With each of these games being as unique as they are relative to each other, I thought it would be fun to make this thread to see how myself and you would rank these games based on whatever factors you look for the most in a Pokémon game.
I figured I may as well kill some time here after thinking about Marill's treatment in the Legends games (specifically ZA) in the
little things that annoy you thread.
Best Azumarill/Marill Gameplay Integration and Representation:
SV >>>>>>>> BDSP >>>> SWSH (present-day version 1.3.2) >> HOME (present day) >>>>>>>>>> LGPE >> PLA >>>> PLZA
Basegame SV has Azurill available in the wild right from the start on the first route, with practically perfect availability set for the whole game. Marill and Azumarill are also very prevalent at Casseroya Lake with a guaranteed fixed spawn tera Fairy Azumarill available. And of course, Azumarill has a very prevalent niche in the final postgame challenges as my personal star of having the most 7-star raid solos of all mons while also being accessible to basegame players of either version without DLC, truly a mon of the people.
Also it's very accessible to get Belly Drum on an existing Azumarill thanks to Mirror Herb, SWSH introduced a similar mechanic that was also in BDSP but it was more cumbersome and less available. Also speaking of not needing to breed, SV removed incense requirements so you always get Azurill from eggs which is probably for the better, it kind of adds a happiness requirement but the prevalence of EXP Candy makes that trivial anyway. Also, sandwich hunting makes it easy and fun to collect shiny/marked Marill and I went for some Chosen Ones with the Destiny Mark in particular. All this QOL and accessibility is something I quite value.
I also like the interactivity of following/picnics/overworld Pokemon in general + miscellaneous representation with the Marill Ball + the photo feature and being able to represent Azumarill on my trainer card and avatar. With the DLC, the Synchro Machine also lets you spawn a Marill Ball in general by pressing ZR (specifically the only ball option that appears no matter what) and lets you play directly as Azumarill. Other aesthetic aspects I'm more neutral on is that Azumarill's model has a fur-like texture in this game and it also leans forward for its battle pose. Also the Fairy Star Boss uses an Azumarill, so you are guaranteed to face it in combat even if you don't use it yourself. Also like almost every other mon, Azurill gets its own material drop item named after it as something to collect.
SV is a completely fine Azumarill experience even before the DLC dropped (which doesn't really add too much to the mon ingame other than like Synchro Machine) but I have to admit my opinion is coloured by having followed the ongoing raid events closely over SV's lifetime, which may eventually stop but are currently still cycling through the starters again with Charizard being present this week, a fitting time to reminisce on Azumarill's rise to fame in the first 7-star raid, yet tainted by Play Rough's damage being visually bugged and its subsequent failings against Cinderace and also people not fully understanding raid mechanics at the time led to Azumarill being arguably one of the most controversial raid choices to discuss online for some time.
After about 3 years of raids that have just about stopped, I actually enjoy the tera raid mechanics in terms of making a use for optimized level 100 mons for overkill damage and setups that can take and require hits backed by tera and rain or Belly Drums or max Defense Curl Rollouts, and being able to use Azumarill is a fun puzzle to solve while not completely playing around the boss gimmicks like disabling abilities, and makes for a powerful show of skill expression and game understanding by making the most out of every combat option and AI quirk the game has to offer against absurd boss script setups like fighting an insta-shield (immune to most targeted status moves until broken) 25x HP Clear Body Metagross with strong neutral/SE coverage that sets Hone Claws and 2 Iron Defenses. Speaking of which, Tera Blast is also fun coverage and gives Azurill physical Fairy STAB for once.
Some things I don't like about SV off the top of my head are that Azumarill lost access to Scald, Curse, and Future Sight in this game when they returned as DLC TMs, but this is an aspect that was at least handled better than SWSH (also they didn't bother to fix SWSH's levelup learnset issues). Future Sight is the most notable loss here as one of Marill's original egg moves in GS.
Now there's a sizeable gap here in terms of personal enjoyment from here, but I have to rate SWSH lower than BDSP simply because Marill was not present in SWSH's basegame and I did not get to use it personally in the campaign on release. Nowadays you can catch it via the Isle of Armor DLC or trading/HOME transfer from another game, but I can't personally attest to the experience of using Azumarill in SWSH as much. If this was 2019 release day SWSH I would put it below HOME as well, and if I had 2020 release day HOME on here then I would put that below itself too because you wouldn't be able to do anything with Azumarill on the Switch at the time other than transfer from Bank which I couldn't and wouldn't do.
I have to take points off of SWSH for Dexit/Movexit and its weird habit of completely rearranging learnsets in order of move power (that also got inherited in the later games), so you get things like never naturally learning Rollout/Defense Curl like you would have in USUM's learnset because they're both level 1 moves that get overwritten by 4 other level 1 moves, but it also doesn't really matter because SWSH has free relearner at Pokemon Centres. But also, SWSH removed a bunch of moves in natural learnsets and relegated them to TMs if they were TMs, so Marill's egg move list really shrunk between USUM and SWSH, and also SWSH merged Azurill and Marill's egg move lists in the process so you get stuff like any Marill now being able to learn Fake Tears by TM when it used to be an Azurill exclusive egg move. Also SWSH DLC/HOME prerelease datamines proposed a potential timeline where Azumarill gets High Horsepower in SWSH DLC, and then it didn't, which I can't hold against the gameplay but it was disappointing nonetheless. Pokemon Camp is alright though.
BDSP Azumarill inherits DP Marill's midgame availability of being available in the Great Marsh with its great gameplay mechanics, making it more of a chore to catch with Huge Power. You can also find Azurill here but it's more common and easier to just get Marill. I used Marill in BD despite having Empoleon and it felt pretty true to form of how I expected, like how it felt to play in the older games but with better early move learn levels (thanks SWSH) and Fairy STAB to throw out sometimes and not taking any opportunity cost of HM slots.
I wouldn't have minded Platinum availability as a wild mon on Route 215/212, or if Marill was actually available in the Grand Underground at some point, but overall BDSP is a fine baseline for how I think mons in general should be playable and treated in the base form of a game, just that SV has more to do with them. Also, the Azurill in Pastoria Gym having Sap Sipper is a funny addition to interrupt Grass spam, and is likely your first time fighting Azurill so you won't have effectiveness information if you don't know that it's Normal type and just assume it's also Water.
Pokemon HOME has the bare minimum standard I can consider for Azumarill being present within a Pokemon game (via transfer/viewing from another game or GTS trade) and having a model/render and status screen.
Marill is not in LGPE, but I was not expecting it to be because it was clearly just Kanto, so it wasn't really a disappointment in that regard compared to the next games that had perfect opportunities lined up for it.
Marill is not in PLA despite the precedence of being in DP's original Sinnoh dex roster, which is one of the few such exclusions. Now you could also mention that Quagsire is another missing Marsh mon that implies the Great Marsh has some more recent additions, but it's not like existing at the time in-universe stopped PLA from adding in all of Sinnoh's original additions anyway. Not that Azumarill would really benefit from PLA systems because it's slow, but Attack being irrelevant and bulk being okay and GV investment being opportune for favoritism would make up for no abilities.
Marill is not in PLZA, and my thoughts on that are contained in the annoyance thread post I link to at the start, but to sum it up there is literally an overworld NPC Marill in XY Lumiose City and an NPC that likes Marill and Azumarill, and also Azurill was one of the early XY mons and a big part of the new Fairy-type marketing at the time. Now you could make the reasonable argument that people are said to be moving away and that Marill could be a pet or something, but for a game all about Lumiose City and its citizens coexisting with Pokemon and charming side missions, it really let me down on this one aspect of the original city that I was hoping to recognize and was already tied into the theme. Not that Azumarill would really benefit from this battle system either because it's a slow walker too, but I would have used it.
I think missing out on both PLA and PLZA (despite having good reason by being present in both original DP Sinnoh and XY Lumiose City) is a rare enough occurrence that not a lot of other mons can complain about, but I also do feel that missing out in PLZA is largely worse off than missing out on PLA, firstly because PLZA had a second chance to include Marill with its DLC Pokedex expansion that it struck out on again, and secondly that missing out on PLZA and PLZA DLC means missing out on a potential Mega Azumarill opportunity twofold. Not that it would have been a guaranteed thing or end up enjoyable, but basically I had more to potentially look forward to with Azumarill if it had been in PLZA rather than in PLA that didn't come to pass, which is kind of the opposite of how I feel about Marill not being in LGPE.
Overall I can appreciate that Azumarill has been treated pretty well in its appearances in general more so than not, and increasingly well over the generations, but that's my thoughts for its appearances or lack of appearances on the Switch so far. Looking back on it all, Azumarill's game feel in SV is worth the most to me and beats out the feeling of it not being in other games, because usually I'm not really thinking about Azumarill in the games it's not in anyway until now.
