Hm, when I've played Pokémon Pearl for the first time, I chose Turtwig as my starter pokemon~
I thought it was a pretty cute pokemon, and its defense was pretty good! As it evolved, yes, it became a little bit on the slow side, but, it's defense more than make up for that anyway. Gym battles weren't that bad when I used it either! Things became a little tricky over at the Snowpoint gym though, because Torterra is 4x weak to Ice type moves, and so, I had to use a little bit of strategy, but no problem. In the end, it was pretty effective against Cynthia's Garchomp as it took its. I took a while to beat her, but, success!
When I played Pokémon Platinum more and more, I used Chimchar more often. That was around when I started to like pokemon like Gastrodon, Roserade, and Togekiss, in which, I don't really like out have pokemon of the same type in my team, so, Chimchar was a pretty good pick for that! It wasn't too bad either; it was way fast, and pretty powerful when It evolved to Infernape! <33