During my Silver Playthrough I couldn't pass up the opportunity to use the Red Gyarados you could find at the Lake of Rage. I don't know what I was expecting, but Gyarados really underperformed.
For one, its movepool really sucked. You catch it with Leer, Bite, Dragon Rage, and Thrash. The former is situational, the middle 2 are mediocre at this point in the game, so you're left with a 90 BP Normal Move as your main Attack. 125 Base Attack is great, but Gyarados seriously didn't do as much damage as it looked like it would.
And it's level up moveset is trash as well. Twister is terrible, Rain Dance isn't practical in an in-game playthrough, and Hyper Beam leaves Gyarados vunerable more often than not. Now, it does get Hydro Pump, and I thought it would certainly fix Gyarados' power issue, until I realized Gyarados has a grand total of 60 Base Special Attack. Someone at Game Freak must've really hated it, because it had 100 Special in Gen 1, but all that Special went to its Special Defense. As a result even the 120 BP STAB Move often didn't 2HKO because of its low power and poor accuracy. And while Flying-Type Moves are Physical this Gen, the only Flying Move Gyarados got was HP Flying, which needless to say left Gyarados with no real STAB.
And to make matters even worse, it's TM Learnset is also pretty mediocre. Every Physical TM it learns is either Normal-Type or Hidden Power, and only Return was really any better than Thrash. The bizzare part is that it actually got a decent assortment of good Special Moves, such as Fire Blast, Blizzard or Thunder, accuracy nonwhistanding. However, with that crappy Special Attack and the difficulty in getting those TMs, teaching Gyarados those moves was not worth the trouble.
Combine that with how slow Gyarados leveled up, and the Pokemon really disappointed me. Its a shame, as aside from the odd Electric-Type Trainer Gyarados didn't MU that badly against the rest of the game. But for such a cool design it hit like a wet paper towel.
If I recall correctly the ONLY non-Normal non-Hidden Power physical moves it could learn in Gen II, even if you included Gen I-exclusive moves, were Rock Smash, which was 20 power back then so even more useless than it is in newer games, and Reversal, which was event-exclusive and pretty much unobtainable for any modern-day playthroughs without cheating. It didn't get Earthquake until Ruby and Sapphire.
Gen II was pretty much Gyarados' lowest point battle-wise
DPPT Pachirisu.
Pachirisu might have that championship years back going for it but in-game it’s a meme. 45 base offenses are seriously pathetic, and nothing, NOTHING from its slightly interesting movepool of Charm, Light Screen, Super Fang, and U-Turn can change the fact you will never do traditional damage worth mattering with this Mon beyond the third gym. I distinctly remember not being able to 2HKO a Buneary lategame.
it was a meme in the championship to be fair, because it was known to be so bad but being used to such a strong degree.DPPT Pachirisu.
Pachirisu might have that championship years back going for it but in-game it’s a meme. 45 base offenses are seriously pathetic, and nothing, NOTHING from its slightly interesting movepool of Charm, Light Screen, Super Fang, and U-Turn can change the fact you will never do traditional damage worth mattering with this Mon beyond the third gym. I distinctly remember not being able to 2HKO a Buneary lategame.
it was a meme in the championship to be fair, because it was known to be so bad but being used to such a strong degree.
My point is everyone knows its a garbage Pokemon, which made the fact someone used it (successfully) all the more impressive.It was a little bit more than just to meme.
Pretty much it was picked because (1) the team that Se Jun Park used to win the Korean Championships was known so wanted to come in with something different and (2) he was originally going to use an Amoongus, but with how popular it is many would have a likely counter for it so chose a Pokemon no one was expecting. It was a risky move, but Pachirisu just so happened to have all the niches (mainly it can be made tanky and has "Follow Me") and no one was prepared for a tanky Electric-type of all Pokemon (in a game where an all-hitting powerful Ground-type move was often used).
It then became a meme afterwards after it worked shockingly well.
BTW, Se Jun Park looks to be enjoying the meme he started with the little electric squirrel:
In BDSP, I found Pachirisu to be one of the most useful Pokemon to use in the game, albiet not in the traditional sense. There were many points during the playthrough where my main team was overleveled, such as between the sixth and seventh gym, so I would use a team of 5 Pachirisu + Gastrodon as my "backup" team for things like the game's side content + certain segments of the game. Its pickup ability was incredibly useful to get items like the Dawn Stone I needed to evolve my Kirlia into Gallade (which was actually pretty OP since I got it right after the second gym + mine had an attack boosting nature and Knock Off). Its access to Nuzzle + Super Fang also made it pretty great when I was catching a bunch of Bronzor to get a Metal Coat to evolve my Scyther into Scizor, as you can't get the Metal Coat normally otherwise.DPPT Pachirisu.
Pachirisu might have that championship years back going for it but in-game it’s a meme. 45 base offenses are seriously pathetic, and nothing, NOTHING from its slightly interesting movepool of Charm, Light Screen, Super Fang, and U-Turn can change the fact you will never do traditional damage worth mattering with this Mon beyond the third gym. I distinctly remember not being able to 2HKO a Buneary lategame.
Yeah I was aware it got Flamethrower I think. It’s been a while since I used it. Nice it gets it in time though!small thing: in HGSS, Typhlosion learns Flamethrower at level 42, just in time for the E4, which improves its end-game significantly
I would like to reiterate that Cyndaquil was never a truly “bad” starter choice; it’s just that the family tends to fall flat in two very important areas. For one, opportunity cost: having Typhlosion as your team’s Fire-Type is nice, but not as impactful as the difference between, say, Meganium and Jumpluff, for example. The second thing I’d like to bring up is consistency. One of the reasons I like Totodile so much more than Cyndaquil is because Cyndaquil’s matchup spread is very polarized throughout the game, while Totodile lacks many of those winning matchups but makes up for it with its much lower amount of losing matchups compared to Grass and Fire-Types. Being able to play at least even with the hardest battles in the game means a lot more to me than being able to beat some easy trainers and lose almost all of the hard ones. Realistically, the battles Typhlosion wins (even after it gets Flamethrower) aren’t anything other Pokémon can’t also do well in, while the same can’t be said for some of Chikorita and Cyndaquil’s losses.I find that Typhlosion late game struggles are due to lack of coverage and being walled by Clair and Lance, two of the toughest fights already. Early game, however, is an easy ride between gaining easy experience and Spa EVs in Sprout Tower, resisting Bugsy's U-Turn, and Whitney's Miltank being countered by Muscle the Machop.
Yeah, honestly this game the Electric-Type absolutely filthy with some of the nerfs, especially on the Special side. Calling Legends' balance changes buffs or nerfs is hard to say with only one game so far existing in this style and said game not exactly being multiplayer-based... but as far as in-game changes go... good heavens, this type is horrible. Electric-Types only get one winning matchup across all of Hisui, that being to the mini-boss Hisuian Braviary, while doing at least below average, if not outright losing to several other "important battles", losing against three of the five Nobles if you count type coverage while also losing to Dialga (Palkia is slightly easier but still not guaranteed by any means) and only beating one of Volo'sRaichu got hit hard by the movepool changes in Legends. It's only options for coverage now are Play Rough and Iron Tail (which are serviceable but inaccurate), Rock Smash (which is garbage), and a bunch of Normal moves. No Surf, no Grass Knot, not even a decent Fighting move. This made the Path of Solitude boss (a fucking Steelix) incredibly frustrating for me since I couldn't paralyze it and my only way of damaging it was Rock Smash. It didn't stop me from using my Alpha Raichu on my main team, but it was still a bit disheartening.
Well, Raichu, Jolteon and Pachirisu got fucked by the movepool cuts, and Magnezone has kinda always had a shit movepool. The rest though?Yeah, honestly this game the Electric-Type absolutely filthy with some of the nerfs, especially on the Special side. Calling Legends' balance changes buffs or nerfs is hard to say with only one game so far existing in this style and said game not exactly being multiplayer-based... but as far as in-game changes go... good heavens, this type is horrible. Electric-Types only get one winning matchup across all of Hisui, that being to the mini-boss Hisuian Braviary, while doing at least below average, if not outright losing to several other "important battles", losing against three of the five Nobles if you count type coverage while also losing to Dialga (Palkia is slightly easier but still not guaranteed by any means) and only beating one of Volo'seightPokémon in the final battle, that being Togekiss. You already hinted at this with Raichu, but the biggest nerf most of them got was to their movepools. Type coverage is decreased across the board in Hisui, and mons like Electivire can be massively cheesed because of it.