Woobat and Swoobat

Does everyone remember Zubat?  The blood-sucking, supersonic-screaming, night-flying hell-beasts that used to fill your face whenever you set foot inside a cave in any Pokémon game ever?  You all remember how annoying those things were?

They’re gone!  Hah-HAH!  Those horrible things are finally gone!

I am not really sure how I feel about what’s been left in their place, however.  Meet Woobat and Swoobat, the new bat Pokémon of Black and White, which I think are supposed to be based on fruit bats, in contrast to the more sinister and evocative vampire bats that inspire Zubat’s design.  I am going to start by acknowledging that, yes, it would be difficult to make a cute cartoon bat – for I believe cuteness was the designers’ aim here – without de-emphasising the traits that make it, y’know, bat-like and emphasising the traits it has in common with other small furry things like flying squirrels, but I have high expectations from the franchise that made a hunk of coral look friggin’ adorable.  I initially labelled Woobat a “blind, buck-toothed airborne Furby,” which should give you a good idea of my first impressions of the thing, and Swoobat is, if that’s possible, even sillier-looking.  I am, however, gradually warming to the idea that Pokémon are allowed to be a bit silly-looking sometimes; they can’t all be badass death machines or graceful paragons of serenity.  Furthermore, in Swoobat’s case I am beginning to think that my first impressions of him may have been unfairly coloured by his in-game sprite, which is awful.  Sugimori’s official art, shown here, is much nicer and while his particular kind of charm doesn’t really appeal to me, I am prepared to concede that Swoobat does have some.  That weird scorpion-looking tail, though, is inexcusable – it seems really out of place on a Pokémon like this, even if it is supposed to form a heart-shape to play into Swoobat’s flavour as a romance-themed Pokémon.  Yes, you heard that right: the Pokédex refers to Swoobat as the “Courting Pokémon” and even bothers to describe its mating habits – don’t worry; there’s nothing graphic.  Apparently, courting male Swoobat emit ultrasonic waves that produce a dizzying high in those affected by them.  This... could be read to have some unfortunate implications, but I’m not going to touch those with a Macedonian sarissa (it’s like a ten-foot pole, but twice as big and with a massive spike on the end).  Regardless, I have to give points for originality in choosing a bat as the basis for a Pokémon with this kind of flavour because it’s certainly interesting.  In short, we’ve had “bat Pokémon” before, but Woobat’s designers seem to have gone out of their way to make it as different from Zubat as possible, and what’s more it actually worked.  I don’t know that I’d call these great Pokémon, but they’re not bad.

As for Swoobat’s combat skills, well, he’s definitely an odd little beast.  His typing, while not unique, is quite unusual: Psychic/Flying, previously belonging only to Xatu and Lugia.  Swoobat is broadly similar to Xatu in that he’s fast and frail, but with more emphasis on “fast and frail” and weaker attacks.  He also doesn’t have quite as many cool support moves and tricks as Xatu, which is very much the kind of thing that Psychic-types are known for these days, but he does have a fair number of nice things: he can heal himself with Roost, protect his team from attacks with Reflect or Light Screen, screw over defensive Pokémon by using Taunt to force them to make direct attacks, use Knock Off to swat away an opponent’s item, or bounce out of battle while doing damage at the same time with U-Turn.  He’s also one of the fastest Pokémon in the game to learn Endeavour, an attack which sets the target’s health equal to the user’s; obviously this attack requires great speed so that you get a chance to use it after you’ve lost most of your health but before your opponent decides to stab you again.  Unfortunately for Swoobat, he lacks vigour.  He can’t take a hit – at all – and his own attacks are weak.  His speed is all he can fall back on, which isn’t that bad because he is surprisingly fast and speed is typically very beneficial for using support moves, but those paper-thin defences will really hurt, and there are, overall, much better Psychic supporters out there.

What is interesting about Swoobat is the choice of three very unusual passive abilities he gets.  Klutz, formerly held only by the rabbit Pokémon Lopunny, is useless to Swoobat: it renders most items inert in the hands of a Pokémon which has it, which in Lopunny’s case allows her to hold onto dangerous items like a Flame Orb without penalty and then use Switcheroo to swap items with an opponent... but Swoobat can’t learn that attack, making the ability completely pointless.  Swoobat’s other two abilities are shared with the beaver Pokémon Bibarel.  The first, Unaware, could be very powerful but Swoobat’s potential to make use of it seems like it would be even less than Bibarel’s.  A Pokémon which is Unaware ignores all boosts from moves like Swords Dance and Iron Defence given to its opponents’ stats, except for speed.  The obvious application for this is to put a stop to an augmented Pokémon that’s attempting to sweep your team, but since Unaware doesn’t ignore speed boosts, you’ll often have to take a hit first in order to do it.  Bibarel isn’t exactly tough, but he’s not a pushover either; Swoobat is and likely won’t be able to suffer even un-boosted hits, so I’m tentatively going to write off Unaware as well.  The final ability, though, is very intriguing.  Sadly, it’s only available to Swoobat from the Pokémon Dream World, which I don’t think are available yet.  This ability is Simple, which doubles the effect of your own boosts.  Bibarel wasn’t much good at this because he didn’t get a many relevant moves (Amnesia, which is dubious, Curse, which is interesting but not game-changing, and Charge Beam, which, on Bibarel, is very odd).  Swoobat doesn’t have a wide selection either, but what he does have includes Calm Mind, a Psychic technique that raises special attack and special defence simultaneously.  Swoobat might actually make an interesting sweeper with this combination.  Not necessarily a good one, mind you.  He only has one special attack that isn’t resisted by Steel-types (which are very popular indeed): the aforementioned Charge Beam.  That might actually work, though, since Charge Beam, while appallingly weak, does have a high chance of raising your special attack again each time you use it.  Final verdict: not powerful, but interesting, and interesting is good because people don’t expect it.

I was genuinely surprised to find that Swoobat might actually have a use.  Having rare abilities and the potential to actually make use of one of them, as well as belonging to a type combination that isn’t horrendously overdone, are worth quite a lot of points in my book even if the sheer power isn’t there.  And I admit that much of my original annoyance at Swoobat is the fault of whoever did his in-game sprite; he may be pretty silly but I suspect that’s intentional, and he’s a far cry from being a carbon copy of Golbat.  So, much to my own surprise...

I hereby affirm this Pokémon’s right to exist!

Patrat and Watchog

I’m in kind of a good mood after Lillipup; I wasn’t sure it was still possible to make one of these early-game Normal-type Pokémon that was worth the pixels it’s drawn in, we’ve had so many before.  Surely this is good news?  Maybe this next Pokémon will also be-

What the-?  Well, that’s... that’s quite disturbing, actually.

There is something deeply, deeply unsettling about this Pokémon’s eyes.  I don’t think the designers were actually aiming for the “demonically possessed” look since the rest of Patrat’s flavour doesn’t support that, but if they were, they nailed it.  Still, the eyes at least are all that I find truly bothersome about Patrat; the evolved form, Watchog, takes the freaky eyes and combines it with a stiff, rigid pose.  Maybe it’s just me, but I think there’s something indefinably wrong with this Pokémon.  I’ll... try not to judge him on this because I am aware that this is somewhat subjective, but I would not be surprised to be told that Watchog creeps the hell out of a lot of people.  Let’s look at this from a slightly more objective standpoint, shall we?  Patrat is based on a chipmunk and Watchog is based on a meerkat, but the meerkat is really the heart of both designs – I say this because their shtick is being keen sentries, something meerkats are known for.  This... would be great if not for the fact that this was also Sentret’s shtick way back in Gold and Silver (and Sentret was a heck of a lot cuter).  I will concede that Patrat’s actual skills make it much better at this than Sentret – its Keen Eye ability renders it immune to techniques that impair its vision, and it is explicitly able to see in the dark – but it’s still losing points as far as I’m concerned for being a second-hand concept.  I’m also very confused that one of Watchog’s powers is apparently bioluminescence, because it seems like a thoroughly redundant (if not actively detrimental) quality for a creature that can see in the dark anyway.  If you don’t need much light to see, then isn’t glowing in the dark like putting up a literal neon sign for predators?  The Pokédex entry says that it’s supposed to intimidate predators but honestly, it still seems like a bad survival strategy to me.

I didn’t go into this expecting Watchog to be a very strong Pokémon, and having now used the thing I have the dubious pleasure of saying that I was absolutely right.  His attacks are lacklustre, his defences awful and his speed middling – in short, he’s exactly like Raticate, Furret and Linoone.  As always when this happens, I am forced to root through the damn thing’s movepool in hopes of finding something unusual that it can do, and as it happens Watchog does get a small selection of useful abilities to differentiate itself from the previous generic Normal-types.  He has Hypnosis and Confuse Ray as disruptive options, although not particularly good ones.  More interestingly, he learns Baton Pass.  Baton Pass is a fascinating little technique that has been around since Gold and Silver, whose function is to switch another Pokémon into battle while keeping the effects of any boosts used by the first Pokémon, such as Swords Dance, Substitute or Agility.  Watchog can in fact learn Swords Dance as well, so you could use him to pass that – a perfectly viable tactic for boosting something that can’t dance for itself, although I can’t imagine why you’d use Watchog as the passer as opposed to something that’s actually competent, like Scyther.  The truly intriguing thing about Watchog is that it also learns Mean Look.  This technique traps its victim in play, preventing it from switching out.  The effect is lifted if the Pokémon that used it faints or switches out itself, limiting its utility... however, for some ungodly reason, Mean Look is one of the effects that can be transferred by Baton Pass.  Doing so allows you to send in whichever of your Pokémon would most efficiently wipe out the victim while it remains trapped; if you manage to execute this tactic without a hitch, it is almost certain to destroy one of your opponent’s Pokémon – possibly several, if you use it as an opportunity to set up – but you’re unlikely to get more than one shot at it; once your opponent realises what you’re up to, your Baton Passer’s life will be short.  Only five Pokémon besides Watchog can do this – Umbreon, Absol, Mew (using Block), Ariados (using Spider Web) and Smeargle (whose big trick is that he can learn absolutely anything).  The trouble is, I can’t really think of any reason to use Watchog for this rather than Umbreon other than that he’s somewhat faster and isn’t weak to Bug-type attacks.  Pulling it off would still more or less require him to take at least one hit, probably two, and with his poor defences and total lack of resistances, Watchog just can’t do that (a well-trained Umbreon, on the other hand, is nigh-indestructible).  Still, with such a rare and unusual skill at his disposal, someone is bound to use Watchog and, since he’s so weak in almost every other respect, someone is bound to forget that he can do that, fall for it, and lose a critical team member.

Sometimes you want a Pokémon to be creepy.  Sometimes it’s part of the design.  Patrat and Watchog are not one of those times.  They’re not meant to be unsettling, but they are, deeply so.  If they weren’t so unsettling, on the other hand, they’d be pretty boring and forgettable (so, again, exactly like Furret).  They’re dull, they’re weak, they’re all but useless except in a single role in which they are thoroughly outclassed anyway, and I cannot think of a single reason they should ever have been made.

I hereby deny this Pokémon’s right to exist!  Let it be cast back into the pits of hell from which it came!

EDIT: Since writing this entry I have learned that, actually, Mean Look, Spider Web and Block don't work that way anymore in Black and White - the effect can no longer be passed.  Why this was changed is a mystery to me.  The number of Pokémon affected is miniscule and invalidating the tactic has almost no impact on game balance, aside from making Umbreon much less useful and finally eradicating the only reason ever to use Ariados.  Thematically speaking, Baton Pass is so abstract anyway that any attempt to explain why certain effects can be passed and others cannot is doomed to failure.  The practical upshot of all this for Watchog is that he is, in fact, completely useless.

Lillipup, Herdier and Stoutland

Right, so, more of the early-game trash we have to get through before being allowed to find anything interesting.  Well, I guess that was inevitable.  So, what are we being offered this time?

Oh.  Oh, that’s... well, okay, that’s actually kind of cute.  Dogs have been done before, but I guess if I let Purrloin live I should give Lillipup a chance too.  No promises though.

Lillipup, I say with little fear of contradiction, is extremely cute, while his adult form, Herdier, has more of a “loyal sheepdog” vibe.  The final evolution, Stoutland... well, I thought Stoutland looked a little silly at first, but I have to admit he’s grown on me.  That moustache is nothing short of magnificent.  Now, like I said, dog Pokémon  have been done to death, but they haven’t exactly been all the same.  Houndoom from Gold and Silver is probably my favourite, and he had an interesting devil dog theme (as well as a type combination, Fire/Dark, that remains unique to this day, which is something I’m very obvious about liking).  Ruby and Sapphire gave us Mightyena, who’s just about the closest thing we have so far to a wolf Pokémon – come to think of it, why isn’t there a wolf Pokémon?  Eh.  The point is that he’s a savage little thing with good cooperative hunting skills.  And I guess there’s also Manectric, but Manectric’s whole background pretty much boils down to “woo, look at me, I have electrical powers,” (yeah, great, get in line) so I’m going to ignore Manectric.  He is silly.  The biggest threat to Stoutland, in terms of being a new and interesting Pokémon that deserves to exist, is the very first dog Pokémon from way back in Red and Blue: Growlithe.  Growlithe already did the whole “dog-as-loyal-companion” thing that Lillipup, Herdier and Stoutland are trying to express.  I’m just willing to let that slide because Growlithe becomes markedly less focussed on that aspect of his design when he evolves into Arcanine, who’s practically halfway-legendary, while Lillipup takes the concept to its conclusion with Stoutland, whose ‘thing’ seems to be rescuing injured people and Pokémon from isolated areas.  The entire evolutionary line is also described as being highly intelligent by Pokémon standards; in some ways, they’re more like partners where Growlithe are loyal servants, which is nice because it’s kind of supposed to be what training Pokémon was all about in the first place.  So, yeah, I guess I like Stoutland even if it’s not the first dog Pokémon ever.  He is only the second domestic dog; you have to give him that.  On to his powers and skills, then...

I have to say, I am unimaginably pleased to see an early-game Pokémon that isn’t a total trap.  The Pokémon available at the very beginning of the game often become very underwhelming later on.  Because Lillipup is a Normal-type, I’m looking mainly at the older Normal Pokémon – Rattata, Sentret, Zigzagoon and Bidoof, all of which are decidedly use-impaired in their adult forms – but this isn’t an ideal analogy.  First of all, Lillipup has two evolutions, giving it more room to grow, and second, all of those Pokémon are strongly biased towards speed and damage, while Stoutland is much more of an all-rounder.  He still hits like a truck, sure, but he’s also built like one, and he’s not slow either.  It actually took me a while to find a Pokémon that was directly comparable to Stoutland to give those of you who haven’t played since Red and Blue some idea of how it fights, but to my surprise there is one.  It’s Kangaskhan.  Both get the expected complement of Normal-type attacks, plus the Dark-type Bite and Crunch just in case they run into Ghost-types and both also get the potentially interesting Reversal, which does more damage when used by a Pokémon closer to fainting (although Kangaskhan has a smattering of other Fighting-type attacks available to her as well).  Stoutland loses out quite badly, though, by being unable to learn Earthquake, the perennial standby of all prominent physical attackers.  On the flip side, there are a number of viable crossbreeds that can give you a Lillipup with Yawn, a time-delayed but reliable sleep-inducing technique which Stoutland has the bulk to use effectively.  Stoutland also has a choice of three highly effective passive abilities: the ever-wonderful Intimidate, to weaken his opponents’ physical attacks, Sand Rush, which allows him to move twice as fast during sandstorms (an extremely common field condition) and, for a Lillipup from the Dream World, Scrappy (Kangaskhan gets this one too), which renders Ghost Pokémon vulnerable to his Normal- and Fighting-type attacks.  All up, I think Stoutland is weaker than Kangaskhan, mostly because of his shallower movepool, which is not a good thing because Kangaskhan, while strong, is hardly top-tier.  It’s still enough to beat the hell out of just about every other ‘early-game trash’ Pokémon though (with the notable exceptions of Staraptor and maybe Swellow).  Long story short, even if Stoutland doesn’t exactly bring any new skills to the table, it’s nice to see a Pokémon that doesn’t actively punish new players for trying to catch something early on.

As I mentioned when I talked about Unfezant, my philosophy in judging these new Pokémon is essentially “if the developers could have left it out and replaced it with something that existed already, maybe with an evolution tacked on, they should have.”  As hard as it is to concede, I don’t really think that applies to Stoutland.  There’s only one other Normal-type Pokémon that really fights the way Stoutland does, and even I’m not going to try to argue that Nintendo should’ve started throwing wild Kangaskhan at us on the outskirts of Nuvema Town (although... it would’ve sure made for an interesting early-game...).  It would have been fun to properly meet Kangaskhan’s baby form at last, but I don’t think the very start of the game is the time or place for it; they’ve always been rare Pokémon and I think they should stay that way.  Likewise, they could have been replaced by Rattata or Sentret, but when it comes right down to it, Lillipup is so much better than the likes of them that it’s just not funny.  I don’t want to make a habit of letting Pokémon pass based on being just plain better than their forebears, but in this instance...

I hereby affirm this Pokémon’s right to exist!

Archen and Archeops

...hang on, didn’t we do this already?  Like, way back in Generation One?  There was this prehistoric aerial predator, and it was a Rock/Flying-type, and it was really fast, and- oh, wait, no, that was Aerodactyl.  Aerodactyl is a pterosaur and Archeops is, well, an archaeopteryx, so there you have it.  Personally, as something of a dinosaurs-and-other-Mesozoic-beasties buff, I think that there’s quite enough of a distinction between an archaeopteryx and a pterodactyl to warrant having separate Pokémon, but that’s just me.  I suspect many (read: normal) people might disagree.  So, anyway, if we fire up the old Pokémadex, we learn that Archeops is the “First Bird” Pokémon from which all modern bird Pokémon supposedly descend.  This... raises more questions than it answers, actually.  Like, how come all prehistoric Pokémon were Rock-types?  We’ve been resurrecting these things from fossilized remains since Red and Blue, and they’re all Rock Pokémon: Kabuto, Aerodactyl, Omanyte, Lileep, Anorith, Cranidos, Shieldon, and now this angry-looking thing.  Did all modern Pokémon evolve from Rock-types?  Heck, do Pokémon evolve?  Well, I mean, yes, obviously they evolve, but do they evolve like real animals do?  Were all ancient Pokémon Rock-types because Pokémon originally evolved from rocks?  Because... that... actually, that would explain rather a lot, but it also RAISES MORE QUESTIONS, DAMNIT!  I’m going to go with the simplest explanation I can think of, which is that Rock Pokémon are vastly overrepresented in the fossil record because their remains preserve better.  Take it or leave it; the scientists in the Pokémon world are unlikely to come up with a better answer since they’re all a bunch of lunatics who prefer to conduct comparative zoology by giving expensive scientific equipment to random ten-year-olds and sending them off into the wilderness.

Anyway.  Archeops.

I think that Archeops is pretty badass, although Archen looks... kind of mangy.  Like someone’s put the poor thing through a washing machine by mistake.  As I’ve said, I can easily put up with the design similarities between Archeops and Aerodactyl because as far as I’m concerned we’re dealing with two very different creatures, but unfortunately the similarity doesn’t end here; both of them are very fast high-powered physical attackers with the Rock and Flying types.  There is a difference; it’s a shift of focus. Aerodactyl wasn’t exactly obscenely powerful, but there’s precious little in all the world that can outrun him.  Archeops swaps that around; he’s fast, but there are still quite a few Pokémon that are faster.  In terms of raw power, though, he outstrips the likes of Tyranitar and Dragonite.  The rather odd thing is that he’s also quite adept at using special attacks, but can only learn three that are of any use and even those (Dragon Pulse, Focus Blast and Earth Power) are somewhat dubious for him, so it’s probably best to just forget about it.  Archeops also gets one very nice thing that Aerodactyl doesn’t: U-Turn, a Bug-type attack that has been called, not without some justification, the best move in the game.  U-Turn does decent but not overwhelming damage and then switches out the Pokémon using it, allowing you to switch without wasting a turn.  This in itself is good, but the truly wonderful thing is that if your opponent decides to switch at the same time, you get to see what you’re up against before choosing what to use yourself.  Honestly, this alone is a major selling point and possibly even enough to make up for the fact that Aerodactyl also gets some things Archeops doesn’t, notably Stealth Rock.  All up, Archeops is theoretically capable of absolutely tremendous destruction.  Notice I say “theoretically.”

Where Archeops falls down as a Pokémon is the ability he’s been given.  Nintendo seem to have felt that Archeops’s destructive potential was just too great, so they decided to hobble him with a passive effect called Defeatist.  Essentially, when Archeops loses more than half of his health, he just plain gives up and stops trying, causing all of his attacks to do only half damage.  This is a concept Nintendo have been playing with for a while now – making a Pokémon with ridiculously awesome stats and then crippling it with some kind of awful drawback.  So far, it hasn’t worked.  Slaking, back in Ruby and Sapphire, not only had an attack stat so far beyond absurd that calling it that would be an insult to absurdity itself but was also as tough as old boots – only problem was, he was also appallingly lazy and would only move once every two turns. 

Diamond and Pearl then gave us Regigigas, master of the legendary golems – a phenomenally bad excuse for a legendary Pokémon that was just as fast and strong as Slaking and could move every turn, but spent his first five turns with his attack and speed halved as he slowly warmed up.  This countdown reset itself if you ever switched Regigigas out, and he had no source of healing – no, not even Rest – to help him wait it out.  As a result, no-one ever uses Regigigas.  Slaking does turn up occasionally, because even if he is a lazy jerk at least you have access to his full power immediately, which is enough to make most Pokémon soil themselves with sheer terror.  So, this concept has so far given us a niche Pokémon which is extraordinarily difficult to use correctly but possibly worth the payoff and an unmitigated disaster which is probably the weakest legendary Pokémon ever (with the possible exception of Phione, who doesn’t really count).  That’s great odds.  Having used Archeops for a reasonable length of time now, I feel he will fall into the former category rather than the latter.  It will be difficult to avoid losing him uselessly in any given battle, but getting it right will result in unimaginable carnage.  I predict that some people will be happy to risk it, because, like I always say, there’s no kill like overkill.

Time to pass judgement.  Hmm.  This is a tricky one.  Is Archeops too much the same thing as Aerodactyl to deserve a spot in the Pokédex?  Same type combination, although it’s not exactly an overdone one, similar but distinct flavour, similar focus... when all’s said and done, though, Archeops is a lot better than Aerodactyl at one specific thing (utterly wiping things from existence), while lacking the ability to do other, cleverer things and being much harder to use right, which is enough of a difference for me.  Nice concept, interesting execution, could’ve maybe gotten away from the idea that all fossil Pokémon must be Rock-types, but hey, if the design is badass and the mechanics back it up...

I hereby affirm this Pokémon’s right to exist!

Frillish and Jellicent

Today I’m going to take a flying leap into the second half of the Unovan Pokédex to look at one of the Pokémon I used in my play-through of Black: the undead jellyfish Pokémon Frillish and Jellicent.  Yes, you read that right: undead.  See, they may not look it, but Frillish and Jellicent are actually Ghost-types.  This is not only an immediate defence against any accusation that Frillish is just Tentacool 2.0, it also means that they possess a unique type combination, Ghost/Water, and therefore an inherently interesting set of powers.  From a mechanical perspective, this is clearly a good start, so let’s look at the flavour.

The trouble with Jellicent is that it’s just a little bit difficult to take seriously. Well, to be totally fair, that’s more a problem with the females, since Frillish and Jellicent show some of the greatest sexual dimorphism of all Pokémon; all Jellicent are extremely poufy, but the females take the silliness further with the heart-shaped mouth and exaggerated eyelashes.  I am not exactly certain why Nintendo feel that female Pokémon should have  Barbie undertones to them, like the heart-shaped tails of female Pikachu or, worse, the heart-shaped horns of female Heracross (are they really supposed to fight with them?), but whatever the reason, it annoys me.  Jellicent is still far from the silliest Pokémon I’ve ever seen, though, and if you actually look a bit closer and read the Pokédex entries, these things quickly shift from ludicrous to downright disturbing.  Tentacool were in the game, more or less, to be annoying; they were the Zubat of the sea.  They’re described as being dangerous, but not aggressive, much like real jellyfish.  Tentacruel, of course, are much nastier, but they tend to be described as preying exclusively on Pokémon.  Frillish and Jellicent... not so much.  Frillish are deep ocean Pokémon, but they hunt at the surface, doing so by entangling prey in their arms, paralyzing them with various toxins, and dragging them back down to the sea floor.  There’s no mention of Frillish harming people specifically, but Jellicent certainly do.  Apparently areas populated by Jellicent act as Bermuda Triangle-like zones in the Pokémon world – ships that pass through are almost invariably sunk and their crews lost.  These things quite literally kill people by the boatload.  They also explicitly feed on life-force.  So, in short: the Pokémon world now has undead jellyfish that are actively aggressive towards ships in their territory, powerful enough to sink them, and hungry for souls.  Well, yes, it’s a bit worrying, but you can’t tell me it’s not awesome.

Of course, if I’m going to judge a Pokémon’s worthiness to exist, I have to look at what it can actually do as well.  Jellicent is a stereotypical “bulky water” – a slow, tough Water-type Pokémon that isn’t totally impotent on an offensive front either (Water is a strong element to use for this kind of thing, because it comes with only two weaknesses: Electric and Grass).  Everyone probably remembers at least one of these things: Blastoise, Poliwrath, Slowbro, Lapras, Vaporeon and Dewgong are all examples, of varying degrees of competence.  There are a lot of Water Pokémon already, and a lot of them are like this, so Jellicent really needs to bring something new to the table to impress me.  Fortunately... it does.  I’ve already mentioned that Jellicent is a Ghost-type; this adds two more weaknesses to it (Ghost and Dark attacks) but in return gets it two extra resistances (Bug and Poison) and, more importantly, two immunities (Normal and Fighting), which mean opportunities to switch in with impunity.  It also makes Jellicent one of only a handful of Pokémon that resist both Water and Normal attacks - one of a few classic combinations favoured for their wide type coverage.  Courtesy of its spiritual powers, Jellicent is the only Water-type Pokémon to have access to Will’o’Wisp, which burns its targets – a strong ability for a defensive Pokémon since being burned weakens a Pokémon’s physical attacks – but the introduction of a new Water-type attack with the ability to cause burns, Scald, may mean that this isn’t as unusual a trick as it would have been a year ago.  As far as direct attacks go, Jellicent has more variety than the standard Water/Ice combination to which many Water Pokémon are limited; it can also learn Shadow Ball (a Ghost attack), Energy Ball (a Grass attack) and Psychic (a... yeah, you can figure this out for yourself).  It lacks punch though, so loading its move slots with direct attacks is probably not the best plan.  Jellicent also has the rare and dangerous Water Spout attack, which has a varying level of power that depends on the user’s current health; unfortunately Jellicent isn’t really fast enough to take advantage of this by attacking before it gets hurt.  The truly lovely thing about Jellicent’s movepool is that it gets Recover, a tremendous asset to a defensive Pokémon.  It also has two nice passive abilities.  Cursed Body is an unusual new ability that can potentially disable attacks that hit Jellicent, preventing opponents from using them again for a few turns.  I love the way this ability fits Frillish and Jellicent’s flavour and I can say from experience that it can be very handy in a tight spot.  It’s not a reliable defence, though, so from a pragmatic standpoint Jellicent’s other ability is probably the better choice: Water Absorb, which confers total immunity to Water attacks (hence, more chances to switch in for free) and lets Jellicent heal itself when it is hit by one.  I still like Cursed Body, though, for being colourful, interesting and somewhat useful.

I really, really wish Jellicent’s designer had been a little more subtle with its gender differences.  However, this is really my only gripe with it.  It’s a unique combination of attributes wrapped in some unexpectedly dark flavour – which is always nice to see in Pokémon, because they really are surprisingly good at it when they want to be (seriously, check out Cubone, Shedinja, Yamask... for that matter, read the flavour text on some of the trading cards from the old Team Rocket sets, which really highlights just how crazy life could get in a world where most wildlife has dangerous magical powers).  I doubt Jellicent will be a top contender, but uniqueness is tremendously valuable and ensures a Pokémon a place somewhere.  It could maybe have been improved, but overall I think it’s good; we’re not quite out of ideas yet!

I hereby affirm this Pokémon’s right to exist!

Pidove, Tranquill and Unfezant

...great.  Another Normal/Flying bird Pokémon.  I have a message for Nintendo, which I shall include here on the off chance that it should somehow make its way before the board of directors in the fullness of time:

YOU GOT IT RIGHT WHEN YOU DID STARAPTOR.  YOU CAN STOP NOW.

*sigh* All right.  Let’s have a look at you, then.  Mmm-hmm... mmm-hmm... Okay, so Pidove is kinda cute, Tranquill’s all right, and Unfezant is... quite interesting, actually; the designers have put in an effort to give it the kind of sexual dimorphism that’s so common in real-world birds, and I really have to applaud this.  The male version might be considered a bit over-the-top, but frankly there are some real male birds that look even more ridiculous.  Overall, I think it’s quite a good design for a Normal/Flying bird Pokémon.  But for heaven’s sake, we’ve already had a dozen different quite good designs for Normal/Flying bird Pokémon!  Time for a walk down memory lane...

Red and Blue had four of the damn things already.  Pidgeot everyone will remember because Pidgeot was awesome; unfortunately he also wasn’t really very good.  Fearow managed to do better by being more focussed towards offense (Pokémon that specialise are usually more effective and easier to use) but still isn’t much use, and Dodrio just keeps going in the same direction.  Then there’s Farfetch’d, but we don’t talk about Farfetch’d.  Gold and Silver added Noctowl and Togetic, who... well, frankly, Noctowl and Togetic were just bad, but at least they were different; they were primarily defensive and had distinct abilities – Togetic had the whole Metronome thing, while Noctowl had a small array of psychic powers like Hypnosis and Reflect to spice things up.  Togetic, of course, later evolved into the absurdly powerful Togekiss, but I’m not going to bring Togekiss into this because I feel she genuinely deserves to exist and should be left alone.  Nintendo, not being finished yet, threw in Swellow for Ruby and Sapphire.  Swellow was more of the old sort, but got a couple of cool tricks that made her probably the best of the lot.  With the exception of Togetic and to a lesser extent Noctowl, all of these Pokémon had one really major problem: Normal and Flying attacks have almost no synergy.  They’re resisted by two of the same types (Rock and Steel) and because Normal isn’t strong against anything, the number of types they do cover between them is pretty small.  This wouldn’t be truly damning, except that – besides Noctowl and Togetic – these Pokémon have few or no other options for attacking.  This is where we come to Diamond and Pearl, and their great contribution to the generic Normal/Flying bird Pokémon pool: Staraptor.  Staraptor was blessed with three things: an exceptional attack stat, the Intimidate ability, which weakens his opponent’s attack stat when he appears and thus helps to cover his lacklustre defences, and Close Combat, a stupidly powerful Fighting-type attack that allows Staraptor to blow massive holes in many Rock- and Steel-types.  There was also Chatot, who is annoying and gimmicky and doesn’t really do anything, but is probably still stronger than Farfetch’d.  The point is that, with Diamond and Pearl, Nintendo had finally succeeded in creating a Normal/Flying-type that was actually worth using (two, in fact; mustn’t forget Togekiss).  Two out of nine ain’t that bad, right?  And with the exception of Chatot, none of them were even particularly silly-looking; some are pretty cool.  Time to quit while you’re ahead, maybe?  But no, instead they gave us Unfezant, and so here we are; me typing out a long-winded history of bird Pokémon and you sitting there reading it and wondering why I don’t have anything better to do with my life (the answer, of course, is simple: I’m a freak).  So, I’ve put this off long enough: time to actually talk about Unfezant.

Well, it doesn’t have any of what made Staraptor awesome.  It’s weaker, it’s slower, it has less useful passive abilities, it doesn’t get Close Combat or any other notable attacks outside its own types (well, except for U-Turn, but nearly all of the Pokémon I’ve mentioned here get that and it didn’t help them none, so I won’t get into why U-Turn is awesome).  So what does it get?  Well... I’m still trying to figure that out myself.  When I first met Pidove, Tranquill and Unfezant, the impression I got from the names and designs was that we were being given a non-traditional bird Pokémon with a defence and support focus, like Noctowl, only maybe this time it wouldn’t suck.  I’m still not sure why Nintendo didn’t actually do this.  Instead Unfezant is... well, a lot like Pidgeot, really, which is not a good thing.  I’m pretty sure he’s still better than Pidgeot, but that honestly isn’t difficult.  He can get a couple of vaguely interesting moves, of which the most so are probably Hypnosis – a fast Pokémon with a sleep-inducing technique is always welcome – and Wish, a time-delayed healing spell that can be used to heal other Pokémon in your party – again, always welcome, but it's also much more effective on a Pokémon that can actually take a hit, like Vaporeon.  I’m trying to think of more to say about Unfezant, but I’m honestly not sure there is anything.  From a flavour perspective, the concept is okay but nothing special, while in mechanical terms the whole thing has been done multiple times already and very little effort has been made to even disguise it as something new.  In case you can’t tell, this is incredibly grating to me.  In making Black and White, Nintendo seem to have utterly forsaken all pre-existing Pokémon – none of them appear until after you defeat the Elite Four.  The trouble is, although they were determined not to use any of the Pokémon they already had, they very clearly wanted to.  Pidove, Tranquill and Unfezant are plainly meant to fill the place of the absent Pidgey, Pidgeotto and Pidgeot.  If those Pokémon had been put into Black and White instead of the new ones, chances are no-one would have even noticed.  I don’t remember anyone complaining about the continued existence of Pidgey and Rattata when Gold and Silver came out all those years ago.

This entry really hasn’t been so much about Unfezant, which I would like to think is more of a reflection on his utter blandness than my lack of dedication to what I’m supposedly up to here.  I’m also quite happy to have found a sensible moment to elaborate on what, exactly, I think is the problem with how Nintendo is designing new Pokémon.  In summary, if they had wanted a new Flying Pokémon for Black and White... they should have bloody well made one!

I hereby deny this Pokemon's right to exist!  Pheasant season starts early this year, everybody!

Blitzle and Zebstrika

Today’s Pokémon are the electrical zebras, Blitzle and Zebstrika.  To begin with, I have to say that I love the designs of these Pokémon.  Blitzle manages the rare feat of looking cute while undeniably battle-ready, and Zebstrika is just plain badass.  If you ask me, out of all the Electric-type Pokémon I’ve ever seen, Zebstrika is the one the looks the most like it would kick you into next Wednesday if you so much as looked at it in the wrong tone of voice.  This is quite plainly not a Pokémon you want to mess with unless you’re particularly enamoured with the idea of having its hoof-prints burnt into your back.  Real-world zebras, I am led to understand, are next to impossible to tame (not that this stops people from trying) and extremely dangerous to ride because they’re just so very, very unpredictable.  Zebstrika, I feel, succeeds in channelling this flavour very well, but without losing all of Blitzle’s appeal.  Based solely on design, Zebstrika is probably one of my favourite new Pokémon.

This is part of the reason I feel it’s such a disappointment when you come to actually use it.  To begin with, being a pure Electric-type means that Zebstrika has to work a bit harder to be unique than if it had had an interesting secondary type.  I bring this up only because, when my Blitzle learned Flame Charge, I allowed myself to hope that it might pick up Fire as a secondary type when it evolved.  I’m not even sure Fire/Electric would be all that good, but it would have been interesting and probably opened up a larger selection of attacks for Zebstrika.  This, of course, is Zebstrika’s main problem, as it often is for Electric-types – many of them don’t have a great deal of variety in their attacks.  There’s nothing wrong with hammering away at your enemies with Thunderbolt, but a Pokémon needs to have something else to fall back on in case you run into something resistant or, gods forbid, immune to Electric attacks.  The Fire attack I mentioned earlier, Flame Charge, is perfectly respectable early in the game, but it’s decidedly lacklustre later on, and other than that Electric and Normal attacks are pretty much the full extent of what Zebstrika can do.  It doesn’t help that Zebstrika is significantly better at using physical attacks than special attacks, which is usually a poor choice for Electric-types because their physical attacks are of fairly dubious quality – the best of them is probably a new attack from Black and White called Wild Charge, which is still slightly less powerful than Thunderbolt and also damages the Pokémon using it, they way Take Down does.  Moreover, the one worthwhile attack Zebstrika can learn outside of the Normal and Electric types – Overheat – is a special attack.  Then again, Overheat is so ridiculously powerful that it might well be worth it, and if it’s the only energy-based attack on a move set, its side effect – halving the user’s special attack stat – matters a lot less.  Even if you take that route, though, the fact remains that Zebstrika has to hunt around for scraps in order to put together even a moderately varied spread of attacks while many other Pokémon, even most Electric-types, have a much wider selection handed to them.

Take, for instance, what is probably Zebstrika’s closest analogue in an earlier game: Manectric, an Electric-type native to Hoenn.  Manectric is a bit slower, a bit tougher, and focuses on energy attacks rather than physical ones, but overall he's pretty similar.  Manectric is pretty much the poster child for the Electric type’s lack of versatility, and even he can rely on Thunderbolt and Flamethrower: two solid, reliable attacks which, although they don’t offset each other particularly well, still give Manectric actual options in offense, most notably allowing him to toast the Grass-types that resist his Electric attacks.  Yes, Zebstrika can imitate that with Wild Charge and Overheat, but he has to dip into the weaker side of his offensive portfolio to do it; Manectric, by doing the same thing, can also add on Crunch (good for murdering Ghost- and Psychic-types) and Ice Fang (an almost unacceptably weak attack, but still the best option against some Ground-types, as well as the many Dragon-types that take quadruple damage from Ice attacks such as Flygon and Dragonite).  These are not strong options, but Zebstrika doesn’t get even those.  I have, however, discovered one fascinating little saving grace in his move-pool: if you are prepared to indulge in a little creative crossbreeding, it is possible to hatch a Blitzle with the unusual technique Me First.  Provided that the Pokémon using this tricky attack is fast enough to move before its opponent, it will copy any damaging attack the opponent is about to use, at 1½ times its normal power.  Using Me First effectively requires that you be quite good at anticipating what your opponent is about to do and, of course, that your Pokémon be particularly fast – and Zebstrika is one of the fastest Pokémon in the game that can learn it, outstripped only by Mewtwo and the curious new Bug-type Accelgor.  I am prepared to concede that using Zebstrika may well be worth it just for the look on your opponent’s face if you manage to get this right against someone who didn't realise he could do that.

Time to sum up.  For a Pokémon this awesome, Zebstrika is depressingly bad and a tragic waste of a really cool design.  It deserved to be better than just another generic Electric-type with no real versatility or purpose in life.  Unfortunately, that’s what it is.  Even its incredible speed isn’t enough to truly set it apart since Jolteon is even faster.  So, much as it pains me to say it...

I hereby (reluctantly) deny this Pokémon’s right to exist!  Let it be blasted into ionized plasma and scattered on the solar wind!

Pansage, Pansear, Panpour, Simisage, Simisear and Simipour

Six Pokémon all at once!?  What could be happening?  Well, just sit still for a minute and allow me to introduce you to the three elemental monkeys of Black and White.  I’ve decided to do these Pokémon as a group, for three reasons: first, they’re strongly associated as a group, second, my major grievances against them are shared by the whole trio, and third, they’re just so unforgivably bland I don’t think I could possibly come up with enough material if I took on each one separately.  So, without further ado: the elemental monkey Pokémon!

I appreciate the thought behind these Pokémon; I really do.  For a bit of context, let’s all think back to Red and Blue.  A big chunk of a Pokémon game’s storyline is, and always has been, travelling the countryside to obtain shiny bits of metal from trainers who have far more self esteem than you do in order to make yourself feel better about the fact that you are, in essence, an extremely violent prepubescent hobo.  Anyway, back in Red and Blue, the first of these Gym Leaders, as everyone probably remembers, was Brock, who trained Rock Pokémon.  This made him dead easy if you chose Squirtle or Bulbasaur and supposedly a little harder if you chose Charmander but honestly not really (on the other hand, heaven help you if you had Yellow and were relying on Pikachu).  Nintendo seems to have decided at some point that this was a good way of starting off the game, because the first Gym Leader of Ruby and Sapphire, Roxanne, also trained Rock-types, as did her counterpart in Diamond and Pearl, Roark.  Now, Nintendo really like their formulae, so I’m always pleased when they try something different.  This is why I rather like the Striaton City Gym, the first gym of Black and White.  Striaton City has three Gym Leaders: Cress, Cilan and Chilli – as in watercress, cilantro (which I believe is what Americans call coriander) and, well, chilli.  They’re triplets, they own a restaurant, their parents were demented food critics... you get the idea.  Each of them specialises in a different type – Water for Cress, Grass for Cilan, and Fire for Chilli – and uses one of the elemental monkeys.  You have to fight whichever of the three is strongest against your starter Pokémon, which could potentially be quite tricky.  There is good news, however: before you meet them, you will be given one of the other elemental monkeys, the one which is strong against the leader you need to beat.  I approve of this valiant attempt to teach new players the type system, which is after all at the heart of how Pokémon works.  I think there is room for improvement: it would have been more interesting, for example, to fight all three of them in succession, and perhaps would have got the point across a bit better too.  The gym’s lesson would also have been a bit more effective if the other trainers there actually used Water, Fire and Grass Pokémon – instead they just use the kind of generic Normal-type trash you always get at the start of a game (for that matter, so do the Gym Leaders themselves – they have two Pokémon each, but only one belongs to their specialist element).  However, I do applaud the effort.  Unfortunately, this is more than I can say for the elemental monkeys themselves.

Simisage, Simisear and Simipour are frightfully uninteresting Pokémon.  They are fast and strong, but not outstandingly so, and fragile, but not remarkably so.  They have a reasonable selection of moves to choose from, but not a huge one.  Among those are a couple of useful skills like Taunt and Nasty Plot, but other than their speed there’s nothing about them to make them really any better at using those techniques than a lot of the other Pokémon that learn them.  They’re not awful Pokémon, they’re just... okay.  They’re like a great big festering heap of general ambivalence and adequacy.  They’re also rather lazily done.  Upon taking a close look at these things’ numbers, and they techniques they can learn, and so on, it becomes clear to me that Nintendo has in fact made exactly the same Pokémon three times, changed its type and the elemental attacks it learns, recoloured it and given it three different stupid hairstyles in the hopes that we wouldn’t notice.  Even Nidoking and Nidoqueen are more distinct than these things and they’re not only the same type, but explicitly the same species!  I don’t think Grass, Fire or Water had any existing Pokémon that are directly comparable to Simisage, Simisear and Simipour (unless you count the design similarities between Simisear and the 4^th-generation Fire-type starter, Infernape, but frankly Simisear loses that contest before it even starts, so let’s not go there) but is that really a bad thing?  I’m sure if you ever found yourself thinking “I need a fast Grass- (or Water- or Fire-) type with mediocre defences and a narrow selection of situationally useful support moves” you could manage to pull something out of that bloated monolithic entity that is the Diamond/Pearl Pokédex.  It might not be strictly superior in every respect to the elemental monkeys, but at least it wouldn’t have one of those god-awful hairstyles.

How might these have been saved?  Well, for one thing, there was absolutely no need to make six Pokémon out of them; that, quite frankly, smells to me of the creature design department struggling to meet the board’s arbitrary target for the number of new Pokémon to cram into Black and White.  Having three completely unrelated Pokémon for Cilan, Chilli and Cress to use wouldn’t have had the same kind of pleasing symmetry, so I don’t think the idea should have been scrapped entirely, but something to make it more unique was definitely needed.  One possibility could have been to make just one Pokémon instead of three, and give it the ability to switch between types somehow, perhaps by holding different items.  It could either retain that ability when it evolved, or go into a split evolution like Eevee – either way, it would be something interesting, and potentially even unique if it could learn attacks from all three types.  If they had to be three separate Pokémon, they should have had a bit more to distinguish them from each other too – would slightly different stat spreads have been too much to ask?  Different passive abilities?  Different attacks (besides no-brainers like giving the Grass-type Seed Bomb and the Fire-type Flame Burst)?  Anyway, there’s no point putting it off any longer; you all know exactly what I’m going to say to these embodiments of mediocrity:

I hereby deny this Pokémon’s right to exist!  Let them be julienned, sautéed and poached, respectively, to be served with balsamic dressing and a glass of the house white on a midsummer’s eve!

Munna and Musharna

Does everyone remember Dumbo?  Y’know; the Disney movie about the baby elephant who could fly by flapping his stupidly large ears?  Remember that one scene where he gets wasted and hallucinates about a parade of pink elephants?  Yeah, I blocked it out for a while too, but trust me, it happens.  Well, with more than six hundred Pokémon now, we’ve got a Pokémon for just about everything... including trippy Disney dream sequences.  Meet Munna and Musharna, the imaginary pink elephant Pokémon.

Yeah.  It’s kinda like that.

Let’s go back to something else everyone should remember: Alakazam.  Alakazam was the archetypal Psychic Pokémon of Red and Blue: extremely fast and ludicrously powerful.  A prepubescent boy could deck him with a single punch, but Alakazam didn’t care because he had the power to unmake worlds by thought alone.  Starmie, Mr. Mime and Jynx were more or less taken from the same mould, and Gold and Silver continued the trend with Espeon, Girafarig and Xatu (not that Girafarig or Xatu could unmake worlds, or for that matter anything more than a small meteorite, but it was something they aspired to).  There were also bulky, defensive Psychic-types, though: Hypno, Slowbro and Exeggutor, then Slowking and Wobuffet in Gold and Silver – and it’s this archetype that has been dominant since then, producing Grumpig, Lunatone, Chimecho and Claydol in Ruby and Sapphire and culminating with the nigh-indestructible Bronzong in Diamond and Pearl.  This focus on defence and support is Musharna’s heritage, and she does it extremely well – while still packing quite a punch when she needs to.  The question is, is she good enough for me to judge her worthy of existence?

If I have a complaint about Munna, it’s that she steps on Drowzee’s toes.  A lot.  Not only do they have the same type and do the same job, Munna walks all over Drowzee’s design as well.  Munna and Musharna were introduced as an utterly shameless tie-in to Pokémon’s new online area, the Dream World, and as a result they have dream powers, which are part of the in-game explanation for how the Dream World works... somehow.  I don’t know; I kind of zoned out when Professor Fennel and her creepy girlfriend started talking about it.  Anyway, Drowzee and Hypno have power over sleep and dreams, and they feed on dreams; that’s always been their shtick.  Not only does Munna do the same thing, Musharna actually goes one step further and is said to have the power to make dreams into reality.  To cap it all off, they even seem to be based on the same animal, which isn’t really an elephant but looks like it should be because no ten-year-old on the planet knows what a tapir is.  Apparently, both Drowzee and Munna are based on a mythical dream-eating spirit called a baku, which is also the word for a tapir in modern Japanese because the animal looks a lot like depictions of baku in classical Japanese prints and carvings.  In short, if Nintendo had wanted a defensive Psychic-type Pokémon with powers related to dreams to use as an in-game lead-in to the new Dream World mechanics... well, they had one.  There wasn’t really any need to add Musharna to the game; she’s more or less interchangeable with Hypno for all intents and purposes.

Unfortunately for Hypno... Musharna’s actually better.  She’s just as good at taking energy-based attacks, while being much better at taking physical ones and at using her own powers to fight back – and what she loses in return isn’t all that important.  Hypno was able to feign competence at physical combat where Musharna cannot, which is of limited relevance at best.  Musharna also moves like a drunken walrus, but Hypno wasn’t anywhere near fast enough for his speed to be an asset anyway.  Musharna also learns most of the same useful techniques as Hypno, with the notable exceptions of Nasty Plot, which dramatically improves the user’s special attack stat, and Switcheroo, which swaps held items with the target.  However, Musharna also has something Hypno doesn’t, and it’s big: the ability to heal herself by using Moonlight while Hypno has to put himself to sleep with Rest to heal.  This is a big deal for a defensive Pokémon, even if Moonlight isn’t the best healing technique out there.  The truly worrying thing about all this is that Hypno might try to maintain his precarious individuality by focussing on the one thing he does that Musharna doesn’t: stalking and kidnapping schoolchildren.

My Musharna has served me faithfully and well, and will doubtless continue to do so, but on balanced reflection I have to admit that Munna and Musharna are not Pokémon that needed to be made, or should have been.  Is Musharna a better Pokémon than Hypno?  Yes, I believe so.  Is she better than a hypothetical evolved form of Hypno that could have been made to fill exactly the same place in both flavour and game mechanics?  Probably not – and that “probably” slides up to a “definitely” if Hypno had somehow gained access to Recover in the process.  Even without evolving Hypno, there are a number of ways he could have been improved – adding Recover to his move-pool, as I said, or giving him a powerful new ability, attack, or even an item specific to him, along the lines of the Thick Club that renders Marowak usable.  Munna and Musharna are imaginary pink elephants for the sake of imaginary pink elephants, and at some point during the design process someone in the room really should have stood up and asked “wait, why are we putting in imaginary pink elephants again?”

I hereby deny this Pokémon’s right to exist!  Let it be dissolved into the shattered dreams of a thousand children who wanted to be firemen and princesses but became lawyers and actuaries instead!