5th Gen The Unova Starters

The Unova starters! In Black and White, the player, along with their friends Cheren and Bianca, receive one of these three Pokemon as a gift from Professor Juniper. Being the great friends that they are, Cheren and Bianca allow you to chose first.

So which one of these Pokemon did you chose for your adventure through Unova?

I started with tepig because it was the cutest of the 3. I've never used emboar to completion in any of the runs of B/W B2/W2 though. While being a fire/fighting mixed attacker with really high atk/spatk is nice and all having low hp/def/spdef/speed in unova is a big nono due to the relative damage output of the general mobs/trainers.

Snivy I picked for B2/W2 and surprisingly has a pretty nice ingame movepool with Coil/leaf blade/aqua tail/iron tail/dragon tail/areal ace/leach seed/synthesis and was generally my goto sweeper for colress and is really useful for the second half of the game in general. BW which I'm 3/4 done now serperior is really nice as a lead and strength slave but in general the lack of elemental coverage/systhesis stops it from being as useful as its B2/W2 counterpart. At least I can setup coils on marshal without worrying about stone edge being supper effective.

Orsherwatt(sp?) is ok I guess, I don't like the designs for its base form and summerott but having a free icebeam/blizzard user is always nice. Never played it it much.

Snivy for me. I love its design and it has a well rounded moveset
and the evolutionary forms get better with each evolution with Snivy.
Instead of the usual awkwardness of 2 to 3 form pokemon.
Though if it is a minor quarrel by any means, Snivy makes it too easy to beat trainers/gym leaders.

I chose Snivy and Serperior really grew on me. I'm not the biggest fan of the starters this gen, but I gotta say Serperior looks really cool in X and Y.

Oshawott is the one I picked in all my Unova playthroughs, being my fave Pokemon and all. I also find it balanced enough to be usable for most of the game, and I always loved the samurai design theme with its evolution line.

Snivy and Tepig I've had less experiences with as a result, but they have a fair share of usefulness as well. The former with decent support moves (and of course Contrary Leaf Storms) and the latter has some good attacking power along with a decent variety of attacks.

Tepig, pretty much always. I've replayed the games so many times and yet I've never chosen Snivy. I don't think I could manage a playthrough without Tepig honestly. :c

I chose oshawott my first playthrough. I really like the design of its final form but i dont remember it being that good. I've also used snivy, but I found Serperior to be lacking also. I still have never played with tepig, it's the only starter I've never used... one day I'll get to it

Forever said:

Tepig, pretty much always. I've replayed the games so many times and yet I've never chosen Snivy. I don't think I could manage a playthrough without Tepig honestly. :c

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I feel the same way as you, except that it's Oshawott that I couldn't manage a playthrough without. Then again, that's what happens when you favour one member of the trio a lot.

Snivy. During my first playthrough of White I picked Oshawott because I tend to lean towards water starters, but I felt like it lacked something the others had and wasn't a big fan. So, in my second playthrough of White I picked Snivy and loved it.

I also tested out Tepig in one game, but when I realized it was just another Fire/Fighting starter I was more than a little disappointed.

Sageous said:

I also tested out Tepig in one game, but when I realized it was just another Fire/Fighting starter I was more than a little disappointed.

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I think how people view the Fire/Fighting starters is this:
- Blaziken was fresh, badass and was the only Pokemon with its typing at the time
- Infernape was viewed as "okay" but many felt it tried too much to be Blaziken
- Emboar was where the fandom hated Fire/Fighting because of how repetitive it got

I don't personally hate Emboar, nor was I disappointed in it but I'm sure the fan reaction was where Game Freak learned that repeating the same type on starters for consecutive generations was probably not the best thing to do.

Hikamaru said:

I think how people view the Fire/Fighting starters is this:
- Blaziken was fresh, badass and was the only Pokemon with its typing at the time
- Infernape was viewed as "okay" but many felt it tried too much to be Blaziken
- Emboar was where the fandom hated Fire/Fighting because of how repetitive it got

I don't personally hate Emboar, nor was I disappointed in it but I'm sure the fan reaction was where Game Freak learned that repeating the same type on starters for consecutive generations was probably not the best thing to do.

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I would've been okay with Emboar had the developers made him more defensive. Instead they made him hit like a truck, but be unable to take a punch. I feel like they could've made him a little weaker and a lot more durable, and give him attacks that take advantage of his size and durability.

Unfortunately, I came to dislike them all out of all the groups of starters. :( However, I started with Oshawott the first time through White and while I wasn't really impressed overall, Oshawott does remain one of my favorite Pokemon. But that's more for personal reasons than anything that happened in the game, haha.

Out of all of them, I actually enjoy using Snivy the most, if I convince myself to keep my starter. While the Tepig line is easy to use and not a terrible line, by this point in the series, I was bored with the Fire/Fighting typing, so I just...didn't care about it and it felt largely outclasses by the Torchic and Chimchar lines, so...there wasn't any interest in it. Snivy is fun to use in BW2 many because I like to teach it Aqua Tail...I really enjoy working on a set around. I usually go with Leaf Blade, Coil, Aqua Tail, and Dragon Tail. Fun stuff!

But yeah, send my vote to Oshawott when it all comes down to it, though. Only Oshawott, though. Not Samurott. lol

Like many others, I chose Oshawott in my White playthrough. Very dependable and evolves into a pretty awesome-looking Pokémon. Didn't like its movepool very much after being used to the diversity of past water starters but it did its job and was my main asset.

Snivy was my pick in Black 2. <3 Serperior's stats and moves are very mediocre but Swords Dance + Leaf Blade was my favorite spam combo lol. Also threw on Dragon Tail and Aerial Ace after breeding a better Snivy post-game.

I first chose Oshawott, since it was my favorite of the three. But I also cheated a little and traded over a Snivy to use for my first playthrough, so I really used the both of them at once. Snivy and its evolutions slowly started to fall behind the rest of the team. Oshawott and its evolutions were just a problem for me to figure out how to use.

Since then, I've gotten better at using the three of them. Tepig is the one that I've used the least, but that's really just up to chance. I tend to roll using Oshawott more than the others, though my current White playthrough has me using Snivy. (I'm gonna box it though because I just don't want to play with the final forms of the Unova starters. I don't like them much.)

I always pick the starter I find the most visually appealing. While I do love the Oshawott line, Snivy was my overall favorite. When it was first revealed as a grass snake with limbs, I just knew they were gonna fall off. I also had a feeling that Oshawott would turn into a majestic sea unicorn which also happened (...kind of...), but Snivy definitely had me from the beginning. I picked Snivy for both Black and Black 2, although I named him differently each time (Lucifer and Arne, respectively).

As I was a foolish child, I always picked the Fire starter first. Basically the only thing good about Emboar is that it has Scald and Grass Knot.

Maybe I'll pick Snivy as my starter next time.

Went with Snivy on my first White playthrough. And the 2nd one as well but I'm not using it. I find it rather strange that my favorite generation somehow produced my least favorite batch of starters though.

Seperior is stupidly tanky. Being able to take abuse from ghetsis bouffalant(head charge and poison jab) and potion up the intire team is so sugoi.

llysender said:

Seperior is stupidly tanky. Being able to take abuse from ghetsis bouffalant(head charge and poison jab) and potion up the intire team is so sugoi.

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Kinda makes me wish the Unova starters had their special ability from the start. Leaf Storm would make it even better and the other two might not have been hated as much.

Oshawott and Snivy are my favorite starters from this gen. Mostly Oshawott though.