2nd Gen GEN 2 are bad starters?

[Caaethil]

Whoever said that must bite their tongue, and then bite it again. Hopefully it falls off so that we don't need to hear their cretinous lies again. Gen 2 starters are bad, the nerve...

Totodile is my first. He is pretty great.

 

[Luzu]

Competitively? They're not exactly the best of starters compared to some of the other starters we have.

Otherwise? They're great, imo. They're still my favorite starters out of all the generations (though arguably Alola might become my favorites hahaha). Totodile was my first starter so I especially have a soft spots for him and Cyndaquil and Chikorita I also love to bits. I hope one day they get good Mega so they can fend their own competitively, but really even if they don't I wouldn't really give a damn. They'll still be precious to me.

 

[Dedenne1]

As far as stats and movesets go id say the starters arent that great. However I love the Cynaquil line (except for typhlosion) as far as design and chikoritas line has great overall designs. Totodile is the only one i can say i dislike just cause idk not that powerful or cute.

 

[morthen]

Chikorita is underrated i feel. Its not the awesome sweeper that the water/fire starter is, and in general SP favors that type of play. But it got lot of tactical use, light screen, reflect, leech seed. Also, , while water types and arguably fire types are abundant, you cant really get a get a solid grass type until late game.

 

[Limey-chan]

I'm quite surprised, reading this thread, that a lot of people share my favourite Gen II starter, Totodile. I was always under the impression that 90% of people liked Cyndaquil; the more you know, I guess!

But anyway, whilst it's true that I didn't quite share the same affection for the Gen II starters that I did for the Gen I originals, I thought they were solid enough Pokemon; both in terms of design and competitiveness. I believe they share their base stats with the other starters, the only real drawback was that they were monotype (though, arguably, this could be seen as an advantage to the Chicorita line, I hated how many part-Poison types there were in Gen I).

tl,dr; I liked them.

 

[BettyNewbie]

Chikorita is underrated i feel. Its not the awesome sweeper that the water/fire starter is, and in general SP favors that type of play. But it got lot of tactical use, light screen, reflect, leech seed. Also, , while water types and arguably fire types are abundant, you cant really get a get a solid grass type until late game.

Chikorita's biggest problem is that it's in a region that's horrible for Grass types. Falkner, Bugsy, and Pryce are all strong against it, while Falkner, Bugsy, Morty, Jasmine, and Clair all resist it. It also struggles against pretty much every E4 member except Bruno, as well as the loads of Poison types and Murkrow/Houndour/Houndoom that Team Rocket uses.

Meganium has more advantages in Kanto with Brock, Misty, and Surge, but by that point in the game, you should probably already have Pokémon to easily deal with them.

And, good Water and Fire types actually aren't that abundant in GSC. The lack of elemental stones eliminates Pokémon like Starmie, Arcanine, and the Eeveelutions as options, while the lack of Ice Beam as a TM also cuts back on the usability of many Water types. Also factor in availability before the postgame (which eliminates Pokémon like Kingdra and Houndoom), and you're basically left with Lapras and Magmar as your only real alternatives to Feraligatr and Typhlosion. Not great, especially considering how much more necessary and useful Water and Fire types are than Grass types.

 

[GoldenAltaria]

From a competitive standpoint, yes, the Gen II starters are bad. The most competitively viable of them is Feraligatr, which resides in the Underused tier. Every other generation besides Gen IV features Pokemon that are at least tiered as OU, if not higher (i.e. Blaziken and Greninja are both relegated to Ubers). Furthermore, Gen IV sports two UU Pokemon (Empoleon and Infernape, the latter of which is viable in OU), while Gen II only has one such Pokemon. However, from an aesthetic standpoint, the Johto starters are far from bad; they are actually my favorites! Cyndaquil is my favorite first-stage Pokemon of all time, and Bayleef is my favorite Grass-type Pokemon. Thus, I don't think that the Gen II starters can be labeled as objectively "bad;" one's assessment of them depends largely on the lens through which one is looking at them (i.e. competitive viability, aesthetic appeal, etc.).

 

[L'Belle]

I'm not a fan of them. I think they're designs are kind of ... Meh ...

I like Chikorita a little because its quite cute, but thats it.

 

[JohnnyGolduck]

Anyone else think Chikorita was the worst starter on purpose? Not design wise of course, Chikorita is adorable and Bayleef and Meganium look awesome but does anyone else think it's supposed to be hard-mode? Gen 1 all three starters are pretty good throughout the game as far as I can remember but I can't remember a tougher starter to use in a game than Chikorita in Gen II. Had to have been done to give the player levels of challenge.

 

[BettyNewbie]

From a competitive standpoint, yes, the Gen II starters are bad. The most competitively viable of them is Feraligatr, which resides in the Underused tier. Every other generation besides Gen IV features Pokemon that are at least tiered as OU, if not higher (i.e. Blaziken and Greninja are both relegated to Ubers). Furthermore, Gen IV sports two UU Pokemon (Empoleon and Infernape, the latter of which is viable in OU), while Gen II only has one such Pokemon. However, from an aesthetic standpoint, the Johto starters are far from bad; they are actually my favorites! Cyndaquil is my favorite first-stage Pokemon of all time, and Bayleef is my favorite Grass-type Pokemon. Thus, I don't think that the Gen II starters can be labeled as objectively "bad;" one's assessment of them depends largely on the lens through which one is looking at them (i.e. competitive viability, aesthetic appeal, etc.).

This is very true, although probably for a reason. GF didn't really start to take competitive battling seriously until Gen 3/4 at the earliest, so the Johto starters, by nature, really weren't designed with competitive viability in mind in the same way as Infernape, Greninja, and the Mega Evos. The overwhelming majority of older Pokémon that are good in competitive either got lucky with their stats/typing/movepool or got a huge buff later on.

I can't remember a tougher starter to use in a game than Chikorita in Gen II.

Yellow Pikachu. :P

You do make an interesting observation, though. In Gen 1, Bulbasaur was a borderline game-breaker, having access to crithax Razor Leaf, all three powders, and Leech Seed, as well as having type advantages against several major NPCs (Brock, Misty, Surge, Giovanni, Lorelei, Bruno) and good stats all around. Do you think that GF purposely made Chikorita weaker to trip up RBY vets who might think that the Grass starter would be as good in Johto as it was in Kanto?

 

[Limey-chan]

Anyone else think Chikorita was the worst starter on purpose? Not design wise of course, Chikorita is adorable and Bayleef and Meganium look awesome but does anyone else think it's supposed to be hard-mode? Gen 1 all three starters are pretty good throughout the game as far as I can remember but I can't remember a tougher starter to use in a game than Chikorita in Gen II. Had to have been done to give the player levels of challenge.

I had an Official Nintendo strategy guide for G/S that said as much, something along the lines of "only experienced players should choose Chikorita!"

 

[illumine]

Anyone else think Chikorita was the worst starter on purpose? Not design wise of course, Chikorita is adorable and Bayleef and Meganium look awesome but does anyone else think it's supposed to be hard-mode? Gen 1 all three starters are pretty good throughout the game as far as I can remember but I can't remember a tougher starter to use in a game than Chikorita in Gen II. Had to have been done to give the player levels of challenge.

In general, Chikorita shouldn't be that difficult so long as you can take out the early Gym Leaders with something else, and it's a very useful support even otherwise, which the other starters don't share. There is a certain sense in which Chikorita may have been prepared as a 'weaker' starter, or a bit gimmicky, being quite different from those such as Charizard which had earlier been promoted, nonetheless this wasn't necessarily meant as a 'hard mode' - its aesthetic was quite the opposite, and was meant to discourage such associations in a way - and in general if you picked a 'weaker' starter there might be other reasons than just its being 'harder,' such as for its appearance and so on, which is generally speaking more where that would be going. I mean, if you like such things, they were basically the rival in R/S, but still.

Gen II was the beginning of certain forms of play, and in general when older starters are relatively 'under-powered,' this is generally because newer starters are supposed to be more powerful, in part to encourage usage. In that sense it would be a weird way of comparing newer and older Pokemon in general. The G/S starters were still comparatively quite strong compared to most that would be encountered, and would rarely make the game that much harder.

 

[RegalSin]

Cikorita = Charmander
Todadile = Bulbasaur
Cyndiquil = Squirtle


Way I see things is that Chikorita is great for having a strong grass type but there are other grass pokemon that seems tempting as well. However it can use earthquake ( If I remember ), and packs a wallop....when it grows up.

They are not suckie but kinda like the kid who never lived up to there fathers/mothers shoes. They are just different because nobody understands them.

 

[illumine]

While Chikorita obviously has similarities to Charmander - in terms of early progression at least, otherwise they can play quite differently - Totodile and Bulbasaur's connection, as well as Cyndaquil and Squirtle's (!), is a bit frayed. If anything, Cyndaquil tends to work out more similar to Bulbasaur, with moves like SmokeScreen, etc., early on, where they have fairly clear uses, while Totodile is more given to the kind of straightforward attack you might expect from Squirtle or Charmander. In general, though, the niches in which the starters fall was somewhat more clearly delineated in the second game, while in the first game some like Squirtle got somewhat left out.

In general, they work quite decently as starters in the games they're in - where starters aren't necessarily supposed to be mandatory, but comparatively good and having a decent arc - so saying that they're quite bad based on extraneous stuff like multi-player, etc., seems to be missing their primary point. In any case, their stats in that have often been deliberately eclipsed or modified via Abilities, etc., in the games since then, as they needed to promote these as separate, while G/S were closely connected to R/B. Apart from the story-line, obviously, they're not 'starters.' Johto was meant to be challenging, early on, but also coherent and a focussed game, which allowed them to develop it into further regions well. This was generally speaking something the starters helped with, as well as keeping things somewhat interesting over two Leagues, hence the focus on moves like SmokeScreen or Reflect rather than more gimmicky ones.

 

[Kahnu]

Gen 2 had some of the best looking starters IMO. Not so much Chikorita.

 

[Terpy]

Totodile FTW. My favorite starter from the first 2 generations.

 

[Bigdog]

I'm quite surprised, reading this thread, that a lot of people share my favourite Gen II starter, Totodile. I was always under the impression that 90% of people liked Cyndaquil; the more you know, I guess!

But anyway, whilst it's true that I didn't quite share the same affection for the Gen II starters that I did for the Gen I originals, I thought they were solid enough Pokemon; both in terms of design and competitiveness. I believe they share their base stats with the other starters, the only real drawback was that they were monotype (though, arguably, this could be seen as an advantage to the Chicorita line, I hated how many part-Poison types there were in Gen I).

tl,dr; I liked them.

I chose Totodile the first time around because it was everything I loved. Its entire evolution line was Godzilla, a Water type, and it had just an amazing design. Both him and Cyndaquil's lines tie perfectly just because they're both just amazing. Then with Crystal and subsequent plays , I exploited the PC box glitch and used all of them because why not? I do like Chikorita, but she's second to the others. But I have a thing for dinosaurs and more importantly, flowers. Getting the Jumpluff line was one of my missions alongside the Mareep and Wooper lines, since I really liked them the most.

The monotyping really hurts them, though.

 

[The Den]

Cyndaquil will always be my favorite starter. Totodile was sick too. I feel like Chikorita was the only weak starter in gen 2, but even that gets pretty strong when it fully evolves. I feel like the only gen that had legitimately bad starters were gen 5.

 

[Squirrel]

I like the Gen 2 starters a fair bit! I feel like their designs are a tad lazy and underdeveloped which can put a lot of people off, but you don't always have to give something a complex design in order for it to be likeable. My favourite of the bunch is Cyndaquil as it's very simple yet stylish and cute to boot. I think the Gen 2 starters get quite a harsh time of it from a lot of fans but it's nice to know they do have a solid fan base out there haha.

 

[Kahnu]

>Typhlosion and Feraligatr aren't the most bad-ass starters ever released

yeah sure okay buddy