Do you ever have a rule against using Legendaries on your in-game team, or do you use them but have a limit?

When i play Pokemon, 9 times out of 10 i have at least one Legendary on my postgame team. However, i feel guilty using a bunch of Legendaries, so i implement something i call the Rule of Two, Sith Lord style. Basically i can't use more than two Legendary/Mythical Pokemon on my team of 6, so as to not have too many crazy-overpowered Pokemon. Often times one of those two is the box art legend in said game, i.e. Kyurem-Black in Black 2, or Ho-Oh in Heartgold.

But what about you? are you anti-legendary or do you limit yourself? Heck, do you just ditch that entirely and go all out Legendary abuse?

I'm anti-brokenmon. My ban list is actually fairly big, since not only it includes every legendary & mythical, but also:

Every pseudo-legendary except Tyranitar
Every Mega with 580+ BST (might allow some of these in difficulty based rom hacks, since you can only have one anyway)
Other mons like Gyarados, Snorlax, Blissey, Aegislash, Speed Boost Blaziken, or whatever I might consider unfairly strong. I even banned Excadrill from my Sand team in Radical Red, using Cacturne instead :)

But to be fair, not all legendaries are OP, there are pseudos, megas, and even strong regular Pokémon that can be more broken than many of the legendaries.

Always two there are - no more, no less. Do they kill each other so you have to replace them periodically though?

Well... I did use to be big on including Legendaries in my main game teams or as members in rotation. I was strongly bonded with my Giratina from Platinum, my Rayquaza in Emerald and Alpha Sapphire (first and only time I used the same Legendary in my in-game team twice), and my 10% Zygarde in Sun, so I saw no wrong in taking them along for the ride. I also used Naganadel in Ultra Sun, though I'm not sure whether UBs count as Legendaries.

I have since become kind of meh on using Legendaries in the main story now that we have hit a point in which there are many fun regular Mons to use, but I do ocassionally have Legendaries in my team for fun in the post-game. I just hope I can get them all together some day, if Bank and HOME are ever free to use.

During the main story, yes. Typically picked a full team by that time you catch a legendary anyways. Broke that rule once to try to finish Diamond before the save file corrupted beyond use.

Held for postgame too, until Sword/Shield. Relied on Zacian and Eternatus a ton for Max Raids.

Oh, right. Also called on legendaries during one challenge run. Bagged the level 70 Suicune (and lots more) from Dynamax Adventures. (Maxed out their Effort Values too.) Used them for three things:

1. Max Raids. Wanted to find certain Pokemon early, like Duraludon and Steelix. Meant chucking in Wishing Pieces and defeating the unwanted Pokemon. Sped up the process so much.
2. To avoid overleveling. Smashed a lot of Oddishes for a better Brilliant Aura chance.
3. Running around Crown Tundra for mints and Max Raids. Escaped from the occasional level 60 encounter.

Never used them for any trainer battle, however.

I frequently use legendaries and mythicals ingame if the option is available (and, for legendaries, if their involvement in the storyline draws me in...), and honestly, I don't usually find that it makes that much of a difference in difficulty - during the main storyline, I find that your levels are way more important than just the raw strength of your Pokemon (and that goes for weak/NFE ones as well). It all "evens out" a lot more than PvP.

...Hm, before this thread I couldn't really think of many games with opportunities to use more than one legendary before the postgame, but looking back there were definitely some that I didn't take. I mean, I wouldn't want to take up 3 spots on my team for legendary trios you get fairly late in the game just because they're legendaries.

I don't have a rule per se, but I generally just already have my team ready by the time I even get the opportunity to have a legendary so it doesn't really matter.

Although I suppose most of my playthroughs nowadays are challenges where legendaries are banned / soft banned anyway.

I only use legendaries and mythicals in a team if;
A. Its required for the story
B. Its for a all legends/mythical battle with a friend
Otherwise no and its why i dont play online battles with randos, because often i just get my team of normal pokemon vs some guy with all lvl 100 legends or mythicals

Always two there are - no more, no less. Do they kill each other so you have to replace them periodically though?

Click to expand...

*WHEEZE* That's a good joke right there!

No, not really. I usually just switch them out for something different if i want to try something else for a change. As of recently i want to use things that i've never used before on an in-game team.

Great question!

Whenever I play Pokémon, I prefer to begin my adventure with some of my all-time favorite Pokémon with at least two sets of teams, which I often breed from a previous game and transfer to the game I chose to play. Because legendary Pokémon cannot breed, I avoid using them during the early portions of my in-game playthrough because their levels would be too high and they wouldn't listen to my commands anyways until I obtain the required amount of gym badges. However, when I finally do reach the point in the game where I can catch the game's mascot legendary Pokémon or any legendary Pokémon for that matter, I always make some space for it in my party to EV train it, give it a better moveset, and max its friendship. However, after doing that, I box it because I prefer to challenge the gyms and defeat the Elite Four with my Pokémon that I used since the beginning first. After defeating the Elite Four with my primary and secondary teams, I then defeat the Elite Four again with my legendary Pokémon, as I never feel comfortable completely ignoring them in boxes.

Personally, from a storyline perspective, boxing the powerful legendary Pokémon that trainers can most likely catch once in a lifetime and never using it in battle just doesn't feel right, as these Pokémon are simply too rare and powerful to be sitting in a preteen's box doing nothing. This is especially true for Reshiram on a personal level, a Pokémon that I must use whenever I can. On the other hand, when using post-game teams, I have no rules or limits when using legendary Pokémon. During post-game, I literally have hundreds of teams. Some of them consist of all legendary Pokémon while others are comprised of a majority of legendary Pokémon. Some teams might have half their Pokémon be legendary Pokémon, while others might only have one, two, or no legendary Pokémon at all. Some legendary Pokémon are great for certain strategies. For example, Groudon and Kyogre are the best Pokémon to use for Sun and Rain teams respectively.

My point is, if you want to win, you sometimes have to use legendary Pokémon if doing so is the best option. A common belief among various casual Pokémon players is that legendary Pokémon are too powerful and/or "broken," resulting in several casual players refusing to include legendary Pokémon in their teams. However, many casual Pokémon players fail to understand that, despite the video game storylines, anime episodes, and Pokémon movies portraying legendary Pokémon as unstoppable forces, sometimes even with godlike powers, legendary Pokémon are, nonetheless, still regular Pokémon but with a glorified title. Albeit legendary Pokémon are often stronger than non-legendary Pokémon and can definitely make winning battles easier, they can still be defeated in battle with a well-executed strategy. In addition, non-legendary Pokémon can become temporarily stronger than even major legendary Pokémon after using status moves that boost their stats such as Swords Dance, Nasty Plot, Quiver Dance, and so forth.

I used to use them pretty religiously! It felt wrong to me as a kid not to since they were so strong. Tried out a bunch when playing the story but my most used was probably Kyogre in Sapphire. Super bulky, great movepool, and awesome attacker overall. If I was ever stuck on the E4 Kyogre helped me get through it!

Nowadays I don't use them anymore though. Last time I did was in BW I believe, and that was aaages ago now. It makes the game too easy and that's on top of an already-easy series to me now that I've been playing it most of my life - so I prefer to stick with regular Pokémon.

As a kid, yes, all the time. My teams were basically just the starter, the legendaries, and the HM slaves! xD

Recently, never. It just feels too easy.

I have used them in my playthroughs on some occasions if I liked the design enough.

95% of the time my team will already be complete and I don't care enough about the legendary to use it though =P

In regular runs, I've only used Yveltal on my Y team. I don't really like most legendaries design and/or typing.

In challenge runs, I do sometimes use them, if they fit the rules and I've already used the rest of the Pokémon thst fits the rules. I would love to use every single Pokémon in a challenge run once.

I don't usually set any restrictions or rules for myself when I play, just about everything is on the table. They sometimes don't make it onto the team though because legendaries are more often than not late-game acquisitions, so I often already have a full team by then. At that point there's no space in the party and the legendary probably doesn't fill a role that the team really needs.

for my story playthrough, no legendaries. post-game though? idc. in fact, using legendaries is kinda fun for me.

i an guilty of using them before, but nowadays most of pokemons already cover the type the legendaries have
in example, on my last X playthrough, my sylveon was way stronger than xerneas lol

Everything goes for me when just play normally until post-game where I just banked and go for the challenge.

For the longest time I was very much against using legendaries on my teams but then one day I just stopped caring about dumb "rules" I had as a kid and now I just use Pokemon that I want to use, even if they are legendaries. That being said, I still like "regular" Pokemon a lot more than most legendaries so I still don't use legendaries often. I've probably done 50+ Pokemon playthroughs in my life and I've only used legendaries in 5 or 6 of them and in only one of those I've used more than one legendary on my team (Zapdos and Articuno in Red).

As long as they're legal I use them.

As a kid I used them whenever I got one of them. At some point I started playing by rules I made up. That included one which forced me to only use a team of six and any gift/legendary would need accounting for. However, as GF went on to force certain legendaries in certain games to be in your party which severely limited my options, especially since they came in so late. As a result I went on to change the rules up so I can just ditch them as soon as possible.

I'm not against using legendaries. But I certainly don't like being forced to use them. Maybe if I could get my hands on them a lot sooner, I might end up using them as a regular team member. But given the way GF currently handles these things it just won't happen anytime soon.