4th Gen Honchkrow in HGSS

[Reginald Cosmic]

Preface: I've never played Gen 4 outside of Renegade Platinum which has a lot of quality of life features and different learnsets (and all the Gen 1-4 starters early on if you're inclined), but I feel like I should finally give regular Gen 4 a chance. I usually pick my team ahead of time, but with Johto, it's super difficult. My team in Crystal (since my 1st complete playthrough in circa 2018) has always been Typhlosion, Slowbro, Donphan super early, Ursaring super early, the odd egg Pichu turned Raichu, and Skarmory, and it's usually a pain to get these mon.

Is it a bad idea to get a Murkrow in the Johto Safari Zone? I know Honchkrow is locked to the post game in HGSS (because of the dawn stone), but I really want to use it in a Gen 4 game. (I hate that some game developer decided to keep Murkrow Diamond exclusive in Gen 4 Sinnoh.) I just don't know how the Johto Safari Zone works for sure because the Bulbapedia page is super long and not even complete. Is there any sort of barrier of entry (after curing Amphy the Ampharos)? Do I have to catch a ton of other Pokemon to unlock the Swamp? For that matter, is Murkrow even, like, usable in the late game and Elite Four? Is my Murkrow going to consistently faint in battle? I'm not as familiar with the Gen 4 mechanics. Yes, I know about the video where a single Sunkern beat the super boss in Gen 2. I meant for a casual playthrough without too much grinding.

(Also, I'm not sure if this matters, but I'll be playing on emulator. Yes, I know I can hack in a Honchkrow in Gen 4 with PkHex, but I don't want to screw around with the game like that all willy nilly.)

 

[Corveone]

Murkrow appears below level 20 in one of the six initial Safari areas, if that particular area isn't available right away, you'll have to do the quest to catch a specific Safari Pokémon so you unlock the ability to change the safari zones and select the one where Murkrow spawns. Pretty sure it can be caught before the Steel gym.

As for viability, well, Murkrow has a respectable base 85 on both Attack/Special Attack and 91 on Speed, which is good for an unevolved Pokémon, and considering the game trainers have pretty meh movesets it should be able to do some things (Also has two very valuable immunities). If you're not playing with any level caps, you can allways overlevel it a bit (save whatever rare candies you find to avoid grinding), a few additional levels + EVs should give it a better chance.

The main problem I think Murkrow has is its moveset. Its Super Luck Ability would do a great combo with other critical boosting stuff, but Scope Lens must be bought in the Battle Frontier, and Murkrow doesn't even learn Night Slash or other moves with higher critical ratio.

Unless you want to breed with a Spearow to give it Drill Peck, its best Flying move would be either Fly or Aerial Ace. And for Dark, basically Faint Attack or Sucker Punch. Sucker Punch is great and should be enough to one-shot Pokémon like Alakazam, Gengar, Mr. Mime and Jynx, but pretty unreliable because it's not rare for Psychic and Ghost types to go for a status move.

 

[Reginald Cosmic]

I actually forgot Murkrow had 85 attack and 85 special attack and 91 speed. That's a lot more encouraging.

The response as a whole is helpful, so thank you for the help.