6th Gen The Kalos Pokédex

[Pendraflare]

In Pokémon X and Y, the Kalos Pokédex comes with a whopping 454 Pokémon, all but five of which you can obtain before completion of the main game, the only ones you can't being Articuno, Zapdos, Moltres, Mewtwo and Zygarde. That is by far the highest amount of Pokémon any main series game has allowed for the story. However, only 69 of those Pokémon are native to Kalos and introduced in the new games. But at the same time, it's divided into three Pokédex sections, with Central, Coastal and Mountain.

What are your opinions on the Kalos Pokédex? Do you like the fact that it has so many Pokémon to choose from or do you dislike that only 15% of the Pokédex is made of new ones? Discuss.

 

[Sheep]

At first I was.. overwhelmed. It seemed like each route had at least 5 new Pokemon to catch and that made keeping up with things really tedious so I gave up at some point towards the later part of the game and just proceeded forward. Once I took care of the E4 I went on to capture what I missed and evolve/train the other 'mons in my box for their Pokedex entries.

That's not to say this is a bad thing at all, though! I actually really enjoyed having such a wide variety of available Pokemon to capture and more often than not was stuck with what to actually use on my team. The Kalos-introduced Pokemon were pretty common to find in both grass and battles so I didn't find myself forgetting that we were in an entirely new region with new creatures to capture.

The more choices the merrier. ;P

 

[Nah]

I kinda liked having a large selection of Pokemon to pick from. More choices is better because then most people will at least be able to get a few Pokemon they like. It also gives it a little more replay value; you can play through the game 4 times with 4 completely different teams and still have plenty of Pokemon that you want to use.

I didn't mind there being only ~70 new Pokemon. In Gen 5 we had 649 Pokemon, so we had a lot already; there's getting to be an awful lot of Pokemon. Besides, I imagine that its hard to keep coming up with good ideas for Pokemon.

 

[Pinkie-Dawn]

The only con I had with the Kalos dex was how difficult it was to create a team of my favorites since I like most of the mons in the dex, and because I'm given three starters in this game, I couldn't use other non-starter Grass, Fire, and Water types on my team due to sharing bonds with starter Pokémon I receive in-game. Even though having less mons was inevitable since it's an even-numbered gen, 72 is still a low number even by its standards, because Gen II and Gen IV had at least 100 new mons in their dex.

 

[Pendraflare]

Who says you have to use the starters you're given? :P

Anyway, I loved the Kalos Pokédex, it's easily one of my favorite things about the game. As Zekrom mentioned it adds for some replay value since the possibilities for teams are so great, which makes the game awesome to do challenges on like Nuzlockes or variants, Monotypes or what not, you name it. Since every route has so many Pokémon for you to try for, it's really hard to choose what your final team will be.

As for the lack of new Pokémon, I don't mind it too much, granted as I said it's only around 15% of what's offered but there's still so much that you get sucked into the options you have. I can understand why people would be upset by this, though (especially the fans of BW only using new Pokémon for the main story).

 

[Hikamaru]

I enjoyed the variety with the Kalos Dex, it was like very hard to make a team based on the options alone. It also added to unpredictability with NPC trainers' rosters due to the sheer variety of the Pokemon in-game, and even led to routes having like 5 or 6 Pokemon available at once.

While the number of new Pokemon was minimal compared to previous generations, it was still a solid number to fit in with the huge number of older generation Pokemon appearing in the game. I kinda hope that with future generations we can continue seeing a regional Dex with this much diversity.

 

[PlatinumDude]

While I do enjoy the wide variety of Pokemon in the Kalos Dex, I kind of wish that more Gen VI Pokemon were introduced to spice things up a bit. In my first play through of X, I tended to stay in a single area for extended amounts of time, catching the available Pokemon within the routes with good natures/IVs.

 

[Sandslash Fan]

I find it hard to settle on a team of Pokemon to use during the game, but that isn't really a new side-effect of X/Y having so many options as it is a generic problem with each game.

Having so many Pokemon available does lead to the real problem of leaning toward the ones with good typing and power, while ignoring the weaker ones (even if you really wanted to try them out). You can only watch a weak Pokemon faint so many times before you just get tired of hoping they'll work.

Another issue I see is that with Pokemon getting too many coverage moves. In the earlier Pokemon games, you'd take a Grass-type Pokemon to the Rock gym and clean up quite nicely. Now a Rock gym would have Pokemon with Flying-type moves, or something else super-effective, and make it pointless to bring a Pokemon of the actual type the gym is supposed to be weak it. Example: Wasn't able to use my Scoliopede or Absol in the Psychic gym due to all of the Fire attacks and Fighting attacks that were being used. ;-;

Now that I've mentioned that observation (to tie it into the topic) I think having a lot of Pokemon to choose from helps you combat certain situations you might not have realized you'd need a specific Pokemon with specific attacks to handle easily.

 

[arinceo]

My only issue was the large number of pokemon I had to breed so I could register their lower evolutions in the pokedex.

 

[Pendraflare]

I find it hard to settle on a team of Pokemon to use during the game, but that isn't really a new side-effect of X/Y having so many options as it is a generic problem with each game.

Having so many Pokemon available does lead to the real problem of leaning toward the ones with good typing and power, while ignoring the weaker ones (even if you really wanted to try them out). You can only watch a weak Pokemon faint so many times before you just get tired of hoping they'll work.

Another issue I see is that with Pokemon getting too many coverage moves. In the earlier Pokemon games, you'd take a Grass-type Pokemon to the Rock gym and clean up quite nicely. Now a Rock gym would have Pokemon with Flying-type moves, or something else super-effective, and make it pointless to bring a Pokemon of the actual type the gym is supposed to be weak it. Example: Wasn't able to use my Scoliopede or Absol in the Psychic gym due to all of the Fire attacks and Fighting attacks that were being used. ;-;

Now that I've mentioned that observation (to tie it into the topic) I think having a lot of Pokemon to choose from helps you combat certain situations you might not have realized you'd need a specific Pokemon with specific attacks to handle easily.

Well some Gyms don't use coverage moves (i.e. nearly all of Gen V's Gyms) from what i've experienced, and lots of options do make it easier to combat them (unless you're playing a challenge where you can't deposit Pokémon).

My only issue was the large number of pokemon I had to breed so I could register their lower evolutions in the pokedex.

Yeah, at first that was something I didn't feel motivated to do, but I did power through it once I had a Japanese Ditto to breed the baby Pokémon and the likes with my ID No.

 

[Trogd0r917]

I liked having 400+ Pokémon to choose from but I was a bit disappointed by how few new ones there were. Especially since almost all of the new ones were available before beating the second gym. As far I remember the only Gen 6 Pokémon that required beating the second gym to encounter were Carbink, Noibat, Bergmite, Goomy and the legendaries.

 

[Pendraflare]

I liked having 400+ Pokémon to choose from but I was a bit disappointed by how few new ones there were. Especially since almost all of the new ones were available before beating the second gym. As far I remember the only Gen 6 Pokémon that required beating the second gym to encounter were Carbink, Noibat, Bergmite, Goomy and the legendaries.

To be exact on that, Skrelp and Clauncher's evolution lines can't be obtained until after the third badge because you need the Good Rod for them, and the two Grass/Ghost-types aren't until after the sixth (Route 16 and 20 to find the respective ones). Just saying. :P

 

[Trogd0r917]

To be exact on that, Skrelp and Clauncher's evolution lines can't be obtained until after the third badge because you need the Good Rod for them, and the two Grass/Ghost-types aren't until after the sixth (Route 16 and 20 to find the respective ones). Just saying. :P

That's still barely any though. I didn't even know you could get the Good Rod in this game, but I already have the Super Rod so there's no point anyway.

 

[Braxien]

It would've been nice to have more Generation 6 Pokémon in the game, seeing as it is a Generation 6 game.

 

[Khoshi]

I like the number of Pokemon that were available in Generation VI, but as with everyone else, I dislike how few Generation VI Pokemon were in Generation VI. I restarted my Pokemon X because I rushed my first playthrough, and I intend to use as many Kalos-native Pokemon as I can, but I'm finding that difficult as there's so few :/ I only have 3 in my team when I wanted 4, maybe even 5 Kalos natives. I really do like how the Pokedex was split into 3 parts, that was innovative and reminded me a bit of FR/LG's Pokedex and how they added Pokemon habitats.

 

[ShiningHelioptile]

I'm sort of in the grey on the low number of Kalos Pokemon. On one hand, there's sometimes only one or two Kalos Pokemon in a route compared to five or seven non-Kalos (a bit of an exaggeration). On the other hand, if we had 150 new Pokemon every gen, it would be overwhelming. However, I feel the Mega Evolutions for both XY and ORAS compensate for this. However, speaking of the Pokedex itself, splitting it in three was neat and bit convenient.

 

[εcho.]

I really liked having such a wide variety to choose from. I have lots of favourites that I like to use and having so many options made the game a lot of fun. I enjoyed mixing up my team now and then and I loved being able to catch and fight a bunch of new Pokemon in each route instead of encountering the same 2 or 3 over and over again.

I also loved how they split the Pokedex in three, I thought the formatting of that was fantastic.

 

[BeachBoy]

For once, it felt genuinely random; like, as an actual pokemon environment. I love not knowing what's around the corner.

Stumbling upon Absol and Honedge were some of my favorite early moments in my Nuzlocke (very first run).

 

[captainfez3]

I'm glad they had so many. My complaint would be that there isn't more lol. I hate having to use gimmicky transfer methods to get Pokemon that are non-legendary. I also dislike that so many legendary trios, duos, and otherwise have been introduced more and more with each gen. It is getting impossible to "collect them all" without using some cheat or begging for dex swaps. Oh well, what can ya do?

 

[Serena123]

I think this Pokedex is far more better than the other's region Pokedexes...:D It looks kinda a new or something.