6th Gen Another Starter Thread (+1 Other Question)

[Ruyu]

Hello guys! I'm sure you all have seen your fair share of these threads on these boards and I feel horrible for doing this as, like I said, this is a question most of you answer often. I was thinking of putting this in the Quick Q&A thread but felt this required discussion so made my own thread. First I will ask my other question before I forget what it is! :)

I have a Nintendo 3DS, I like it, don't love it, but like it. However, I did find a Red or Blue Limited Edition Nintendo 3DS XL with Yveltal and Xerneas on the cover. My favorite color on the other hand is Lime Green or Green and I kind of wish there was a Lime Green/Green 3DS XL with Zygarde on the cover. Is the XL a lot bigger than the 3DS? I would LOVE bigger screens! So yeah my question here is; Is the Nintendo 3DS XL much bigger than the regular 3DS? Also, are there covers/cases/skins for the 3DS XL like there is for phones?

Now to start my discussion for choosing my starters:

Chespin: Chespin, oh, Chespin. The cute rodent looking starter. The poor under-utilized grass starter like every generation when almost no one chooses the grass type. On this generation I don't see much reason to choose this guy due to his plethora of weaknesses, though, looks like he would be a great physical sweeper or wall if you so chose to build him that way. His special stats and speed are, well, meh. I don't see myself choosing this starter unless someone can convince me otherwise, but the other two just seem to outshine this one in every way this generation. Thoughts?

Fennekin: Fennekin, the over-used fire starter like every generation,me erode always chooses the fire starter. This guy looks interesting in every aspect! I love the psychic secondary typing in his final form, I find it interesting and I always liked psychic types. Looks like he is special stat based and looks like he could be a great special sweeper or wall if you so chose! Base speed of 104 is good, but there's one problem for me to start with this pokemon; I will be choosing charmander from Professor Sycamore later! I don't want two fire types! I LOVE diversity in my team!

Froakie: Froakie, the in the middle starter just like in every single generation except for Piplup in Diamond/Pearl/Platinum. Piplup in my opinion is the best starter for those games, and is my favorite starter in all of the regions, except for the Pikachu from pokemon yellow of course! I am very heavily leaning towards this guy as I would love to choose charmander from Professor Sycamore to get that cool looking Mega Charizard Y! His speed is, simply put, AMAZING! His special attack is also great but his defenses aren't that good...if I choose this pokemon I am pretty sure I will be doing a special sweeper pokemon! Also can't get over the secondary DARK typing! Awesome!

Once I get my starters figured out, should I save before receiving my starter to be able to soft-reset for a good natured starter or does nature not really matter much for the play-through? I know for a fact I am going to be soft-resetting for a female starter as I love using all female pokemon on my teams and will be doing that on X and Y as well, only usually catch females too unless I have no other choice or I need it for pokedex and it's hard to find (rare) and find a male. If that happens I usually breed until I find my female :) Let me know if it's worth soft resetting for correct nature for just the Playthrough or not as I will be raising pokemon from scratch. My competitive team will eventually be all shinies but that will take forever as I have never even seen a shiny in the wild except for the Gyrados in silver/gold and Heartgold/Soulsilver and I have been playing for over ten years, I got the game boy color and pokemon blue AS SOON as pokemon blue came out in stores! I remember begging my mom for it, I was 5 or 6 when it came out so think of a 5 or 6 year old seeing a see through purple gameboy color and a game with a huge turtle with cannons coming out of his shell, I begged for it haha! I don't even know how I got this off-topic, my bad! :/ BACK ON TOPIC!

I was just thinking, I need to also ask one more thing:

I was debating on catching Fletchling at the first route and train that up to be on my team if I end up not using Charizard. If I choose charmander though, I shouldn't need Talonflame should I? I'm sure by the time I get the fly HM to fly around my charmander will have already evolved into charmeleon and then Charizard so I could use him as my flyer and could use the move to take out fighting types and others weak to flying. Should I invest in the fletchling or will I have my charmander to level 36 and into Charizard by the time I get the fly HM? If I should invest in Talonflame I'll probably put charmander in a box and just end up using Talonflame as my fire/flying type pokemon for my team and then end up raising Charmander when I have beat the game and have received a Japanese ditto and can start breeding for my shiny competitive team :) Although I have 0 shines so that might take a while haha!

That's all the questions I have for now and thanks for reading through all of that!

Ciao!

- Ruyu

 

[Banned]

Is the Nintendo 3DS XL much bigger than the regular 3DS? Also, are there covers/cases/skins for the 3DS XL like there is for phones?

Yes, quite a lot bigger (although also uglier imo):

Spoiler:

There are some protective cases for the 3DS XL, ranging from some quite bulky ones used as a kind of travel case to simple plastic "shells" to give it some extra protection from bumps. There isn't anything like the skins available for phones though, as far as I know.

Now, the main topic:

Chespin: Chespin is by far the most original starter in my opinion, in terms of concept, design and learnset. Fighting as a secondary type is pretty overdone in starters, but then again it's novel on a Grass-type starter. It's not great in competitive play, but then that shouldn't be a priority when playing through the main story anyway.

Fennekin: Psychic as a secondary type is really cool and exciting, but unfortunately that's where it ends for Fennekin. It's rather dull other than its typing, and transforms into a hideous oaf of a creature upon evolution. I chose this as my first starter, and deeply regretted it.

Froakie: Ahhh, Froakie. Sublime in a competitive setting with its Hidden Ability, but not quite so much without it. This certainly shouldn't affect your decision on which starter to pick, anyhow. Froakie is simply adorable, and Greninja is incredibly cool. In terms of design, they really got it right here. And Dark as a secondary type is perfect (being my favourite type hehe). Its learnset leaves something to be desired, but that's not such a big negative really. Also, frogs have already been done to death in Pokemon, but frogs are awesome, so I'm not complaining.

Once I get my starters figured out, should I save before receiving my starter to be able to soft-reset for a good natured starter or does nature not really matter much for the play-through?

Nah, I wouldn't bother personally, it isn't at all important.

If I choose charmander though, I shouldn't need Talonflame should I?

You wouldn't "need" it, no. But then I always say that during a playthrough there is no particular Pokemon you really "need". Just use the Pokemon you like the most. If you like Talonflame, you shouldn't dismiss it simply because it's similar to Charizard!

 

[Ruyu]

Thanks, berlyda! Anyone else have something else to say about this? Would love more opinions on all the topics I asked about!

 

[griever7x]

Hi there!
My favourite out of the 3 kalos starters is, without a doubt, chespin.
I always liked grass type starters and this one, having a unique design and typing, just got to me. Anyways, Chesnaught has awesome physical stats and an unique ability that makes him immune to 21 moves! I've had quite a bit of battles with it and I have to say the combination of Leech Seed/Spiky Shield/Rocky Helmet or Leftovers is awesome. However, don't expect it to fare well against special attackers; its speed is also terrible.

Fennekin is like, the cutest out of ALL the starters, no doubt about that, but gets uglier and uglier upon evolving... What a disappointment... Even if it was competitively viable, I'd still not use that ugly thing called Delphox.

Lastly, the water starter this gen does look very promising, in my opinion. Everyone seems to like Greninja, and apart from its awesome design, it also has an amazing ability that makes it very compettively viable!

All in all, I'd get either Chespin or Froakie, and totally ignore Fennekin... Even if you didn't opt to take Charmander.

 

[Hikamaru]

Here were my thoughts on the Kalos starters:

Chespin: So, this cutie ends up as the slowest of the three this time around, but it seems to be the physical tank of the bunch, having high Defense with Attack coming close behind. Gaining Fighting-type as Chesnaught is kinda interesting since we've had two Pokemon with that typing already, but it's the first time we got Fighting on a starter that isn't the Fire-type. Sadly it ends up with the most weaknesses of the three, plus I don't like using a lot of slow Pokemon most of the time, however Bulletproof does make him immune to a few moves. Not the best competitively but it sure is a hard hitter in-game.

Fennekin: One of the two I actually used up to its final evo, thanks to that trade with Shauna after the Elite Four. Fennekin's line is essentially the polar opposite of Chespin's, specializing more in Special Attack, with some good Special Defense and Speed alongside it. Gaining Psychic-type as Delphox is kinda cool since it can deal with a lot of Fighting and Poison-types (which I have been seeing a lot of during the main story) and even though its movepool and hidden ability was disappointing, it's still a solid Pokemon to use.

Froakie: This was my main Kalos starter in my X playthrough. Aside from me loving Water-type starters most of the time, I was actually impressed at how awesome his evolutions turned out so yeah I just had to call myself a member of Team Froakie. Froakie sets a first for Water starters because he's the fastest of the trio, something which never happened with the Water starter before. Plus, he's the first to not have stereotypical "all rounder" stats that past Water starters had. Also, his Protean ability, solid offensive movepool and the secondary Dark-type as Greninja make him awesome. Definitely the Kalos starter I recommend to any first-timer.

 

[Pendraflare]

I used Chespin the first time I played through the game. He's quite bulky, and does have a lot of weaknesses but Chesnaught is my favorite designed of the bunch. He's slow but I do like the moves he has, and he did me well in quite a few battles I used him in. I also used him in a Wedlocke I was doing back in late 2013, and while I didn't finish that, he did survive the whole time I had him. So he's probably my favorite of the three.

Then we have Fennekin. Delphox's typing is alright I guess, even if it does leave it open to a lot of common attacks like Surf, Shadow Ball and Earthquake. But it's still plenty usable, especially on the special side with Calm Mind. In my first play through of Y, it came to the rescue against Diantha's Mega Gardevoir, which felt good using my starter against the Champion's ace to end the game. And I like Delphox's design myself, I know a lot of people don't but I do personally. And Braixen is a happy one though =P

As for Froakie...can't say much about it since I have yet to use one seriously in an in-game play through. But he is well designed, and is it wrong that I like Froakie and Frogadier more than Greninja?

 

[Skirovik]

Is it possible to get the hidden ability when receiving your first starter or does it have to be bred/safari'ed?

 

[Shhmew]

Is it possible to get the hidden ability when receiving your first starter or does it have to be bred/safari'ed?

It has to be bred/safari'd :3

I posted some facts on the starters somewhere else last night, but here I'll post my opinions. :3

I will start with Chespin, since it's the only one I haven't used. It's more defensive, which just usually isn't my style of play. In addition to that, Quilladin and Chesnaught are just extremely awkward to me. Chesnaught kind of looks like its armor is way too small for it or something. It's ridiculous. For these reasons I did not bother using it.

I used Fennekin in my very first playthrough, because I loved it ever since I first saw it. Delphox was a bit of a disappointment in terms of design, but I still do think it's pretty cool, with that fire wand thing :3 It was alright to use, I love fire types and fire/psychic typing was definitely fun. Even so, it fainted quite often due to its many weaknesses. Still loved using it and I don't really have any qualms with it, except that its movepool isn't all that great. (didn't expect it to be or anything, just makes it pretty predictable to use)

Now Froakie, is obviously better with its hidden ability. But, even without it, it's the most fun for me to use. Greninja strikes very fast and hard, and even with its not-too-great defenses, it still gets the job done with its extreme versatility. It does great with both physical and special moves, and learns a whole lot of coverage moves excluding water and dark moves, including Ice Beam, Extrasensory, U-Turn, Acrobatics, Grass Knot, Rock Slide, Dig, there's just so many options. And that's why I love it so much, it's just a lot of fun! I love its design too, it's so cute, especially in Pokemon amie.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

As for what to use on your team. Don't stress about it. Use what you like. Everything is awesome and more than capable of working on your team :3 For me, I really wanted to use Talonflame, but I also wanted to use Charizard, so I used Charizard in my first playthrough and Talonflame in my second, so I could experience lots of other types too. They were both so great hehe >.<

 

[morrison]

fennekin
I havent even considered him. For some reason starter fires always seem to require flames out of any orifices. not as bad as chimchar with the toad flame head but ears ?Looks like so. got some bad ear inflammation there.

chespin, he is really cute and it is an interesting typing, reminds me a bit of a bipedal chelterra.
When I saw what he evolved into I reseted my game. How hideous can you get. I liked how someone offsite compared it to the"puberty" stage .

So I picked Froakie. I love Water types anyway and even when all have been unsatisfactory i tend to take the water type(looking at you gen IV)(except gen2 its tied with cyndaquil the only fire starter i <3) All his stages are cool even if I prefer the 1st evo to the 2nd, but he is awesome. I also love dark type, unfortunately he doesnt learn any decent moves early.
His signature move is unfortunately only one of those 15 x 1to5 hits damage types which is a pity if you like sig moves.

I have got a white red 2ds. Takes a while getting used to not folding it but it is really easy to handle.

 

[Playflame]

Well since i own both Pokemon x and y, i want to get right through x first, then in time i will get right through y.

Well with me the first pokemon was pretty hard to pick between Fenniken and Froakie, so on X i decided to pick Fenniken and y i am gonna pick Froakie. :3