Pokémon you had fun using in in-game runs

[aegon the unlikely]

The Hoppip line was surprisingly incredibly fun - and useful - in my Crystal Hardcore Flying Nuzlocke. Fast sleep and Leech Seed are not to be trifled with, and Headbutt actually does sufficient damage to most enemies; Jumpluff isn't sweeping teams, but they sure make it a lot easier.



My Scyther, armed with HP Rock of all things, was also really strong in that same Nuzlocke; even nearly soloing Lance (I believe Jumpluff helped put a Gyarados to sleep). Agility, Swords Dance x2, and HP Rock defeats everyone Lance had. They may not have much in the way of strong STAB options until like Gen IV, but they don't need those in GSC; a 24% Attack boost after beating Whitney goes a fair distance in ameliorating that issue, especially if you have 102 BP Return to help sweep. As you can see from my sig, Scyther and Jumpluff ended up being among the run survivors.



In my regular Crystal Hardcore Nuzlocke, Furret was a real trooper. Defense Curl + Rollout, with a bit of aid, decimated Whitney; he also swept over half of Lance's team, and just hit enemies really hard with Headbutts and Returns, only finally losing steam by the Red fight (still won, though).



In a Crystal Water-type Hardcore Nuzlocke, this little fish was really strong, reliably crushing Bugsy after spamming Defense Curls (on Metapod) and Swifts and then sweeping with Rollout. Like Furret, they too took out 4 mons against Lance, and Surf, Sludge Bomb, and decent speed and bulk - coupled with usable Special Attack and solid Attack - helped me win many battles. They were able to put in work against Red too, IIRC.

 

[mertyville]

This is something I figured when I discovered that you can trade Pokemon Colosseum Pokemon after beating the game any time to Ruby or Saphire. So around Gym 6, I traded a few Pokemon from Colosseum like Raikou to Sapphire and it was very satisfying to use Thunder. I don't know if I used Raikou at all ingame in the mainline series. For in-game Colosseum it does come late but I do often grind them regardless because Raikou is still a high value Pokemon in my mind.
In the Sapphire run I made which is about a few years ago by now, it worked best when I got Kyogre due to Permarain. Often I didn't really need Kyogre nor bothered to use it.

For my Ruby rerun I decided to trade over a lv55 Dragonite from Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness. Generally as a Fly slave and I was using it to trade over Masterballs for softresetting Regis and Groudon with good enough ivs and natures. I did not intend to use Dragonite to fight but mainly to stall due to his high level. I wanted Jirachi with Lax Nature (which I wanted to use in an in-game run for the first time) to be the Pokemon I have fun with. Then I accidentally made Jirachi forget Psychic and was kinda dumbfounded. So I decided to use Dragonite as the 'main' Pokemon of my team. Level advantage wise it only mattered really during the 8 gym where I first used it.
Dragonite had no evs and had Dragon Claw, Fly, Dragon Dance and Earthquake in his moveset. It had a neutral Nature and despite Dragonite being more of a physical attacker, I barely had to use anything besides Dragon Claw during the run. Main obsticals were Ice Type users mostly bulky waters but anything else dropped relatively fast. Even with the trade experience grow, I only reached lv60 with Dragonite so it kinda shocked me. Maybe I did have a little advantage because of Pokerus which literally any Pokemon get when I trade between games due to batteries drying making it impossible to disappear.
Definitively I had a blast using it. Grinding was less an issue due to bonus exp because it is a traded Pokemon and the lack of hoops trying to grind to evolve a Dratinit up to it.
This might be the only instance I use Dragonite somewhat legimately in a game because the ones I used in Red/Blue are grinded up with the MissingNo gltich

 

[Omastar68]

Usum I'm liking carbink. Now in reality it is PROBABLY a worse registeel, which isn't even ok itself typically, but that's for ladder and in game there is no early registeel ofc.

Carbink is super bulky, with a good ability in clear body kinda(it starts all phys moves so no bueno baby doll eyes.) way better than sturdy there. It has low offenses, which is usually Bad in game where you can smash through faster without really worrying about faints much, except the fat defs let you go atk, etc, evs. Also the moves later. Good coverage too.

Obviously there have been TONS over the yrs, not just this one ATM, but I forget most stuff.

Edit: maybe reg darm in 5. Cause ohko all, fastish, fat ish for playthrough. Don't quote me. But that and mienshao were breaking friends in casual easy, stupid hjk/sf blitz.

 

[pika pal]

For my SV run both Main Game and Indigo Disk, I had three candidates to add, one of which is Breloom who I covered in a previous post, but I got two more thinking back on it since the thread popped up again.



Similar to Breloom, albeit just a regular encounter. What felt really nice here was the open world aspect letting me beeline straight for a Dawn Stone at Level 20 rather than being at random/progression's whim to evolve to a useable form, and Gallade's myriad of Coverage options are great with Gen 9 relearning and its early full-evo stats for things like Iono.


Ran Hitmontop for my "new team" in the Indigo Disk, since I knew it would be a Doubles-centric environment and it did not disappoint. Intimidate saved my run against quite a few things like Crispin and Drayton, Fake Out is a lot more valuable for glassy attackers like the Excadrill I was running, and Fighting STAB is never out of style. This mon is genuinely the main reason I advocate Gamefreak should experiment with more in-game Doubles content/campaigns, because even without the competitive mindset, playing the format even casually really made me appreciate how much more useful a lot of that utility is both with how Doubles works and other difficulty adjustments (not having "Switch" mode enabled meaning a weak-exit mon is a big momentum sink)