After several weeks of recording, and sharing this journey, we’re finally here: the Pokémon League. The real question is whether or not my team of E-tier Pokémon can actually make it through.
As a reminder, you can see the full team (and their moves) listed out at the end of Part 9.
Though, before I stepped into the League, I did make sure to grab some healing items. A lot of healing items, in fact. I had enough Revives for 5 of our team members to go down in every single fight, and also a bunch of Lemonades, Full Heals, and some Hyper Potions. We won’t be using any of these items in battle, but this should ensure that I can keep the team topped off between fights.
With all of that sorted, I figured we were finally ready to tackle the League.
First up, is Will the Psychic Pokémon specialist. He’s the Elite Four member that I’m the most afraid of. The reason being is quite simple: all of his Pokémon know Psychic. That’s a 90 power move, that’ll hit for 135 power after the same-type boost, and there is no reprieve from it across his team. Worse yet, only Pinellopi takes reduced damage from Psychic attacks, but she doesn’t have an especially…reliable way to fight back. Ergo, I’m a little worried.
Plus, Will’s team is also rife with disruptive status inducing attacks. For example, both of his Xatu know Confuse Ray, and his Jynx knows the sleep inducing Lovely Kiss. In either case, these disruptive attacks could put us on the back foot, which would be hugely detrimental for our chances of winning. As such, I think I’m going to need to make liberal use of Safeguard on Mabel, which is an option that I’ve kept around specifically for this fight.
Anyway, Will leads the first of those aforementioned Xatu, so we counter with Mabel. My logic here is 2 fold. Firstly, Mabel has an abominable Special Defence stat so she should take limited damage from Xatu’s strong Psychic attacks. Secondly, is the aforementioned Safeguard, which Mabel should be able to set before Will can hit us with Confuse Ray. Mabel is quite quick after all.
That in mind, I go for a very predictable turn 1 and immediately set up Safeguard for my entire team.
As luck would have it, this turned out to be the correct play because Will immediately went for Confuse Ray, which was blanked by Safeguard’s protection.
Good. There will be no cheese today unless I am the one serving it.
From there 2 Magnet boosted Thunder Punches are able to drop the first Xatu, which sees Will sending in his Jynx as a follow-up.
With Safeguard active, I know that Lovely Kiss isn’t an option, so he’s almost assuredly eyeing up a Super Effective Ice Punch into Mabel. There’s no way she can tank that, so I have to pivot into Winston here.
As predicted, Winston eats the Ice Punch upon entry, but he ends up taking massive damage from it. At least, it was more than I anticipated. I’m a little bit dubious about his ability to survive a Psychic on the following turn, but he manages to hang on, and lets a Shadow Ball rip in return. Predictably, this one-shots Jynx since she has paper-thin defenses.
Though, I’m a little worried about Winston’s ability to contribute further in this fight given how much of a beating he took here.
Thankfully, next out is Will’s Exeggutor, who I’m fairly confident Winston can outrun. As such, I decide to let him go down swinging with a Shadow Ball, which ends up doing a little over half to our opponent. That’s far more than I expected, but is yet another instance of Winston demonstrating how much of a beast he is.
From there, Mabel returns to the field to finish Exeggutor off with an Ice Punch, which prompts Will to send in his second Xatu.
Once again, I’m more afraid of confusion than I am of Psychic, so I immediately set Safeguard to prevent Confuse Ray from working against my team. And, once again, this proves to be the correct play as Will tries to confuse my precious Mabel a second time.
Thanks to that free turn, I’m fairly confident that we can best this Xatu with Mabel, but only if Light Screen is active. This’ll reduce the power of incoming Psychics such that we’ll effectively have double the number of turns to KO our opponent.
However, this proves unnecessary because Mabel is able to easily down Will’s second Xatu with another 2 Thunder Punches. That leaves Will with only his final Slowbro, who goes down to a Critical Hit Thunder Punch.
Low-key, I’m very impressed with how well Mabel did across this fight. She hasn’t exactly made a splash in many of the boss fights to this point, save for Clair, but Will was pretty much the perfect fight for her. Most of his Pokémon don’t like her combo of Electric, and Ice type coverage, and her massive Special Defence stat did wonders for mitigating the otherwise threatening Psychic attacks. Plus, Safeguard was a nice barrier to prevent any shenanigans from either Confuse Ray, or Lovely Kiss.
With our first win sorted, we’re onto the second fight: Koga, the ninja master. He’s kind of a Poison type specialist, but his team is constructed more around being annoying. Notably, he has the ability to set entry hazards with Spikes, 60% of his team knows the damage-over-time move Toxic, and several members of his team can boost their evasion. With that in mind, it is clear that Koga doesn’t intend to actively engage with his opponent in battle. Rather, he’ll whittle you down over time with a passive strategy that relies on dodging your attacks.
To that end, I need a solution so that his team doesn’t get out of control with evasion boosting moves. A single boost to evasion will give all of my attacks a flat 1 in 4 chance to miss, which severely hampers our odds of successfully navigating the fight. To that end, I think leveraging sleep might be the best play here since it’ll totally disrupt Koga’s ability to set up his otherwise annoying strategy.
With that in mind, we lead Trevor into his Ariados.
That might seem a little odd at first brush, but Ariados’ only attacking move is the Grass type Giga Drain, so it can’t retaliate against Trevor for any meaningful damage. Plus, Trevor outspeeds Ariados, so we have a chance to put it to sleep before it starts stacking evasion boosts with Double Team.
Tragically,Trevor misses Sleep Powder, so we’re still stuck gambling despite our best efforts to prevent this exact scenario. It’s times like these where I can really feel the weaker power level of our team because I normally just one-shot Ariados with a fire type attack, and never have to think about it. Unfortunately, no one on our team could pull that off, aside from Pinellopi with Explosion, but she wouldn’t have been able to act before Ariados.
Irrespective of Ariados’ newly added chance to dodge incoming attacks, we’re able to connect with Sleep Powder on the following turn, which should buy us a couple free turns to nab a KO with Return. This ends up being the case, though we miss several attempted attacks along the way. Regardless, the first of Koga’s intentionally annoying Pokémon goes down without much of a fuss.
This prompts Koga to send in his Venomoth, which knows both Gust, and Psychic. I was fairly certain he’d use Psychic, which would make Mabel the best pivoting option, but I didn’t want to be wrong and send her into a Super Effective Gust. As such, I decided to send in Pinellopi instead of Mabel since she could tank both options reliably.
Hilariously, neither of those options were used. Instead, Venomoth went for Supersonic, which, thankfully, missed. Unfortunately, it found its target on the following turn, so we are once again locked in the hell that is fighting through confusion.
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay~
I genuinely didn’t expect Koga to go for Supersonic a second time, but I guess that was wishful thinking. I really should’ve just sent in Mabel here because she could’ve shut all of this nonsense down with Safeguard.
Realizing this, I pivoted over to Mabel who ate a soft Psychic on the way in. She then set Safeguard to guard against any further nonsense. In retaliation, I fully expected Venomoth to use Gust, but you know what happened instead? Toxic. How’s that for some poetic justice?
Fella really had a free KO right there, and opted to try and poison my Pokémon instead. Koga isn’t even trying to win. He’s just trying to frustrate the player into making so many consecutive mistakes that he wins incidentally.
Regardless, I’m anticipating a Gust on the following turn so I swap over to Vanessa assuming that she can tank the Gust, and KO Venomoth on the following turn. Unfortunately, I’m wrong, and she comes up just short of a KO. This means Vanessa eats a nasty Psychic in retaliation, but she lives, so she’s able to claim the KO on the following turn.
Unfortunately, that means Vanessa’s no longer in peak fighting form, which means we’ve lost our most reliable answer to Koga’s Muk. If I’d been thinking, I’d have realized this and wouldn’t have wasted her early. As such, it’s safe to say we’re officially on the back foot.
Regardless, Koga gives us a bit of an opportunity to reclaim some ground by sending in his Forretress next. I don’t have a good answer for it since I dropped Fire Punch from Winston’s repertoire, so I decided to send in Pinellopi for a battle of attrition.
I would’ve loved to use Rollout here, but Koga’s Forretress knows Protect so it can shut down any attempted Rollout sweeps. That said, we know Rock Smash, which has a 50% chance to lower the opponent’s Defence. With a few of those stat drops, I’m confident we can find our way through the opposing Forretress.
Several…very uneventful turns later, Pinellopi drops the opposing Forretress with a Strength, while having taken minimal damage herself. Admittedly, I’m not sure if the defence drops from Rock Smash actually mattered here, but I’m going to pretend that they did. And trust me – you really didn’t need a play-by-play of the almost 10 turns of back-and-forth that happened as our Forretress took pot shots at one another for virtually no damage.
This prompts Koga to finally send forth his Muk, who immediately uses Minimize to boost its evasion. Unfortunately, Pinellopi can’t really do anything here to prevent that, so we just have to deal with the 1 in 4 chance to miss Earthquake as I swap in a fairly brittle Vanessa to (hopefully) KO our opponent.
As such, the following turn sees me clicking Earthquake, and praying to whichever Gods are listening. And…it hits! But, in what has been a recurring theme for Vanessa throughout this entire journey, Earthquake is just shy of the KO. Worse still, we miss on the following turn, which sees Vanessa drop to a resisted Sludge Bomb.
Great.
At this point, I was at a total loss for how to proceed. Basically all of my Pokémon could KO Muk, but I’d have a 25% to miss, and take hefty damage in the process. Ultimately, I decided to use Daisy Jr because her Ice type attacks would prove useful against Koga’s final Pokémon, Crobat, who’d be sent out provided we could actually hit his Muk. That’d save me from having to swap my Pokémon around, so there was a chance that I could hit Crobat before it used Double Team.
As luck would have it, we were able to score that KO against Muk on the following turn thanks to a Surf from DJ. That just left the incredibly speedy Crobat who I was hoping DJ could outspeed with Badge Boost.
Unfortunately, Crobat cleanly outran everything on my team, which meant Koga was, once again, able to set up an evasion boost. As such, we’d have no amount of certainty while fighting his fifth, and final Pokémon.
Now, there’s something I haven’t answered yet, which players of more modern Pokémon games might’ve picked up on. Why didn’t Koga heal his Muk? In a modern game, he absolutely would have given how low on HP it was after Vanessa’s Earthquake. However, in the older games, the Elite Four (and gym leaders) only use healing items on their strongest Pokémon. Ergo, Koga was saving everything for Crobat.
Unfortunately, that puts us in a fairly awful position. You see, I’m fairly certain that Aurora Beam will not KO Crobat, but it will put it in healing range. As such, Koga can just heal his Crobat back to full, and we’ll still have to gamble with our 1 in 4 odds of missing an attack. And that’s assuming he doesn’t continue spamming Double Team to further reduce our odds of actually hitting his final Pokémon.
As such, I decided to bet the whole house on red, and attempted to use Blizzard. I figured that it’d get the clean OHKO provided it hit, but it was obviously going to be a huge gamble since Blizzard has really shaky accuracy in the first place, and Crobat’s evasion boosts would only make that worse.
Sadly, the gamble didn’t pay off, and DJ went down without ever landing a hit.
OK.
Next, I sent in Mabel. I figured she could set Safeguard to prevent Toxic from dismantling my team, but Crobat’s Wing Attack proved much more powerful than I anticipated. As such, she went down without having a chance to fight back.
OK.
I guess…we’ll try Pinellopi? Maybe she can OHKO this foul creature with an Explosion?
You have to be fucking kidding me.
Alright. Well, we have Trevor who’ll do about as well as Mabel did against Crobat’s Wing Attack, and Winston. I guess we’re sending in Winston.
As if to taunt me, Koga uses yet another Double Team, which further increases Crobat’s odds of dodging an attack. We now have a 1 in 3 chance of missing everything. Huzzah!
However, in what can only be described as an act of divine punishment, Winston rips a Critical Hit Return, which turns Crobat into a carpet stain. Once again, Winston has proven himself as the MVP of our E-tier challenge by securing us our second win within the Pokémon League.
Holy smokes. We just about lost that battle thanks to the abysmal luck we had. It’s no wonder that fan formats of competitive Pokémon completely ban the use of evasion boosting moves. That fight really wasn’t a test of skill – it was just a bunch of back-to-back gambling.
Regardless, with Koga’s team of troll Pokémon taken care of, we could move onto Bruno. He’s a Fighting type specialist like the 6th gym leader Chuck. Though, I’d argue that Bruno’s team is less threatening because he doesn’t leverage any scary status moves like Hypnosis. Instead, he relies entirely on brute force, which is far more predictable to play around.
Case in point, we lead Vanessa into his Hitmontop to bait it into using the Super Effective Dig. If he does this however, he’ll be playing right into our hand. Earthquake deals additional damage to Pokémon that are underground, so we’ll all but ensure that we score a clean OHKO if Bruno uses his most straightforward attacking option.
Though, Vanessa ends up going first, which puts a bit of a wrinkle in our plan. However, we move first on the following turn, so we’re still able to score the KO without taking any damage ourselves.
This prompts Bruno to send in his Onix, which also knows Earthquake. I anticipate that’s what he’ll be using, and send in Daisy Jr who takes the attack with ease before easily offing the Onix with a Surf.
Next up is Hitmonchan, but I decide to leave DJ in because I don’t actually think Hitmonchan can do any real damage to her. Yes, it knows Thunder Punch, but Hitmonchan’s Special Attack is abysmal, so I’m anticipating that DJ won’t really sustain much damage from an Electric attack. Thankfully, I’m correct and she’s able to drown Hitmonchan in 2 Surfs while eating a fairly soft Thunder Punch in return.
This prompts Bruno’s fourth Pokémon, Hitmonlee, which I don’t have a great counter for. So, I decide to leave DJ in to soften up the opposing Pokémon with a Surf, thus ensuring it’ll be KO’d on the following turn.
However, DJ refuses to go down quietly, and tanks a Hi-Jump Kick from Hitmonlee surviving on a sliver of HP. This gives her the opportunity to attack with, yet another, Surf which is just shy of getting the KO. How unfortunate. It would’ve been so cool if she scored 3 back-to-back KOs, but, alas, it was not to be and she goes down to the following attack.
This does however give Mabel a free layup, which prompts Bruno to send out his final Pokémon: Machamp. This guy is a bit of a monster who knows the powerful combination of Rock Slide, and Cross Chop. Unfortunately, Mabel has no shot of winning here, but I leave her in to score a little chip damage with Thunder Punch before she drops to Rock Slide. Then, I send in Trevor to do what he does best: put opposing Pokémon to sleep. That’s exactly what happens on the following turn, and then I’m able to defeat Bruno’s Machamp while it takes a nap.
Well, that battle was a lot more straightforward than the previous one.
Also, for those keeping track at home, Trevor is the only member of the team who hasn’t been KO’d yet in the League.
Anyway, onto fight number 4: Karen. She’s kind of a Dark type specialist despite half of her team not actually being Dark type Pokémon. Though, thematically everyone here is a Dark type, so I guess it works.
Regardless, her team is similar to Koga’s in terms of how it’s designed. That is, she’s a lot less interested in actually winning, and has a team built to annoy the player. However, there’s no evasion boosting here, so we should have a much smoother time than we had against Koga.
To that end, I start with an identical lead to what I used against Koga: Trevor. With that, we’re able to put Karen’s lead Umbreon to sleep before it can do anything. I follow this up with Pinellopi who goes boom, taking down Umbreon in a single strike before it can awaken and begin wreaking havoc with a combination of confusion, and the accuracy dropping Sand Attack.
Unfortunately, Explosion forces us to send our next Pokémon into battle before our opponent, so Karen is able to respond by countering whoever we choose. I decide to use this to our advantage however, and send in Mabel to lure out Karen’s powerful Houndoom. In no uncertain terms, this thing is the only remotely threatening Pokémon on Karen’s team, so if we’re able to KO it early then we’ve basically won the battle.
I decide to use Mabel as a bit of a sacrifice here, and set Light Screen on the following turn. My thought process was that Light Screen would reduce the incoming damage from all of Houndoom’s Dark, and Fire type attacks, which would help either Vanessa, or DJ to KO it after Mabel goes down. Though, to my surprise, it also helped Mabel to withstand a Flamethrower. Huh. Who would’ve thought that Ledian would turn out to be the premier Special wall of Generation 2.
That being the case, I swap to DJ on the following turn who is able to take a relatively soft hit from a resisted Flamethrower. Though, I am glad for that Light Screen because DJ’s Special Defence is abysmal, so she wouldn’t have been able to take that hit anywhere near as well without the helping hand.
The following turns go much the way you’d expect: DJ drowns Houndoom. Though it took more than a single Surf, which I was a little surprised by. Evidently, DJ isn’t quite as cracked as she originally appeared while churning through Rocket Grunts in Goldenrod.
Regardless, with Houndoom bested, the rest of Karen’s team falls with fairly little resistance. Mabel defeats Vileplume, and Vanessa defeats both Gengar, and Murkrow. If it feels like I’m rushing over this bit, it’s entirely because nothing interesting happened. Both of my Pokémon simply used attacking options, and Karen’s paper-thin offense, and defense swiftly folded.
Honestly, I’m still really confused as to why Karen was given top billing in the Elite Four. She’s such a downgrade from Lance in the Generation 1 games, and her fight always felt a lot easier than the 3 fights that precede her.
Either way, that just leaves the champion: Lance. We already got a bit of a preview for how this fight would go while fighting Clair. That said, will the extra preparations that we made ahead of the League prove to be enough?
To that end, I debated quite a bit about how I should start the fight. On one hand, Mabel naturally answers Gyarados with Thunder Punch, but I was afraid that this would invite a Hyper Beam. I’m fairly certain she could take 1 Hyper Beam, but that’d leave her too weak to help out with Lance’s entourage of Dragonites. As such, I was a little apprehensive about overusing her too early in the fight.
That in mind, I decide to rely on a strategy that I’ve used several times across this playthrough: sleep into Rollout.
As I have done several times before, I led Trevor who immediately attempted to put Lance’s Gyarados to sleep. Unfortunately, he eats a huge Hyper Beam for his trouble, but hangs on and retaliates by putting our foe to sleep. This lets me send in Winston for free on the following turn, so I can use the Defence Curl + Rollout combo that we’ve leveraged several times throughout this playthrough to great success.
What follows, can only be described as an absolute massacre. Winston proceeds to demolish 4 members of Lance’s team with Rollout. Gyarados, 2 Dragonites, and Aerodactyl all drop to Winston’s wrath. Unfortunately, this brings Rollout to its conclusion just as Lance’s Charizard hits the field, but I think the damage has been done already. We are so far ahead thanks to Winston that I’m not entirely certain we can even lose the fight anymore.
However, Winston isn’t especially fast, so he’s been eating hits before he was able to score those sweet Rollout KOs. As such, Charizard is finally able to end Winston’s reign of terror, which gives us a free switch into DJ. She’s not quite able to OHKO Charizard, so she takes a bit of damage before Lance is forced to use his final Pokémon: Dragonite. However, we’re in a 5 versus 1 situation, thanks to Winston, so I’m fairly confident that we can win.
Regardless, I have a decision to make: do I use Aurora Beam, or Blizzard. My gut says that Aurora Beam won’t do enough damage because it didn’t during the Clair fight. However, if Blizzard misses – like it did against Crobat – then we might lose tempo, and throw the fight. As such, I decide to go with the lower damage, but more reliable option: Aurora Beam.
As predicted in Part 7, Daisy Jr acts first despite the level difference, and…
Darn.
I’m a little bummed that the attack we went to so much effort to obtain didn’t actually prove as useful as I’d hoped, but we have been handed a golden opportunity here. Dragonite is absolutely within range of a KO by Mabel’s Ice Punch, and she will always move first. Plus, Lance elected to KO DJ with Outrage, which functions similarly to Rollout. That is, he’s forced to keep attacking on subsequent turns, which means Lance can’t actually heal his final Dragonite. In essence, Lance has inadvertently put himself into a checkmate scenario.
Thus, with 1 more Ice Punch from Mabel, we’re able to down Lance’s final Pokémon winning us the challenge run.
…What a wild ride.
I’m not very surprised that we managed to win, but I am surprised with how easy it ended up being. I think the only real hiccups throughout the entire playthrough were during the early game when our options were really limited. Once the ball started rolling, our team quickly came into its own, and we’ve been largely uncontested outside of a few troublesome fights like Koga.
Though, this playthrough wouldn’t be complete without a report card, so it’s time to look back on the highs and lows of every team member. In addition, I’d like to answer the question of if they truly belonged on the team during this playthrough. That in mind…
Mabel (Ledian)
Grade: B
Obviously, we have the most data on Mabel because she was effectively our starter Pokémon.
That said, she started off fairly poor. Her only offensive option was Tackle, which uses her lower attacking stat, she doesn’t get the same-type bonus on anything she learns, and she evolves later than most other Bug type Pokémon. That was already really bad, but it felt worse because she had to carry Winston to level 9 before he learned an attack that could do damage, which only served to magnify her various flaws.
That said, as soon as we hit Goldenrod City, everything changed for the better. Thunder Punch, and Ice Punch have been a part of Mabel since we first reached that milestone in our journey, and she has been a relatively consistent member of the team from that point forward. There are a lot of trainers in this game that do not like dealing with the combination of Ice, and Electric so Mabel has been doing a ton of work against random trainers basically the entire journey.
I think it’s also worth highlighting that she was a tour de force throughout the Pokémon League. Our team had no real way to deal with Psychic type Pokémon, and Daisy Jr wasn’t quite the solution to dragon types that I was hoping she would be. As such, Mabel, and her absurd Special Defence proved highly useful.
Plus, Safeguard also did quite a bit of work mitigating all of those terrible status moves that would’ve completely ruined us across the League.
All said, I was really happy with Mabel across the run. As I said, she had kind of a weak start, but she really came into her own once we obtained the elemental punches.
However, there’s no denying that she absolutely deserves her spot here. There are so many better Pokémon for using the elemental punches, and most of them wouldn’t be a pain to raise for the first 25% of the playthrough. Though, I do think Ledian’s unique access to utility moves like Safeguard, and Light Screen provide her with a valid niche for standard playthroughs, so she’s not totally misbegotten in the same way that some of our other team members were.
Winston (Wigglytuff)
Grade: A+
There is no world where Wigglytuff belongs on this team. I’m not even sorry for saying it. This Pokémon is way too good to be here.
Yes, the first several levels are a pain because Jigglypuff doesn’t learn Pound until level 9. However, after that point, Winston was the strongest thing on the team by virtue of performing exactly as well as any other Pokémon would. Turns out same-type Normal moves are really strong in older games where Pokémon generally have less move variety, and Wigglytuff’s tremendously deep learnset leaves it spoiled for choice as far as coverage is concerned.
Furthermore, it learns the combo of Defence Curl and Rollout via level-up. That’s insane. Most Pokémon need TMs for 1, or both of those attacks, yet Jigglypuff learns the full compliment by the time you’re ready to fight the third gym. And it bears mentioning that Rollout is a very strong attack in this game. The power-creep that defines modern Pokémon hasn’t set in yet, so Rollout is amongst the strongest attacking options that you can plop onto a Pokémon regardless of how inconsistent it can be.
And if all of that wasn’t enough, Winston was the linchpin for Gyms 1, 2, 3, 5 (Pryce), and 7 (Jasmine). On top of that, he contributed throughout the League, and demolished 4 of Lance’s 6 Pokémon. In all honesty, that final fight against Lance was criminally easy thanks to Winston absolutely dunking on the majority of Lance’s team with Rollout.
All said, Wigglytuff is too good to be here. Yes, it’s a little rough at first, but it’s as strong as most of your other “good” options in a normal playthrough. It’d be better if its stats were a little higher, but the Badge Boost in these older games does a lot to patch up Wigglytuff’s somewhat mediocre stats in a very meaningful way.
Trevor (Weepinbell)
Grade: B+
Yes, I’m giving Trevor a slightly higher score than Mabel.
Generally speaking, I get the logic behind including not fully evolved Pokémon on the original tier list. They’re at a substantial disadvantage when compared against many of your other options, so why bother using Weepinbell when Bellossom, Meganium, or Jumpluff are right there?
That said, Trevor was great throughout the entire playthrough. He was the only member of the team in the early game who was functional from the moment I caught him. Bellsprout has wicked powerful Vine Whips, and that helped a lot with besting the Ground and Rock types that my team otherwise had no solution for.
After that, Sleep Powder proved to be the most valuable asset that Trevor could bring to a fight. We got a fairly good demonstration of that across the League, but even fights like Chuck did a great job of highlighting just how powerful sleep is when it’s working for you.
Also, despite the hate that Grass Pokémon usually get, I found Trevor very useful throughout this playthrough. There were definitely sections of the game where he wasn’t able to contribute much, but there were others where he was over-contributing. For example, all of the sea routes saw Trevor and Mabel going back, and forth while the rest of the team sat and warmed the bench. And this proved to be enough experience to where I didn’t really need to use either across the Rocket Hideout.
But, again, the sheer utility of Sleep Powder was far and away the most useful aspect of Trevor across our challenge run.
As for if he belongs here: probably? He’s a little on the weaker side owing to the reduced stats from not being able to evolve, but I question if Weepinbell is really that much worse than the aforementioned Grass Pokémon like Meganium. Maybe it’s safest to say I’m undecided about Trevor’s placement on the original list.
Vanessa (Arbok)
Grade: C+
Hoy boy.
Okay, so Vanessa, like Mabel, really came into her own when we got access to some half-decent TMs at Goldenrod.
However, holy shit what a useless Pokémon.
Vanessa had some of the most awkward stats to work with. The rest of the team had specializations when it came to where their stats were allocated. For example, Winston has an extremely high HP stat, and Mabel was both fast and tanky on the Special Defence side of things. By comparison, Vanessa’s stats were very middle of the road, so she lacked a niche. This, in combination with her inability to consistently score KOs meant that I was almost never excited to use her, nor was I particularly impressed when I did.
In fact, outside of the fight against Morty, I can’t think of another time where Vanessa really came in clutch to save the day. I could be misremembering, but I feel like she was always simply along for the ride since someone else was usually better suited for battle than she was. And it isn’t like using Dig is an especially unique attribute since there were other Pokémon on my team (Mabel), and other Pokémon I could’ve caught (Rhyhorn, Shuckle, Dunsparce, Paras) who could’ve leveraged it just as well.
Honestly, I think the biggest problem for Vanessa throughout my playthrough was that Trevor overlapped with her too heavily. He had access to a wider variety of disruption moves, his Poison typing was just as useful on defense, and his Grass secondary type gave him far more targets to attack in battle than what Vanessa could hope for. I even considered giving him Sludge Bomb, but I figured that’d make Vanessa entirely obsolete, which I think really drives home just how much overlap existed between the 2 Pokémon.
That said, there is no question in my mind that Arbok belongs on this team. It’s such a middling Pokémon in every sense of the word, and, even with proper support, it still struggles to meaningfully contribute in battle. It’s decidedly “fine”, but there are so many other options for Pokémon that can perform better than it that you’d be better off using.
Pinellopi (Forretress)
Grade: D
What a useless bag of bones.
Where the hell do I even start?
Even with TMs from Goldenrod, Pinellopi was a huge pain in the butt to train. The rest of our team really found their footing once we got them some decent attacks, but there was no saving Pinellopi. Not even Rollout could salvage her, which is saying something since it is an otherwise phenomenal attack for a very large number of Pokémon throughout the Gen 2 games.
What’s worse is that Pinellopi’s evolution level is SO far behind every other Pokémon we were using. This meant that she was stuck in her first stage well beyond the point where the rest of our team had evolved, which put her even farther behind everyone in terms of overall power level. This was especially bad because most of our opponents were also using evolved Pokémon, so Pinellopi, who was already struggling, had an even harder time.
Though, I hadn’t truly given up until I threw EXP Share on her for the remainder of the game. I genuinely don’t think Pinellopi contributed directly in more than 20 trainer battles across the entire game, which is…pathetic. Honestly, I would’ve been better off using just about anything else.
And her one saving grace – going boom – wasn’t even that good. Every other Pokémon with boom has a higher Attack stat sans Voltorb, but Voltorb is fast enough to always move first. And that’s without mentioning how the likes of Weezing, and Graveler can both learn a variety of OK attacks that are generally helpful in addition to Selfdestruct. Meanwhile, Pinellopi couldn’t learn much of anything besides the same suite of Normal attacks that every other Pokémon can learn.
There is no doubt in my mind: Forretress is a truly cursed Pokémon to use in a Gen 2 playthrough. It does almost nothing well, and everything that it can do is done better by another Pokémon. If you want a Steel type for defensive utility then Magnemite has you covered. If you want a sturdy Pokémon that can use Rollout then you have an absolute treasure trove of other options including Miltank, Wigglytuff, Shuckle, Azumarill, Donphan, Golem, or Rhydon. And as we’ve already mentioned, it is the worst option for Selfdestruct because it brings literally nothing else to the table.
As such, I can confidently say that Forretress is an absolute bottom of the barrel pick, and it, without a shadow of doubt, belonged on our team.
Daisy Jr (Seadra)
Grade: A-
I’m a little conflicted about where exactly to put DJ on the overall grading scale. That’s partly because I had her on the team for the least amount of time. Everyone else was caught before the third gym, but I didn’t get DJ up and running (really) until after Jasmine.
That said, Water Pokémon are broken as heck in these older games. Every other type, aside from Normal, has to scrounge for half decent attacking moves. Meanwhile, you casually get Surf before Morty, which gives every Water Pokémon a 135 power attack after the same-type bonus is applied. Obviously that’s going to be busted irrespective of which Water Pokémon is using it.
In addition, DJ had some really impressive physical bulk that let her tank quite a few hits. I know it comes as a trade-off for her dismal Special Defence, but I was always surprised at how well she could tank various attacks even when she was still a Horsea.
Though, there’s no escaping the disappointment that was her performance across both Clair, and Lance. I was really hoping Aurora Beam would go the distance. Unfortunately, it was not to be. It’s just a little too weak unless an Ice type Pokémon like Dewgong is using it.
Even still, DJ was a nuke on the same level as Winston from the word go, so I can’t rightfully place her any lower than A tier. Though I am making it an A- because of how “well” she did in the fights where I needed her most.
And, as you might expect, I don’t think Seadra belongs here. Yes, it’s not fully evolved, but it sure acts like it is. Kingdra is an obvious improvement, but Seadra still hits plenty above its weight, and functions just as well as the majority of the fully evolved Water type options that players have access to throughout Johto.
Okay – with that, I am done. This was basically a double feature, and my fingees is tired from typing.
Thank you if you made it this far, or if you read any part of this journey. It was fun enough to do, but I’m not entirely certain I want to do another journal style playthrough like this ever again. It was a lot of work to keep on top of, and it wasn’t as fun in the end as it was in the beginning.
Either way, thank you for accompanying me across this journey.
And I guess…let me know in the comments who your favourite team member was. Do you feel like I did anyone dirty with how I played? Let me know. I’d love to hear about it.
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