While the first starter I picked from D/P/Pt was Piplup, simply because I thought Empoleon looked insanely cool at the time, my favourite is by far Chimchar. Playing through it all with the Piplup line, I found it to be pretty... underwhelmning? It pretty much didn't live up to my expectations of being a total bad-ass, and I generally didn't like using it much. Nowadays, I don't think too highly of it's design either, so yeah, Piplup is kinda meh. Torterra looks super cool though, but I've always felt like the Turtwig line was more of a Bulbasaur knock-off, and I just never really got around to using it much. One of my friends used it though, so I did get to see what it was capable through him, but again, eh.
Chimchar definitely takes the cake though, and totally disintegrated it as well :p Literally everything about Chimchar and its evolutionary line was perfect, maybe juust except for how it was the same typing as typing as Blaziken. But that's alright, they wouldn't do it again, right :p RIGHT?! But I digress, Infernape is definitely up there in my favourite Pokemon list, and entirely because I feel like it's gotten all of the important factors in what makes a great Pokemon down. Good design? Check! Great stats? Check! Great movepool? Ehh, it doesn't learn any physical Fire type moves until Flare Blitz, which is its last move, so could be better. But otherwise, check! And that's about what I consider the most important factors of a good Pokemon :p
