(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

[QuentinQuonce]

What other parallels are there? Honestly curious

I was mainly thinking about how Kanto and Sinnoh both - initially - have a Pokedex of 151 Pokemon (I've always thought that the Sinnoh dex in DP was made this number as an intentional callback to the Kanto dex) and how the level spread of opponents in Kanto and Sinnoh is broadly similar: the first gym leader has their team at level 12/14, going up to the final gym leader at level 50 while the Elite Four start off in their early/mid-50s and cap out in the mid-60s. Just a small thing I noticed since Hoenn and Johto are quite similar on the second point, too, with both their final gyms capping out at 40/early 40s while their Elite Four go from the 40s to the 50s (though Hoenn is a little ahead of Johto in this regard, starting at 46 and ending at 58 while Johto starts at 40 and ends at 50).

 

[Leif98]

The meloetta post by QuentinQuonce in the other thread made me realize once again how much I dislike battle-only form changes.

I can tolerate castform (since the stats are the real issue here) and Minior, but Cherrim, both Darmanitans and Meloetta annoy me to no end, because they waste cool designs and what would be additional intersting mons by being bad both ingame and in competetive.
Meloetta has to run a suboptimal special move to change into a physical-oriented form, and poor Darmanitan goes from a fast and frail physical attacker to a bulky and slow special attacker...when under half health. Did they expect you to run a half physical and half special moveset for a thing that will probably not activate anyway because Darmanitan has paper defenses? Not to mention when it does activate it probably dies anyway because it has 55 Base Speed.
Galar version fares a bit better but in that case the stats are super similar and the typing is the only unique thing (and why run Zen Mode when you can have a free Choice Band?)

If these were permanent form changes you'd have some cool stuff to play around with. I doubt Zen Mode Darmanitan would be any good but it seems fun to use ingame if it wasn't so cumbersome to use. Zen Mode being a post game thing in BW felt laughable since it is a complete downgrade

 

[R_N]

If I had a nickle for every time a weird mid-battle form change clashed with battle design, i'd probably have several nickles but it's weird it happened twice in the same generation.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Cherrim is an especially annoying one since, even despite the fact that you HAVE to see one at some point in DPP because every Pokemon in the Sinnoh Dex bar Unown is used by an NPC, I can never once recall seeing the Sunshine Form in-game. Gardenia uses one in rematches in Platinum but other than that the only NPC who has one, iirc, is a girl in Iron Island - I assume it knows Sunny Day given its level, but I've presumably always beaten it too quickly to find out.

Outside of that I think a couple of foes make use of it in PBR and I occasionally see it in Pokemon Go, but that's about it. And the way Pokemon Go handles Cherrim is also crap - Overcast is generally the default form when there's non-sunny weather, so you'd be forgiven for assuming that Cherubi can be evolved into Sunshine Form when the weather's sunny, the way it works for Goodra in rain. No such luck. It's apparently just completely random.

 

[ScraftyIsTheBest]

I was mainly thinking about how Kanto and Sinnoh both - initially - have a Pokedex of 151 Pokemon (I've always thought that the Sinnoh dex in DP was made this number as an intentional callback to the Kanto dex) and how the level spread of opponents in Kanto and Sinnoh is broadly similar: the first gym leader has their team at level 12/14, going up to the final gym leader at level 50 while the Elite Four start off in their early/mid-50s and cap out in the mid-60s. Just a small thing I noticed since Hoenn and Johto are quite similar on the second point, too, with both their final gyms capping out at 40/early 40s while their Elite Four go from the 40s to the 50s (though Hoenn is a little ahead of Johto in this regard, starting at 46 and ending at 58 while Johto starts at 40 and ends at 50).

You know, this is actually true. The Elite Four levels of both, at least in DP, are also similar and progress in the same way with each Elite Four being two levels higher and then the Champion is three levels higher.

The only difference is DP Sinnoh's E4+Cynthia levels of their aces at least are exactly one level higher than the aces of RB Kanto's E4+Blue.

RGB Elite Four

DP Sinnoh Elite Four

That's in addition to the level curves of the Gym Leaders being relatively similar too yeah, not to mention the first Gym is Rock and the second is a starter type with a very strong fully evolved Pokemon as the ace (Starmie or Roserade).

There are a few other parallels out there too. Namely Barry's team composition mirroring Blue's, using a FWG core including his starter and having two of three set Pokemon based on that, and always leading with the regional bird (Barry's Staraptor and Blue's Pidgeot). Staraptor itself was the first regional bird to actually closely follow Pidgeot's design ethos from a gameplay standpoint.

Uxie, Mesprit, and Azelf are also met at Level 50 like Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres and pretty late into the game, and then both RGB and DP also unlock post-game dungeons that have you meet a Level 70 Legendary (Cerulean Cave's Mewtwo vs Turnback Cave+Stark Mountain Giratina+Heatran) after you beat the Champion.

I could go on and on there but there's seemingly a lot of mirrors between Sinnoh and Kanto in all sorts of places.

While not expressly a parallel there was one reference in DPP of some guard at a gate claiming to be thirsty which is an obvious shoutout to the Saffron guards.

The Kanto references actually run pretty deep and even earlier than most think, looking at it. Kanto's influence shows itself a lot even in earlier generations.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Running around on Koraidon is a CHORE in SV.

There's only one reason why tbh. All those annoying small mons in the way.

 

[R_N]

Running around on Koraidon is a CHORE in SV.

There's only one reason why tbh. All those annoying small mons in the way.

From running around the region for hundreds of hours, it's really funny the stark contrast in running around the early areas whicha re full of tall grass and tiyn pokemon vs anywhere else which often have less grass and larger pokemon where you generally only run into a Pokemon if it's Tauros and hates you, specifically

 

[Leif98]

Cherrim is an especially annoying one since, even despite the fact that you HAVE to see one at some point in DPP because every Pokemon in the Sinnoh Dex bar Unown is used by an NPC, I can never once recall seeing the Sunshine Form in-game. Gardenia uses one in rematches in Platinum but other than that the only NPC who has one, iirc, is a girl in Iron Island - I assume it knows Sunny Day given its level, but I've presumably always beaten it too quickly to find out.

I remember seeing the Sunny Form in prerelease media and when I got the game I was curious as to why it seemingly was not present.
Cherubi being a honey tree encounter does not help its availability either. And the ability itself is also a mess because they decided to make it a weird gimmick by boosting attack and special defense, which makes no sense considering its stats
maybe it was a coding error and they just ran with it

 

[R_N]

I remember seeing the Sunny Form in prerelease media and when I got the game I was curious as to why it seemingly was not present.
Cherubi being a honey tree encounter does not help its availability either. And the ability itself is also a mess because they decided to make it a weird gimmick by boosting attack and special defense, which makes no sense considering its stats
maybe it was a coding error and they just ran with it

Probably aimed at helping Groudon its allies since they also get the Attack & Sp Def boost
And generally i think raising special defense is never a bad thing to lean in on. Feels like grass types like special defense anyway


Honestly I think the misstep was "boosting attack despite higher special attack" and more "boosting attack without giving it any physical moves". Poor thing only really had Nature Gift (a one use shot) and Razor Leaf (by egg move only) to really use with the boost in DP; Seed Bomb was at least added in Platinum and it has a handful of others these days.

 

[Cobalt Empoleon]

Cherrim is an especially annoying one since, even despite the fact that you HAVE to see one at some point in DPP because every Pokemon in the Sinnoh Dex bar Unown is used by an NPC, I can never once recall seeing the Sunshine Form in-game. Gardenia uses one in rematches in Platinum but other than that the only NPC who has one, iirc, is a girl in Iron Island - I assume it knows Sunny Day given its level, but I've presumably always beaten it too quickly to find out.

Outside of that I think a couple of foes make use of it in PBR and I occasionally see it in Pokemon Go, but that's about it. And the way Pokemon Go handles Cherrim is also crap - Overcast is generally the default form when there's non-sunny weather, so you'd be forgiven for assuming that Cherubi can be evolved into Sunshine Form when the weather's sunny, the way it works for Goodra in rain. No such luck. It's apparently just completely random.

I've seen Gardenia activate Flower Gift in her initial Platinum battle (she has Cherrim instead of Cherubi and leads with a Sunny Day Turtwig) but yeah it's not a common occurrence.