it separately from CT. It barely builds on Dynamax, but it has zero impact on CT, while Teal Mask really is a single storyline continued in the Indigo Disk. GF were even aware of this themselves, as "The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero" is an actual name rather than just "Expansion Pass" which is the biggest takeaway there was a change in philosophy there.

While we are on that topic, another thing that kind of annoys me: both Crown Tundra and Legend Arceus itself clearly were experimenting with the idea of the player's decisions actually changing stuff in the story. That went nowhere in SV. On one hand, I get it. Of literally all generations, SV is the one gen where I can say most of the new exclusive Pokemon are not extremely arbitrary, but still, the idea of exclusives to begin with is extremely outdated and I would rather have either exclusive mechanics like Alola night cycle or Unova's White Forest/Black City and choices changing what Pokemon I get (or the order I get them). It really doesn't feel like they usually play around with the concept of versions enough, which is insane considering this is literally the only franchise succesful enough to even get away with launching two versions without big backslash.

Also not a big fan on the trend started by XY of "this version's exclusive Pokemon new form is in the other game". It was already lame with Megas, but with Paradoxes is just weird. A new player can't be wow away by Iron Jugulis if they have never ever seen Hydreigon.

 

[AztecCroc]

Kyurem's. Black Kyurem fits perfectly with shiny Zekrom. White Kyurem for whatever weird reason looks like a mix of shiny Kyurem and regular Reshiram. No other fusing mon has this weird mismatch and it looks way worse than it could.

That would be because Reshiram's shiny is bad and mostly doesn't change in the 3D games and the parts that do (the neck and tail rings, the eyes, and those lines right behind the fingers) aren't on Kyurem/get colored using Kyurem's palette rather than Reshiram's. The only other difference in Reshiram's shiny is that the shadows on its feathers become slightly pink/purple (an effect made almost invisible in the 3D games) as well as becoming almost imperceptibly yellower (which White Kyurem did do in BW2, but never again after).

Also for whatever reason the two bands it does have on its left arm just stopped changing color at all when shiny from XY on?

A new player can't be wow away by Iron Thorns if they have never ever seen Hydreigon.

?
I think you've got a typo there, Iron Thorns is the Paradox Tyranitar, Iron Jugulis is the Paradox Hydreigon.

 

[pokemon4eva]

While we are on that topic, another thing that kind of annoys me: both Crown Tundra and Legend Arceus itself clearly were experimenting with the idea of the player's decisions actually changing stuff in the story. That went nowhere in SV. On one hand, I get it. Of literally all generations, SV is the one gen where I can say most of the new exclusive Pokemon are not extremely arbitrary, but still, the idea of exclusives to begin with is extremely outdated and I would rather have either exclusive mechanics like Alola night cycle or Unova's White Forest/Black City and choices changing what Pokemon I get (or the order I get them). It really doesn't feel like they usually play around with the concept of versions enough, which is insane considering this is literally the only franchise succesful enough to even get away with launching two versions without big backslash.

I don't like how they're managing their exclusive version content either. All Paldea has to offer aside from the usual exclusive mons is...the student wear different colors. Even SWSH, a game that's notably lacking in various areas, still had stuff like 2 exclusive gym leaders (whose gyms use the exact same gimmicks for some reason lol).

I suppose the most remarkable difference should be the professors, but despite their storyline being the game's biggest highlight, it disappoints me that both Sada and Turo are completely interchangeable. It feels...videogame-y, in a way that ruins suspension of disbelief, because when someone wants to talk about their characters or their emotive moments, they have to refer them as "Sada/Turo" or "the AI professor". In that aspect they're really no different from say, Archie and Maxie in Ruby and Sapphire, two characters that behave exactly the same except their "land" and "sea" goals being interchangeable.

 

[Dusk Mage Necrozma]

In that aspect they're really no different from say, Archie and Maxie in Ruby and Sapphire, two characters that behave exactly the same except their "land" and "sea" goals being interchangeable.

They did try to add more substance to their goals - Maxie wants to expand the land for humanity while Archie wants to expand the sea for Pokemon - but it doesn't really amount to much.

 

[DrrT]

That would be because Reshiram's shiny is bad and mostly doesn't change in the 3D games and the parts that do (the neck and tail rings, the eyes, and those lines right behind the fingers) aren't on Kyurem/get colored using Kyurem's palette rather than Reshiram's. The only other difference in Reshiram's shiny is that the shadows on its feathers become slightly pink/purple (an effect made almost invisible in the 3D games) as well as becoming almost imperceptibly yellower (which White Kyurem did do in BW2, but never again after).

Also for whatever reason the two bands it does have on its left arm just stopped changing color at all when shiny from XY on?

?
I think you've got a typo there, Iron Thorns is the Paradox Tyranitar, Iron Jugulis is the Paradox Hydreigon.

That makes absolutely no sense.

First of all, Reshiram's shiny being "bad" is purely subjective. I agree, but I also think Zekrom's shiny is bad. That doesn't stop Black Kyurem from using green on its shiny because it's emulating it. The exact same thing should happen with White Kyurem, it should use purplish color, not red. The entire point of the colored Kyurem's wires is that they are the same colors as Reshiram/Zekrom's shining effects. The 3D games removing these almost entirely is also a moot point because White Kyurem was introduced literally as a 2D sprite in a 2D game. It just isn't consistent with how neither Black Kyurem not even the later Necrozma and Calyrex forms work. Shiny Reshiram doesn't have red. White Kyurem shouldn't either then. Where does the red come from?

That was indeed a typo tho, my bad. But point still stands. A new Violet player is told "this is a future form of Hydreigon!" but they have never even seen Hydreigon or its line.

I don't like how they're managing their exclusive version content either. All Paldea has to offer aside from the usual exclusive mons is...the student wear different colors. Even SWSH, a game that's notably lacking in various areas, still had stuff like 2 exclusive gym leaders (whose gyms use the exact same gimmicks for some reason lol).

I suppose the most remarkable difference should be the professors, but despite their storyline being the game's biggest highlight, it disappoints me that both Sada and Turo are completely interchangeable. It feels...videogame-y, in a way that ruins suspension of disbelief, because when someone wants to talk about their characters or their emotive moments, they have to refer them as "Sada/Turo" or "the AI professor". In that aspect they're really no different from say, Archie and Maxie in Ruby and Sapphire, two characters that behave exactly the same except their "land" and "sea" goals being interchangeable.

SV at least gives a reasonable explanation as to way each type of Paradoxes are exclusive to each game. It feels a lot less on the nose that most of the other dual versions, where you have stuff like Zangoose and Seviper being mortal enemies...that don't even exist in the same universe I guess. Or even worse, they do, since trainers do have them, but the player just randomly can't catch them. While it's true that SV could have shown us the Paradoxes' timelines or a glimpse of it I prefer them being rather of a mystery. For the record, SWSH's exclusive gym leaders also feel extremely arbitrary if you ask me. But mostly yeah, I agree, they are not doing enough.

I get it, versions "need" to exist. But either you try to actually make actual important differences to the world like Unova or Alola...or you give me more options to choose from like LA and the Crown Tundra. Right now we are just in a weird grey area in the middle where is like "oh sure, I guess I need to wear orange colors in my game, and Cramorant exists but Morpeko doesn't." I'm not asking for anything crazy like the box arts being avaliable in both games (then again, Johto did it...) just make me think about what version I want for more than two seconds. I know a lot of people apparently found Moon's inverted clock annoying, but it's actually the reason why I replay Ultra Moon now instead of Ultra Sun. It's an actual difference!

They did try to add more substance to their goals - Maxie wants to expand the land for humanity while Archie wants to expand the sea for Pokemon - but it doesn't really amount to much.

These two also have so much potential. We are only given a very brief glimpse of their past lives (including an Adventures nod to the Emerald arc in Alpha Sapphire) but the fact they apprently used to be on the same team (!?) is fascinating. I want to know what made them become such extremists. I know it's hard to justify such weird extremes but there is so much potential in there. Did meeting Jirachi have something to do with Archie's obsession? How long has he know Shelly for? What kind of weird team were he and Maxie in that somehow got splited into two radically different cult

Don't get me wrong ORAS improved a lot the basic RS storyline (specially the whole meteorite part) but it could be more.

 

[Yung Dramps]

These two also have so much potential. We are only given a very brief glimpse of their past lives (including an Adventures nod to the Emerald arc in Alpha Sapphire) but the fact they apprently used to be on the same team (!?) is fascinating. I want to know what made them become such extremists. I know it's hard to justify such weird extremes but there is so much potential in there. Did meeting Jirachi have something to do with Archie's obsession? How long has he know Shelly for? What kind of weird team were he and Maxie in that somehow got splited into two radically different cult


Don't get me wrong ORAS improved a lot the basic RS storyline (specially the whole meteorite part) but it could be more.

I've sometimes wondered how much mileage specific regions and the series in general could get from a formal prequel game. I don't mean like Legends Arceus where it's set far in the past, I mean something closer to the original game where you see what a bunch of the cast members were like as teenagers/younger adults, how they grew into their positions and the state of their region when they did so. Out of the 9 we have so far I would say that Galar sowed the most seeds for a project like this with the abundance of flavor text about past incarnations of the League and Leon & Sonia essentially being a player-rival duo.

 

[pokemon4eva]

K so I'm watching the "Emerald's Victory Road trainers" video today and it reminded me that Emerald inexplicably moves Wally to the beginning rather than the end of Victory Road. In a game which largely makes changes for the better this one is baffling. Wally's team is objectively decent by NPC standards and having it come at the end feels so much more sensible, especially as the trainer immediately after him has possibly the worst team in there: a single Roselia (which you've literally already just defeated because Wally has one as well!). Granted Emerald has a pretty brutal tag battle at the end of Victory Road RS doesn't, but that fight is actually skippable.

It's also pretty nonsense considering there's a NPC trainer who after beating him he says sth like "there's a young trainer that has been beating everybody here" which is clearly alluding to Wally. This makes sense in RS since he shows up at the end, but in Emerald you beat him at the beginning of the cave, and yet said trainer's dialogue is still there...

 

[QuentinQuonce]

It's also pretty nonsense considering there's a NPC trainer who after beating him he says sth like "there's a young trainer that has been beating everybody here" which is clearly alluding to Wally. This makes sense in RS since he shows up at the end, but in Emerald you beat him at the beginning of the cave, and yet said trainer's dialogue is still there...

Perhaps the implication is meant to be that Wally got to the end of the cave and was like "you know what? No rush, I can hang around for a bit until the player catches up"

 

[DrrT]

I know Pokemon is not supposed to be realistic, and Wailord already makes any discussion about their weight a moot point. But I got curious about some of them.

Copperajah is once again too light considering is supposed to be made a copper. Hippowdon is lighter than a normal hippo despite being bigger and filled with sand. Primal Groudon grows way too much for the few kilos it gains, presumably because it hits the max.

I always assumed GF just makes them too light, just like a lot of them are ridiculously short like Charizard. Then I looked at Hoothot. 20 KILOS!? This guy is fucking fat, I know it's a round boi but it's also a bird.

Who decides that stuff? Are they still limiting themselves to 999 kg at max? Why?

 

[R_N]

I know Pokemon is not supposed to be realistic, and Wailord already makes any discussion about their weight a moot point. But I got curious about some of them.

Copperajah is once again too light considering is supposed to be made a copper. Hippowdon is lighter than a normal hippo despite being bigger and filled with sand. Primal Groudon grows way too much for the few kilos it gains, presumably because it hits the max.

I always assumed GF just makes them too light, just like a lot of them are ridiculously short like Charizard. Then I looked at Hoothot. 20 KILOS!? This guy is fucking fat, I know it's a round boi but it's also a bird.

Who decides that stuff? Are they still limiting themselves to 999 kg at max? Why?

This got me curious about how big real owls get

Snowy owls are pretty big, can get to around 21 inches. So ball park of Hoothoot's 26 inches, close enough. And weight wise it is....about....5.5 lbs on the heavy end.
Mm! Smidge off base there, I think!

 

[Karxrida]

20kg is about 44lbs. The bird with the largest wingspan – the snowy albatross – maxes out at 12.7kg or 28lbs. Hoothoot's weight puts it in flightless bird territory, about on par with smaller examples of the lesser rhea and dwarf cassowary. Those two birds also average about 3.1-3.4 feet in length and are thus about 50%+ bigger than Hoothoot.

 

[AztecCroc]

Hippowdon is lighter than a normal hippo despite being bigger and filled with sand

Hippowdon is significantly smaller than a real hippo. It stands a bit taller, but its a lot shorter lengthwise.

 

[Hugin]

Duraludon is my favorite. 5'11" and 88 lbs. Most people would be hospitalized or dead with those numbers. Archaludon is 6'7" and 132 lbs, which is still ridiculous. As in, Archaludon would float in water levels of ridiculous. (and that's without the Light Metal ability).

For reference, Duraludon is said to have a rivalry with Tyranitar, which is 6'7" and 445 lbs.

 

[CPU]

Archaludon is pushing it but I can see Duraludon being fairly light. It's named after duralumin, and a Google search puts its density at about 3x that of water. It's also based on buildings, which are more space than mass for their volume. It's still way too light for its height, but I can see what they were going for.

 

[DrrT]

Hippowdon is significantly smaller than a real hippo. It stands a bit taller, but its a lot shorter lengthwise.

I know that you love to try to "ackstually"people but not only is Hippowdown half a meter bigger than a real hippo which is not "a bit taller" but it's also not a lot shorter since its head is way bigger than a normal one and it has sturdier legs. And even then it shouldn't weight 5 times less than a real hippo. Specially since again it's a creature that according to the dex fills with sands and rocks.

This got me curious about how big real owls get

Snowy owls are pretty big, can get to around 21 inches. So ball park of Hoothoot's 26 inches, close enough. And weight wise it is....about....5.5 lbs on the heavy end.
Mm! Smidge off base there, I think!

The issue with that is that all those owls are way larger than Hoothot. They only reach these weights by being that big, because birds have hollow bones after all. Obviously reallistically Hoothot shouldn't fly anyways because of its anatomy, but its weight is genuinely ridiculous for a bird that size. In a kinda amusing way tho.

Your comment does make me wonder however, if it may be just early gens instalment of "every bird is flying type even if it's Doduo"

 

[AztecCroc]

I know that you love to try to "ackstually"people but not only is Hippowdown half a meter bigger than a real hippo which is not "a bit taller"

0.35 of a meter is only a little over a foot of difference in height (and to be clear real world quadrupeds besides giraffes are measured to the shoulder not the top of the head, if you measured an actual hippo like how Pokémon are measured it would also be around 2 meters). Also Hippowdon, at 2 meters tall is like maybe 3 to 4 long? It's a very square creature. Actual hippos get to a little over 5. Hippowdon also has far more empty space inside given the much larger mouth and the sand pouch.

It's also presumably being measured with the sand pouch empty, given that's a thing you could do and the sand isn't actually part of its body.

Further, a big part of why hippos are so heavy is to allow them to be able to walk along the bottoms of bodies of water which Hippowdon, swimmer of sand and mud, doesn't need to do. The black rhinoceros for instance only weighs 800 to 14,000 kg. Hippowdon's still pretty light, but not as absurdly so when you consider it's not trying to sink like a rock in water.