Pokemon you won't use in-game

[ScraftyIsTheBest]

I think it works in the context of Gen 1.

The first Magikarp you can get is the one from the Route 4 salesman at level 5, training it is actually a pretty major investment, and there's a very decent chance a kid playing the games for the first time during the 90s wouldn't know about Gyarados. However, anyone stubborn enough to continue training Magikarp on the off chance it'll get better will be rewarded with a beast that can easily muscle past Misty (an actually scary boss) and continue to be useful for the rest of the game. Like I said before, later games just made it way easier to get it Gyarados.

Plus iirc older gens locked fishing catches to specific levels based on the rod and Magikarp wasn't part of the Super Rod table, so you couldn't cheat a Gyarados later on. You had to invest in it regardless of what part of the game you were in.

Also the dichotomy of Magikarp being completely and utterly useless compared to Gyarados being a total powerhouse was really effective for Gen 1, especially in the context of the Magikarp salesman being the first means to obtain it.

It's supposed to be a ripoff in-universe, a waste of 500 yen for a Pokemon who is seemingly completely useless, not only having poor stats but only knowing Splash, a move that does nothing. If someone gives up, it will be a ripoff and a waste, but if you're persistent enough to try to raise the Magikarp from Level 5 up to Level 20 and beyond you're rewarded with a Pokemon who is incredibly strong, with high stats, a great movepool, and only two weaknesses, turning what should've been a wasted 500 yen into possibly the best monetary investment ever.

The game even subtly encourages people to try even if they don't know about Gyarados from what I dug into, because there are NPCs at the Pewter City PokeMart who allude to the Magikarp salesman. One of them brings up a shady salesman who sold a "totally weak" Magikarp for $500, but another NPC there says "Good things can happen if you raise a Pokemon diligently, even the weak ones!". The duality there notes Magikarp being useless and weak but also subtly encourages you to not only buy it but actively try to raise it, and the "good thing" that can happen from doing that is Gyarados.

Not to mention Magikarp as a whole was more effective in its gimmick in older gens because there was no EXP All mechanic and Magikarp is also in the Slow EXP Group, which made raising one a tedious chore in tandem with how weak it is. Later generations have made the process of raising Magikarp less of a chore due to scaled EXP gain and EXP All, especially in the Switch era where EXP being shared across the party is a permanently baked-in mechanic that cannot be turned off.

 

[Hugin]

Off the top of my head, friendship evolutions in older games is generally up there at the top of the list these days. I was willing to humor the mechanic back then but over time due to now being familiar with what most of those evo lines can do, better alternatives, and frankly decreased tolerance towards the idea of grinding an invisible number for middling payoffs hasn't really endeared me much. Would have put time-based evolutions here as well pre-PLA as a sort of honorary mention but that can be worked around by tweaking the clock if needed.

I was going to respond to this singing the praises of Eviolite for solving at least some of the "annoying evolution method" problem, but that mostly works for middle stages like Golbat and Rhydon. Meanwhile, for some reason most friendship evos are starting with extremely weak mons that NEED the evolution to function. Why GF?

 

[NaturalTropius]

I'll say this- I really never like using Pokémon that I can't fully evolve in-game. To me, the thought is like- I came into the series in Gen IV, and a lot of those evolutions just feel inseparable from their pre-evolved forms, even when they're still good without them. I can't use a Dusclops without thinking about how the team is incomplete because I can't evolve it into Dusknoir, and I can't use a Seadra without thinking about Kingdra. That really hurt my enjoyment of LGPE, just because it really did feel like those evolution lines were just forced to stay incomplete.

I will say, it's starting to happen with PLA and SV evolutions, too.

 

[Castersvarog]

Personally, I just cannot bring myself to use a Mon that’s only available at like the very end of the game, like during Victory Road or their equivalents.
It’s two things, having an empty team slot for that long just bugs me a little in a way I don’t even know how to describe.
And it just doesn’t let me build a connection to the Mon I’m using. Like not being able to evolve it myself or just get any use out of it except for a single digit number of fights.

Really the only exception has been Hydreigon in Gen 5 because there’s such a large postgame it can see a lot of use in

 

[Magcargo]

Previously, in the earlier gens, I would avoid using shitters like Emolga or Kricketune. I was more obsessed with stronger Pokemon like Chandelure, Aegislash, or Excadrill that were powerhouses in their final form. Nonetheless, now that I've mellowed out a bit, I think that finding ways to make a lot of these "bad" Pokémon work in an in-game playthrough and leveraging their good traits between their typing, movepool, or other traits is really cool. It helps that the EXP All of the newer gens have a lot of tools to make the Pokemon good, between convent item access, more accessible egg moves, infinite TMs, etc

Usually for a first playthrough, anything is fair game since ill be rotating a party of 10 - 12 mons, but generally, I don't like using legendary Pokemon in the story mode if I can help it. There are a few exceptions- the Titan Iron treads feels like a "strong Pokemon" more than a legendary for example- but most others I think are off the table. Urshifu could have been another exception but being forced to get the EXP charm to use it is a lame design choice, so I never do.

Apart from that, some Pokemon are kind of just bad and shitty in an unfun way. I definitely would never use Luvdisc (mostly due to vibes) and I feel like Unown would be an extremely boring Pokemon to use because it only has one move. Lumineon and Delibird are two other guys that I see myself not using though...... they do have some sauce I could see being fun. But yeah, I do feel that Unown / Ditto tier Pokemon that are not only bad statistically, but LITERALLY have no options in how they can be utilized or built are the type of Pokemon I'd never run

 

[Omastar68]

I try to challenge myself with nfe teams, but I cannot bring myself to, typically, use mons that forego reasonable abilities. Something like pressure is usually under fire by me for game, though I am using wailmer with that in oras rerun. There's worse stuff though than that even.

The exception is if I use an nfe that essentially gets no ability, because I have the option to Evo for useful one at some point. So my shroomish.

EDIT: w/ the nfe thing wouldn't use grubbin sadly. I'd feel dumb going adamant/etc, in case I have to evo, but similarly dumb to go modest/etc and NOT evo for forever/a while.

 

[bdt2002]

I just finished writing a post about this in slightly less detail in another thread, but I thought it would be relevant here too. Armaldo in Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald specifically might be the worst Fossil Pokémon for an in-game playthrough in the entire core series and I’m struggling to think of something that’s worse.

The Anorith family has everything you could want in a bad Pokémon for a Hoenn playthrough. The main issues come down to how bad Rock/Bug is in Gen 3 Hoenn and how few and weak your options for STABs are, but Anorith’s base stats and relatively late final evolution don’t make matters any easier. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but Anorith comes at Level 20 and evolves at Level 40 with one of the slower Exp. groups, and some of this Pokémon’s same characteristics are shared with the other fossil Pokémon, Lileep, who isn’t a world beater in its own right but I feel Rock/Grass to be noticeably better and even somewhat underrated and it clears Anorith by a country mile defensively.

Going down the list of fossil Pokémon available for in-game playthroughs, and like I said, I can’t think of something weaker. The Kanto fossils also come and evolve late but Omastar and Kabutops can at least be used for Blaine and some late game battles, Archen suffers from Defeatist but playing around this is significantly easier in single player than in multiplayer and it’s a beast when it’s not active, and the Sinnoh fossils have some embarrassing base stats and are version exclusive but you can at least attempt to find a spot for them in Diamond & Pearl’s limited environment with bad Trainer AI and getting to dodge a bad matchup in Gardenia. Those two are probably the only things that come close, but I think you get my point by now. The only possible reasons I can think of for choosing Anorith are if you used Lileep in your previous playthrough and if Armaldo is your favorite Pokémon of all time (it does have a good design, I’ll give it that). Those are good reasons but they don’t do anything to improve how awful this thing is on paper and in practice.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

I just finished writing a post about this in slightly less detail in another thread, but I thought it would be relevant here too. Armaldo in Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald specifically might be the worst Fossil Pokémon for an in-game playthrough in the entire core series and I’m struggling to think of something that’s worse.

The Anorith family has everything you could want in a bad Pokémon for a Hoenn playthrough. The main issues come down to how bad Rock/Bug is in Gen 3 Hoenn and how few and weak your options for STABs are, but Anorith’s base stats and relatively late final evolution don’t make matters any easier. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but Anorith comes at Level 20 and evolves at Level 40 with one of the slower Exp. groups, and some of this Pokémon’s same characteristics are shared with the other fossil Pokémon, Lileep, who isn’t a world beater in its own right but I feel Rock/Grass to be noticeably better and even somewhat underrated and it clears Anorith by a country mile defensively.

Going down the list of fossil Pokémon available for in-game playthroughs, and like I said, I can’t think of something weaker. The Kanto fossils also come and evolve late but Omastar and Kabutops can at least be used for Blaine and some late game battles, Archen suffers from Defeatist but playing around this is significantly easier in single player than in multiplayer and it’s a beast when it’s not active, and the Sinnoh fossils have some embarrassing base stats and are version exclusive but you can at least attempt to find a spot for them in Diamond & Pearl’s limited environment with bad Trainer AI and getting to dodge a bad matchup in Gardenia. Those two are probably the only things that come close, but I think you get my point by now. The only possible reasons I can think of for choosing Anorith are if you used Lileep in your previous playthrough and if Armaldo is your favorite Pokémon of all time (it does have a good design, I’ll give it that). Those are good reasons but they don’t do anything to improve how awful this thing is on paper and in practice.

I've played through RSE a billion times and I don't think I've ever used either fossil, they're so awful. Don't get me wrong, I like a punishing Pokemon (I was actually thinking of writing a post here about how when I'm replaying any title for my own enjoyment, I typically go out of my way to avoid using any Pokemon generally accepted to be "the easy option", like Geodude in GSC or Lucario in B2W2) but getting these two at about 10 levels weaker than you'll likely be and having to drag them up to level with their dogshit natural movepools for... not all that great a payoff just ain't it. I can only imagine they're easier to raise in ORAS but I've never tried.

 

[Cobalt Empoleon]

I used Armaldo once in a mono-Bug Emerald run. I was already committed to a very grindy experience (just getting Nincada to 20 takes ages), so I didn't mind raising Anorith. In general, I've found that I enjoy replaying Pokemon games a lot more if a) I only start a run when I really feel like there's something strategically interesting about the theme and b) I let go of the need for efficiency.

I've played through RSE a billion times and I don't think I've ever used either fossil, they're so awful. Don't get me wrong, I like a punishing Pokemon (I was actually thinking of writing a post here about how when I'm replaying any title for my own enjoyment, I typically go out of my way to avoid using any Pokemon generally accepted to be "the easy option", like Geodude in GSC or Lucario in B2W2) but getting these two at about 10 levels weaker than you'll likely be and having to drag them up to level with their dogshit natural movepools for... not all that great a payoff just ain't it. I can only imagine they're easier to raise in ORAS but I've never tried.

I also try to avoid mons that trivialise their games, although tbh I don't even mind if an awkward mon doesn't have a great payoff

 

[Omastar68]

I've played through RSE a billion times and I don't think I've ever used either fossil, they're so awful. Don't get me wrong, I like a punishing Pokemon (I was actually thinking of writing a post here about how when I'm replaying any title for my own enjoyment, I typically go out of my way to avoid using any Pokemon generally accepted to be "the easy option", like Geodude in GSC or Lucario in B2W2) but getting these two at about 10 levels weaker than you'll likely be and having to drag them up to level with their dogshit natural movepools for... not all that great a payoff just ain't it. I can only imagine they're easier to raise in ORAS but I've never tried.

Oh much easier. Or at least, it IS easy, and I know from posts recently they were NOT easy back then. My first game was sapphire, and I've played emerald, but that was ages ago, and I recall zero. Armaldo is mostly my favorite fossil oddly enough, I had been trying to make a go of it in oras or what not with av, love that item.

I think one other group I avoid is generally weather dependent, even if you can forego ability, it kinda seems boring too. Love some grass types so I might sneak in an oddish or Bellsprout in SOME gens, but that maractus in SS darn well better be water absorb, not chloro. Uh other might be auto win button, dracovish and bone club marowaks. Idk I used both those some, but upon reflection kinda meh outside fighting people on competitive. Sandshrew goes back to the weather thing, but more cause it's outclassed hard by exca. I don't want x that is a waaay worse y, unless I inexplicably, or otherwise, dislike y. Mythicals handed out through gift are probably mostly for post game but...if I ever see one in before that I won't use it on playthrough. Bigger on starter birds than starter mammals, unless maybe a whole starter mammals theme. Bunnelby, bidpof, etc. I like to stack types for a theme some, but even though that stacks weakness too, I avoid much/any 4x weakness stuff. I'd likely not go for anything that evolves too late. For most people that'll be cause they want their hydrei/volc/dnite etc, for me is cause it will take too long to get the extra exp from NOT evoing by lvl once you can.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

I generally avoid Legendaries and Slow Exp. Group mons, but I wouldn't be terribly opposed to the idea of using Raikou or whatever.

Now, Gyarados... No. Absolutely not. Magikarp is thoroughly useless, which is something that I don't like. I don't mind weak but functional, but when GSC Gastly looks better, we have a problem.

The payoff? A boring water-type with good stats (depending on the game) that will chew through TMs.

I couldn't think of a mon more unappealing.

Late-game pseudos too. In general, I don't like mons that require me to carry them and feed them exp so I can get a powerhouse late-game. Anything that can't pull its own weight has no business in my teams.