Why Gen 1's AWFUL Learnsets are ACTUALLY FANTASTIC!

[@MythrilZenith]

So I apparently forgot to put it in the script entirely and only remembered it now, but I wanted to mention Gengar. Not only was it a trade evolution, but it had very few viable moves in its own learnset. But, it was one of the best users of some TM moves in the game because of its stats and typing. It's the counterpoint of Pokemon with bad stats but good unique moves - a Pokemon with good stats but is wholly reliant on TMs to be effective. Honorable mention to Mew as well for having a moveset consisting of literally every single TM but very few moves learned by level.

[@TheHistorySoldier]

Was leaving out Razor Leaf intentional?

[@MythrilZenith]

@@TheHistorySoldier No I just mentally mixed up razor leaf with vine whip and thought it was a 35/85 move and not 55/95.

[@arlynbooker]

So, a small fun fact: Poison being weak against Bug is a reference to Kamen Rider (a tokusatsu series featuring bug themed heroes). Before Dark was a thing Poison was kind of the 'evil' type; but once Gen 2 rolled around and we got Dark it inherited Poison's old Bug weakness and Poison became resistant to bug (though weirdly bug also lost its weakness to poison.)

[@redmagic2113]

"Nice argument Senator, why don't you back that up with a source?"

[@Naul6892]

@@redmagic2113 Pretty sure that's been proven to be the reason why Dark is weak to Bug, but no official source relates that to the poison type.

[@redmagic2113]

@@Naul6892 I don't think that explains too much, it's supposing things, but I don't see why the sources can't be provided so we actually know if this is true or not? Must not be that complicated, right? 'Cause Poison = Evil type does not seem to actually work out that well. Specially when most of the Pokemon of the first generation were poison types, and some just don't fit in.

[@redmagic2113]

@@Naul6892 Don't get me wrong, there ARE some Pokemon that are actual references, Like Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee, but claiming a WHOLE TYPE around a reference seems a bit off...

[@Naul6892]

@@redmagic2113 If you ask me, i'd say that the reason why Bug is strong against Poison has more to do with the fact that Game Freak made the most common Grass types part poison and gave them that weakness so Bug wouldn't seem too weak (something they didn't thought through in FRLG) rather than due to some analogy or reference to Kamen Rider.

[@compsognathus3106]

A note on grass moves. The way critcal hits works with Crit+ moves means that Razor Leaf is easily the best grass attack in the game as it in effect has 110 power before STAB. Anything that can learn it is going to want to use it over anything else.

[@adventureoflinkmk2]

Yes, but in gen1 crits bypass all stat (de)buffs, which means if you rely on growth or amnesia for example or otherwise doing badge boost glitch you're wasting turns

[@assortmentofpillsbutneverb3756]

​@adventureoflinkmk2 yep which is another balanceable hook. Best leaf users would be mons with high base stats. Gives the ability to really pick and choose which grass need better stat boosters vs which can just use leaf. Tbh there is a real path towards an improved gen 1 meta being an interesting experience. Maybe I'll make that my hobby project

[@MythrilZenith]

You know, somehow I missed that Razor Leaf is base 55 power in gen 1. My brain kept confusing it with Vine Whip's 35 power and I never actually bothered to check against it. Makes my whole Mega Drain argument somewhat of a moot point. Though Petal Dance is still good at 70! Crit in gen 1 is weird and of mixed usefulness, I'll need to take a more specific look at the math involved before giving a solid comment as far as that goes.

[@adventureoflinkmk2]

@@MythrilZenith It's based off your speed stat for a start So basically things like electrode and jolteon and aerodactyl will crit the most often and slowpoke/slowbro will crit the least

[@ZenKrio]

​@@assortmentofpillsbutneverb3756there is a version um, mrsmithplay I think, made that rebalanced all pokemon, he's done this for gens 1 2 and 3 so far.

[@free6lackpanther682]

I absolutely love how one-time TMs and awful movesets impact the single player. You really form a bond with your Pokemon and forces you to come up with creative strategies. Every step of progress feels meaningful and personal

[@marcoasturias8520]

Another funny thing about gen 1 movesets is that, there are so many mons that simply don't have moves for the first dozens of levels, because they were made to NOT exist before one endgame area. This makes hacked solo runs extremely silly!

[@antant9523]

black white did something similar, but with the evolution levels. when the pokemon appear in future games, it actually make them silly, being unevolved for a long period of time. gen 1's evolution level is also partly based on their caught location too

[@BrainInAVat7]

This is basically why baby Pokémon were introduced in gen 2

[@doomsdayrabbit4398]

Yep. We forget easily that a franchise that's had more than twenty releases over almost 30 years started out life as a *single game* developed over the course of five years with barely any hope that it would be successful itself, let alone would have any sequels.

[@OrpheusMC]

Maybe it’s my personal brainrot, but when you were describing the intentional design behind certain weak movesets and tradeoffs being left behind for most Pokemon having competitively viable movesets in the newer games, I flashbacked to FE and how that series has also left intentionally combat weak units in the past with newer games making all units potentially combat viable.

[@MythrilZenith]

@@OrpheusMC the FE brainrot hits hard and often

[@islayprettylies9485]

Yes! I think the ubiquity of high power, high accuracy moves of multiple types for coverage on every single mon is one of the more rarely mentioned forms of power creep. Being a shallow one-trick pony can really offset a Pokemon being above average in various other departments.

[@Applemangh]

Sometimes you can see a sensible design philosophy in Gen 1 designed around the single player experience, which is something I really appreciate and think we need more of. But you can also see a lot of issues with Gen 1. Maybe you could argue that even those were intentional, like critical hits ignoring buffs and debuffs was meant to balance out the fact that faster Pokemon had a higher critical hit rate, or Butterfree's superiority to Beedrill to encourage trading or something. But I doubt it.

[@redwings13400]

This is interesting because it makes the case that competitive pokemon could have become a very different metagame if in game trading weren't a thing. Without trading, you couldn't build a perfect team where everyone has every tm move. You would be even more restricted if you could only get one tm for hyper beam in the entire game. Pokemon that learn it naturally, like dragonite and gyarados, might be a lot more valuable as a result. You couldn't just assign everyone a thunderbolt tm, you'd need to choose whether you want your zapdos and jolteon to learn the consistent electric type move, or if you want to give it to your tauros for coverage. Tauros could be a monster, but getting that autoinclude would involve spending your one time hyper beam and body slam tms on it, otherwise it's a bland normal type with take down and stomp. Someone should make a 'limited tms and no trading' gen 1 metagame, or even that type of metagame for any other generation. Honestly it would be pretty interesting. Adding in trading, while mostly very good, took away interesting decision making from competitive pokemon.

[@MythrilZenith]

@@redwings13400 Hyper Beam specifically you can obtain multiple copies without glitches bc it's a coin prize TM, but I totally agree that a theoretical "one game, no trading, no glitches" metagame would be incredibly unique. Brings back memories of just battling your friends as you all played the game, or other low power level jank formats like kitchen table magic.

[@Nisi1]

I'd love to play a metagame like that. You saw a bit of it in really old Japanese tournaments before people started buying an extra game boy and cartridge so they could trade themselves and optimize everything Stuff like Strength being a "good enough" replacement for Body Slam because it's reusable, limited PP Ups, not being able to throw Ice Beam or Blizzard on half your team, etc

[@Laezar1]

@@Nisi1 limited PP up in particular is cool because some moves can function pretty differently at lower PP, like, a pokemon boosting their healing moves or not will affect their ability to stall quite a bit, some status moves have PP on the low side so the lower accuracy might lead to them running out, and of course the 5PP moves are a lot less appealing, 8PP blizzard is extremely likely to get a freeze before it runs out, but 5PP will.

[@spitfiremanlizerd]

I haven't watched the video yet, but it's something I've been thinking about. Gen 1 feels like an RPG first and a "pokemon" game second. When every pokemon gets good Stab moves, and gets them early, it kind of makes them all function the same casually /in single player. In gen 1, Fearow learning Drill peck was actually a pretty big deal, you might even keep spearow from evolving to learn it even earlier. Gen 1 you kind of feel like you are using the tools you have to beat the game like any other RPG, going forward most of the time you are limiting yourself in purpose. Gen II on it's easier to just use the starter the whole game if you want, for gen I you probably aren't doing that until you at least get surf or something.

[@Coolguy.399]

This is exactly why i love gen 1, it encourages improvising, hard work and trial and error. I'm not saying it's better than most newer games like those in gen 6 or 7, but it has a unique charm!

[@tailoredmuffin3668]

One thing I wanted to mention is that the best grass DPS move Bulbasaur gets is razor leaf, a move that only it and the Bellsprout line have access to. They both hit the speed thresholds to get a 100% crit rate (with Gen 1's crit mechanics) with it making it an effective 165 BP move after stab that's great for all the water types in the late game. However the fact it is not a TM moves mean that these two are your main pokemon if you want nice, reliable late game grass damage with no drawbacks unlike moves like Solar Beam or Petal Dance.

[@iBenjamin1000]

ah, I was wondering why he wasn't talking about razor leaf.

[@MajinMattPlays]

Awesome to see you cover *another* of my specific interest brainrot topics. So, as is tradition at this point, lets get into my overly long comment. Gen 1's movesets are interesting and unique due to the fact Gen 1's entire design philosophy was interesting and unique. While from Gen 2 onwards the games took from the Anime and Yellow version, seeing Pokemon as friends and allies that you're intended to train lovingly and raise for an entire playthrough, Gen 1 is different, seeing Pokemon more as RPG Party Members with defined specialties and abilities. I think to best showcase this, we need to look at 3 things: Movesets/TMs, Pokemon Availability/Evolution Levels, and the treatment of certain types both in the matchup and move department. I actually want to cover that last point first: How types are treated, and how moves within them are designed. I think a great way to approach this is from a sort of RPG sense, Normal type moves are your Basic/Physical attacks, they hit most things neutrally and are often times reliable, but they also have a lot of variety while not benefiting most pokemon with STAB. Then, from there, we can look at the Rock type, a type that has severe weaknesses since every Rock Type in the game is also a Ground type resulting in 4x weaknesses to Water and Grass. So, they function similar to early game, tanky enemies, or to use FE Terms, they're Armor Knights. Their low Special and easy to exploit 4x weaknesses makes them a learning tool at Brock, and also a counter to the otherwise spammable and reliable Normal Type moves being thrown around. To look at how moves are treated among the types, I want to look at a few in particular, Fighting, Ghost, Rock, and Dragon. All of these types are often talked about as being shafted, and while I 100% agree with that sentiment, I don't think them lacking powerful move options is the problem, but that's a discussion for another day. Fighting types are unique amongst these types, being more of an archetype than other types are, Fighting types benefit from an important counter to both Normal and Rock types, but suffer from bad move choices. However, they boast incredible attack stats and access to strong physical moves such as Body Slam. This makes Fighting Types fill more of a Barbarian, Berserker, or similarly squishy heavy hitter from an RPG. Now, to talk about the other 3, Ghost, Rock, and Dragons share one core trait. They're all types that are defined in Gen 1 by their defensive utility rather than their offensive traits. Rock and Ghost both serve as counters to Normal type, Rock being resistant and benefiting from other decent type matchups, while Ghost only benefits from an incredible defensive matchup into Normal and Fighting, but the type itself doesn't benefit the Pokemon much at all beyond that. Ghost has bad moves because the goal of the type isn't to be offensive, they're supposed to be a total counter to Normal and Fighting spam that a player who grabbed a Machop in Rock Tunnel may think to be an easy win against anything. Rock however, as it is less of a hard counter, gets to benefit from offensive prowess as well, though keeping in theme of it being defensively oriented, its only two moves are unreliable and don't hit especially hard, but benefit from 4x effectiveness against some pretty scary potential opponents such as Charizard. Lastly, Dragon type, the beloved and incredibly powerful type that no one seems to grasp the purpose of in Gen 1. If you are going into Gen 1 blind, without guides or the internet, you will almost certainly not be aware the Dragon type exists at all until you're face to face with Lance, who you are supposed to believe is the Final Boss of the game, and more specifically his Dragonite is the final boss. Pulling up Dragonite's weaknesses, something very apparent showcases itself. Resisting Fire, Water, and Grass, while taking neutral damage from damn near everything, and having only 2 weaknesses in function that are rare types that the player is fairly unlikely to have pokemon to utilize those moves much less know to use those moves. Dragon Type was designed to be a singular end to the reliability of the Starters and their incredible type core. Dragon type is functionally the Final Boss type of Gen 1 by design. This ended up being way longer than anticipated, so I'm gonna cut this short. I hope to see you talk more about Pokemon, and especially Gen 1's wacky designs!

[@milopolley4911]

This is all a super cool read, I never thought about that function of Dragon type before, but it makes so much sense now. It always bothered me they didn't have moves in gen 1 before that. One note - there is a Rock type that doesn't share Ground type in gen 1: Aerodactyl. As a kid I was stunned when Electric moves worked on it, because of the Rock/Ground conflation, lol

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

The TM that made it click for me is Water Gun. You find it just after facing Brock, and just before facing your very first Hiker. You know those Rock Types can be terrible, but they have terrible Special and most of them are Quad Weak to Water, making the low 40BP move actually 160BP against 90% of the one you'll face. Even your Raticate will one shot them way past mid-game. You get Bubble Beam as a direct upgrade from Misty, but Water Gun is good enough right now.

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

It's probably out of the scope of this video, but I love how EVs work in Gen 1. A Pokemon you have since the very beginning will naturally get stronger. Sure, Tauros is way better than Raticate. But you've been using it since the very beginning, so he'll probably be better by the time you catch a Tauros. So it won't be an issue if he learnt Thunderbolt and Bubble Beam. You won't feel like you're missing something. The change of EVs in Gen 3 shows the tension between competitive Pokemon and Pokemon as a game.

[@antant9523]

the water gun tm definitely help to get through mt moon better, especially if you do not start with bulbasaur and squirtle. there is no double kick on the nidos yet in red blue (that is changed in yellow). the water gun tm is very useful on the nidos and rattata, even jigglypuff which you just caught on route 3 and would not have any attacking move

[@doomsdayrabbit4398]

​@@shytendeakatamanoir9740Eh, honestly Gen III EVs are just a streamlining of the overcomplicated stat experience system of Gen I. If it were about competitive versus casual, they would have given the Gen I/II Pokémon new learnsets in RSE, but instead every last one of them retains - to the level - the same learnset as in GSC, with slight modifications for popular ones like Pikachu.

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

@doomsdayrabbit4398 It's really not complicated, and even if it was, it wouldn't matters anyway. The more monster you fights, the stronger you'll become. You don't need to understand the nitty gritty, it's really intuitive. If anything the new system is more complicated. It doesn't really matter in early Gens, granted, because you're the only one with EVs, so you're always stronger than the opponent anyway. And while their distribution is all over the place, having extra bulk doesn't matter that much.

[@RiversChungus]

@@doomsdayrabbit4398 I'm not sure why you'd say the earlier gen stat experiences are more complicated, when the system isn't ever described anyways. But at least in the early gens, you're not ever "wasting" those stats like you can if say, your gen 3 ralts is constantly beating up fighting types, wasting EV space in attack instead of something more useful. I dislike how modern EVs work in a single player game because of that, I think stat experience worked a lot better for that.

[@antant9523]

gen 1 is weird, but there are always valid reasons for the choices they make, especially when look at it from the jrpg design point of view. people also pointed out how movesets are based on where they are found, you start with 2 moves in general and gain more as you progress. so a late game pokemon will basically learn no moves until the late levels because they can only be found at those high levels. there is one issue however, with jynx and lickitung. being traded pokemon, they will be obtained at the same level as the traded pokemon. this is not an issue with farfetch'd or mr mime, because the traded pokemon can be caught at low level. jynx and lickitung, however, are given movesets like they are found at a low level. poliwhirl lowest level is 23, so the lowest level jynx u can get is 23. when you get jynx however, it would have 4 moves, instead of being like the rest where she start with two moves. lickitung is the worst however. you need to trade a slowbro. slowbro can be obtained at level 23 at the lowest. however, because lickitung's moveset is not based on obtained at level 23. it looks like a "obtained at level 5" moveset. this is an issue, because there is no way to get licktung with wrap in red blue (which is a very great move), because of the low learnset levels, it would already have 5 moves at level 23, so missing out on wrap. it is only in yellow they make slowbro being obtainable at level 15 which can then be traded to red blue to be traded to get lickitung with wrap.

[@brennantmi5063]

I really like the way moves are handled in gen 1, garbage level ups, cracked TMs. You get thunderbolt for Surge for crying out. Once you reach Celadon it really opens up. The Department Store and game comer are both loaded with moves much better than things you get on level up and the goat Thirsty Girl gives you Ice Beam, Rock Slide and Tri Attack basically for free. Not to mention Psychic and Body Slam, arguably the two best moves are just given to you for free during the game. I think a weakness of the system is decision paralysis and fear of missing out heavily dissuade people from using TMs I think your point at the end about movesets really hits the nail on the head. When you become champion you don't become champion with some random easily replicable pokemon anyone could get, you have a team of one of a kind specialists that potentially are the only pokemon in the region with their movesets. Pokemon obtained from scouring every corner of the world equipped with man made moves acquired from leaving no stone un-turned. In RBY pokeballs are a relatively new invention, and the things players can do with them are extraordinary not just from our outside perspective playing the game, but also from the perspective of the people you meet in game. There is a certain magic to it that I'm not sure any of the other games have managed to capture.

[@heatth1474]

Even as a kid, I hated single use TMs. The end result is that I either never used a TM for fear of going into a pokemon I replace or, if I did use a TM, that I was very relutant to change that pokemon ever again in the future. Neither situation I felt lead to an interesting gameplay experience. So, like, I don't think this kind of old design is bad 'now' for the modern gamer, I don't think it was ever good, even if you are talking about a single playthrough experience without guides. That said, I do agree with you on the learnset point. I wish TMs were flexible in the old games because I wish I could experiment more, which I do remember was a fun experience whenever I learned a new move (just never through TMs, because it might be a waste). A too good too early learnset would be ultimately cause a similar problem just from a different angle: limiting the experimental potential.

[@doomsdayrabbit4398]

It feels like an interesting thing that develops from an adult mind that becomes horrifying to kids. You're ten years old playing this game, you've only had just over 3000 days of life. A 30 year old game dev who's spent half that kid's life working on the game can run through the game in a few hours, but the kid it's designed for is gonna take a month at least. A full 30 days - 1% of their life! And if you choose wrong? It's *permanent* - the same kind of permanent that adults in their 30's to 60's find creative ways to avoid on the regular, but for a kid, has the same threat as the oft threatened "permanent record".

[@pikminman13]

​@doomsdayrabbit4398 I still never use pp recovery items even though saving them is pointless. Though with overclock it isn't that big of a deal to run back to the pokemon center after every 3 battles

[@flintlocke1344]

I got into Pokemon during gens 3-4, a point where movesets were rapidly getting more streamlined and standardized, but well before the current era of infinite-use TMs and pretty much every Pokemon having level-appropriate attacks throughout their movesets. HMs are my go-to thing for past games having a rougher yet more textured experience, but move access is another inarguable contributor. I often feel like modern Pokemon is trying a bit too hard to be an engine for building and battling competitive teams. Some aspects of that shift I appreciate (in particular, S/V making items like Leftovers and Life Orbs buyable in regular shops is one of my favorite QoL changes in the entire franchise), but I think I’d like the new games more if my journey through them felt more like a journey and not a guided tour with the Battle Tower as its final destination. For me, and I’m sure for many others, catching and training Pokemon isn’t a meaningless grind - it’s where I find a ton of the fun in Pokemon and other monster collectors like Cassette Beasts and Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth.

[@doomsdayrabbit4398]

The Battle Tower isn't even fun. It's just the same experience you have throughout the rest of the game. The Battle Frontier is where the real fun is - all these interesting quirks thrown in to change battles from rote memorization of strategy into dynamically changing games of _actual_ on the fly strategy.

[@EnigmaticMrL]

Charizard could not learn fly until Pokémon Yellow, and Lickitung could not learn the move lick at all in Gen I. Ergo, your argument is invalid :P.

[@MythrilZenith]

@@EnigmaticMrL don't start with me lol You and I both know that realistic logic is secondary to good game design!

[@rjd1922]

​​@@MythrilZenithHow is Charizard and Dragonite being part Flying-type but not learning any Flying moves good game design?

[@seisveintiocho-x9e]

Yes!

[@krazmaster2581]

Maybe they thought Lickitung couldn’t learn Lick because it was a ghost type move and normal is the antithesis to ghost? Or that having a normal type being able to hit ghosts super effectively might’ve been too much? (Couldn’t think of a good excuse for charizard, was gonna mention its size but you can fly on pidgey just fine.)

[@Kali_Krause]

Toxic and Leech Seed have the same algorithm in gen 1. Both do 1/16th damage to target with Toxic damage first then Leech Seed. In essence, you can do 17/16ths worth of damage but the max you'll ever make it is 15/16th because by then, your opponent has already fainted!

[@bennconner1195]

Rock types in gen 1 are actually quite good because the majority of attacks are normal type. Moves like earthquake are rare because hardly any Pokémon learn it by level up and there is only one TM.

[@sapinballwizard]

Really great video! You did a good job of putting into context what I feel like a lot of commenators leave out - These games were made as JRPGs with a unique gimmick, not as the foundations of a franchise. On top of that, in 1996 barely anyone had the internet, and the guy writing the Prima guide wasnt doung in-depth strategic analysis of movesets. It's the same reason why Onyx is a lame pokemon but excellent first boss battle, as many have pointed out.

[@MythrilZenith]

Treating a game in isolation, as just what it is, is one of my favorite analytical moves. You learn so much by going into a game with it as the full world and origin, instead of teleologically trying to use it merely as an origin point to trace forward from.

[@christiancinnabars1402]

While in modern Pokemon, lacking coverage options and sometimes even STAB options hurts _a lot_ ([physical Electric type noises]), there is something about the older gens that I like when mons have mostly contained coverage moves and otherwise Normal type attacks. Nowadays, you have almost every physical mon being given Earthquake, Rock Slide/Stone Edge, two of the three Elemental Punches, and maybe Close Combat, and special attackers get Focus Blast, Flamethrower, Ice Beam, Thunderbolt, Flash Cannon, Shadow Ball, and Psychic/Psyshock. This creates a meta where most Pokemon have a lot of options (unless they're named Lilligant or Glaceon. Like, Alluring Voice? Sure, thanks...), but at times it does feel pretty monotonous and very cookie cutter. For offensive movesets, there's STAB and EdgeQuake or BoltBeam coverage, STAB + priority + status, or STAB + double status if you're feeling daring. If not, chances are you're RU or lower. Back then, because of both the more limited movepools and the physical/special split not being a thing yet, you had to settle with stuff like Fire Punch and Ice Punch Gengar, Spore + Focus Punch + Mach Punch + freaking Sky Uppercut Breloom, Hyper Beam and Blizzard Dragonite, mono-Thunderbolt Zapdos, and Megahorn + Double-Edge Rhydon. And as a result, you see a wider variety of moves throughout even high tier competitive play. In modern Pokemon, this is alleviated somewhat by a lot of Pokemon being given signature moves with somewhat unique mechanics. Though there is a bit of pushback on giving _all_ Pokemon signature moves, so instead only stronger Pokemon seem to be getting most of them...

[@mattdagnall8617]

Great analysis! I think people miss how different the game design of Gen 1 (and 2) are to later, modern games. It's gratifying to see someone putting themselves in a different mindset in order to understand games from a different time.

[@PK_Smokey]

Really nice video all the way through. I never actually realized how hard of a counter Beedril was to so many trainers.

[@costby1105]

IIRC Link battle were added very late in the game so the game was balanced mostly around single player. Gamefreak was probably influened more by Final Fantasy Legend/Makai Toushi SaGa than Dragon Quest for balancing decisions; Infact PP was very clearly influenced by The first two SaGas title on the Game Boy. SaGa 1 and 2 have Weapons and abilities, both have a number of uses similar before becoming unusable, but abilities work like move in Pokemon and are restored upon visiting an inn. In Saga weapons have limited uses so if you find a rare weapon with limited use you want to ration it for dire circumstances or boss fights. Weapons and Tome tend to be slightly stronger and have more uses than their ability counterparts in SaGa 1. For instance Flare does 8 times the user Mana/Magic stat in base damage with 20 uses while the ability only does 6*the user's Mana/Magic stat with 3 uses.

[@Devmon52]

I typically follow competitive Smogon singles formats for current generations. Looking back on Gen 1 is still a wild experience. I know I played through it as a kid. As evident with this video, the structure was very different and relied on that sense of exploration. I appreciate it for what it is, but I prefer the modern approach. At the very least, I am glad to hear more positives about Beedrill because it is such a fun Pokémon to use in the early game, and evidently into the mid-game. TMs are a great concept, but they definitely made me want to hoard them with gamer-item-hoarding mentality rather than expending them. Infinite use and craftable TMs have helped a lot of with that problem for me.

[@ussgordoncaptain]

2:30 it's important to note that at that time you get access to the all powerful mega punch right before. That TM kinda hard carrys people who find it. There's also a body slam TM which is really easy to find in the boat, and Body Slam is a top tier move in gen 1. 3:30 the best grass move is probably razor leaf due to its critical hit rate. Crit moves are really broken in gen 1. Gen 1 Venusaur almost always (255/256 because gen 1 is broken) crits. You are more likely to gen 1 miss with Razor leaf than you are to fail to crit with it. 8:05 , yeah I understand the issue, I wonder if you could have it be that the battle tower had every single TM available for sale or something to preserve that. Though it's still absurdly annoying to get a team in pokemon all the way. Watch the channel Im a blisy to see how silly building a "real team" actually is for somebody. (though i use arbitrary code execution for everything now so it's a *lot* easier)

[@delta_power3049]

Razor leaf doesn't Gen 1 miss, that only happens with 100% accurate moves. It misses as intended. And a gen 1 miss would happen just as often as Razor Leaf not criting

[@zachlyons2425]

The crit doesn't happen 1/256 times. Not talking about missing. ​@@delta_power3049

[@wraith4978]

i can atest to pokemon generation 1's whole moveset philosophy being great for balance since i noted that there were trainers who go off of the last 4 moves they can learn with each mon, so their move list was easy to predict and was likely a way to help keep the better moves towards the end of the game. but gens later, man they would just make mons with: -big stupid stab move -crippling overspecialization -direct stat/ability nerfs and/or removing/restricting moves -held items that accidentally worked too well in specific situations (gems anyone?) sometimes balanced by having the "worst mons" hard counter the "best mons" but still gen 1 had very well-rounded mons at times who weren't one-trick ponyata. (heck even mewtwo, the original gangsta for investing all stats into speed and special still was out overspecialized by deoxys who got out sped by regieleki.)

[@cat_ann_]

Every single trainer (barring Gym Leaders who have a single TM move) use the last moves they learn relative to the level of each of their pokemon. It wasn't programmed like that because it'd make their move list easy to predict, it was like that because it was literally the easiest way for them to program trainer battle movesets. It was something undone as soon as *Yellow* because, presumably, they had more time to actually add proper movesets instead of letting things like Lorelei's Slowbro's strongest move being Water Gun or Blue's Exeggutor having 3 moves happen. (also big stupid stab moves and crippling overspecialization are verymuch a thing in Gen 1. Hyper Beam exists, Blizzard had to be nerfed not only in later generations but also when the game was localized, and certain pokemon are good at literally one thing and nothing else. Electrode can't do anything but Be Fast)

[@wraith4978]

@@cat_ann_ guess i played too much gen 1 challenges back in the day to realize later generations suffer from the same problems as gen 1, heck sometimes i wonder if IF 80 and 120 base power moves for all types in gen 1 would shake up the game balance. also shout out to the gen 1 tms that were useless, i liked them there for flavor (and the soft-boiled tm, that one was made for chansey quite literally)

[@cat_ann_]

Every fire type having to deal with their best STAB move being Ember until either hitting level 40/50 or getting to Blaine certainly is FANTASTIC. I think you're ascribing a whole lot of intention that wasn't there with this video, the Gen 1 games famously had a very protracted and disorganized development cycle, *that* is the reason there's so much jank and weirdness in the final games- learnsets included. Early data suggests that there were originally 237 moves planned for Gen 1 at some point along development, and the moveset data we have from this time shows a lot of Pokemon were intended to learn a higher variety of moves than what they got in the final. The AMOUNT of moves they learned were roughly the same- some more, some less- but there was a greater variance in their learnsets at the time. I imagine the number was reduced for the exact same reason the amount of Pokemon themselves were, there just wasn't space for it, leading to hastily thrown-together movesets in the final that are very "safe." Also, I get the that the video is titled like that for clicks, but I don't think even *most* of the learnsets can be called anything but awful, and not in a way that's secretly brilliant. Last time I played Red I had an Aerodactyl in my team who I honestly found to be kinda unworkable because of how shallow it's movepool is, even with decent stats it could not contribute much beyond getting Toxics off. Not a single rock move to it's name and all the flying moves it learned were weak or unwieldy. That brings me to your Gengar point in a comment below- Gengar is almost certainly not designed to be "a Pokemon with good stats but is wholly reliant on TMs to be effective," it's designed like that because the Ghost type was added later into development and thus ended up being very slapdash in it's composition- two damaging moves, only one of which can play into the type chart at all, which can't even hit the type they're *supposed* to be good against. You see this with other types added late, in fact- Rock has a grand total of two moves two it's name because the Rock type didn't exist for most of development, it was Ground were one in the same. Rock Throw was originally a weaker version of Earthquake and Rock Slide was an entirely different move called Star Freeze. The final rock types were either just Ground types (the Rock/Grounds) or a different type (the Fossils). And then there's Dragon, which *also* can't play into the type chart at all because Dragon Rage only ever does 40 damage, meaning the fact it is super effective against itself even in Gen 1 never comes into play. Long comment! But to put it simply, if you think these learnsets are some kinda secret genius, it is in spite of themselves- not because of any intention that may or may not have been put into them.

[@PhilFromSchool]

as much as i appreciate that stone evolution pokemon can learn whatever they want now, i did like that it was a trade off, to keep your pokemon small first to learn better moves

[@thekiss2083]

Grass DPS is indeed a narrow set of moves, when you choose to completely ignore Razor Leaf that is 🤷

[@purplemage4974]

Thanks for making this video; I'm currently in the process of planning out a Pokémon hack (as a distant sequel to my completed Fire Emblem hack) and one of my goals is that I want to recapture the whole "less is more" vibe Gen 1 (and to a lesser but distinct extent, BW1) had; granted, while I've been making whole level-up learnsets based on a combination of Gen 3, 5, and 7 learnsets as reference, I'm trying my best to ensure each evolutionary line has a purpose or role in mind for why they're included in a restricted dex of 250, as opposed to attempting to cram a thousand mons into a single game. Moves are also limited, with a lot of moves from the later gens getting culled as I deemed them unnecessary. Overall, I really just want to keep things simple and not overwhelm players (and myself) with too much data and too many options to keep track of. Once again, thanks for the vid :')

[@Gamexpertvids]

One interesting thing is if you do want a Bulbasaur with Petal Dance in Gen 1 you have to breed through Gen 2 and trade back.

[@justintsui2522]

Yes, but no... I agree that Gen 1's and other earlier gen's restraint on movepool is actually a good and intentional part of its game design, but not for the reason that you laid out. I understand the idea about allowing more expression and creativity for using suboptimal sets and the tradeoffs of limited resources like tms, but I think the limited movepool actually really shines because the experimentation it induces allows the player explore unique and niche moves and Pokemon to find unique edges in optimizing the most optimal and efficient teams, exploring glitches and exploits to gain the edge, offering unique and counterintuitive solutions to problems and forcing the player to engage and understand the game's mechanics to progress through the game. Of course, unfortunately, the games don't often offer the difficulty to encourage the player to master the mechanics outside of postgame DLC or sidegame battle simulators like stadium or battle revolution. In other words, the limited movepool isn't good because it invites suboptimal play but rather invites player towards a path to more optimal play and improvement through replays.

[@HighPriestFuneral]

Inducing the player to "explore glitches and exploits to gain the edge" doesn't seem like good or intentional game design... especially considering how basic and easy Gen 1 is at its core (outside of Yellow which does improve the experience a fair amount in numerous ways).

[@justintsui2522]

@ Sure, it may not be intentional but it can lead to more interesting and fun gameplay and introduces hidden mechanics that are rewarding to discover and master. Like half the fun of speedruns are find exploits that let you skip parts of the game or unintentional mechanics that add depth to the game such as combos in Street Fighter II. I’d take a glitchy game that is mechanically interesting over a polished game that’s mechanically flat anyday

[@pikminologueraisin2139]

the rby games are the rare pokemon games I play in which I actually don't use a hm slave it feels very freeing to just slap Cut or Strength on my starter pokemon (what moves are they gonna learn anyway?) I also like how the game succesfully gatekeep your progress with only 4hm, or 3 you're not forced to use flash and cut is only truly needed one time (they could have placed a guard or something instead of that one tree towards route 9) fly is still very convenient I always have a flier but again that's not required so it pretty much boils down to strength and surf surf has always been good in combat, 80 base power normal move is good by gen1 standards, fly is only sligthly worse than the best flying move in drill peck. flash and cut are truly lame though having to use hm felt more and more annoying as the hm moves themselve became worse with powercreep

[@kwest9747]

The only moves you need are cut, strength and surf - all learnable by krabby/kingler, the real solo challenge master - it needs no HM slaves to carry it thru the map.

[@pikminologueraisin2139]

@kwest9747 yes indeed. i'm a kingler believer

[@srosecas8382]

I wanted this video topic recently lol You should do more like this

[@SNWWRNNG]

Razor Leaf almost always crits on Venusaur, which makes it almost equal to Flamethrower, Ice Beam (which is inferior to Blizzard, but hey) and Tbolt when you factor in that the latter can crit a decent amount on non-slow Pokemon, have slightly superior accuracy and come with secondary effects. The almost guaranteed crit means you also ignore all stat changes, both yours and your opponent's, which makes boosting your Special on Venusaur a lot worse but also helps out against enemy Amnesia, Growth or X Special users. Yellow Lorelei's Slowbro can crush a Venusaur charging Solar Beam with Amnesia and Psychic, but always takes heavy damage from Razor Leaf.

[@Kali_Krause]

Red and Blue are held together with glue and Duct tape lol All Jokes aside, there is one thing the intrests me more and that's glitch moves. Some glitch moves such as TM05 can be taught to pokemon like Graveler. Then by using the Johto Time Capsule exploit, you can then trade the Graveler to Gold, Silver, or Crystal where it becomes a Golem with Rollout!

[@Houndguardian]

I only remember my friends and I just picking whatever looked the most badass or dumb. The former meant that everyone owned Charizard of course.

[@DynamiteDominique]

I forget which old game it was. But I remember a bug catcher had 2 level 20 Beedrills that wrecked my whole team as a kid. From that day on, I always respected Beedrill.

[@tobigrantlbart]

Funfact: The Gen 1 meta looks like it is solved however it isn't and it scares me

[@PhilipMurphy8]

Looks like a great analysis in this video, will subscribe

[@maebemaebenot]

Love the video concept and I totally agree with the sentiment. Just want to point out that Nidoqueen also gets body slam by level up and razor leaf is the best broadly useful grass move because of gen 1 crit mechanics.

[@jacobstone4070]

This is really cool. Love your fire emblem stuff but happy to see you branch out too

[@Princely_Crow]

I always get frustrated when people criticize older pokemon games without considering the context they were designed in. Alot has changed, and the way pokemon is played today is unlike how it was back then. Alot of people will review pokemon games on how fun they are to nuzlocke or play competitively, but i think it is lost on a lot of people how good older pokemon's single player experience was and how interesting the design decision were. They had different kinds of goals back then. I really liked your perspective you shared in this video.

[@foggernaut8876]

You know, I think you pinpointed exactly why I hated Yellow Legacy. Something about learn sets didn’t feel right in that hack, along with the other design changes that we not necessary.

[@MythrilZenith]

@@foggernaut8876 Coming from the Fire Emblem scene where we're flush with "fix" hacks that lean heavily into elements that don't fit with the original design, I totally understand what you mean.

[@verymelonman12]

What dos a romhack you don't need to play have to do with anything?

[@nomorenames5568]

the better the move the harder it is to access and the more exclusive it feels when you finally unlock them, especially on an amazing pokemon. Am I right? I've only watched 30 seconds of the video. Nice to see you explain it for everyone though. It's game design like this that is sorely missed nowadays . The kind that places great stuff behind great effort in a natural way. If I had to think of a modern example I would have to say End of Dyeus which is an indie game that feels like a mix between early 2D zelda and Elder scrolls. It's the only game I've ever played that made an Iron Shield feel like a massive upgrade. It's open world but every 25 feet there is something new to discover in the world. For instance a graveyard that only reveals it's secrets in the moonlight. Or a treasure forest that encloses you with fog until you have to navigate a literal maze through the fog in order to find the ultimate weapon at the end. It's just a solid open world RPG experience that I haven't felt since Tears of the Kingdom and it's exemplified by it's dedication to making you work for every item so that they all feel like an amazing reward for your hard work --- Just like Gen 1 does with the best pokemon and best moves.

[@lazerchu]

Razor leaf in the best gen 1 grass move because it basically has 100% crit chance making it’s effective base power 110, Venasuar and Victreebell FTW

[@johnwest6690]

Very true and your argument of Kaizo is spot on.

[@Kakarotovsky]

Excellent video! Congrats!

[@MythrilZenith]

Glad you liked it!

[@marcoasturias8520]

I wish Pokémon worked with a "unlockables" system. Something like: beat the Gym, get a TM, in 3 towns later you buy as many in the store. Midgame Gym & TM, that's on the game corner after beating the Gym. All TM's get restocked after you get them once in the overworld. Dunno, I think it'd be nice to work in completing something like a TM Dex!

[@blazi2293]

Gen 1 is built like an old school JRPG, with normal moves being like the standard sword attack that is reliable but doesn't hit the enemy's weakness, while special moves are more like magic I like to see it as "baby's first Shin Megami Tensei". In SMT your demons usually have one specific role. In gen 1 Pokemon, it's the same, the game basically wants you to use the right Pokemon for the right situation and TMs are a little bonus to give more replay value (That's on paper because realistically this is an easy game so you can just keep spamming psychic type moves) Gen 1 mechanics were definitely more singleplayer oriented while modern games are built around multiplayer

[@drizz_tv]

I always stuck with razor leaf in gen 1. And used missingno to get around TM limitations 😆

[@MythrilZenith]

@@drizz_tv Yeah, the glitchy elephant in the room that lets you make effectively infinite copies of items is one of the only reasons having most of the best moves in gen 1 be TMs isn't completely infuriating.

[@SamuraiSam]

Razor Leaf is also a very strong grass-type choice since it crits almost every time

[@Nitosa]

I will always say this, gen 1 is the only game that feels like it was almost solely designed for the single player ingame experience, instead accounting for other factors like the mons individually, other players, by oftentimes breaking logic to enhance the solo experience. The best example are the mons some trainers have like onix, it's a big thematic experience going from small critters and bugs to a gaint rock snake which sticks with you, while designing him to teach you that Spa moves or effective a good way to beat high defense mons. Or how intimidating Lance is with 3 dragons who you likely have never seen before.

[@Ty9916]

Ive been playing JP blue this past week and decided to use Beedrill after seeing Bopper's vods from awhile back. With level caps Beedrill is 100% better than the embers from any fire type for Erika.

[@FourthSeatStudios]

The Beedrill propaganda worked. I'm pretty confused about how Mega Drain was listed as better than Razor Leaf... but it looks like that's already been talked about to death in the comments.

[@sagacious03]

1:30 Tackle was base 35 power with 95 Accuracy in Gen 1, so Fury Attack only needs 2 or more hits to be better in Gen 1. Anyway, okay analysis video! Thanks for uploading!

[@HighPriestFuneral]

Not to mention most of the Pokemon that can learn Fury Attack are also Normal type, so they're getting some STAB off of it, making it more useful. I know its considered a terrible move, but I always keep it on my Fearow for some time.

[@Zandral36]

Isn‘t it that in both, mtg and pokemon, the developers where just not experienced yet and did a better job later? I soubt that it was all intentionally.

[@Dukstless]

Nice try ex-Gamefreak dev, I know you were half awake while making some of the decisions: - "yeah bro, Rock Throw being 50 power and 65% accuracy is balanced, what do you mean the only other Rock move is a TM" (for reference that makes it 8th least accurate move in the game, only ahead of OHKO moves, Sing, Supersonic, Poison Gas and Hypnosis lmao). - Take Down is inferior Double-Edge. Worse power and accuracy, both are TMs that are available roughly at the same point in the game... the only thing it has going over Edge is being one of the few rebuyable TMs. Oh and it's still in G9, despite GF removing some other questionable G1 moves like Barrage. - why does Moltres learn Leer in place of Flamethrower, what war crimes did it commit to be punished like that

[@JustButton]

- rock is super effective against 4 types - you answered your own question. take down is renewable, double edge is better - gen 1 fire spin

[@redmagic2113]

I know, right? There's something off about this supposedly "defense" for Gen 1 movesets. Besides criticism, specially towards bad game desing it's not a bad thing. It helps game designers grow and learn how to properly make the game approachable and fun to play. Justifying bullcrap like: "Hey, Beedrill has the best Bug Type move and because of a glitch it's 4x times effective towards plants!", and we're like... "Yeah... So? The game never tells you this, and Beedril is still garbage and unbearable to play with. You better just use a Psychic type like Mr. Mime and just blast through those plants more effectively since all of them are faster than Beedrill". Not aknowledging a mistake is allowing people to NOT LEARN from their mistakes. In the 3Gen Remakes they learned a lot and corrected some movesets (Not all), that at least deserves some praise, no meat-riding all the first generation for how awful and badly thought out it is. We have to acknowledge that errors to improve, not put them under a rug or sugarcoating them.

[@Dukstless]

@@JustButton "rock is super effective against 4 types" meanwhile, Ground type with Dig and Earthquake

[@ChronoSquare]

Pokemon learning moves faster than their evolutions was a thing that existed for generations. One thing that i absolutely love Generation 4 for is how the starters get exclusive moves for not evolving. Namely, Nasty Plot on Infernape by leveling up Chimchar enough. Access to exclusive moves from pre evolutions through a move relearner wouldn't be a thing for several more generations.

[@HighPriestFuneral]

I think Gen 3 gave Bug Bit to Caterpie and Weedle if you trained them to Level 20 as well. It was always a neat touch.

[@falcahtas]

In Gen 1 , Razor Leaf is much better than Petal Dance as it will always crit if base speed is over 63. Both Venasaur and Victrebel are probably better than Vileplume due to this.

[@jierdareisa4313]

I do really love ALL MythrilZenith videos!!!! ❤

[@kaj6492]

dude spent a large part of the video talking about petal dance being the best dps grass move. its not. its razor leaf. its essentially 110 base power because it basically always crits

[@michaeldoerrler2363]

I see what you mean about exclusive moves, but inthink the developers have started doing that again by just giving pokemon signature moves. The gen 6 and 7 starters all had signature moves and the gen 8 and especially 9 dexes give many of their new mons signature moves. It goes further than moved in a lot of cases too including evo methods and abilities.

[@DiviTon]

Razor Leaf is far and away the best grass move for damage in gen 1. Its a single turn 110 base power move. Solar Beam, Mega Drain and Petal Dance don't compare at all. If you have a grass Pokemon that can learn Razor Leaf, there is no reason to run any of those other moves.

[@Morgil27]

Talking about the payoff after a slow and steady grind reminds me of a similar statement by Yuji Horii regarding the grinding in the first Dragon Quest game.

[@LordZemosa]

I see those Fire Emblem nicknames on your HoF team. A man of culture as well I see 👀

[@MythrilZenith]

6+ years ago and still going strong!

[@JoseHernandez-ql8vw]

remember mordor? good times

[@dracozeon_]

I dont agree with your final point. The kaizo games are so much fun to me due to all the things you said were negatives, the high lvld trainers, torturous route design, and wild pokemon being threatening and ready to go as soon as you catch them. While leveling up your pokemon and getting to know them and using tms on them are good for a normal game, i think its not a favourable idea for a difficulty romhack, due to the games design about battles being the most important thing about the game

[@Davidizor104]

Blue Kaizo mentioned

[@grauenritter9220]

to try and get all the moves on console is gonna be a nightmare

[@MythrilZenith]

@@grauenritter9220 With glitches nothing is impossible. Tedious, but not impossible.

[@Kakarotovsky]

I'm doing this right now!

[@grauenritter9220]

@@MythrilZenith at least to play meta in rby you don't need gale of darkness xd purity transfers

[@MythrilZenith]

@@grauenritter9220 yeah once you start getting to 3rd gen and beyond it feels effectively impossible to get anything meta going. Needing to own every single game in the series because the base Pokemon comes from Coliseum but has an egg move and tutor move from Emerald and then a TM from Fire Red... Pokemon optimal moves were an absolute mess, and it just fueled high school me's annoyance at the fact that everyone just data-edited their Pokemon.

[@grauenritter9220]

@@MythrilZenith well they kinda fixed it so they could lower the barrier to VGC(prevent hacking for VGC), but it was weird because in the early 00s, they still made games for singleplayer mostly, but due to the link cable people started feeling the need for multiplayer optimization in play throughs. I wouldn't be surprised if the antiJeigan sentiment was due to "link cable"maxxing.

[@babafisi8135]

Lil bros be like “Gen 1 Suck” bro get a rom hack 💀

[@assortmentofpillsbutneverb3756]

This is a step into gen 1 greatness, but there is more you could get into. Gen 1-3 have similar vibes but it becomes more like modern as the gen gets higher. The older games just played far more like rpg's than a catch'em all battler. TM's and ev's giving individual mons in a playthrough flavor, the types having physical or special giving type flavor, special not being split, the crits, map design, etc. Not saying it is not buggy or undercooked, just that there was a while different path the series could have taken and an older game design philosophy that isnt present anymore

[@masterstealth11]

Great video! You got a sub brother

[@ricksdarkness3257]

Love the Fire Emblem-based nicknames

[@emilydonegan3208]

Red/Green were, at their base, single-player JRPGs. It's not like Final Fantasy starts you out with every magic type at level 1, right?

[@josephbulkin9222]

Your arguement falks apart when you see how manh mons are.lumped with Normal moves and ONLY Notmal moves. Tms neing limited becomse a problem when you waste them because you didnt know what was coming next.

[@verymelonman12]

I simply cannot agree. With either this video or this weird trend of insisting these old pokemon games are actually well designed when they're clearly not. And this is not me being some zoomer, I grew up on gen 1 and 2 like most of the people agreeing with you here. RBY and GSC were fine for their time, but simple were not as good as they could be.

[@MythrilZenith]

@@verymelonman12 The title is clickbait yes, and there are genuinely flaws and issues, I don't pretend to not see them. But to claim there is NOTHING worth talking about or investigating further or even just taking an odd interest in is in my mind simply untrue.

[@verymelonman12]

@@MythrilZenith I have nothing against examining the games from the perspective of developer intent. That's fun to do. I'm just used to people that do this going on to assume said intent is beyond criticism, especially in its execution.

[@hunter00143]

Genwunner click/ragebait Muh nostalgia

[@LeetHaxington]

yeah I always thought keeping unevolved pokemon was cool when I was little. You could have like secret moves in battles with friends by looking at the level learnset charts and spotting some of these differences. It took some planning and research and then you had to work for it because leveling in gen 1 is pretty hard in a lot of ways. But then in later games you don't have to worry about getting punished for lazily giving an HM to a pokemon. Just give them a placeholder surf and forget about it later. Or catch a high level version of the pokemon or grow them in the daycare and just re-learn the move instead of them getting permamently overwritten. Lame. And then you just get infinite item storage now and fully healed after every trainer fight and it's basically pokemon snap on rails between towns and every pokemon in every fight dies in 1 hit without even grinding up levels. In gen 1 you have to look at the map to explore a little and find like zapdos or to get to cinnebar island to progress. I got lost a couple times and didn't know where to go because of the path I played the game so I had to figure it out. That's not even possible now, everything is so handed for you. You don't even have to store items in your PC. You get infinite backpack storage to take every random healing item you wish you had in the caves in gen 1. You even seem to have unlimited money in new games to just buy more potions than you could use. In gen 1 you have to strategically decide on repels or potions to get through a cave... I mostly quit playing when I learned about EV training. Why bother leveling up your guys if you don't have perfect stats and perfect pvp movesets that are awful to use in the story. And if you're not playing to battle people why play at all. Just feels like you lose from the start. Not to mention grinding to level 100 at least in gen 1 felt like it would take 100 hours per pokemon. And it could take hundreds of hours to find the perfect stats pokemon. And then grinding up a bunch of pokemon that only have 5 pp movesets with 1 attack move and the rest are debuffs... Just makes grinding even slower.

[@ArcLite-s1m]

Bro you should have seen the Butterfree I had, do you know what that thing can do

[@ian.swift.31614]

butterfrees can make enemies go to sleep and then do bad things to them :(

[@alexandreberthault9942]

Long live gen 1 Beedrill ! :D

[@EmissaryOfSmeagol]

Cool video MythrilZenith

[@MazterP28]

Missingno enters the chat,

[@windowsforvista]

Very cool video

[@shiruotakuno28]

No.

[@kingzant99]

omfg I was like number 151. I feel so honored

[@what-un4yq]

With how gen 1 it might be pretty balanced to do a double playthrough with a beeper force the battle. Cuz in mid game everything seems pretty balanced All things considered.

[@drmann15]

Razor leaf

[@infernoboi92]

Auto crit razor leaf is the best

[@nathanieljones8043]

I agree the new gens are super bland bad mons should get good moves and vice versa

[@martinithechobit]

I WAS THERE>!!!.

[@Tinil0]

I disagree completely. This feels like well presented cope.

[@bongjovi4928]

Pokemon was way more fun without the geek breakdowns.

[@luckpup2766]

They're still bad; bad for the game.

[@josephbulkin9222]

What kind of a title is that?

[@BrainInAVat7]

I have been preaching for years that power creep and the physical/special split have removed a lot of interesting choices from the game

[@rjante2236]

I've started to realize this, too. The reason why the older games were harder was because the available moves by level up were worse.

[@blazie42069]

gen 1s awful learnsets are pretty cool, gen 2s on the other hand are actually awful. Like why does hitmontop get no good moves