More early route Pokes.
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Lotad/Lombre/Ludicolo
Type: Water/Grass
Ability(s): Swift Swim/Rain Dish
The first new Pokemon you can find on Route 102, Lotad is a fairly
common sight in this area. One thing to note about him is his unique water/grass typing, which would open up a cocktail of possibilities
involving gym compatibility, if it weren't for a few flaws. Obviously,
he's great against Roxanne with dat 20 BP Absorb, and has the same issues as Treecko with midgame, though lategame is a lot nicer for him.
One thing I need to get out of the way, however, is that Lotad's start
is fucking atrocious. He's stuck with Astonish until Lv7, where he gets
the just as pitiful Absorb. While this lets him deal with Roxanne, it
does not excuse the rest of his offense, as it sucks. He does get to
upgrade to Mega Drain, but that only shows up if he stays as a Lotad
until... Lv43. As for water moves, he's screwed; the only damaging water
move he gets through level up is Hydro Pump, which he gets at... Lv49.
The rest of his level up movepool sucks; Fury Swipes, Uproar, Thief, the
general useless stuff. Thank god for the Surf HM, but that doesn't
appear until after you defeat Norman. He also appreciates Giga Drain and
Ice Beam.
Another issue that Lombre has is that the item that he needs to evolve
comes late. There is a water stone in the second part of the sunken
ship, but you need Dive in order to get it. Likewise, you can get
infinite stones by trading in blue shards, which can be found on
Clamperls, but again, you need Dive and blue shards only have a 1 in 20
chance of being held. But once you do, it's pretty hard not to
appreciate his stats. STAB Surf hits hard coming from 90 SpA, and
70/70/100 defenses means that he is reasonably bulky on the special
side. His only real flaw is speed, but 70 base is still enough to
outspeed most things of note, thanks to EVs.
Basically, has a really bad start, doesn't really shine until lategame, but turns out alright in the end.
3.5/10
Seedot/Nuzleaf/Shiftry
Type: Grass, Grass/Dark (Nuzleaf/Shiftry)
Ability(s): Chlorophyll/Early Bird
The second new Pokemon you can find here, Seedot is better than Lotad, though he's still not the best Pokemon in the world.
The first concern is that Seedot only has a whopping 1% chance of being
encountered on Route 102. That is laughably rare, and this amounts to
spending hours upon hours of searching. Now, there is an easier way to
get a Seedot, the process being that you need to trade the NPC who has
the Seedot a Ralts, another Pokemon that is really rare. But is Seedot
worth the aggravation?
First off, Seedot is yet another grass type, which is to say he's
basically stuck in the hole of "decent earlygame, bad midgame, great
endgame", and it doesn't help that his start is worse than Lotad's.
Essentially, he's stuck with Bide until Lv13, when he gets Nature Power,
which basically gives him early Swift. And what makes this worse is
that he doesn't get any grass moves through level up, and doesn't learn
Feint Attack until Lv31. Like with Lotad, his level up movepool is
pretty sad; other than Feint Attack, he gets Torment, Swagger, and Razor
Wind, as well as Extrasensory, which might have helped him against
Fighting types... were it not for the fact that he gets it at Lv49.
What this amounts to is that Seedot is reliant on TM's for a good
moveset. Bullet Seed is pretty much required early on for his STAB, even
though the damage is not at all consistent. And he's unfortunately
stuck with it until the Giga Drain TM arrives. As for his coverage, it
basically consists of Dig, Shadow Ball, Brick Break, and Aerial Ace.
While these are good moves, they all have massive competition, so he
isn't exactly guaranteed to get these moves. It should be noted, though,
that Brick Break and Dig give him a way of killing steels, and Aerial
Ace can help against fighting types somewhat. Thanks to Chlorophyll, he
can make excellent use of Sunny Day, which patches up his average speed
and also opens up Solar Beam, which is more potent than Giga Drain. There
is also the Explosion tutor in Pacifidlog which can turn Shiftry into a
literal nuke. Perfect for taking out annoying chumps in the Elite Four,
like Glacia's Walrein or Wallace's Milotic.
His gym/elite compatibility is similar to Lotad's, except that he's even
better at taking down Tate and Liza thanks to his dark typing, and he
wants nothing to do with Brawly. Phoebe also fears him since he's dark
and she uses ghosts.
Like Lombre, Nuzleaf has to wait a while before he can evolve, though
his item shows up right when he's ready to do so. There is a hidden leaf
stone somewhere in Route 119 that you can collect using the Dowsing
Machine. And if you miss that one, you can trade a green shard for one.
Too bad they only have a 1 in 20 chance of showing up on something that
has a 1 in 20 chance of showing up (resulting in a cumulative 1 in 400 or .25% chance of success). And you need Dive. After quite a bit of pain
(but not nearly as much as with Lotad), you finally have something that
has quite good offense (100/90/80), even though his STABs only have 60
power apiece when other mons have moves that have 80 BP or more. Yeah, grass sucks in this generation.
Like Lotad, starts off extremely shitty, but gets better sooner than
him. Also, Nuzleaf sounds a lot like Nuzlocke. Just pointing that out.
5.5/10
Ralts/Kirlia/Gardevoir
Type: Psychic
Ability(s): Synchronize/Trace
Wally
must be the luckiest bastard alive. He managed to find his Ralts on the
first attempt. It took me 20 minutes to find Ralts one time.
Ralts is the first psychic type that you can encounter in the game, and
is a pretty good alternative to the Abra line, which appears later on.
But like Abra, she has a slew of relatively minor issues before becoming
the goddess that is Gardevoir. The first issue that needs to be
addressed is her obscurity; Ralts has a heart pounding 4% chance of
spawning, which, to be frank, is barely better than what Seedot has for
an encounter rate. Thankfully, unlike Seedot, Ralts is worth searching
for.
Ok, disregarding the whole elusiveness issue, how does Ralts fare once
caught? Not too great. She comes at Lv4, and her first damaging attack
is learned at Lv6, which means that you will need to do the whole bait
and switch thing for two levels, and it does not help that she's in the
slow experience group. Have fun. Once we get around this, we then find
out that Ralts's stats are among the worst in the game; she has worse
base stats than Mudkip in every category, except for speed which she
ties. And she evolves 4 levels later. Granted, base stats don't really
take any real effect until Lv20, but you should get the idea here.
Unfortunately, Kirlia isn't much of an improvement over Ralts, getting
only +10 to most of her bases, except her special stats, which get +20.
Thankfully, she gets Calm Mind one level after evolution, which
generally proves useful and allows her to be a decent threat.
Thankfully, evolution is only at Lv30, which is pretty tame.
And what if she is fully evolved? Your reward for 26 levels of pain is a
monster with monstrous offenses and great special durability. To give
out an idea of how high Gardevoir's special attack is, the only
non-legendary Pokemon in the Hoenn dex who has higher is Alakazam. While
her speed is comparatively low next to his, 80 speed is still more than
enough to outspeed most things of note, and she does it with better
overall durability (68/65/115 vs 55/45/85).
Let's get to movepool. While she does require TM use for coverage, the
only TM she really requires (Thunderbolt) is one that can be bought at
the casino (or just use the one that Watson gives you). Before then, you
could always use the Shock Wave TM. As for level up moves, I had
already addressed that she gets Calm Mind far earlier than most others
get it, and as another treat, she gets Psychic five levels later. For
reference, Kadabra has to wait 10 more levels for the same move. As for
anything else, she does get Hypnosis, but she learns that at Lv51, which
is around the time you reach the Elite Four, and that's not getting to
the 60% accuracy.
Psychics as a whole are pretty
neutral in Hoenn, being only effective
against Brawly, though Gardevoir can deal with Winona and the water
kings if she packs Thunderbolt (which I hope for your sake she does;
mono psychic isn't what it was in RBY) However, it should be known that
psychics don't fare so well against the elites because Sid and Phoebe
specialize in types that are strong against psychics, and both Glacia
and
Drake have two Pokemon each that know Crunch.
In a nutshell, somewhat poor start, but becomes good once the midgame
starts to wane and remains competent throughout the rest of the
lategame.
Also, despite the feminine appearance, Ralts
has a 50/50 chance of being male. Makes you wonder why they didn't
introduce Gallade this generation...
7.5/10
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Have a nice day.
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