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