on the other hand Skeledirge got to just be An Actual Crocodile and got a fairly weird, unique take on a theme.
so that's pretty neat
so that's pretty neat
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(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon
- Thread starter BriarRose
- Start date
The signature move/ability spam in Gen 9 is just completely off the wall. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of new Pokemon have some signature move/ability and a fair portion have two signature things. This was an issue in Gen 8 as well, but I think it's definitely worse in Gen 9. I dislike how they seem to be trying to churn out tons of signature things to make every Pokemon feel "special" because I think it produces less satisfying design and causes bloat.
There is one key difference from Gen 8 (where many of the new signature moves/abilities were pretty bad), which is that the signature moves/abilities in Gen 9 are actually extremely strong most of the time (the absurd powercreep is a story for another day). But even if the new signature moves/abilities aren't pointless filler, I still find it dissatisfying that so many Gen 9 Pokemon are pretty much carried by them in terms of battle property design. I think there is value to finding interesting new combinations of types/stats/moves/abilities and making it thematically cohesive. One example would be with Polteageist, which has the distinction of being the only Ghost-type with Shell Smash. This contrasts it with other users (usually Water or Rock types), but it's still thematically sound. It does have two "special things", being its signature move Teatime and the evolution item gimmick, but both of them are pretty much pointless filler and don't do much to make Polteageist stand out. I know that it's been argued that it's harder to make new Pokemon stand out without having special things, but I believe that there is still plenty of room for interesting design without that (as evidenced by Polteageist), and I wish they'd try more to do that (or at least keep it to one signature thing, seriously).
Additionally, if they're going to keep making signature things, I'd like there to at least be some thought put into them. I think Fire Lash a good example of a signature move, since there's a clear connection between the move name and its effects, and it makes sense as to why Heatmor (and the other Pokemon it is later given to) has it. On the other hand, there's Lumina Crash: it has a very generic name which doesn't say anything about its effects, and there's no particular reason why Espathra has it as opposed to any other Psychic type other than "we needed to give it a special thing". It's clearly a very powercrept move which has to have limited distribution, but I feel like if they give it to more Pokemon it'll just have to be more or less arbitrary (I guess there's some "light" theming you could do, but that's about it).
With all of that said, let me talk about the thing that lead me to write this entire post: Kowtow Cleave. I see it as the prime example of the signature spam that's happening. First of all, it's given to a Pokemon which also has a signature ability (one which I don't have a major specific complaint about). Second of all, it has no need to exist. It is technically Kingambit's best non-conditional Dark-type move, but it'd make basically no difference if it just used Throat Chop instead. It's also almost identical to False Surrender, which is already the signature move of another Pokemon. It's even similar in theming. Seriously, it's a new evolution for a popularish(?) Pokemon, it doesn't need so many special things to stand out.
...I just realized that Bisharp/Kingambit can't actually learn Throat Chop in Gen 9. But Wugtrio can?! I guess it's because it already has enough Dark-type moves in its level-up pool, though even considering the difference between Japanese/English move names, I don't think there's anything preventing them from just having it learn Throat Chop instead of Kowtow Cleave.
There is one key difference from Gen 8 (where many of the new signature moves/abilities were pretty bad), which is that the signature moves/abilities in Gen 9 are actually extremely strong most of the time (the absurd powercreep is a story for another day). But even if the new signature moves/abilities aren't pointless filler, I still find it dissatisfying that so many Gen 9 Pokemon are pretty much carried by them in terms of battle property design. I think there is value to finding interesting new combinations of types/stats/moves/abilities and making it thematically cohesive. One example would be with Polteageist, which has the distinction of being the only Ghost-type with Shell Smash. This contrasts it with other users (usually Water or Rock types), but it's still thematically sound. It does have two "special things", being its signature move Teatime and the evolution item gimmick, but both of them are pretty much pointless filler and don't do much to make Polteageist stand out. I know that it's been argued that it's harder to make new Pokemon stand out without having special things, but I believe that there is still plenty of room for interesting design without that (as evidenced by Polteageist), and I wish they'd try more to do that (or at least keep it to one signature thing, seriously).
Additionally, if they're going to keep making signature things, I'd like there to at least be some thought put into them. I think Fire Lash a good example of a signature move, since there's a clear connection between the move name and its effects, and it makes sense as to why Heatmor (and the other Pokemon it is later given to) has it. On the other hand, there's Lumina Crash: it has a very generic name which doesn't say anything about its effects, and there's no particular reason why Espathra has it as opposed to any other Psychic type other than "we needed to give it a special thing". It's clearly a very powercrept move which has to have limited distribution, but I feel like if they give it to more Pokemon it'll just have to be more or less arbitrary (I guess there's some "light" theming you could do, but that's about it).
With all of that said, let me talk about the thing that lead me to write this entire post: Kowtow Cleave. I see it as the prime example of the signature spam that's happening. First of all, it's given to a Pokemon which also has a signature ability (one which I don't have a major specific complaint about). Second of all, it has no need to exist. It is technically Kingambit's best non-conditional Dark-type move, but it'd make basically no difference if it just used Throat Chop instead. It's also almost identical to False Surrender, which is already the signature move of another Pokemon. It's even similar in theming. Seriously, it's a new evolution for a popularish(?) Pokemon, it doesn't need so many special things to stand out.
...I just realized that Bisharp/Kingambit can't actually learn Throat Chop in Gen 9. But Wugtrio can?! I guess it's because it already has enough Dark-type moves in its level-up pool, though even considering the difference between Japanese/English move names, I don't think there's anything preventing them from just having it learn Throat Chop instead of Kowtow Cleave.
Something that makes one of the annoying things you mentioned even more annoying
Latios, legendary Pokemon. Signature move: Luster Purge. Psychic, special, 70 power, 5 PP, 50% chance to lower Sp. Attack by 1 stage.
Espathra, some fuckin' bird. Signature move: Lumina Crash. Psychic, special, 80 power, 10 PP, 100% chance to lower Sp. Attack by 2 stages.They really just took a legendary signature move, made it twice as good, and gave it to a random ostrich.
Something that makes one of the annoying things you mentioned even more annoying
They really just took a legendary signature move, made it twice as good, and gave it to a random ostrich.
Wouldn't that just be regular power creep? I mean they were made like 6 generations apart
Protean also got turbo nerfed so eh.
Something that makes one of the annoying things you mentioned even more annoying
They really just took a legendary signature move, made it twice as good, and gave it to a random ostrich.
Power creep or not, they definitely did go overboard with the amount of signatures this time. I knew GF isn’t going to learn from what Gen 8 did in terms of signatures.
It’s practically insincere at this rate, I’ll tell you that.
It’s practically insincere at this rate, I’ll tell you that.
"learning" from this implies its inherently a bad thing. But it really isnt. Like I'm not saying you can't find the design space they operate in annoying, or maybe consider them overtuned depending on the move/ability (it is a little funny how I've seen complaints about being the same, being worse than a similar AND being better than a similar), but being annoying to you or not the design work you want out of the series is pretty subjective. The fact this is effectively their fourth go around with this design philosophy probably implies they just think they're neat.
"Insincere" is also kind of a weird way of putting it; I know we've been through this rodeo before (and weill continue to do so again and again and again) where similar sentiments come forth but again maybe it's not always cynicism for why the design is the way it is.
I also feel similarly about throwing around the word "bloat". Abilities probably contribute the least to bloat in terms of both user design (there's only up to 3 to worry about per pokemon) and game design (the effects are mostly coding based with no real modeling outside of special instances and often variations on other more complex stuff and there's significantly fewer of them and the only times they get cut is when the Pokemon gets cut and evne then they're often still fully functional!). Moves are the only thing that had a "xit" to them and certainly have more design worker into them from balance and modeling and then..... they mostly only axed a selection of bad-to-meh moves and then continued to add more and more signatures and now a full gen later they're doing it again. So it clearly isn't affecting that much. And in terms of movepool bloat, per pokemon, the way the moves wind up distributed rarely matter since they go to one or two pokemon at a time and they are relying on the other generations offering hundreds of moves. From a user perspective there's a lot of cruft they ignore but most of that isn't on the new stuff.
And hey since I'm on this dumb soap box, Item Bloat. I've been on that side of the conversation before but I think at this point I've refined it to "most people are just annoyed at bag space". It feels telling to me that when people complain about item bloat its often just at evolution items or form change stuff, and more specifically abotu the "main item" pocket. There was a LOT of complaints about say the 2 pots and the 2 apples and the various key items to collect for form changes and memories and so on. But in aggregate there aren't a lot of those compared to everything else. Comparatively speaking far fewer cared that the TM pocket now carries 200 (SWSH) or 170 (SV) of the damn things. No one's ever really complained about the nearly 100 berries. All these food items they have for sandwiches or whatever. People rejoiced at getting all the old Pokeballs back....probably because there's an entire dedicated bag space for each of these things!
If the game just sorted items better (vitamins, feathers, exp stuff can go in the battle pocket or the medicine pocket, for example), had more Pockets (held items go here, evolution stuff goes there, etc) or hell if there were sub headers within a given pocket I think most people wouldn't even care at all. Especially if the stuff was easier to get.
At least that's how I feel about it at this point. Nearly 50 mega stones is a lot, and they probably should have just condensed it to a single "Mega Stone" to begin with, but I instantly stop caring the moment you put those 50 stones into their own dedicated pocket and not lurking at the bottom of my main pocket bag where i have to keep scrolling around to find stuff and it makes me really annoyed every single time i go into it and then I come onto a forum to complain about it at length for 3 years.
Incidentally.....
SWSH, before DLC, introduced 34 non-Max moves. 30 of these were unique to a specific Pokemon lines (the fossils i am putting together for this since its based on the heads).
SV introduced 44 non-Torque moves. Counting the Ruin quartet together, there are 31 of these unique to a specific Pokemon. To my surprise several ones I thought would be unique are also given to other, unrelated Pokemon so it wouldn't surprise me if DLC or future games somehow finds a way to spread that love since it's already on their mind. And they had several new moves that are just...plain jane normal ass moves. Not even limited distribution or anything.
And in terms of abilities SWSH (again, before DLC) introduced 25 and all of them unique to a Pokemon. SV introduced 31, 27 being unique; I'm counting the Paradox abilities as non-unique because man seeing 7 of these things have the same ability and another 7 having the other its like...gotta have some give here. If I went into Gen 7 I would also give the UBs a pass on sharing Beast Boost; there's 11 of them its fine
So it's more than SWSH but it's not that much more.
"Insincere" is also kind of a weird way of putting it; I know we've been through this rodeo before (and weill continue to do so again and again and again) where similar sentiments come forth but again maybe it's not always cynicism for why the design is the way it is.
I also feel similarly about throwing around the word "bloat". Abilities probably contribute the least to bloat in terms of both user design (there's only up to 3 to worry about per pokemon) and game design (the effects are mostly coding based with no real modeling outside of special instances and often variations on other more complex stuff and there's significantly fewer of them and the only times they get cut is when the Pokemon gets cut and evne then they're often still fully functional!). Moves are the only thing that had a "xit" to them and certainly have more design worker into them from balance and modeling and then..... they mostly only axed a selection of bad-to-meh moves and then continued to add more and more signatures and now a full gen later they're doing it again. So it clearly isn't affecting that much. And in terms of movepool bloat, per pokemon, the way the moves wind up distributed rarely matter since they go to one or two pokemon at a time and they are relying on the other generations offering hundreds of moves. From a user perspective there's a lot of cruft they ignore but most of that isn't on the new stuff.
And hey since I'm on this dumb soap box, Item Bloat. I've been on that side of the conversation before but I think at this point I've refined it to "most people are just annoyed at bag space". It feels telling to me that when people complain about item bloat its often just at evolution items or form change stuff, and more specifically abotu the "main item" pocket. There was a LOT of complaints about say the 2 pots and the 2 apples and the various key items to collect for form changes and memories and so on. But in aggregate there aren't a lot of those compared to everything else. Comparatively speaking far fewer cared that the TM pocket now carries 200 (SWSH) or 170 (SV) of the damn things. No one's ever really complained about the nearly 100 berries. All these food items they have for sandwiches or whatever. People rejoiced at getting all the old Pokeballs back....probably because there's an entire dedicated bag space for each of these things!
If the game just sorted items better (vitamins, feathers, exp stuff can go in the battle pocket or the medicine pocket, for example), had more Pockets (held items go here, evolution stuff goes there, etc) or hell if there were sub headers within a given pocket I think most people wouldn't even care at all. Especially if the stuff was easier to get.
At least that's how I feel about it at this point. Nearly 50 mega stones is a lot, and they probably should have just condensed it to a single "Mega Stone" to begin with, but I instantly stop caring the moment you put those 50 stones into their own dedicated pocket and not lurking at the bottom of my main pocket bag where i have to keep scrolling around to find stuff and it makes me really annoyed every single time i go into it and then I come onto a forum to complain about it at length for 3 years.
Incidentally.....
SWSH, before DLC, introduced 34 non-Max moves. 30 of these were unique to a specific Pokemon lines (the fossils i am putting together for this since its based on the heads).
SV introduced 44 non-Torque moves. Counting the Ruin quartet together, there are 31 of these unique to a specific Pokemon. To my surprise several ones I thought would be unique are also given to other, unrelated Pokemon so it wouldn't surprise me if DLC or future games somehow finds a way to spread that love since it's already on their mind. And they had several new moves that are just...plain jane normal ass moves. Not even limited distribution or anything.
And in terms of abilities SWSH (again, before DLC) introduced 25 and all of them unique to a Pokemon. SV introduced 31, 27 being unique; I'm counting the Paradox abilities as non-unique because man seeing 7 of these things have the same ability and another 7 having the other its like...gotta have some give here. If I went into Gen 7 I would also give the UBs a pass on sharing Beast Boost; there's 11 of them its fine
So it's more than SWSH but it's not that much more.
Okay, okay, I know everyone is sick of Scarlet / Violet bashing, so let me start off by saying I love Pokemon Violet and it is my new favorite Pokemon game. I'm not going to talk about anything story related in this post because I want the dust to settle on the game even though I just beat it in less than three days. I'm not even bothered by the glitches and I think the game is fine enough in terms of optimization. I never had a single crash or me fall through the floor, the game was relatively polished for what it was trying to be.
Real talk though? The game is phenomenal and absolutely worth full price. Please get it, I can almost guarantee you will have a good time. The fact I have seen SV un-ironically compared to Sonic 2006 is just blatant hyperbole. 10/10 game.
but.
the animation.
for sandwich eating...
...is by far THE hokiest special effect failure I've seen in a video game. like it's legendarily bad. this is the true thing the haters should be focusing on lol
the player's mouth just moves over a JPG of a sandwich that doesn't even change as you "bite" it. and then it's like...sandwich nirvana? with pokemon? what.
and then the sandwich disappears in what is clearly someone messing around with photoshop deletion.
then you retch / barf (?)
then you...FIST PUMP...WAIT WHAT JUST HAPPENED
I'm not even mad at it, it made me bust a gut laughing
the animation.
for sandwich eating...
...is by far THE hokiest special effect failure I've seen in a video game. like it's legendarily bad. this is the true thing the haters should be focusing on lol
the player's mouth just moves over a JPG of a sandwich that doesn't even change as you "bite" it. and then it's like...sandwich nirvana? with pokemon? what.
and then the sandwich disappears in what is clearly someone messing around with photoshop deletion.
then you retch / barf (?)
then you...FIST PUMP...WAIT WHAT JUST HAPPENED
I'm not even mad at it, it made me bust a gut laughing
Real talk though? The game is phenomenal and absolutely worth full price. Please get it, I can almost guarantee you will have a good time. The fact I have seen SV un-ironically compared to Sonic 2006 is just blatant hyperbole. 10/10 game.
1,000 step evolutions take forever.
The overall "power creep", "signature/ability overbloat", and such are just a result of a shift in design philosophy that by and large focuses more on making each Pokémon mechanically unique and viable while exploring the potential of the game's combat mechanics. Certainly don't see a reason to complain about a new Pokémon getting an improved version of an old legendary's signature if said signature wasn't very good to begin with. Especially considering that oftentimes very good moves are balanced by limited distribution on typically subpar users, Boomburst being the clearest example of this. If there's anything to complain about with move bloat, it's the plethora of early game trash in the ~50 BP range that just slows the early game down. Nothing of value would be lost if the majority of these moves were cut and your early STAB options were moves like Razor Leaf or Flame Wheel instead of Leafage or Ember.
Ember and Flame Wheel have different categories, but I never saw the point in Leafage, especially because I swear they made a small deal out of it when the Sun and Moon starters were revealed.
Just give it the old legend's signature move.
And maybe buff the old legend's signature move a bit so it doesn't suck.
Having the new not-important Pokemon's signature move be a huge upgrade over the old legendary Pokemon's signature move with basically the same flavor draws attention to the new mon being designed in a time with very different design philosophies and makes the Pokemon franchise as a whole feel less cohesive.
That's really my biggest gripe with the modern signature bloat, particularly the instances where the signature thing is hastily tacked on. It's not that it takes up space in any menus, it's that it makes the new Pokemon feel less integrated into the rest of the franchise because the whole "look at me and my cool thing that only I can do" makes them stick out like a sore thumb.
Though I guess in the cases of gens 7-9, it's more like all the fingers got caught in the door. If they're not sticking out like sore thumbs, they're suffering from Syndrome syndrome: "when everyone has a signature thing, nobody does". This ironically makes Pokemon like Centiskorch more interesting, since their uniqueness comes from combining pre-existing traits in new ways without needing a signature thing as a crutch.
Then you have a 130 SPA / 110 Speed mon with 80/80/110 defenses that can run an 80 BP STAB that debuffs Special Attackers by 2 stages. A completely unwarranted buff that is avoided by making a new move instead.
Wait, these moves debuff Special Defense, not Special Attack like you said. That's hella busted are you really serious with this suggestion? Wow.
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*Goes to Smogon's main page and, right there on the twitter feed, spoiled of 3 new Pokemon*
... A week. I get it, the games are out now, we're all excited about the new Pokemon, and for Smogon that means for competitive. But not everyone plays the game to completion in the 24 hours it comes out. Is it too much to ask that for at least a week we don't show what the new Pokemon look like for those foolishly enough wanting to be surprised? Names are fine, names nowadays you really can't tell what the Pokemon looks like, like I know all the Starter's evos names and I have no clue what I'm in for with them (which is handy as I do look up a new Pokemon's bulbapedia page just to make sure how they evolve so I'm not wasting experience on them). Just for the first week the names don't need to be accompanied by an image. Those who know will know, and those who don't will see the name and think "that sounds like an interesting name, I can't wait to see what it looks like when I naturally come to seeing it in my game".
... A week. I get it, the games are out now, we're all excited about the new Pokemon, and for Smogon that means for competitive. But not everyone plays the game to completion in the 24 hours it comes out. Is it too much to ask that for at least a week we don't show what the new Pokemon look like for those foolishly enough wanting to be surprised? Names are fine, names nowadays you really can't tell what the Pokemon looks like, like I know all the Starter's evos names and I have no clue what I'm in for with them (which is handy as I do look up a new Pokemon's bulbapedia page just to make sure how they evolve so I'm not wasting experience on them). Just for the first week the names don't need to be accompanied by an image. Those who know will know, and those who don't will see the name and think "that sounds like an interesting name, I can't wait to see what it looks like when I naturally come to seeing it in my game".
Cheryl.
Celesteela is Life
I feel like I could write a 1,000 word rant on why I hate how the Diglett line has gotten two regional forms that do little to nothing different with the entire line. Alolan Diglett/Dugtrio was bad enough with it literally being a reskin with "volcano steel hair" or whatever, but Wiglett/Wugtrio is just so disappointing because I was really excited with Wiglett being this dope garden eel. I thought they'd finally do something unique with Dugtrio by making it a Water/Dragon or something, or even forgoing the trio concept altogether (maybe the Wiglett's that evolved from Diglett decided that it would be better to only have one head as their evolution, or maybe two, larger heads?). Aaaand then we get red reskin of Dugtrio that's attached to a rock instead of the ground. Icing on the cake, the mon is destined to be bad competitively because they copypasted Dugtrio's stats again on a mediocre mono type. Like, if you're going to give this line two regional variants, could you at least make them more of a unique take from the original? It's just so lame.
It’s true there’s too many early game ~50 BP that don’t add up much within few levels, but move Category and the likes are still important; Ember, a Special move, won’t deal as much damage from a Pokémon with a higher physical Attack stat as Flame Wheel do.
But a change of design phisolophy isn’t automatically beneficial in the long run, especially if the quality of signatures greatly fluctuate to the point of coming off as insincere in some cases. Having a signature is, at the end of the day, just a signature, and the Pokémon are going to need more than a signature to stand out among the current crowd.
The increasing amount of banned new Pokémon from each generation in Smogon also proved worrisome, as no one wants to deal with the most broken strategy / Pokémon imaginable every day to the point of making a metagame even more stale than if things didn’t changed up. The nerfs tend to be too little, too late if more and more overpowered things sprout up in an alarming high rate. And when that started to happens more frequently on regular Pokémon when it comes to the bans, something’s not right.
While Doubles, and VGC by extension, makes several banned Pokémon less broken in practice, Battle Stadium Singles still exist when it comes to official GF formats, which means not even competitive players outside of Smogon are safe from such problematic power creep.
One thing I agree is that a move that is superior to a move that is already subpar to begin with shouldn’t be considered a big deal.
To chime in on the "Signature" spam, my main issue with it is that it already contributes to an issue DrPumpkinz brings up about franchise cohesion and design philosophy, because this started heavily in Gen 7 and especially 8 I feel and thus you don't see it with much frequency in previous gens to blend in. The philosophy I think this goes into is that in older games, Pokemon were very much stand-ins for Animals and Fauna, wild life that acted on instinct and the moves essentially represented Darwin-evolved traits they developed to function in the wild. Nowadays, the Pokemon feel a lot more like "funny animal" style characters whom you can simply catch multiples of, with them often getting signature moves or abilities to make them gameplay distinct like RPG party members (at least in games without "equippable" builds or job systems like some FF games).
In the old games, signatures were usually reserved for Legendary Pokemon (who were unique or near-so in the world's lore with incredible powers) or for a few select species that had REALLY out there builds and traits as you see with some weird evolutions in real life as well amidst the hundreds of relatively "normal" looking animal species. Nowadays almost everything has one, which kind of has the opposite effect of the signature making them stand-out because it's simply an assumption rather than an upset now.
Another annoyance for me is the hindsight where subsequent releases make it clear the Signatures are more about marketing the Pokemon than designing all these unique creatures, because very often these signature moves or abilities find their way onto other Pokemon after the debut "look at the new shiny toy" appearance (Gen 6 starters saw their Signature moves given to "mundane" Pokemon within the same gen for an extreme case). At that point it feels like a design philosophy they can't even commit to, be it cold feet by the game designers or double dipping by the marketers.
I also think the signature spam indirectly contributes to the perceptions of power creep, as inevitably they either repeat traits that caught peoples' attention under different flavor (Protean -> Libero) or they have to keep escalating or trying weird combinations that get stronger as a result (without spoiling a name, anyone watching SV OU talk knows a utility mon ability that is causing quite an impact).
In the old games, signatures were usually reserved for Legendary Pokemon (who were unique or near-so in the world's lore with incredible powers) or for a few select species that had REALLY out there builds and traits as you see with some weird evolutions in real life as well amidst the hundreds of relatively "normal" looking animal species. Nowadays almost everything has one, which kind of has the opposite effect of the signature making them stand-out because it's simply an assumption rather than an upset now.
Another annoyance for me is the hindsight where subsequent releases make it clear the Signatures are more about marketing the Pokemon than designing all these unique creatures, because very often these signature moves or abilities find their way onto other Pokemon after the debut "look at the new shiny toy" appearance (Gen 6 starters saw their Signature moves given to "mundane" Pokemon within the same gen for an extreme case). At that point it feels like a design philosophy they can't even commit to, be it cold feet by the game designers or double dipping by the marketers.
I also think the signature spam indirectly contributes to the perceptions of power creep, as inevitably they either repeat traits that caught peoples' attention under different flavor (Protean -> Libero) or they have to keep escalating or trying weird combinations that get stronger as a result (without spoiling a name, anyone watching SV OU talk knows a utility mon ability that is causing quite an impact).
You could say we should pay some last respects to people trying their hardest to design new signature abilities and moves when at this point most of the more "simple" design have already been done.
It's funny since a certain totally not famous MOBA is suffering from the very same problem, that it has reached a point where champion designs are trying too hard to feel unique, with the result of overloaded and often overcomplicated kits that become impossible to balance.
I remember someone saying something similar about the Gen 8 starters, how they look more like hyper-stylised individuals than species that could function in an ecosystem. It makes me wonder if anyone's tried redesigning them.
Also, Inteleon's design still bothers me because it looks like it has no space for internal organs.
I may not have been said someone, but I have made similar criticism about the Gen 8 starters (and some other prior ones like Incineroar) in the past.