Tynamo, Eelektrik and Eelektross

Today’s Pokémon are the latest addition to the stable of Electric Pokémon: Tynamo, Eelektrik and Eelektross.  These ugly-looking things are the misbegotten spawn of two similar-looking but very distinct creatures: the electric eel (which isn’t really an eel at all, phylogenetically speaking) and the lamprey (which isn’t an eel either but looks like it should be).  Tynamo are about as close as you get to Magikarp in Black and White: they’re distinctly based on larval eels and they’re extremely weak on their own (but can co-operate to produce more powerful attacks).  This is aptly reflected in their total inability to learn any attacks aside from the ones they start with: Tackle, Thunder Wave, Charge Beam and Spark.  It also smoothes over the sharp change of Tynamo’s evolution to Eelektrik; this is when it becomes a proper adult.  Now, I think Eelektrik and Eelektross are very well-done.  Eelektrik looks a bit vacant; Eelektross has much more personality, but both recognize that an electric eel on its own is a bit boring in a world where electricity manipulation is not especially unusual and mitigate the situation by taking on characteristics of lampreys, leech-like cartilaginous fish with mouths like plungers lined with circular rows of teeth, as well as some features of bioluminescent deep ocean eels.  They fight with a combination of their electrical powers and muscle that nicely reflects the different influences in the design, and I think Eelektross even has a certain goofy charm about him.  That said, I do have a couple of specific grievances against these Pokémon.  The first is against their names.  Now, Pokémon have been given some fairly silly names in the past and these are not really bad names in that respect.  My problem with them is that they’re simply not that easy to say; the long ‘e’ sound in ‘eel’ messes with the natural stress of the word ‘electric,’ which normally has almost no stress on the first syllable, making it sound forced and awkward (and I write this after consulting a friend who studies phonetics and speech therapy).  They don’t roll off the tongue as Tynamo (by way of example) does.  I don’t often talk about names much and I’ll concede this is a minor point, but it’s not a good thing when people refer to a Pokémon as “the electric eel” because Eelektross just doesn’t sound right.

The other thing that bugs me is their levitation.  In the games, Tynamo, Eelektrik and Eelektross can levitate and are thus immune to Ground-type attacks, which is absolutely fine... the problem is that it seems to be completely missing from their flavour, which is bizarre because normally the Pokédex very clearly calls out Pokémon with the Levitate ability.  It says quite explicitly that Eelektross lives in the ocean and can crawl onto the shore using his arms to attack prey, both of which seem at odds with any suggestion that he can fly.  What’s more, their art and sprites (with the exception of Tynamo’s) depict them as though they normally move by slithering along the ground.  A lot of Electric Pokémon can be taught to fly by manipulating magnetic fields with the Magnet Rise attack, but only Magnemite moves that way normally (ironically Magnemite doesn’t actually have the in-game Levitate ability that Eelektross has), so I’d still expect some kind of explanation if this is something their entire species can do, especially since it isn’t obvious how they’re doing it or why it was thought to fit the concept.  It’s almost as though the designers decided that they were going to make an Electric-type with Levitate, started to make one, forgot what the original plan was, finished the design and then remembered why they started in the first place and slapped the ability on at the last minute without changing the flavour aspects to accommodate it, which... well, it’s more or less the same degree of incompetence I’ve come to expect from them but it’s a very different kind, which is odd because Game Freak’s incompetence is normally very predictable.  Maybe they had a new designer working on this one.  Hmm.  Anyway, in spite of all the time I’ve spent complaining about this I still think Eelektrik and Eelektross are a very cool design; it’s just a shame that one of their most important abilities was neglected completely since it wouldn’t have been very difficult at all to tweak them to address it.

So why would you begin designing a Pokémon from the concept “an Electric-type with Levitate” anyway?  Answer: believe it or not, it’s one of the most sensible ideas Game Freak have ever had from a competitive standpoint.  Electric Pokémon only have one defensive weakness, and that’s Ground-type attacks – this is why Electric/Flying is such a powerful combination – and Levitate lets a Pokémon shed that weakness without picking up the vulnerabilities to Rock and Ice attacks associated with the Flying type.  The practical upshot of this is that Eelektross has no weaknesses.  None.  Only two other Pokémon, Spiritomb and Sableye, can make that boast.  This property makes Eelektross significantly tougher than his defensive scores, which are only average, would suggest.  Since Eelektross is very slow, that’s important; he needs to be able to take a hit or two.  It also allows him to make a decent tank-style Pokémon even with no recovery techniques aside from Rest as he can actually afford to spend a couple of turns asleep if you’re careful.  Eelektross’ main asset, though, is his ability to hit like a sledgehammer on both sides of Pokémon’s offensive coin – physical and special.  Many Pokémon can only make effective use of one of the two attack types and can be thwarted relatively easily by a Pokémon with enough defensive power on one side (Blissey, for instance, stops many special attackers completely barring an especially potent Focus Blast, while few physical attackers can break Ferrothorn or Skarmory without a super-effective attack).  It’s impossible to mount such a reliable defence against Eelektross, who has a number of strong attacks on both sides, such as Thunderbolt, Wild Charge, Flamethrower, Rock Slide, Grass Knot, Acrobatics, U-Turn and Volt Switch to make use of his good stats.  With access to the very exclusive Coil attack, he can pump up his physical attack and defence stats to make himself even more dangerous, or alternatively he can blast targets with a preliminary Acid Spray to make them more vulnerable to his special attacks.  Being so painfully slow does neuter him to an extent, since it makes it much easier to chip away at him with strong neutral attacks, but  he remains a powerful and unpredictable threat with offensive versatility matched by very few Electric-types.

Eelektric and Eelektross have certain blemishes that annoy me greatly (Tynamo, for his part, doesn’t; if I were a Game Freak designer I would be perfectly happy to sign my name to Tynamo), which I think I’ve harped on quite enough.  The idea is a cool one though, which was executed with a fair degree of competence and created a Pokémon with an interesting and powerful but not excessively strong combination of abilities.  In short, this one’s a keeper for sure.

I hereby affirm this Pokémon’s right to exist!

Klink, Klang and Klinklang

Pokémon, it is known, may not all be completely natural; many owe their existence to human activity in the last few centuries.  Voltorb and Electrode, whose bodies are modelled on Pokéballs, are almost certainly artificial in some way.  Grimer and Muk were born from the toxic waste of human industrialisation.  Magnemite and Magneton certainly seem artificial but their true nature is extremely mysterious.  Today’s Pokémon, Klink, Klang and Klinklang, continue the theme.  These bizarre Steel-type Pokémon seem to be entirely mechanical and evolve by adding on extra components.  The resident Professor Tree of the Unova region, Professor Juniper, investigates Klink during the course of the game and determines that they did not exist in Unova more than one hundred years ago, when they appeared suddenly in an area called the Chargestone Cave.  How she can possibly have figured this out is beyond me, but (in fairness to Aurea Juniper) she’s probably the least incompetent of the regional professors to date, so I’m inclined to take her word for it.  Klink are made up of two gears meshed together, which seem to begin life as independent beings and have to find each other.  This is complicated somewhat by the fact that Klink apparently have soulmates: every gear has one, and only one, matching partner and no other gear will fit.  Unfortunately for Klink, they need their partners to survive; it’s the rotation of the two meshed gears that produces the energy they need to survive (somehow).  So... I guess if it doesn’t find its one and only partner quickly enough... it dies?  I can see they were trying to do something interesting but I’m not sure Game Freak thought this through (not to mention, Magneton is already a mechanical Pokémon made up of smaller formerly-independent units – I’m not too upset about that one though, because the gear design is fitting and, at least, amusing).  The other interesting thing about these Pokémon is what we learn in one of Klang’s Pokédex entries: the express emotion by varying the speed and direction of their rotating gears.  On the one hand, this implies a rather stilted range of emotion, since the different gears wouldn’t be able to change direction independently... on the other hand, that’s exactly what you’d expect of a mechanical Pokémon, so it actually does make sense.  Everything else in the Pokédex boils down to “this Pokémon has energy powers” (which, incidentally, suggests they should be a lot better at using special attacks than they are), but overall Klink, Klang and Klinklang are not nearly as bad as I thought they would be.  I’m at a loss as to what they add to the game that Magneton doesn’t – the plot point about Professor Juniper studying the Klink in Chargestone Cave, for instance, would still have made perfect sense if she had been studying Magnemite – but they’re not actually badly designed per se.  I’m far less mad at them than I was at, say, Gigalith.  So, now that’s out of the way, on to the mechanics of our mechanical friends...

Klinklang has one absolutely wonderful blessing that other Pokémon can only dream of getting their hands on: the Shift Gear technique.  This move doubles its speed stat and boosts its physical attack stat all in one turn.  This is fantastic!  Klinklang is already strong and fast – not exceptionally so, but it can certainly compete – so after using Shift Gear it becomes frighteningly battle-ready.  It’s got a second neat little signature move to use as a powerful, if somewhat inaccurate, primary attack as well: Gear Grind, a Steel-type attack that fires two gears to strike the target one after the other (the useful thing about this is that a Pokémon protecting itself with a Substitute will be struck by the second gear if the Substitute is broken by the first one, as with, for instance, Marowak’s Bonemerang).  The question is... where do you go from there?  Steel is a wonderful defensive type but a poor offensive one, strong against only two other elements and weak against four; you can’t rely on Steel attacks alone if you want to be a sweeper, which Klinklang clearly does.  Unfortunately, aside from Gear Grind, its offensive movepool is a complete joke.  Klinklang’s other good physical attacks are Return (a powerful attack which most Pokémon can learn but few will use, since Normal is one of the only attack types that’s arguably worse than Steel) and... um...

...yeah, Klinklang’s other good physical attack is Return.

This is probably the worst offensive movepool I’ve seen in any Pokémon I’ve looked at so far.  The only one I can think of that comes close is Lilligant and at least she can use Hidden Power because she’s a special attacker.  Speaking of which, Klinklang does actually get some decent special Electric attacks like Thunderbolt, but his special attack score is mediocre, so they won’t do him much good.  The exception is Volt Switch, which allows a Pokémon to switch out after doing damage and is always good for a tactical advantage – and why the hell not?  It’s not like there’s anything else you could possibly teach Klinklang!  I don’t think I’d be pushing it to say that the only reasonable moveset for Klinklang is [Shift Gear – Gear Grind – Return – Volt Switch].  Anything else is a gimmick.  I guess you could use Thunder Wave, but slowing its opponents down is quite honestly the least of Klinklang’s worries.  If you really want to revel in how awful Klinklang’s movepool is, Rock Smash gives you a Fighting-type attack which will be slightly stronger than Gear Grind against some Steel-types.  Screech will weaken your targets’ defences and maybe scare them off or kill them faster.  And heck, if you’re planning to use Klinklang on a rain team for some reason, why not try Thunder?  It won’t actually be good, but it might at least be unexpected!  Klinklang’s passive abilities – Plus and Minus – add insult to injury; these abilities are useless in a normal battle, and give you an unexciting special attack boost in a double battle if you use Klinklang alongside another Pokémon with one of the same abilities... that is, use it alongside another Pokémon that shares its lacklustre defences and vulnerability to Earthquake, which, as strategies go, is about on par with smothering yourself in honey and wading into a nest of Brazilian fire-ants.

It’s a shame Klinklang is so terrible because it otherwise would’ve had a real shot at making me like it.  Although its design is similar to Magneton’s, it has enough quirks and evidence of real effort on the designers’ part that I would have at least felt guilty about trashing it, and in battle it handles completely differently to Magneton (who’s a high-powered special attacker).  As is, though, Game Freak massively overestimated the advantage they were giving it with Shift Gear and consequently all the thought that went into this Pokémon (quite a lot, I suspect) goes wasted.  Such a shame.

I hereby deny this Pokémon’s right to exist!  Let it be melted down for scrap, recast into a statue of an obscure Russian emperor, looted by Bolsheviks, sold to a Parisian art gallery, put into storage for ten years, lost, found, melted down again and minted into coins for the Celadon City slot machines!

Foongus and Amoonguss

Oh, hey, a Pokéball.

Wait, wait.  I’m not falling for that.  It’s not really a Pokéball; it’s a Voltorb.

Hang on; there are no old Pokémon in Unova!  I’m safe!  Which means... whoohoo, free stuff!  Now, what’s ins-

...damnit, Foongus!

Today’s Pokémon are Foongus and Amoonguss (and yes, I knew what the adult form was going to be called as soon as I met the juvenile).  Foongus and Amoonguss are mushroom Pokémon that use their patterned caps to imitate Pokéballs in order to aggravate and enrage players, who expect to pick up an item but get a battle instead.  Old hands will recognize a familiar theme: that of Voltorb and Electrode, the irritable and highly explosive Electric Pokémon from the original games who pull the same trick in power plants as Foongus does in forests.  As you may already know, I am extremely touchy about the resurrection and reuse of old themes (especially ones that were annoying the first time).  Foongus isn’t just an old idea, he also makes less sense than Voltorb and Electrode.  Think about it.  Why – or, more importantly given the timescale involved, how – would a wild animal (plant, fungus, whatever) evolve to look like a man-made item like a Pokéball?  Voltorb is a Pokémon that explicitly didn’t exist before modern times, and its first appearance coincided with the introduction of mass-produced Pokéballs; it’s almost certain that Voltorb’s appearance and anatomy are not entirely natural.  Foongus has no such excuse.  The Pokédex doesn’t know why they look like Pokéballs (at least it admits that it doesn’t know, which is more than the blasted device usually offers), but Foongus seem to practice this imitation specifically to troll humans, using the disguise to draw people in, then blasting them with toxic spores.  Do they want to avoid us or not?  Amoonguss... Amoonguss strains credulity even further, if that’s possible.  They apparently use the Pokéball-patterned caps on their arms to lure prey by performing a kind of languid, swaying dance.  I will allow a moment for the absurdity of this to sink in.  They attempt to lure prey – presumably other wild Pokémon – by mimicking the appearance of a device used by humans to capture and enslave wild Pokémon.  What’s more, it explicitly doesn’t even work!  Amoonguss’ imitation of a Pokéball is so terrible that most Pokémon can distinguish them from the real thing almost effortlessly!  And I can understand why!  Unless you’re looking directly down at them, Foongus and Amoonguss look nothing like Pokéballs; a mushroom cap just isn’t the right shape.  Voltorb are too large for a perfect imitation and don’t have the button on the front of a Pokéball, but at least they’re actually spherical, and their bodies have the shiny, metallic finish of a real Pokéball, which Foongus and Amoonguss certainly don’t.  This... this is just a failed species.  Something so incredibly bad at its own survival tactics shouldn’t even exist, much less thrive!  Seriously, Game Freak!  Why!?

Y’know, I could totally finish this entry right here and I would be completely happy with it; I think I’ve made my point.  Let’s keep going anyway.

Oh, and by the way, Amoonguss, if you want to try claiming that “mushroom Pokémon” is a new and original idea, Parasect and Breloom would like a word with you.  The difference between them and you, Amoonguss, is that, while Parasect is an insect controlled by a giant parasitic mushroom and Breloom is a kick-boxing dinosaur with fungal traits, you are just a mushroom.  A poisonous mushroom, sure, but that’s hardly creative or original.  You had your chance at being interesting and you blew it by going with the dumb Pokéball thing, so shut your boring face and show everyone what you can actually do.

To give credit where it’s due, Amoonguss is not a weak Pokémon.  He’s a Grass/Poison dual-type, which means he has to follow Venusaur, Vileplume, Victreebel and Roserade.  Victreebel and Roserade are heavily aggressive Pokémon while Venusaur is something of a tank; Amoonguss is a support Pokémon like many other Grass-types, including Vileplume (full disclosure: Vileplume is my favourite Pokémon and I am bitterly offended by any attempts to encroach on her territory).  From an offensive standpoint Grass/Poison is at best dubious, but it’s fairly solid defensively, bestowing useful resistances to Water, Electric and Fighting attacks.  Amoonguss, likewise, has reasonable but not particularly impressive attack and special attack stats and is horribly slow, but luckily is quite bulky.  None of this is any reason to use Amoonguss though.  If you’re going to use Amoonguss, you’re using him for one thing: Spore, the only 100%-accurate sleep-inducing technique in the game, which is exclusive to him, Parasect, Breloom, and that jerk Smeargle (who learns everything).  Never use Amoonguss unless you plan to abuse this attack, and abuse it hard, because the rest of his movepool is... lacklustre.  You should probably take the time to get an Amoonguss with Stun Spore by crossbreeding with one of the dozen other Grass Pokémon that learn it, and Toxic is a decent choice if you like waiting for things to shrivel up and die, but neither of those is really very interesting; spreading debilitating ailments is just what Grass Pokémon do.  Synthesis for healing is definitely worth consideration.  Beyond that... I’m really not sure.  In terms of direct damage, I don’t think any of Amoonguss’ attacks are worth looking at aside from Giga Drain, which will make him tougher by augmenting the healing provided by Synthesis.  Sludge Bomb will do reasonable damage but it has a fairly high chance of poisoning its target, which is actually a bad thing for Amoonguss for two reasons: first, ‘regular’ (i.e. non-Toxic) poison is easily the least-harmful status affliction in the game, and second, Pokémon can only have one such affliction at a time, so being poisoned will render them immune to sleep, which is Amoonguss’ one big trick.  On a similar note, Amoonguss’ ability – Effect Spore – is an absolutely terrible one for him.  If an opponent makes physical contact with Amoonguss, there is a chance that it will be paralyzed, poisoned, or put to sleep, at random – so if Amoonguss was trying to use Spore, Toxic or Stun Spore on the same turn, there’s a chance that the effect will be blocked by another status condition (possibly a much less useful one) brought on by Effect Spore and his turn will be wasted.  Breloom and Parasect have this non-ability too, but they at least have access to other ability choices (much stronger ones) while Amoonguss is going to be stuck with it until Game Freak decides to release his ‘hidden’ ability.

Spore alone is such a wonderful technique that Amoonguss is almost worth using just for that, even though the rest of his options are mediocre.  However, I don’t care.  His design is terrible.  Nothing about Foongus and Amoonguss is new, nothing about them is interesting, heck, I don’t think anything about them even makes sense!  Get them out of my sight!

I hereby deny this Pokémon’s right to exist!  Let it be forced to justify itself before a jury of irate Voltorb!

Karrablast, Escavalier, Shelmet and Accelgor

I mentioned recently that it’s been a good year for Bug Pokémon, and it continues to be... well, interesting at least... with these curious specimens: Karrablast, Escavalier, Shelmet and Accelgor.  Shelmet is a fairly unexciting pink snail-like Pokémon that lives inside a helmet and sprays acid when people bother it, and Karrablast is an utterly unremarkable horned beetle that... sprays acid when people bother it.  Things get interesting when we put them together.  When Karrablast and Shelmet are “bathed in an electric-like energy together” (obfuscating Pokédex-speak for “when you trade a Karrablast for a Shelmet”) both of them evolve in a rather unusual way: Karrablast swipes Shelmet’s armour.  With the protection of Shelmet’s thick armour plates, Karrablast becomes the insect knight Escavalier, a veritable battle-tank of a Pokémon, while Shelmet, freed of the restrictions of that same heavy armour, becomes a light, darting ninja bug: the evasive Accelgor.  Leaving aside Escavalier and Accelgor themselves for a moment, this is a very fun way for a Pokémon to evolve.  The implementation is a bit clunky – it’s hard to understand why you should have to trade one for the other, and the hint the Pokédex tries to give you just makes it more confusing (especially since there actually are Pokémon – Nosepass and Magneton – that evolve on exposure to the unusual electrical fields of certain areas in the game world).  However, it’s nicely done in that it’s a unique evolutionary mechanism directly related to the unique relationship between the two Pokémon.  As with almost everything, it’s not entirely without precedent; there are two other Pokémon that rely on other species for their evolution.  Slowpoke, famously, evolves into Slowbro when its tail is bitten by a Shellder as it fishes; the Shellder, interestingly, changes form as well.  Even more interestingly, we are repeatedly told that Shellder can actually be dislodged from Slowbro’s tail by particularly fierce attacks, causing it to revert to Slowpoke.  Red and Blue seem to have been utterly unsure how to represent all this and just gave up and had Slowpoke evolve by level as most Pokémon do (probably the best they could do at the time, but still something of a cop-out).  The other Pokémon I’m thinking of is Mantine, who evolves from Mantyke by levelling up while in a party with a Remoraid (the fish Pokémon that cling to the undersides of Mantine’s wings).  The Remoraid doesn’t attach to Mantyke or anything; in fact he’s completely unaffected by the process.  I’m not sure why his presence alone should cause Mantyke to evolve, and it’s not really explained (what’s more, Remoraid and Mantine don’t even live in the same places most of the time).  What I’m getting at is that these evolutions have always required a little suspension of disbelief.  Shelmet and Karrablast have a creative evolutionary process, even if it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and its execution, if strange, still compares favourably to Slowbro and Mantine.

Shelmet and Karrablast themselves are frightfully bland Pokémon, Karrablast especially – Shelmet at least has a somewhat eccentric form, even if he doesn’t have any noteworthy special abilities, while Karrablast is just a beetle that happens to be associated with Shelmet in some vaguely-worded manner (also, like Remoraid and Mantine, they’re not actually found anywhere near each other).  I would also like to note that, although spraying an acidic liquid is the only remarkable ability Karrablast is explicitly said to have, Karrablast can’t actually do that.  Escavalier’s Pokédex entries are similarly misleading; we are told that “they fly around at high speed, striking with their pointed spears.”  Sounds fine, except that Escavalier is one of the slowest Pokémon in the game; only fourteen are slower, eight of which lead a completely sedentary lifestyle.  This Pokémon is, I kid you not, outrun by a sloth, a coffin, a snail, a number of rocks, an acorn, a sea anemone, and a tree.  Never have I read a Pokédex entry so blatantly at odds with the actual characteristics of the Pokémon it describes.  Did they read what they were writing?  Thankfully Accelgor makes sense.  Having lost his heavy armour, Accelgor becomes one of the fastest Pokémon in all existence.  He also becomes vulnerable to heat and dryness, so he wraps himself in a cloth-like membrane to keep his body moist.  These are properties that actually are reflected in what Accelgor can do.  I am very confused at the crash-helmet he seems to be wearing, though, since the rest of his design seems to aim for a ninja flavour.  I guess race-car drivers wear helmets a bit like that, which fits with his blistering speed, but it’s still odd and slightly jarring.

So, what do these Pokémon do?  Escavalier is broadly similar to Scizor, the evolved form of Scyther: both are strong, tough, slow (though in Scizor’s case only moderately so) Bug/Steel dual-types.  I am reluctantly going to recycle a phrase I used a few months back and describe Escavalier as “Scizor, with bigger numbers and fewer options” – stronger, tougher, slower, and capable of significantly greater damage thanks to Escavalier’s Megahorn attack, which easily beats out Scizor’s strongest Bug-type attacks for sheer power, but lacking the versatility that really makes Scizor worth using.  Scizor, notoriously, doesn’t care that he’s slow because he can smack you around with Bullet Punch, the Steel-type equivalent to Quick Attack, which gains a nice power boost from his Technician ability (Escavalier’s passive skills, by contrast, are unremarkable) and can do surprisingly heavy damage.  U-Turn lets Scizor do damage while bouncing out of play to be replaced by another Pokémon.  If he really wants to, he can be fast with Agility, or even use Baton Pass to give the benefits of Agility or Swords Dance to another Pokémon.  Escavalier can’t do any of that; he works on a strictly point-and-stab basis, and he doesn’t even have the offensive movepool to be particularly good at that.  Don’t get me wrong; Escavalier’s Megahorn will murder things, but it’s also his one big trick, and Bug attacks are pretty easy to resist.

Accelgor is far more interesting.  I’m not sure what exactly you’re supposed to do with him, but I’m sure you could work something out.  Accelgor is a pure Bug-type with poor defences, excellent special attack, and a speed stat most conveniently measured as a fraction of the speed of light.  His passive ability, Hydration, automatically cures him of poison, burns, and other such ailments at the end of every turn while it’s raining, which is a nice fit with his design but no more useful for him than it would be for anyone else.  He learns Recover but doesn’t have the defences to make use of it.  He’s fast enough to be a sweeper but I’m not sure he’s powerful enough or learns enough attacks – then again, a set of Bug Buzz, Giga Drain, Focus Blast and maybe U-Turn would be far from terrible.  He’s the fastest Pokémon in the game that learns Me First, a technique which mimics a damaging attack the target is about to use, at 150% of its normal power, if you’re fast enough to go first (yes, you are) – that still requires that you be able to predict what your opponent is going to do, though, which can be tricky.  Accelgor can, in theory, put things to sleep with Yawn, but there’s a delay before Yawn takes effect that may cost him.  He learns Baton Pass but no moves of note that he could pass.  He learns Spikes, but doesn’t have the defences to stick around for long to lay several layers (although, with U-Turn or Baton Pass, he could lay a single layer and then be gone, only to return later to plague your enemies).  With the fastest Encore in the game, Accelgor is also good at locking down defensive Pokémon, who’ll be stuck using only one move; unfortunately for him, Encore isn’t what it used to be and lasts only 3 turns rather than the 4-8 turns it would last in Diamond and Pearl.  Again, I... really am stumped by Accelgor.  He has such an eclectic array of strengths and powers that I’m certain he’d be extremely powerful in the right hands, but he’s far from user-friendly.

I went into this intending to judge these Pokémon together, since they’re joined at the hip, as it were, but the more I think about it the more I realise that I like Accelgor a whole lot more than Escavalier.  Escavalier’s probably stronger, I’ll give him that, but Accelgor’s much more unique, and is actually good at the things he says he’s good at.  Shelmet needs more detail because he’s very dull as-is, and I think he deserved a better partner for that fascinating evolution, which in itself could have used a bit of work, but in comparison to existing Pokémon, I think Shelmet and Accelgor, at least, are worth keeping.

I hereby affirm Accelgor's right to exist!  Let Escavalier be sacrificed that its friends might live!

Emolga

Okay, guys, we’re on a roll: Haxorus, Galvantula, Reuniclus and Ferrothorn; that’s four in a row!  And the next entry in the Pokédex is...

...yeah, I totally just jinxed myself, didn’t I?

My next Pokémon is Emolga, the cute electrical rodent Pokémon.  Yes, you’re experiencing déjà vu for a reason.  It’s a glitch in Game Freak’s design process; it happens when they change nothing.  Because, yes, this is exactly what you think it is: a flying Pikachu.

As far as I am aware, Pikachu wasn’t originally intended to be the mascot of the Pokémon franchise; it just sort of happened.  Pikachu wasn’t the very first Pokémon designed (that honour belongs to Rhydon) nor the creator’s favourite (I believe that one’s Poliwhirl); his massive popularity probably stems from being Ash’s partner in the TV show.  There are a number of factors which I suspect played into that: the show’s writers didn’t want Ash to begin his journey with one of the three ordinary starters, or with another Fire, Water or Grass Pokémon, but they did want him to have a Pokémon whose type had strengths and weaknesses that were easy to understand (say he’d started with a Nidoran: they resist Fighting attacks for what reason, again?) as well as potential for simple elemental badassery, and they wanted it to be one that was quite rare but not extremely unusual (like, say, Dratini, or anything from the Ghost- or Psychic-types).  There really aren’t that many Pokémon in Red and Blue that fit all of those criteria.  Anyway, Pikachu became Ash’s hetero life-mate, Pokémon unexpectedly became one of the most popular franchises on the planet, and the rest is history.  The thing is, Pikachu worked – and what do Game Freak do when they realise they’re onto a good thing?  That’s right: they do it again... and again... and again... and thus we have Pichu (the midget Pikachu from Gold and Silver), Plusle and Minun (the cheap Pikachu knockoffs from Ruby and Sapphire) and Pachirisu (the slightly-less-obvious but also slightly-more-useless Pikachu knockoff from Diamond and Pearl).  Of these, I most despise Plusle and Minun for being (and this is not my opinion but a statement of fact) Pikachu twins with + and – signs stamped on them.  Their purpose in life is to play cheerleader to other Pokémon, and they get a starring role as the player and rival’s partners in one of the side-games, Pokémon Ranger (which, in my opinion, is completely undeserved, but hey, whatever) but are otherwise unremarkable.  Pichu, I suppose, is forgivable on account of being essentially part of an existing Pokémon, as well as part of the introduction of the new breeding mechanics, and Pachirisu is, um... well, you can tell they were trying; it’s not entirely their fault that they failed.  At least you don’t notice immediately that you’re looking at Pikachu 3.0...

...which brings me to Emolga.  To her credit, Emolga is easily the least offensive of all the Pokémon I’ve been talking about; a flying squirrel is actually an interesting design base and different enough from the previous incarnations of the cute electric rodent archetype to draw my attention, if only for a moment, from the fact that she is still following that archetype.  Emolga, like all these Pokémon, produces and stores electricity in her cheeks.  She then releases the energy through her “wings” as she glides, in order to... well, I... don’t know, she just does.  Presumably it helps her stay aloft somehow?  That would be a decent way of tying the Electric element in with the flying squirrel design, but it would be nice if they had actually explained it.  It also would have been nice if, given that the designers had two Pokédex entries to work with (one for Black and one for White) they had told us something different in each; the fact that they didn’t suggests to me that they were out of ideas.  As with Pachirisu, you can tell that Game Freak were trying with Emolga (and, I might add, doing a much better job of it) but my honest opinion is still that they were trying to do the wrong thing: hark back to Pikachu (and yes, this is what they were doing: cute rodent, electrical cheek-sacks, yellow and black colour scheme) when they could have just used Pikachu.  No-one would have minded; people like Pikachu!  I understand what Game Freak were doing by deciding that they weren’t going to use any old Pokémon in Black and White – I really do – and it was a good plan, but it would have stayed a good plan only if they had actually followed through with it, and Emolga is yet another example of their failure to do so.

I’m ranting at Emolga again, but I ought to stress once more that she’s actually something of a turn-up for the books – and not just her design either.  Let’s compare her with the elder electric rodents on a mechanical level.  Like Pikachu, Plusle and Minun, she’s a fast and manoeuvrable Pokémon with a focus on attack power (Pachirisu is a complete about-face from this trend, being a heavily defence-oriented Pokémon, but Pachirisu is also a complete about-face from anything resembling combat effectiveness, so this isn’t exactly a selling point).  Plusle and Minun like to use Baton Pass, and they’re not nearly as incompetent at this as they are at everything else because they have a lot of buffs to pass to teammates (most importantly, Nasty Plot) and can also (in theory) heal other Pokémon with Wish, so well done them.  Emolga can do that sort of thing too, but has fewer support options (no Wish, no Nasty Plot) and isn’t generally as good at it.  Pikachu’s thing is overwhelming damage, which he can achieve by holding an item known as a Light Ball that doubles his power, making him stronger than just about any other Electric Pokémon.  Being unevolved, he’s insanely fragile and not quite fast enough, so using Pikachu is mostly a demonstration of how hard-core you are if you can avoid getting the damn thing killed, but the results if it works are nothing short of spectacular.  Emolga, if nothing else, is faster and tougher than Pikachu, but she’ll never match his damage output.  Her best bet at coming close is to double her speed with Agility and then smack things around with Electro Ball, which does damage based on how much faster you are than your target, but in fairness Galvantula does it better.  Between Electro Ball, Air Slash and, say, Volt Switch, though, she can achieve a degree of power and manoeuvrability that at least falls short of being entirely terrible.  Emolga’s saving grace is her element.  She’s a Flying-type as well as an Electric-type, and Electric/Flying is nothing short of wonderful.  It invites rather unfortunate comparisons to Zapdos, but it’s also five resistances and an immunity to only two weaknesses.  Emolga is, I’ll be honest here, pretty much the bottom of the barrel as far as Black and White go: her stats, apart from speed, are mediocre and she doesn’t have a lot of attack options, but she still trounces Plusle, Minun and Pachirisu in terms of usability.  Pachirisu, I want you to reflect on that for a moment.

Emolga’s design is a good start, I’ll give her that much.  What’s more, she’s actually not that bad in comparison to what she could have been.  Bearing in mind, though, that what she could have been is one of the absolute worst Pokémon of all time, and that her design needs fleshing out, and that she’s still just a newer version of an old idea (albeit a pretty good newer version) I’m not going to keep her.  As with so many other Pokémon from Black and White, Emolga is a surrogate for older Pokémon the designers were desperate to include but determined not to.  This, at the risk of sounding blunt, is dumb.

I hereby deny this Pokémon's right to exist!  Let it be snared in a power line to provide electricity for our homes and families!

Ferroseed and Ferrothorn

Today’s Pokémon are Ferroseed and Ferrothorn, the... uh... the... spiky... metal... plant-things...

Google, help me out here.

...y’know, I don’t think anyone has a completely satisfactory explanation as to what Ferroseed and Ferrothorn are.  People think they’re based on the durian, the world’s most passive-aggressive fruit, which comes from South-East Asia.  It tastes delicious, smells revolting, is covered in vicious thorns, and is perfectly capable of killing you if it falls on your head.  In many respects, Ferroseed is very much like a durian; he’s round, spiky, vegetative, and wishes that the world and everything in it would just leave him alone.  However, he’s also made of iron, lives on the walls of caves and survives by leaching minerals from the rocks.  I suppose when you think about it this is the logical conclusion for a fruit that clearly wants nothing to do with anyone – hiding in a cold, dark place, sucking on rocks and jabbing anyone who bothers you.  Ferrothorn... doesn’t really look like a durian anymore because his body shape is squashed and he has little spiked pod-things dangling on the ends of vines; I think someone was just given the art for Ferroseed and a bottle of sake and told to go nuts.  Ferrothorn, like Ferroseed, lives in caves – he prefers to cling to ceilings rather than walls, though.  I’m not sure how we’re supposed to imagine him doing this; I find it most natural to picture him digging his spiked pods into the rock so his body dangles below them, but then again, he supposedly fights by using those things like flails, so maybe he latches on with his body spikes and the vines hang down beneath?  I’m not sure it’s entirely fair of me to complain about that, although it is kind of important that we should be able to picture a Pokémon in its natural state.  Ferrothorn is the only Pokémon in Black and White who is even more antisocial than Ferroseed, and will start throwing spikes at you just for being there, even if you’re not actually bothering him.  Personally, I am sympathetic to his point of view.

If I were to criticize Ferroseed and Ferrothorn, I would have to say that they remind me a little too much of Pineco and Forretress.  Although Pineco is a Bug-type, he’s (obviously) plant-based in his design, and although he and Forretress are forest Pokémon and have quite a different appearance to Ferroseed and Ferrothorn, anyone who can remember fighting wild Pineco in Gold and Silver (which learn Selfdestruct at an absurdly low level) will agree that the similarities in temperament are striking; we have two Pokémon with metallic physiology, a sedentary lifestyle, defensive tactics based on scattering spikes, and multiple crippling personality defects.  The case against Ferrothorn becomes significantly more damning once you recognize that he’s very similar to Forretress in mechanics as well as flavour.  Both of these Pokémon are absurdly resilient physical walls with few weaknesses whose main contribution to teams, outside of their tremendous capacity to absorb physical damage, is their habit of leaving a generous layer of spikes behind them wherever they go.  As you will know if you’ve been paying attention to my assorted nonsense, switching Pokémon at the right moments is an important part of gaining the upper hand in battle, which is why entry hazards – moves that make switching costly by causing damage to the incoming Pokémon every time your opponent tries it – are a popular choice.  Stealth Rock is generally favoured because it only takes one turn to set up and does a great deal of damage to certain Pokémon, while Spikes sees less use because it has to be stacked up over three turns to become effective.  A few Pokémon, however – Forretress and Ferrothorn among them – are tough enough that they can afford to sit around laying Spikes for three turns, and if they do, they can make life very difficult indeed for their enemies.  Provided they avoid Fire attacks, from which they both take quadruple damage (this is Forretress’ only weakness; Ferrothorn is also weak to Fighting attacks but not as severely) they can switch into most physical attacks and more or less negate them, which is their other main role – and once they’ve done all they can, they can always blow themselves up if there’s something in your way.

Ferrothorn is, for the most part, better at his job.  Defensively, Grass/Steel is probably better than Bug/Steel overall, despite being weak to Fighting attacks and only neutral to Ice attacks (which Forretress resists) because it also buys resistances to Water, Electric and Rock attacks, three powerful and common attack types.  In addition Ferrothorn, despite having weaker physical defensive potential than Forretress, is streets ahead of him in defence against special attacks, giving him greater versatility as an all-purpose roadblock.  He also has a wonderful passive ability: Iron Barbs, which damages any opponent that makes physical contact with Ferrothorn.  Many people like to compound this effect by making Ferrothorn hold an item called a Rocky Helmet, which does exactly the same thing as Iron Barbs and stacks with it.  Even if you think you can maim Ferrothorn severely with an attack, it will come at a heavy cost unless you can do it without touching him.   Moreover, although Forretress is not a Pokémon you want to allow free turns, he has relatively little in the way of offensive power (unless you want to blow him up).  Ferrothorn’s Power Whip, on the other hand, while it is easily resisted as a Grass attack, has quite a sting.  Almost nothing enjoys being hit by a Leech Seed either, since it means losing health the longer you stay in play while Ferrothorn becomes even harder to kill.  For all that, though, Forretress still has a few tricks of his own that Ferrothorn can’t match.  He’s just about the toughest Pokémon in the game that learns Toxic Spikes, a technique similar to Spikes that poisons incoming Pokémon, and one of the toughest that learns Rapid Spin, a vital attack that does negligible damage but clears away entry hazards laid by your opponent.  Forretress wishes he could learn U-Turn, which switches its user out after doing damage, but can’t (a shame; as a Bug-type attack it would do respectable damage coming from Forretress), but he does get the next best thing: the Electric equivalent, Volt Switch.  Your special attack score is terrible and you’re not an Electric-type, but the tactical advantage make it a possible option nonetheless.

I don’t think there can be any reasonable argument that Ferrothorn’s not strong.  It bothers me that he eclipses Forretress to an extent, but even if Forretress becomes more of a niche Pokémon, Rapid Spin and Toxic Spikes are still rare enough, and Forretress is still tough enough, that he’s not going to vanish completely; I’m glad Game Freak had the presence of mind not to take those things from him by giving them to Ferrothorn too.  Also, although Ferrothorn and Ferroseed converge with Forretress and Pineco in many important respects, they’re still quirky enough that I consider them good designs in their own right (better than Pineco and Forretress? Maybe... not sure).  If you know me well, though, you’ll know there’s one thing that makes me really like Ferroseed and Ferrothorn: they’re really kickass Grass-types!  So, since we all know that Grass-types need more love...

I hereby affirm this Pokémon's right to exist!

Solosis, Duosion and Reuniclus

This must be the weirdest concept for a Pokémon ever.

Well, okay, Deoxys is a shapeshifting psychic virus from space, that’s pretty weird.  And Mawile is some kind of metallic rabbit-thing with a huge pair of jaws growing out of the back of its head.  And Breloom is an overgrown mushroom that punches things.  And Garchomp is a shark with arms, legs, claws and armour spikes.  That flies.

...what the hell kind of game am I playing here anyway?

Even so, Solosis is an odd idea.  He’s... well, a cell.  Some kind of nucleus-type structure, suspended in a mysterious green fluid that shields his delicate body from the elements, with almost no discernable anatomical features.  Although young, Solosis possess formidable psychic powers which they use to move around and defend themselves against enemies.  When they evolve into Duosion, Solosis apparently start to divide in two, but stop partway; they’re still single organisms but they have two brains which sometimes work at cross-purposes, occasionally causing them to take seemingly random actions.  Their psychic abilities are greatest when their two minds are working in unison.  One would expect them to finish dividing when they evolve once more, but the final evolution’s name – Reuniclus – seems to suggest that the two halves actually fuse again, and the Pokédex says nothing either way, which is a tad confusing.  Reuniclus is... I don’t know... he’s clearly supposed to be cute and I know there are people who think he’s cute, but Reuniclus makes me cringe.  The empty black eyes and the split down the middle of his head don’t bother me so much in Solosis and Duosion because their anatomy is simpler, but Reuniclus looks more like an animal than a single cell, and at that stage the eyes start to disturb me and the split head looks worryingly wrong.  He seems creepy and alien, and I don’t think that’s what the designers were going for at all (although I’ve been wrong before).  Reuniclus supposedly has tremendous physical strength, which... is a lie, although I’ll let him off on that one because he can learn a number  of forceful attacks that Duosion can’t, like Rock Smash and Strength (they’re not attacks you should ever actually teach Reuniclus, understand, but they’re evidence at least that the designers were thinking).  What makes me curious about Reuniclus is that his body is in several parts: he has two floating “ears,” and his “arms” are each made up of a number of separate balls.  Given the basis of his design, these floating body parts make me think Reuniclus might well reproduce by “budding” – one of those “ears” could just drop off one day and become a new Solosis.  Of course, that would imply that Reuniclus are asexual, which they aren’t – there are male and female Reuniclus.  Then again, we’re told that their brains form a link when they hold hands; it’s not out of the question that they could exchange genetic material in the same way.  There’s a lot you could do with this concept, which Game Freak haven’t done yet, but I’m satisfied that it’s creative at least (if bizarre).

Solosis’ psychic powers are formidable, and they just get stronger as he evolves.  Anyone who’s played Red and Blue will remember how crazily strong Psychic-types were back then: the only Pokémon that resisted Psychic attacks were other Psychic-types, and there were no halfway-decent attacks that did super-effective damage to them.  The fact that only two elements (Fighting and Poison) were weak against Psychic attacks didn’t seem to matter.  Since then, however, Game Freak have been atoning for their sins by repeatedly punishing Psychic Pokémon for existing.  Gold and Silver introduced new elements that resist Psychic attacks, Ghost- and Bug-type attacks that actually do damage, and Pursuit, a Dark-type attack that can hit Pokémon before they switch out, something that has had a profound influence on tactics ever since.  Diamond and Pearl were when the hammer really fell, because that was when Pursuit became a physical attack (prior to that, all attacks were physical or special according to element, and all Dark attacks were special).  Most Pokémon that learn Pursuit are better at using physical attacks, and most Psychic-types are better at defending against special attacks.  All that’s happened slants the game against single-typed Psychic Pokémon to the extent that Alakazam is now scared to show his face in serious battles (he’s still good, just very difficult to use) and Psychic attacks tend to be relatively ineffective in the long run.  I say all of this so that you will fully understand the implications when I say that Reuniclus, a single-typed Psychic Pokémon, is still crazily good.  His attacks don’t pack as much of a punch as Alakazam’s, but they come close.  Like many Psychic-types, Reuniclus’ offensive movepool consists primarily of Psychic backed up by Shadow Ball, Energy Ball and Focus Blast – Focus Blast is horribly inaccurate but you need the source of Fighting-type damage to murder Dark-types (who, after all, would not hesitate to murder Reuniclus if given the opportunity).  If you’re using a rain team, Thunder will be nicely accurate but I wouldn’t bother with it otherwise.  A pretty nice spread, but even though power is his strongest point, his attacks aren’t what make Reuniclus good.

What makes Reuniclus good is that he’s as tough as old boots.  If you can hit him before he explodes your brain, Alakazam will go down to a gentle shove, but there is precious little that can one-shot Reuniclus.  He’s not remarkably resilient to plain old damage, although compared to other Pokémon that can hit as hard as he does, he’s definitely near the front of the pack.  The truly wonderful thing about Reuniclus is the Magic Guard trait, which renders him utterly immune to indirect damage: poison, burns, Leech Seeds, weather damage, Stealth Rocks, recoil, you name it – only direct attacks can actually hurt him (this same ability is what makes Clefable usable; don’t underestimate it) – and when you can’t rely on Toxic to whither him, Reuniclus is extremely difficult to squash.  And he can heal himself with Recover.  And he can use Calm Mind to grow steadily stronger and stronger while he refuses to die; before long even Blissey, whose job is to soak up energy attacks like they’re nothing, will be scared to take a Focus Blast.  Reuniclus’ weakness is that he’s horribly, horribly slow; almost everything in the game outruns him.  Luckily, he has a solution: like many Psychic Pokémon, Reuniclus can distort space with Trick Room to allow slow Pokémon to move before faster ones for a short time (this was supposed to be Beheeyem's niche; unfortunately Beheeyem is basically Reuniclus, only worse at everything).  Since a Pokémon can only learn four moves, it’s not really possible to cram all of these tricks onto a single Reuniclus, which is where it all falls down, of course, but he can easily afford to choose between Trick Room and Calm Mind and still be effective – and until your opponent knows which one you’re using, it’s very difficult to come up with an answer to Reuniclus.  For flavour, you can also add on the standard Psychic-type support powers like Light Screen and Thunder Wave, but unlike many Psychic Pokémon this is not really where Reuniclus’ potential is greatest; stick to nuking things unless you desperately need a particular kind of support.

I’m actually almost worried Reuniclus is too strong – a few Pokémon are; most people agree that Garchomp was a bit over-the-top, I am convinced that Game Freak did not think things through when they gave Blaziken Speed Boost as her Dream World ability, and a few Pokémon from Black and White are so powerful I worry that they eclipse older Pokémon completely (notably Excadrill and Ferrothorn).  What’s more, I have an instinctive aversion to whatever it is about Reuniclus that is supposed to be cute (Solosis and Duosion are fine).  Still... I can’t deny it’s a creative design, even if it doesn’t do it for me, and just being a Psychic-type carries enough disadvantages that Reuniclus will never be an instant “I Win” button (although, as always, I would prefer giving the existing Psychic Pokémon more love to creating all-new, superior ones).  On balance...

I hereby affirm this Pokémon’s right to exist!

Taking a break

Apologies to everyone out there who actually reads this nonsense, but I need to write an essay on the use of hospitality type-scenes in Homer's Odyssey and study for a test on spectroscopy and thermodynamics, so I'm going to remain silent for a short while.

I should be back in about a week.

Joltik and Galvantula

This has been a good year for Bug Pokémon.  Black and White introduced Leavanny and Scolipede, who, despite not being remarkably powerful, finally banished the unfortunate cliché of Bug-types that appear early in the game, evolve quickly, peak early, and ultimately prove useless.  So far, I’ve also looked at the bizarre but surprisingly intriguing Crustle and the awe-inspiring solar moth, Volcarona, both fun and powerful additions to the Bug-type hive.  Like Volcarona, the Pokémon I’m looking at today – Joltik and Galvantula – draw much of their uniqueness from something very simple, a new type combination: Bug/Electric.  Joltik’s not just an insect that happens to have electrical powers either, which would be the lazy way of interpreting the type combination; the two elements actually work together.  Joltik is, as his name suggests, a tick; he’s a parasite who normally lives by attaching himself to much larger Pokémon.  Where normal ticks drain blood from their hosts, however, Joltik drains static electricity (which doesn’t seem obviously harmful; it might be more appropriate to call Joltik a symbiote, depending on whether it can provide its host any benefit – perhaps by helping it to fight attackers?).  Joltik are adaptable Pokémon too; those living in urban areas, instead of clinging to large Pokémon, cluster around power sockets and other man-made sources of electricity and extract energy from those, an interesting and creative example of how wild Pokémon can react to the presence of humans.  It’s easy to imagine Joltik being major pests and dealing with them as an important part of day-to-day life in Unova.  Galvantula, sadly, isn’t as interesting as Joltik in that respect: he really is just a spider who happens to have electrical powers.  Moreover, unlike Joltik he has competition; there’s been a spider Pokémon before, and Ariados was a nicely-executed and, yes, even somewhat creative take on “this Pokémon is a spider and does spider things.”  Galvantula’s ability to spin conductive silk that shocks enemies who become tangled in it is something of an obvious move, but I like that Game Freak have gone to the trouble of giving Galvantula a signature move (Electroweb) to illustrate this power; it’s exactly the sort of thing I like to complain that they should do more often.  Galvantula also has great artwork – he’s cool and a little creepy, as spiders should be, and his bright contrasting colours give him a bold, distinctive look – and possibly the most awesome name of any of the new Pokémon; it’s subjective, I know, but I just think “Galvantula” is really fun to say!  I think Joltik combines his electrical powers and insectoid traits in a much more creative way than Galvantula does, which is a shame, but I’m still happy to call Galvantula well-executed and a good effort.

Galvantula isn’t a Pokémon of particularly dramatic power, but he has two specific features that make him a unique and enjoyable Pokémon to use.  The first, of course, is his type.  Bug/Electric is unique to Joltik and Galvantula, and the two elements work well together.  Any Grass Pokémon that comes in trying to resist Galvantula’s electrical blasts is at risk from his powerful Bug Buzz attack.  To deal with Ground-types, Game Freak have very kindly given Galvantula something that many other Electric Pokémon would kill for: a strong Grass attack in Energy Ball.  There are still Pokémon that will block all of Galvantula’s main attacks (Dragonite, for instance, or Magneton) but in general he can pick a good, or at least decent, attack for anything.  Where Galvantula falls down is that he’s not a legitimately high-powered Pokémon.  He’s very fast – more cheetah-fast than Concorde-fast, but still an asset for that alone.  However, his attacks aren’t as powerful as he’d like; I don’t want to say “lacklustre” because his special attack stat is pretty good, but many other Electric-types outstrip him and he doesn’t learn any special attack buffs (unless you count Charge Beam, which is entirely too slow and a little too unreliable for a Pokémon of Galvantula’s frail constitution).  This is where Galvantula’s other unique property comes in: the Compoundeyes trait.  A Pokémon with Compoundeyes uses all attacks with a higher degree of accuracy, unlocking the potential of powerful but imprecise techniques.  Only two other fully-evolved Pokémon have Compoundeyes – Butterfree and Dustox.  Butterfree’s Sleep Powder becomes deadly accurate with Compoundeyes, which almost makes her halfway usable if you’re really committed, while Dustox... gains absolutely nothing from this ability, which is a shame because he was even more useless than Butterfree to begin with.  Galvantula is another story altogether: Compoundeyes allows him to reliably use Thunder in place of Thunderbolt, which most Electric-types favour since Thunder’s 70% accuracy presents such a liability.  Galvantula’s Compoundeyes-Thunder is 91% accurate, and this is how he is able to outstrip the likes of Jolteon, Magnezone and Zapdos in damage output.  It’s a little tragic that Galvantula has nothing else that can make especially good use of Compoundeyes, but Thunder is such a cool trick that it’s hard to be too upset.

The bad news is that Galvantula’s not particularly versatile.  The sheer joy of precision Thunder aside, there’s not a lot else to recommend him.  He makes good use of Volt Switch, a new energy-based Electric-type equivalent to the older U-Turn, which switches its user out immediately after attacking to help you wrong-foot your opponents, but most Electric Pokémon can  learn this technique and most are fast enough to use it well.  His combination of excellent speed and access to Agility to increase it further makes him a stronger candidate than most for another new attack, Electro Ball, an attack whose damage is based on how much faster you are than your target.  This is a fun trick but unfortunately it produces essentially the same effect as his main big trick – massive electrical damage – with more power but somewhat reduced reliability, since you need a turn to use Agility in order for Galvantula to be fast enough to hit the highest damage levels against all his likely opponents.  That’s honestly all there is to Galvantula.  He learns some other universally useful attacks like Thunder Wave, Sucker Punch, Pursuit, Spider Web and Light Screen, but isn’t especially competent at using them compared to the other Pokémon that learn them.  You shouldn’t really use Galvantula for anything other than what he’s good at, but if that’s the niche you need, it’s hard to find someone better.

I wouldn’t call Joltik and Galvantula perfect Pokémon; I think Galvantula is somewhat less creatively done than his younger form, he steps on Ariados’ toes a little bit, and he’s too short on versatility to be a top contender.  However, he’s still one of my favourite Pokémon from the new games, with nice artwork and unique powers – and I love Joltik’s concept as well.  I would love Galvantula to have been given some more attacks that would exploit Compoundeyes, but he has no truly serious faults.  This is the kind of Pokémon that upholds my faith in the series.

I hereby affirm this Pokémon’s right to exist!