I myself have never been a fan of gen 2's starters. I might even go as far as to say they're my least favorite, even worse than gen 5 or 6's starters (though Serperior and Chesnaught really salvage those trios imo, whereas gen 2's trio has nothing). It's not that I particularly hate any of them, unlike Delphox or Emboar, they're just very, well, bland. The entire Typholsion line is passable, I suppose. Nothing noteworthy bad or good, just okay. Cyndaquil is pretty ugly actually but Quilava and Typhlosion are both a nice balance of cute and cool, albeit very overly simplistic. I mean, I'm all for simple design choices, not every Pokemon has to be some super beastly death machine, but there is absolutely nothing to make Typhlosion stand out from the rest of the bunch. It is the most generic Fire type ever, and for a Pokemon with as much symbolic importance as a starter, that is very bad. I may not be a fan of Delphox or Emboar but AT LEAST they tried to do something to stand out. It certainly doesn't help that I can't stop comparing it to a much better starter, Charizard, because Gamefreak was so lazy it gave them the exact same base stats. THAT alone is enough to make me hate Typhlosion. It does get extra points for making the game a breeze though.
I don't have much to say about Meganium. It's just a discount Venusaur, honestly. It's a green plant dinosaur best known for its big red and yellow flower, defensive stats, and an inexplicably popular middle evolution. Meganium is also pretty boring, design wise. I mean, not as bad as Typhlosion, but it's not winning any awards for most creative starter of the year, either. Not much to say here except that it's a slightly more feminine Venusaur (At least it gets its own stats though). I guess it's good if you want to play the game on hard mode?
Feraligatr is a mixed bag for me, honestly. Let's get the elephant in the room out of the way, first: the name. As in, it is reaching new levels of terrible, ESPECIALLY considering that we now have the technology to support 11 letter names and yet Gamefreak insists that this eyesore is acceptable. Was the concept of sticking the words "feral" and "alligator" just so incredibly clever to you guys that you just could bear to think of a new name? To take any letter out besides the O at the end? There are some Pokemon with some pretty lazy and unoriginal names out there, but at least they had the decency to spell them correctly. You don't see us battling with Talnflams or Flygns, do you? Outside of that, Feraligatr is okay, I guess. The lesser of the three evils. Its design clearly had far more effort put into it than I Can't Believe It's Not Venusaur!™ and every-Fire-type-ever over there, but at its core the base concept of Feraligatr is the least original of the three, and one of the least original in Pokemon, honestly. It's a blue alligator which is, who would have guessed, Water type. Oh boy, what a creative idea. Totodile and Croconaw are pretty cute though, I'll give it that. If I'm not picking Typhlosion because it makes the game a cake walk, this is the Pokemon you'll see me replaying Crystal or HGSS with.
TL;DR The gen 2 starters are easily my least favorite on account of being so boring and bland, and an uncreative meh Pokemon is arguably worse than a creative bad Pokemon.
