Pokemon that disappointed you in-game despite looking good initially?

[mertyville]

Imported Cheese is exaggerating a lot in his life streams. In his tierlist videos he makes clear that he goes for a non-speed but still efficient run. Meaning knocking out the opponent with as minimum efford as possible. He does give credit for set up, but it better pays off and you don't have to go +6 to sweep.

Not to take away too much off topic, I think I will write about my past experience with in-game Azelf in DPP. I don't remember which one but I know that whenever I could not one shot an opponent, which is possible if you grinded and taught it good offensive moves, this thing dies usually.

Uxie is the exact opposite. It doesn't die but you slowly chip away health. If you don't get to set up +2 with X-Items and your opponent has moves to status you, you are screwed. It is a real waste of time. You can win eventually but to me it was a waste of investment using this Pokemon.
On the contrary, I used in a Platinum run a few months ago Mesprit and it pretty much helped sweeping the rest of the game. It might be the worst competitively speaking but for a run where you want to waste as little resources as possible, it is ideal.

 

[ant4456]

IDK if this is the right thread bc this is romhack talk buuut:

Been using Vaporeon in RadRed and it fuckin sucks tbh. It takes like 40-60% from every boosted attack which makes it really hard to run, and it struggles for moveslots.

Flip Turn has been my best use for it so far, in the Morty fight I lead it and Flip'd to deal with Mimikyu. But in a lot of games Vaporeon feels like a sack lol

Been considering throwing an Assault Vest on it because that could maybe be interesting, and because I can't run Wish on it anyways bc egg move and I'm lazy. Lefties doesn't seem to help when the starting damage is so high

I've been running Gardevoir also and it's really underwhelming due to bulk, even the Mega kinda just dies. Neutral to everything kinda sucks, resists few types.

 

[Hugin]

I'm not sure if Wishiwashi is frailer and weaker than it seems like it should be or if it's because the one I used for a playthrough of Moon had two 0 IVs. I feel like unlocking the IV checker explained a lot, but was I expecting too much from the Schooling form's Base Stat Total or was it the bad IVs?

I never had problems with it's health, so it's probably IVs. 45/135/135 is an odd statline, but not bad.

The lack of speed certainly doesn't help, either. It took a lot of chip in the process of killing everything for me.

 

[Just A Seaking]

I'm not sure if Wishiwashi is frailer and weaker than it seems like it should be or if it's because the one I used for a playthrough of Moon had two 0 IVs. I feel like unlocking the IV checker explained a lot, but was I expecting too much from the Schooling form's Base Stat Total or was it the bad IVs?

I never bothered to check its IVs, but my experience of using Wishiwashi in UM was thoroughly disappointing too. Granted, UM is a harder game and you don't get that early Scald TM, so that's less of a surprise, but I expected so much more from a 'mon with 620 BST. Slow 'mons in general tend to struggle in-game, but it was a recurring problem that Wishiwashi would take one or two hits, get knocked down to 25% HP, and be out of commission for the rest of the battle. It has the Dusknoir problem where the defenses can only do so much to offset that pathetic HP, but it's much more pronounced since 1/4 of your HP is effectively a KO.

IDK if this is the right thread bc this is romhack talk buuut:

Been using Vaporeon in RadRed and it fuckin sucks tbh. It takes like 40-60% from every boosted attack which makes it really hard to run, and it struggles for moveslots.

It's been a few years since I've played Radical Red - I think the game's had two or three major updates since the last time I played it - but my experience was that bulky mons tend to really struggle in that boss rush environment. Unlike competitive, where you can tailor your 'mon of choice and their EVs to specific threats, a bulky 'mon for a boss rush needs to be a generalist that can take on a wide variety of threats - and the power levels get absurdly high going into the E4 and Blue. Offensive 'mons pretty much play the same every time - get rid of things that can check or counter them, and set up as your win condition - but defensive 'mons are on the backfoot since they just can't cover everything.

 

[CynicalGiant]

I wanted to use Natu/Xatu in a playthru of Soulsilver but good god what were they cooking with this, I caught it because I love its design and never used it in Johto before but immediately boxed it after seeing its movepool

pokemon with 65/70/70 defenses and 75/95/95 offenses, let's give them predominantly status moves for some reason?
when you catch a Natu, levels 18-24, unless you catch a level 18 one it won't have any attacking moves
it is such a strange choice, I don't have a problem inherently with support pokemon but it feels like they forgot what Natu/Xatu stats were like when they decided this learnset lmao

also like what is the point of a Psychic/Flying pokemon if I don't have any Psychic or Flying moves? You can get a Natu/Xatu right after Morty so I guess you can just teach it Shadow Ball but not even weak STAB is so odd
the typing would be very useful against Chuck but you won't have any moves to deal super-effective damage to Chuck's team...

 

[Skeleton!]

Torantula is pretty much dead weight until it's evolved, and even then, it's move pool is very underwhelming.

 

[Magnus0]

Torantula is pretty much dead weight until it's evolved, and even then, it's move pool is very underwhelming.

But did it look good initially though?

 

[Darvin]

Generation 1 Tauros is such a huge disappointment for an in-game playthrough. With its competitive reputation, solid stats, and broad movepool you'd expect great results. But it was really bad. I've played through Red and Blue using every fully-evolved Pokemon, and Tauros is pretty near the bottom the list of fully-evolved Pokemon. Not quite enough to make the bottom 10, but definitely a dishonorable mention.

First is the matter of catching it. Being a late-comer is not a deal-breaker and there are lots of great late-game Pokemon in Kanto. But the real pain point is that Tauros is only available in the Safari zone. The generation 1 Safari zone is unforgiving. Most Pokemon are significantly harder to catch in the Safari zone than they are in any other locations, and Tauros is one of the hardest Pokemon to catch in the Safari zone. To find it with any reasonable odds, you first need to travel to the very depths of the Safari zone where it has a mere 4% chance to appear. Once it appears, it has a massive flee chance and will usually flee on the first turn so usually you get one chance to throw a Safari ball at it before it's gone. There are other rare Pokemon that aren't too bad to acquire; Kangaskhan, Rhydon, and Exeggute all have pretty low flee chances so when they do appear you get lots of chances to throw balls at them. But Tauros is a runner, and that means you'll need to encounter it about a dozen times to catch it, and that can easily take over an hour of resetting. In fact, I'd say it's tied as the second-hardest Pokemon in the game to catch with Scyther (the hardest is Porygon, and that's not even close...)

Now, if it were at least good once you got it then that would be a redeeming quality, but Tauros disappoints even here. Its great stats are actually much worse than they appear, because Tauros is in the slow level-up group which means it's going to be several levels lower than most other Pokemon given the same same amount of experience. In practice, this means its stats are comparable to Wigglytuff, which I don't feel I need to elaborate on why that's a bad thing. It's not just experience that's a problem, it's also its movepool. Tauros gets great TM's, but it makes bad use of them and is a questionable choice for such valuable TM's. Even with Thunderbolt and Blizzard, Tauros still loses badly to Lance's Gyarados and Dragonite, and if it can't handle those matchups why would you bother teaching it those moves at all? Tauros ends up struggling because it needs great TM's to function, but it's not the best user of those moves so it's hard to justify teaching them. So in practice it ends up spamming Strength as its main attacking move.

Tauros isn't the worst Normal-type in the game. Porygon, Ditto, and Persian are all orders of magnitude worse and very memorable for just how bad they were when I ran them. But I had very low expectations going into those runs, I could plainly see these were bad Pokemon with no redeeming qualities. Tauros is a legend of generation 1 and I went into that run expecting better and was severely disappointing. It wouldn't quite make my bottom 10 worst Pokemon for an in-game playthrough, but it would get a dishonorable mention on that list...

 

[Ravenson]

But... Persian is actually quite fun in-game.

 

[Darvin]

But... Persian is actually quite fun in-game.

What are you doing with it?

I found it was just a pain the whole way through. Meowth is under-leveled when you get it and really struggles to do anything, and ends up needing to be switch-trained to keep up with the team until it evolves at... level 28. That's just such a late evolution for an early-game Pokemon with terrible stats and moves. It really felt like raising a Magikarp, except once I finally got the evolution I got a Pokemon with stats slightly inferior to Raticate. And it's not just stats, the movepool is terrible too. Its only good level-up move is Slash, but that only comes at level 51 so you'll probably win the game before getting it. And your only good TM move is Body Slam. I found it basically was just using Body Slam and Screech the entire game.

 

[Ravenson]

What are you doing with it?

I found it was just a pain the whole way through. Meowth is under-leveled when you get it and really struggles to do anything, and ends up needing to be switch-trained to keep up with the team until it evolves at... level 28. That's just such a late evolution for an early-game Pokemon with terrible stats and moves. It really felt like raising a Magikarp, except once I finally got the evolution I got a Pokemon with stats slightly inferior to Raticate. And it's not just stats, the movepool is terrible too. Its only good level-up move is Slash, but that only comes at level 51 so you'll probably win the game before getting it. And your only good TM move is Body Slam. I found it basically was just using Body Slam and Screech the entire game.

I'll admit it got a lot of focus on my team - from leaving Cerulean City to getting to Route 7 or 8 or wherever Vulpix shows up, it was the only mon besides my Bulbasaur starter in rotation. This probably helped it avoid the experience you had, though I did get a full team in the end (Poliwrath, Lapras, and Magneton). I had it learn Pay Day and rounded out its moves with the BubbleBeam and Swift TMs. At the end, the Rare Candies I found throughout the game got used to boost it to Slash level (other mons got boosted evenly though, I just fight everything so I'm usually at a good level by game's end). I like to use one mon to fight each of the rival's at the finale and Persian took on Alakazam and won.

It's definitely a "win with your favorites" kind of Pokemon, but seeing it in the same echelons as Ditto and Porygon is pretty unnecessary (fun fact: a Porygon given the same love and attention as the Persian described above being sent against an Alakazam will end with it being smacked against the wall of the stadium so hard it's reduced to a .jpg). It's clearly a step above them both.

 

[Darvin]

I'll admit it got a lot of focus on my team - from leaving Cerulean City to getting to Route 7 or 8 or wherever Vulpix shows up, it was the only mon besides my Bulbasaur starter in rotation.

Yeah, if you're only running two Pokemon for such a long stretch of the game then you're going to become very over-leveled.

At the end, the Rare Candies I found throughout the game got used to boost it to Slash level (other mons got boosted evenly though, I just fight everything so I'm usually at a good level by game's end). I like to use one mon to fight each of the rival's at the finale and Persian took on Alakazam and won.

That's about 10 levels higher than when I'm typically reaching the Champion. In my run with Perisan, it just got one-shot by everything in the Elite 4 and literally couldn't claim a single KO. And it's not like it was under-leveled, the other teammates were the same level and they cleared the game just fine even with Persian being deadweight.

It's definitely a "win with your favorites" kind of Pokemon, but seeing it in the same echelons as Ditto and Porygon is pretty unnecessary

I didn't mean to imply those three are equivalent, rather that all of them are are substantially worse than Tauros in different ways. Persian is more of just a conventionally bad Pokemon, while Ditto is a weird gimmick that doesn't really work, and Porygon is just a nightmare to actually obtain.

I have a personal tier list for in-game Red and Blue runs, and while Persian is near the bottom of the list, Ditto and Porygon actually get entire tiers all to themselves for being so bad.

my tier list

 

[Ravenson]

Yeah, if you're only running two Pokemon for such a long stretch of the game then you're going to become very over-leveled.

My team always ends up at the same level at the end, so while they were definitely over-leveled in that middle stretch, they really shouldn't be by the end because the experience only gets divided up so much.

I didn't mean to imply those three are equivalent, rather that all of them are are substantially worse than Tauros in different ways. Persian is more of just a conventionally bad Pokemon, while Ditto is a weird gimmick that doesn't really work, and Porygon is just a nightmare to actually obtain.

I have a personal tier list for in-game Red and Blue runs, and while Persian is near the bottom of the list, Ditto and Porygon actually get entire tiers all to themselves for being so bad.

It's fascinating to me how we agree on some things (Venusaur, Ninetales, Slowbro, Arcanine, Porygon of course) and then just wildly disagree on others (I'm much more bullish on Lapras and Poliwrath than you and you are way more in love with Magneton than I was).

 

[Darvin]

It's fascinating to me how we agree on some things (Venusaur, Ninetales, Slowbro, Arcanine, Porygon of course) and then just wildly disagree on others (I'm much more bullish on Lapras and Poliwrath than you and you are way more in love with Magneton than I was).

Lapras is incredibly under-leveled for how late in the game you get it. If you got it at a higher level it would be incredible, but as it stands it's arriving at level 15 near the end of the game, and it's in the slow experience group. It just needs a huge amount of grinding to thrive, and I can't rate it highly when other late-game Pokemon are things you just throw on your team and they work well with no extra effort on your part.

Poliwrath just underwhelmed. There's a big chunk of Water-types on my tier list that all got tiered back-to-back in C tier, and honestly they're about equal. They all have their pros and cons, but at the end of the day they shared the same dynamic and really didn't have anything to make themselves stand out. Poliwrath would probably be quite good with a few more levels, but Amnesia really didn't do anything at the levels I was using it.

Magneton hits some pretty nice breakpoints with its higher special stat that Raichu, Electabuzz, and Electrode fall short of. It was getting OHKO's where those others were getting 2HKO's. It's available at a very nice level, and is basically ready for Victory Road the moment you catch it.

 

[igiveuponaname]

View attachment 735744

What makes you rank kadabra so far down compared to Alakazam while Haunter and Gengar are both chilling together in S?

 

[Darvin]

What makes you rank kadabra so far down compared to Alakazam while Haunter and Gengar are both chilling together in S?

A big part of what makes Gengar and Haunter so good is that they're amazing both offensively and defensively. Ghost/Poison renders them completely immune to most physical attacks, and their massive special stat means they can be tank special attacks with ease. Their excellent movepool complements this; Electric/Psychic coverage hits more than half of the Elite 4 for super-effective. Haunter's lower stat total doesn't prevent it from doing the same job as Gengar. It still completely dunks on the entire Elite 4 and most of the Champion's team, and does it effortlessly.

This is not the case with Kadabra. Its defenses are paltry and it doesn't have a broken defensive typing to compensate for that. Any time it's not outspeeding and OHKO'ing, it's getting absolutely clobbered. This can lead to random KO's throughout the game, as a critical hit against Kadabra is almost always going to KO it, and crits have very high probability in gen 1. The Elite 4 are another matter entirely, their Pokemon are strong and fast and Kadabra often ends up outsped and only 3HKO'ing which leaves its horrible defenses exposed. Alakazam's extra power, speed, and defense patches up the problems Kadabra has and categorically improves its performance. Alakazam outspeeds stuff Kadabra doesn't, the extra Special means it needs fewer hits to KO, and its higher bulk means it often lives hits that Kadabra can't. Kadabra just can't do what Alakazam does, at least not at the same level.

 

[johnkneebravo]

The Serperior line looked really cool, but in Pokémon Black, I ended up not even using my starter to beat the Elite Four.

 

[bdt2002]

This is not the case with Kadabra. Its defenses are paltry and it doesn't have a broken defensive typing to compensate for that. Any time it's not outspeeding and OHKO'ing, it's getting absolutely clobbered. This can lead to random KO's throughout the game, as a critical hit against Kadabra is almost always going to KO it, and crits have very high probability in gen 1. The Elite 4 are another matter entirely, their Pokemon are strong and fast and Kadabra often ends up outsped and only 3HKO'ing which leaves its horrible defenses exposed. Alakazam's extra power, speed, and defense patches up the problems Kadabra has and categorically improves its performance. Alakazam outspeeds stuff Kadabra doesn't, the extra Special means it needs fewer hits to KO, and its higher bulk means it often lives hits that Kadabra can't. Kadabra just can't do what Alakazam does, at least not at the same level.

Fun Kadabra Fact: this thing is broken in Platinum. Kind of. No, like, it’s actually broken, as in it doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. I discovered on my most recent Platinum “playthrough” I got so bored playing Sinnoh again that I stopped after the second Gym that the in-game trade Abra from Oreburgh City has some kind of programming error. You know how Pokémon from trades are supposed to listen to you depending on the number of Gym Badges you have? I accidentally found that if you do the Abra trade after having already obtained the first Badge, for some reason this Abra still won’t obey you even below Level 20 because the in-game trade mechanics don’t recognize you obtained the Badge already.

What this means in practice is that on top of Kadabra’s existing issues you already mentioned, this thing loses out on winning matchups against the Poison-Types in Eterna Forest and that Team Galactic starts using during this stretch of the game, save for the Stunky family who it loses to anyway. Getting Gardenia’s Gym Badge does fix this error, thankfully, but it would be nice if you could use Kadabra against her Roserade for that fight. I don’t know if this happens in Diamond, Pearl, or in BDSP though, I haven’t tested this because that would require me to play another Sinnoh game and that region as good as it is gives me major burnout…

 

[doipy hooves]

I don’t know if this happens in Diamond, Pearl, or in BDSP though, I haven’t tested this because that would require me to play another Sinnoh game and that region as good as it is gives me major burnout…

This does happen and is intended because Sinnoh badge obedience only updates every 2 badges, so you're only safe up to Level 10 even after badge 1 which is unlike every other region.

 

[bdt2002]

This does happen and is intended because Sinnoh badge obedience only updates every 2 badges, so you're only safe up to Level 10 even after badge 1 which is unlike every other region.

This has been intentional the whole time!? This is what I get for mashing through the dialogue boxes, isn’t it?

 

[Roldski32]

but it would be nice if you could use Kadabra against her Roserade for that fight

I actually tried to used Kazza as Kadabra against Gardenia myself, would have been nice if it didn't have obedience issue except... Kazza got outsped and 2HKOed by her Roserade because that negative speed nature sucks so much and Kazza's Confusion doesn't 1HKO it. Gardenia's badge does increase the obedience cap but only up to L30, and here's another problem, Kazza has to not level above L30 by Maylene or it risked getting disobedient again and you can't increased that obedient cap until you beat Maylene herself,and that negative speed nature kicks in again. Kazza as Alakazam gets outsped by Maylene's Lucario unless you actually dumped 5-6 Carbos on it, and Kazza as Kadabra literally can't outspeed it. Really, that reduced speed from Quiet Nature is really annoying.