What Pokemon would you have liked to use in-game but couldn't?

[mertyville]

There are a lot of Pokemon and each game allows one to build a different team and use.
However, there are Pokemon one doesn't get to use during an in-game run either for being a huge investment, being a trade evolution (and not having access to someone to trade at the time), being post-game exclusive, only being accessable one or more generations later etc.

I think there are a lot of Pokemon where people theorycraft how it would perform or generally wanting to try out just because of a certain desire like me wanting to use Golem or Alakazam in Gen 1 which bothered me a lot.

However the Pokemon I want to pick is a Pokemon I wanted to own in general, not only for an in-game run, but to use it perhaps even competitively.
That Pokemon being Celebi:

Until Pokemon BW was released, I have never been able to get my hands on Celebi. Even with friends and many tricks we discovered, we could not find ways to get it. With Gen 5, online trades became far easier and I managed to obtain one even after. In Crystal, I managed to finally use Celebi through Virtual Console.
Tho to this date, I still have no Celebi in Gen 3 or Gen 4 games. Even with Glitches there is no way to obtain them, at least from my knowledge. Probably some risky Pomag Glitch which requires Pokemon I don't have.
The general appeal on how hard it was to obtain at the time is what makes it so desirable for me.

So what are Pokemon you would like to use in-game?

 

[Codraroll]

Practically any Ice-type whatsoever, in any game. They tend to only be available toward the end of the game, usually in an icy area somewhere around the seventh Gym. By the time you can find an Ice-type, most of the game is already over. This also means that most Ice-type Pokémon are designed around a late-game encounter, which make them poor choices for game runs even if you trade them over. The earliest Ice-type to evolve by level is Smoochum, at level 30, but more commonly, you'd have to drag around the base form until the mid level 30's, around the time your starter Pokémon reaches its final evolution. Many other Ice-types require Ice Stones (which are much rarer than the other elemental evolution stones) to evolve, or have quite convoluted evolution methods. The high evolution levels are a result of, and remedied by, the Pokémon usually being available so late. The designers usually want you to use the base form for a while before evolving it, so the evolution level is set as the encounter level + a bit. This, unfortunately, traps the Ice-type in a vicious cycle, wherein the existing Ice-type Pokémon are deemed best suited for the mid-late-game, because they evolve around that point. So any designated Ice-type area is placed in the mid-late-game, and any new Ice-types are designed to be encountered around the typical levels of that point. Hence, we never get any new Ice-types that can actually be found and contribute to your team from the beginning of the game.

The rare exception is Snom, which evolves by friendship, which means you can get your hands on a Frosmoth quite quickly if you find Snom early enough (and in SV, you can, if you know where to look). And if you do, you'll find Frosmoth embodying most of the typical problems of the Ice-type: quite slow, with a bunch of weaknesses and barely any resistances, a shallow movepool with severe coverage issues, and being shoehorned into a defensive role in which it performs terribly due to the aforementioned type chart problems (and they are combined with the similar issues of the Bug-type). Game Freak is fond of withholding Ice-type Pokémon from players, but they aren't exactly preventing any game balance issues by doing so. The only explanation I can think of why Ice-types are so severely handicapped every time, is that some of the designers passionately hate winter.

 

[RocketSurgery]

In general, I dislike it when any cool mon is unavailable until late game. Obviously the most common offenders are pseudos, who either are completely unavailable until late game or who are available early but completely useless for 40-50 levels (I'm looking at you, ). But I think the worst offender of this group is

In RSE this awesome robo-spider is just straight up locked to the postgame. Don't you even dare think of trying to steal Steven Stone's thunder, you are not cool enough to use this unless you are a Champion. What, Steven isn't Champion in Emerald anymore? Well, screw you anyways, we're still locking this behind postgame.

And if you think you're gonna beat the system by getting a friend who already beat the game to trade you a beldum, have fun doing nothing but fainting from take down for twenty levels before it finally becomes useful.

 

[CTNC]

In general, I dislike it when any cool mon is unavailable until late game. Obviously the most common offenders are pseudos, who either are completely unavailable until late game or who are available early but completely useless for 40-50 levels (I'm looking at you, ). But I think the worst offender of this group is
View attachment 762148
In RSE this awesome robo-spider is just straight up locked to the postgame. Don't you even dare think of trying to steal Steven Stone's thunder, you are not cool enough to use this unless you are a Champion. What, Steven isn't Champion in Emerald anymore? Well, screw you anyways, we're still locking this behind postgame.

And if you think you're gonna beat the system by getting a friend who already beat the game to trade you a beldum, have fun doing nothing but fainting from take down for twenty levels before it finally becomes useful.

Even after its debut Gen, you're not getting to use Metagross in game.

In BW2, Metang isn't worth hurling tons of Timer Balls at because it comes after the final Badge. (Speaking of, this is a problem with Durant and Heatmor in BW. They're only in Victory Road and they got moved to post game in BW2.) Beldum is also in the DLC for SwSh and SV, but it's in the parts of DLC made for post game. The only upside its only move was changed to Tackle SwSh.

There is one Gen where you can theoretically catch Beldum early enough to use it in game, Gen 7. In theory, you can catch Beldum on Mount Hokulani around Level 27. In practice, Take Down and a Catch rate of 3 says no. You may want to wait until you get the Master Ball because it's harder to catch than Legendaries!

 

[Ironmage]

A noticeable chunk of my interactions with open-wold games is finding that the promise of freedom isn't all that much when the one thing I actually want to be doing is blocked off, and SV isn't able to be an exception. I generally like semi-gimmicky teams ingame, so running multiple paradox mons as part of a terrain team would be right up my alley. I do find it a bit funny to be thinking of level 30 as late to get online when I'd gladly take availability at 40 to deal with legitimate balance concerns as long as there was content after that the mons could be used for.

 

[Codraroll]

Even after its debut Gen, you're not getting to use Metagross in game. (...) There is one Gen where you can theoretically catch Beldum early enough to use it in game, Gen 7.

That's not entirely true: Beldum was given out as a pre-order bonus for ORAS, allowing you to use it from the very get go. It was even shiny.

It did not give the complete Beldum experience, however, as it came with a bunch of event moves that entirely eliminated its awkward Take Down phase. I recall it being a quite solid team member. Still, for all practical purposes, that gift Pokémon might as well not have been Beldum at all.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Ooh ooh I can do this! Mainly because I bred a ton of Pokemon with cool egg moves/shiny forms/hidden abilities in Gen V some years ago and used most of them in playthroughs... but some remain untouched and unused even now.



Carnivine is a Pokemon I love the idea of, but have never quite gotten around to actually putting into practice. It's a funky Grass-type - much like James of Team Rocket, I love those. It has Levitate, which is a cool niche and a pretty powerful ability for a mid-level mon such as this. It learns a bunch of interesting and rare moves like Rage Powder, Acid Spray, Stockpile, and Worry Seed. It's a goofball, and I - you get where I'm going with this.

It's weird because I feel like it's one I should have used by now but the timing has just never felt right.



I've used Poliwrath - it's great. But I've never raised a Poliwag up with the intention of someday making it a Politoed. It being a trade evolution doesn't help, and nor does being a Water-type in a series full of them. But it's not even like other Water-types are much more interesting - Politoed gets a ton of neat moves like Perish Song and Belly Drum, it must be tons of fun to use. Plus it gets Drizzle! I think I briefly experimented with one for a Battle Subway rain team once, but I clearly didn't get very far with it (probably because millions of people have done it better - try doing a sun team, now that's a challenge).



Yeah. This one hurts. I love Relicanth. Like, actually love it. It gets Head Smash for god's sake! That's one of the coolest moves around. And what a poppin' shiny! But the one I bred is just sitting around gathering dust. Why exactly?

It's just a hard one all round. It comes super late in Hoenn and I feel like it basically doesn't exist in other games? Hmm, yeah - post-game in DPP, HGSS, BW, B2W2, late as hell and only by fishing with the Super Rod in XY, late as hell in SM/USUM, and DLC-only in SwSh. Relicanth needs more rep in general, but it's a hard mon to cram into the early-game. Plus that HP and Defence makes Onix look manageable; you'd only be able to beat it if you picked a Grass-type starter.



Yeah I've just never used this. Idk why really. Just... doesn't feel like my style, if you get me? Maybe it's a weird sort of contrarianism but Aegislash is so popular and the form change mechanic feels so OP in-game I just always find myself not wanting to give it a try.

Also just to add to the legendary/mythical list: Victini. I'm not a huge fan of it in general, but the fact that it's catchable at level 15 in BW pre-National Dex is really cool; it's pretty much the only one where they seem to have intended for players to use it (at least the players who got the damn event ticket; I never did until the DNS exploit became a thing). It would have been nice to have used it at some point, but I never did. Obviously V-Create is the move Victini is most known for, but did you know they gave out a Victini at one point with Bolt Strike, Bolt Flare, and Glaciate?! That's so frickin' cool and would have been the utmost fun to do a solo run through a game with. Too bad they gave it out at level... 100. Yeah.

Shaymin's in the same boat. I actually really wanted to use Shaymin's new forme in Platinum and even managed to get the event distribution back when that game was first released, and the girl in Floaroma Town will give you a Gracidea pre-National Dex... but it was given out at level 50. Well, that's stupid. I'm not going to subject myself to that. I've used a few other mythicals in-game previously: I got a Keldeo at level 15 back when B2W2 were released, and Celebi, Mew, and Jirachi were all given out at level 10 at various points in Gen III. There's a level 15 Hoopa distribution in Gen VII; I've never actually gotten around to it but I'd like to use that in an Alola game at some stage.

Meloetta and Genesect were also given out at a low level, but I'm... less interested in using those.

 

[Hugin]

So many for me. Now, some challenge runs have helped. I did a run of Brilliant Diamond with the various event legends that game gives you and it was very fun, I did a run of SV that used a different team for each storyline and caught plenty of lategame stuff(And used the paradoxes for Postgame), and monotype runs of XY were great(SO MANY mons are available early).

Otherwise, there's a bunch of mons who just come way too late or otherwise don't merit the effort of trying to make them work. So many waters, as I've said elsewhere, are going to show up when you have a water type. Shoutout to Whiscash, which I used in a Nuzlocke with different encounters, and it went swimmingly, but is basically impossible in most games normally. Gimmick normals are my jam, but a lot of them are weirdly limited in availability, too.

I want to do an Unknown run at some point, with 6 specific types, but dear lord that seems like work to set up.

Many other Ice-types require Ice Stones (which are much rarer than the other elemental evolution stones) to evolve, or have quite convoluted evolution methods.

I did an Eeveeloution run of SwSh and LET ME TELL YOU, digging duo for the Ice Stone was miserable. EVERY OTHER EEVEE is available before the third gym by a normal method, Ice Stone is locked to like Gym 6 without RNG.

Yeah I've just never used this. Idk why really. Just... doesn't feel like my style, if you get me? Maybe it's a weird sort of contrarianism but Aegislash is so popular and the form change mechanic feels so OP in-game I just always find myself not wanting to give it a try.

Doublade is a perfectly reasonable mon to take to the E4. Not perfect(speed HURTS), but Eviolite, Swords Dance, and a ridic defensive typing can go a long way in XY.

 

[bdt2002]

Oh, 100 percent, easiest answer of my entire career. I didn't even have to think about this one.



...wait, no, that's not right. I mean, yeah, it is a Heatran, but... I don't know. Something's... something's missing. I wonder what that could-

(Not my picture- if it was I wouldn't be making this post, after all.)

Wha... when the heck did this happen? Yeah, so... uh, here's the thing. Event exclusive moves strike a personal nerve with me. Scratch that. Limited time content in general strikes a nerve with me. There are two things in this picture that are out of the ordinary. Can you spot them? That's right. This person decided to build a Choice Scarf Heatran with the wrong Nature... is what I would say if my favorite video game in history didn't have a Wi-Fi event in 2010-11 (depending on where you live in the world) that gave this thing a base 150 power, 100% accurate STAB move that can and will shred absolutely everything in sight that's not Fire-resistant. Similar to a handful of other popular event Pokémon of the time, this Heatran has a set Nature, and at first glance you might not know how this set is supposed to work in any sort of competitive setting. Typically speaking, these kinds of "big STAB nukes" want to be fast and get as many opportunities to get on the field as possible, and while QUiet's Special Attack boost is nice, Heatran already suffers from a below average base Speed of 77. Personally I think it should have been Timid, since it's not only more viable but it unironically fits this Pokémon's role in the Ranger Net mission you find it in. Oh yeah, that's right. Eruption remains exclusive to this day to a discontinued event from a 2010 DS spinoff game. A game I love like it's my child, granted, but this is where the problem starts.

Originally the idea of limited time events sounded cool to me growing up. It was a fun way to get people to play new games and, most importantly, play them together and encourage a sense of community... but there was one teeny, tiny little problem. I didn't have access to the Internet for quite some time after the DS/Wii generation was already behind us. We (my family) didn't get access to the Internet for the sake of gaming until the middle of 2014, and would you believe it, that was right around the time the servers shut down anyway. My opinion on limited time content pretty much did a complete 180 entirely because of Mario Kart Wii, a game that famously scrapped Mission Mode from the previous game on DS and made the... questionable decision to replace them with limited time "tournaments" which, for all intents and purposes, yeah, this is just the Mission Mode replacement. The realization of what I had missed out on hit me: not only was I missing out on those Mario Kart events, I was missing out on Pokémon events too. Not only that, but the events from my favorite video game ever made. The game that for over a decade I was convinced was quite literally made for me, and I couldn't even play all of its content.

This... this hurts. And to this day, I've still never really gotten over it. Up until extremely recently I've practically framed my entire online identity around this franchise and especially this game. Could I ever really call myself as big of a fan of this game if I never even had a chance to play these events and use these Pokémon? Did anyone of this even matter as much as I was making it out to be? How much was I overthinking this? Now, I know what some of you might say. Not only can I use this on Pokémon Showdown- which I have, to much enjoyment (I even made an RMT for it in DPP OU some time ago!), but those fan servers exist now, for both Pokémon and for Mario Kart DS and Wii. However, there is an argument to be made that using these counts as cheating, and even if it didn't, the damage had already been done and my enthusiasm for Wi-Fi events, limited time content, and end-of-service never fully recovered. This story would normally end here, but it somehow gets even worse. Pokémon Sword & Shield, my least favorite games in the entire core series, had a genuine chance to fix this, as datamined information for the DLC revealed certain Pokémon would retain access to their event exclusive moves even in spite of "Dexit". We knew Heatran was going to be in The Crown Tundra, and this was the DLC that even introduced the Nature mints as a bonus on top of that.

Almost ten years exactly after the North American release of Guardian Signs, Game Freak had a chance to fix everything and restore a piece of my childhood I knew existed the entire time but never got to enjoy. Literally ALL THEY HAD TO DO was give this thing one move back. Just one. And it wasn't even a weirdly out of place event move either like Rayquaza having V-Create! Eruption FEELS like something Heatran should learn naturally in later generations! All they have to do is either make Eruption (and probably Water Spout alongside it) into new TRs. They cannot POSSIBLY screw this up! They even gave Extreme Speed to the Legendary Beasts as a permanent addition in these games so they don't even NEED to make new TRs! There is literally no conceivable reason why they can't-

...what? What do you mean it's still locked? A-and you're telling me this got removed from Heatran completely in Scarlet & Violet? And Legends Arceus didn't have it either? The game that, mind you, feels like a spiritual successor to the Ranger games more than any other game we've gotten after 2010? sigh