FireRed Analysis: Brock and the Starter Stomp
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Art by skrimps.
For a game series all about building teams of cool and cute creatures, Pokémon is atrocious at incentivizing new or young players to raise anything but their first partner. Starter Pokémon have an inherent level advantage over the competition, starting at level 5 whereas the first wild Pokémon range from 2 to 4, and tutorial battles immediately bump it up to at least 6. Trainer battles consisting of weak Normal-types pose no challenge to your own pumped pipsqueak, and it was seldom explained how to raise freshly caught Pokémon too weak to take on wild Pokémon of the same level before Exp. Share takes the job over for you. This is a problem in basically every Pokémon game, but I recently replayed FireRed, and oh boy is it extra bad about it. Not only are the usual starter level privilege and uncompelling wild Pokémon present, the first 'challenge' battle in Brock is either an effortless affair that reinforces relying on your starter or a nightmarish roadblock that still might be best handled with the starter, all depending on if you chose Charmander without prior game knowledge. I'm going to discuss the sweeping design choices that contribute to Brock's bottleneck, then examine each Pokémon available before facing him.
Rock in Kanto is a Type of Peaks and Valleys
Kanto's type distribution isn't the greatest. A lot of the common Pokémon are Normal-, Flying-, Bug-, or Poison-type, meaning they stand little chance against Kanto's Rock / Ground roster of the Geodude, Onix, and Rhyhorn lines without some advanced strategy. Early-game, this either is impossible because of the limited Pokémon customization options, or requires some mechanical knowledge that only nerds like you and me learned about online years later. This makes Rock one of the worst types they could have chosen for the first Gym. If you even bothered to level up any of the Pokémon you caught so far, they fall flat where it counts. Why use them at all? Meanwhile, Bulbasaur and Squirtle can just throw vines or bubbles Rock-types' way and win instantly. You'd probably conclude Rock-types were worthless. Even Charmander has more of a chance than the average Pidgey or Ratatta because it only fears Onix's Rock Tomb and can get lucky with Metal Claw Attack boosts or Ember burns.
Physical Attacks and Stat Modifiers are Miserable to Use
A subtle yet massive advantage starters get is a diverse level-up moveset, which includes early special attacks. When the Viridian Forest experience consists of Metapod and Kakuna spamming Harden, you're left to choose between the most boring battles imaginable or ripping the bandage off with your starter's Ember, Bubble, or Leech Seed + Vine Whip. At no point against Trainers do you need to use Growl; the foes' damage output is so low you can't even appreciate the difference. Tail Whip is negated not only by Harden but also by Defense Curl on Geodude and Sandshrew in Brock's Gym, not to mention all the Trainer Pokémon with Harden, Defense Curl, or Growl immediately afterward on Route 3. String Shot has no practical use; initially faster Pokémon are probably winning anyway. The result for training new Pokémon is either using the switch-in switch-out strategy (which the game only hints at later) against Bug Catchers or taking on a whole lot of low-experience wild Pokémon. The only certainty is boredom. Charmander's Growl can help against Onix, but even I forgot it existed when doing a test run for this article, which is a testament to its poor implementation.
Charmander Players Get No Hints
Charmander has an overt advantage over Viridian Forest's Bug-types, so making the first Gym hard for it in contrast could have been a great lesson. The problem is, you're left out to dry if you committed all your Experience Points to it. Instead of commenting on matchups like the next couple Gyms, the Pewter Gym guide only tells you about the Pokémon party screen, and has the gall to imply your team order matters at all for the upcoming battle. FireRed and LeafGreen have two extra layers of tutorialization over the Red and Green originals: the L/R Help System and the Teachy TV item. Both are only concerned with the utter basic mechanics but fail to help players reach the assumed, intended gameplay style: raising a diverse team of Pokémon. They also say nothing on creative battling strategy; it's type matchups or bust, and if you have a Charmander against an Onix, tough luck. The only 'clean' solution in Charmander runs is to catch Mankey, a Pokémon that no NPCs have shown you or mentioned, is found on the optional Route 22 (which you might have avoided after the Rival jumpscare like I did as a kid), and relies on you knowing that Fighting beats Rock and it eventually learns Low Kick and Karate Chop.
Pokémon Breakdowns
Giving Bulbasaur Leech Seed instead of a generic Grass-type attack at level 7 is an unusually clever design move; it can teach the player about Grass's early-gen identity -- playing for the long term -- given how Bulbasaur's unremarkable Tackle leaves few other choices. There's also a physical-special learning opportunity in observing how Vine Whip interacts with the Harden users, though Kakuna's 4x resistance undermines that. These lessons are still contained within the context of using Bulbasaur, so decimating Brock with Vine Whip means you're unlikely to, ironically enough, touch grass and make new friends.
Charmander gets Ember for the smoothest Route-clearing experience of the starters but then finds itself between Brock and a hard place. It gets Metal Claw at level 13 specifically for this Gym battle, but it's a pittance in the face of Onix's true-grit Defense stat. If you've invested all of the scarce Experience Points in Charmander, victory isn't impossible, but you'll have to play the odds, most of which are hidden from you. Against Geodude, hope for a Metal Claw Attack boost as it wastes turns with Harden, and against Onix, use Growl and then try for an Ember burn, Rock Tomb misses or Potion PP stalling, or unpredictable AI choices in the weak Bind and Tackle. If you did the Rival battle on Route 22, you could even lose to Onix a couple of times to repeatedly get the high EXP from Geodude and evolve Charmander. Executing these strategies well is far out of a new player's league, but it's still better than most of the Pokémon options described below and entirely possible with Potion spamming and dumb luck (my memories attest to that), so the starter stomp principle survives.
Bubble is weak enough that Squirtle has to expend a bit more effort against closely leveled foes and can realistically succumb to Weedle's poison, but healing items are plentiful enough for this to be as trivial as the Brock battle. Water is busted.
Pidgey makes a poor first impression for Flying-types, only knowing Tackle at the earliest levels, and Sand Attack in the second Rival fight is a nuisance at worst. In fact, Kanto doesn't give you much reason to care about Flying-types until, well, you get Fly. Patiently raising it to level 9 does net you Gust against the Bug-types, but the best it's got on Brock is further lowering Rock Tomb's accuracy, something you might not know to exploit.
I used Rattata in the playthrough that inspired this article, and I have to say it's pretty neat overall, but it certainly could do more to look enticing. Tackle and Tail Whip, moves that mirror your starter, are a tough sell, especially when level disparity makes STAB unnoticeable. The only hint that something cool lies in store comes from a girl in the Viridian Forest gate, who tells you to 'watch out for its wicked bite.' The Ratatta you've seen don't bite at all, so this advice is too easily discarded. If she had said that you need to raise it some, I bet many more players would have discovered the reward at level 13 in Hyper Fang, an absurdly strong move for the game's first half. Whether you reach that level before Brock or not, though, a Normal-type is a Normal-type against Onix.
Whoa whoa whoa, Peck!? Are you sure we don't need a Normal-type move here, guys? Well, I can respect the boldness, though a new player isn't gonna appreciate the difference facing wild Spearow unless they're using Bulbasaur. It can immediately establish the pecking order in Viridian Forest, unlike Pidgey, but Brock clips its wings all the same.
Whew, Scratch. I was getting worried. Mankey gets Low Kick and Karate Chop soon enough, though they don't help against all the tedious Bug-types. Brock can still be tricky for Charmander users, since Experience Points will be divided between it and Mankey, Onix has enough Defense to take Low Kick pretty well, and Mankey is frail to the point of fearing repeated Tackle and Rock Tomb.
A Bug Catcher hints that Bug-types evolve quickly, but getting Caterpie to level 10 in a reasonable amount of time is anything but. With non-STAB Tackle and the fairly useless String Shot, switching is the only surefire way to get a low-level Caterpie some Experience against wild Pokémon. It can fend for itself upon becoming Metapod by using Harden, though Tackle is just as weak. Butterfree rewards you with Confusion, one of the very rare early-game special attacks. Beating Brock with it might sound impossible given its Rock weakness, but it's actually possible to use Harden six times against Geodude and then take Onix's Rock Tomb pretty well. That's a fun strategy, but hardly one a new player can be expected to think of, especially considering the initial hurdle in raising Caterpie.
Poison-types are often designed strangely, in a mechanical sense; inflicting their signature status (if they even have a move that can) is inconsistent, and their damage output is otherwise pathetic. I tried Weedle in my serious run, and it embodies the issue, relying on Poison Sting's 15 Base Power and 30% poison chance. It adds up to a whole lot of disappointment. Raising it when half of the Trainers use it themselves is a cruel joke, and unlike Butterfree, Beedrill is a terrible payoff that learns Fury Attack of all things. Bug and Poison aren't broken, guys, it would have been okay to give it a bit more oomph.
Pokémon's eternal face is unusually elusive in Viridian Forest; you could walk through a dozen times and never encounter it. If you do, you have a nice and self-sufficient Electric-type, though aiming for the horn won't get you far against Brock. It's rather unfair that Cerulean Gym's guide recommends Electric-types when this Pikachu is the only available one and inaccessible at that point.
Conclusion
Kanto gets off to a rocky start. That players stuck with it, whether cruising by with a boringly powerful starter or lucking out with Charmander, speaks to the simple power of its gameplay loop. One could conclude that Pokémon simply doesn't have to 'try,' but I'm of the opinion that if Pokémon can be fun when so much is going against its intentions, thoughtfully crafting the experience could elevate it to a whole new level of brilliance. What if the game were more hostile toward leaning on your starter? What if wild Pokémon were designed to immediately sell you on their concepts? What if the interactions between early-game Pokémon represented the depth the franchise is capable of? I believe certain future games get close; hopefully I'll talk about them someday. Until then, I hope this article has sold you on the importance of a game's opening sequences.
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