2nd Gen Starter choice

I just restarted Crystal on a whim; I've actually never gotten to Kanto in Crystal... Only in Gold iirc.

I picked Cyndaquil because I know I have the most fun playing with it, but it feels a bit bad that I basically never try out the other fire pokemon in the game then. To my defense, there is p much only Growlithe and Ponyta and muchhh later Houndour... right?

How did you decide what starter to pick in the gen2 Johto games? I know that Cynda is easy mode due to Bugsy and Chiko is hard mode due to being weak to both first two gyms. But there's other pokémon to use as well. So what train of thought can decide for you? :)

A lot of it for a first playthrough is just whichever design jumps out to me the most, which was Chikorita when I first played Gold/Silver back in the day. Tbh I don't usually think too hard about starter choice.

Johto is like Sinnoh though where there's little to choose from for Fire types, although Dark is even worse (literally your only option for a Dark type before Kanto is Umbreon).

Well I used all three since I've done a few Gen 2 playthroughs in my life but my first choice and still my favorite Johto starter is Totodile. Coincidentally I also recently restarted my Crystal on Virtual Console to get one more Celebi to add to my Pokemon HOME and I chose Totodile again just like the first time when I played Crystal on an Emulator more than a decade ago.

I chose Cyndaquil in Gold when that came to the Virtual Console and for my first Virtual Console Crystal team I chose Chikorita so it was time to finally go back to Totodile now that I restarted the game again. I'm at the 4th Gym now about to battle Morty soon.

I always pick water starters, popularity be darned

First time I played Pokémon Silver a long time ago, before even knowing english, I decided to pick Totodile because it just looked cool to me. Ever since then I don't think I've ever beaten GSC with a starter other than Totodile.

Picked Totodile on looks. Loves its design. Sits high up among all starters (for the first form, at least).

Chikorita usually. Simply has the most pleasing design to me of the three.
It has a disadvantage against the first two gyms, but you can easily grab a couple mons early on to rid yourself of the disadvantage if needed.

When I knew nothing about the games, my initial choice was Cyndaquil. I actually think it was the best choice for an in-game playthrough, at least in Gen 2, for several reasons:

Fire types' availability: Cyndaquil was essentially the only Gen 2 Fire-type you could have before Kanto. Houndour (arguably the most interesting) and Slugma were post-game, Magby was a Gen 1 pre-evo, and Entei and Ho-Oh were legendaries. And for Gen 1 you only had Magmar, Growlithe OR Vulpix, and Ponyta (only after 8 badges iirc). Like in a few other regions, since Fire was considerably rare, it was a good starter pick since it was allways easier to find Water and Grass Pokémon later. It was also good against the new Steel type, which many types had trouble dealing with.

Typhlosion was also arguably the only of the three that could perform well at what it was meant to. Meganium is great for support, but that didn't help much when all battles are single, and it was easily walled and countered by a lot of stuff. And Feraligatr had the problem of being a physical Water type before the P/S split. Typhlosion on the other hand had a nice stat spread that worked really good with its typing, and could even benefit from Thunderpunch (TM) being a special attack.

In my first playthrough I picked Cyndaquil. In my second one I chose Totodile. And every subsequent playthrough I usually went with Chikorita. I think a lot of this is also just nostalgia at this point. My first Chikorita playthrough also happens to be my most successful playthrough. That's because in this one in particular I ended up getting tons of Pokemon to level 100; literally filling multiple boxes with them.

When I played the Generation II games, I never picked any Pokémon other than Totodile simply because I liked its design at the time.

I always choose the water starters and ironically enough, they also always turn out to be my fav ones among the three of them. I really like the color blue lol.

Usually based on design and recommendations for me as a kid. Chikorita was very cute, but Cyndaquil was also adorable and everyone said it was really good to use. So I went with it first. Using Chikorita throughout the gen 2 games was just brutal so I didn't end up using it as often :'(

The first one I picked in Johto games was Chikorita. While I like all three Johto starters, Chikorita was my favourite back then because of anime.

Nowadays, I usually pick the one that fits my planned team the best.

Ice fang- I mean, the Water starter.

I love all of them and will alternate each time I play a Johto game.

I don't usually use a Johto starter for battling at all, but Chikorita's evolutions have good field move compatibility in Gen 2, since they're the only non-Legendary Pokemon able to learn all of Cut/Flash/Strength/Rock Smash. In Gen 4, Feraligatr has the best field move compatibility of any Pokemon obtainable in the game, with it being able to learn any HM except Fly.

Cyndaquil is the one I like the best in terms of in-battle utility, but early Johto has some excellent non-starter options for building a team that I feel kind of overwhelm the actual starters. Even if I pick it, it's unlikely to stay on my team in the long run.