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"Worst Pokémon Ever"
- Thread starter SapphSabre777
- Start date
all this time i thought calyrex was a quadruped with its back legs hidden behind its front... dear god, it's awful. why are its legs so long?!?
Nobody mentioned this thing yet? Probably because it is just that forgettable. A lot of people, myself included, were expecting a new pokemon referencing Stonehenge in Galar, but I don't think anybody was anticipating such a dull execution. They literally took a chunk of the monument and slapped a face on it. Not even a good face, just an overly cartoon-y, almost robotic face that doesn't flow with prehistoric vibe of the design. I suppose it has some sort of hiking motif, with the 'legs' representing muddy hiking boots, but it doesn't do enough to salvage the rest of the design for me. This should have been a unique inspiration for a pokemon and I'm really surprised the designers this gen couldn't do anything better with it.
It could have been better but I like this design, especially the arms and the hat ! His stats are a whole mess. 20 Sp Att is OK for a physical Attacker but damn, 20 Sp Def, it dies from everything ! Interesting movepool with Rock and Fire / Ground coverage and interesting in Double with ability ! I really like this Pokemon in Random Double :) But yeah could have veen better !
When I published my Eiscue rant a few months ago I brought up the fact that it felt unfinished, like Game Freak failed to fully realize what they were going for in an organic, well-assembled manner. Lopunny is the opposite situation: Game Freak did exactly what they wanted to. The problem is that thing being utterly wretched.
Pokefans toss around the term "furry bait" too liberally nowadays. It seems like every time anything remotely humanoid with animal features is revealed people are quick to deride it as just some sleazy bid to pander to the e621 crowd. But when you look at Pokemon like Cinderace, Hatterene, Salazzle and Incineroar, even if you don't like them personally you can't deny that there was clearly a ton of effort put into their designs, backgrounds and lore to make them stand-out in the evergrowing line-up of creatures. If furry bait was ever an intention from the start it was certainly not the be-all end-all, with the designers behind these Pokemon making sure they have a lot more to offer, a clear purpose within their home regions and beyond.
I can't say the same for Lopunny. While it hasn't been explicitly confirmed by the devs for obvious reasons there's simply no other way to interpret its design other than being based off a Playboy bunny. Bulbapedia even backs this up! From there its purposefully sexualized what with a feminine face and its hands in a position that kinda looks like it's cupping "breasts".
Ok, so its inspiration and how it reflects it is more than questionable for a children's game. But hey, this isn't the first nor the last time Game Freak has made these sorts of dirty jokes: 3 generations later Tsareena would be introduced, a Pokemon pretty overtly based on a dominatrix. And while I'm not exactly crazy for that mon I can at least say it was an interesting pick for battle: A priority-blocking signature ability, strong stats and a cool movepool for a pure Grass type with tools like U-Turn, High Jump Kick and Rapid Spin.
So what does Lopunny have to offer? Pure Normal type with 3 subpar abilities with a movepool that while decent in a vacuum doesn't hold a candle to many other Normal types. Don't forget its highest stat being a middling 105 speed with everything else not even cracking the 100 mark! This hunk of garbage serves absolutely no purpose in Sinnoh what with Bibarel already taking on the role of early-game Normal rodent and everything else just being better.
The only reason why this Pokemon isn't my undisputed worst Pokemon of all time is because of its Mega Evolution. Mega Lopunny really is what the base form should've been from the start: It doesn't manage to shake off the unfortunate origins but at least it provides neat battle applications with the new design having some sort of presence. But if I were ever to somehow come to have control over this franchise, my first order of business would be to outright retcon base Lopunny and make a stat-adjusted Mega the new base because as it stands, the current base Lopunny truly is furry bait and a particularly grievous form of it.
for some reason I got strong ‘Ben Shapiro reading the lyrics to WAP’ vibes from this lmao
More seriously though, I’ve never been very interested in the argument that a Pokémon like Lopunny is ‘inappropriate for children’ or whatever. Maybe I was too gay to be corrupted by it, but as a 10yo playing Diamond I remember thinking ‘oh it’s like a playboy bunny’ and then moving on immediately. “Utterly wretched” seems a little harsh. I’m not a huge fan of its design, but I don’t think its simplicity can be counted against it when compared with the other Pokémon you mentioned.
The comment about stats is true of like 80 fully-evolved Pokémon lol. Not everything can have a competitive niche or super high and/or minmaxed stats and for the average first-time casual player it’s completely irrelevant whether or not something turns out to have been outclassed by another Pokémon all along.
The most offensive thing about Lopunny is that it evolves by friendship from a Pokémon with a base friendship of 0.
It's funny to me that you take issue with Lopunny while finding Tsareena OK, because for me it's the opposite.
When I published my Eiscue rant a few months ago I brought up the fact that it felt unfinished, like Game Freak failed to fully realize what they were going for in an organic, well-assembled manner. Lopunny is the opposite situation: Game Freak did exactly what they wanted to. The problem is that thing being utterly wretched.
Pokefans toss around the term "furry bait" too liberally nowadays. It seems like every time anything remotely humanoid with animal features is revealed people are quick to deride it as just some sleazy bid to pander to the e621 crowd. But when you look at Pokemon like Cinderace, Hatterene, Salazzle and Incineroar, even if you don't like them personally you can't deny that there was clearly a ton of effort put into their designs, backgrounds and lore to make them stand-out in the evergrowing line-up of creatures. If furry bait was ever an intention from the start it was certainly not the be-all end-all, with the designers behind these Pokemon making sure they have a lot more to offer, a clear purpose within their home regions and beyond.
I can't say the same for Lopunny. While it hasn't been explicitly confirmed by the devs for obvious reasons there's simply no other way to interpret its design other than being based off a Playboy bunny. Bulbapedia even backs this up! From there its purposefully sexualized what with a feminine face and its hands in a position that kinda looks like it's cupping "breasts".
Ok, so its inspiration and how it reflects it is more than questionable for a children's game. But hey, this isn't the first nor the last time Game Freak has made these sorts of dirty jokes: 3 generations later Tsareena would be introduced, a Pokemon pretty overtly based on a dominatrix. And while I'm not exactly crazy for that mon I can at least say it was an interesting pick for battle: A priority-blocking signature ability, strong stats and a cool movepool for a pure Grass type with tools like U-Turn, High Jump Kick and Rapid Spin.
So what does Lopunny have to offer? Pure Normal type with 3 subpar abilities with a movepool that while decent in a vacuum doesn't hold a candle to many other Normal types. Don't forget its highest stat being a middling 105 speed with everything else not even cracking the 100 mark! This hunk of garbage serves absolutely no purpose in Sinnoh what with Bibarel already taking on the role of early-game Normal rodent and everything else just being better.
The only reason why this Pokemon isn't my undisputed worst Pokemon of all time is because of its Mega Evolution. Mega Lopunny really is what the base form should've been from the start: It doesn't manage to shake off the unfortunate origins but at least it provides neat battle applications with the new design having some sort of presence. But if I were ever to somehow come to have control over this franchise, my first order of business would be to outright retcon base Lopunny and make a stat-adjusted Mega the new base because as it stands, the current base Lopunny truly is furry bait and a particularly grievous form of it.
Lopunny's a little strange, but I think it's forgivable considering Playboy Bunnies are an actual thing. Pop culture has an immediate right to parody pop culture and it's found in all sorts of video games, TV shows, movies, music, art etc.. Like it or not, Playboy is an important part of 20th century American culture, and so parodying its own furryism as an actual animal is both acceptable and nothing short of hilarious to me. If Playboy dresses women up as rabbits in order to sexualise them, then Pokémon creating a rabbit and saying "still find it cute?" is parody at its finest. Considering it's rooted in something that already exists, I don't find Lopunny too different to something like Froslass -- I'm sure someone out there finds Froslass incredibly hot and has drawn ghost-fetish fan art of it, but Froslass is based on a yokai so it's fine by me.
Tsareena is way more egregious. Mangosteens have, before Tsareena, never been associated with sex. Sexualising a fruit is, therefore, already strange. Anthropomorphising that fruit into something as specific as a dominatrix is reaching the grounds of unforgivable, essentially with the amount of detail they put into it. It only evolves through learning Stomp, which makes no sense to someone who doesn't know what a dominatrix is and could lead to curious children getting on the internet to figure it out, which they're helped in working out by Tsareena being exclusively female. Trop Kick also has no reason to exist beyond "haha feminine Pokémon that drop kicks opponents" and is frankly a waste of coding. Tsareena isn't a parody of anything -- it's simply a Pokémon that exposes children to the existence of dominatrixes (dominatri?) and it's pretty lewd and disgusting.
Ultimately, both are probably fine for the same reason that Lord Farquaad can fringe upon masturbation in Shrek. Kids don't know what it means, and by the time you know what it means you can appreciate the Pokémon for what it is. Is it kinda creepy? In the case of Tsareena yes due to the nature of its design and lack of wider meaning, for Lopunny probably not because it's much easier to look at it and go "oh, it's a rabbit" and miss the meaning entirely, while it gets some brownie points for being a parody of something that already exists.
Though in the vein of the thread, stick my vote for "worst Pokémon ever" on Tsareena for the reasons above. I don't foresee myself ever using one on a team because I dislike its concept so much, which isn't true for any other Pokémon. I have used Lopunny plenty of times (and just thought it was a rabbit before I knew what Playboy was) so the same rationale doesn't work for it.
Lopunny is really bad though. Like, outclassed-by-Persian-Kanto bad. It's on par with the worse rodents, and at least those evolve early.
Buneary has pretty great stage-1 stats though
salazzle has fire lash. i rest my case
I already mentioned a certain Bug-type duo, but there are some other viable... or should I say unviable contenders that can hit my least favorite Pokémon list.
- Electrode: Now it is not a vastly overshadowed one by any mean. It's very fast and can make use of Thunder Wave, but it's the design that make it feels such a miss. While I tolerate a Pokémon with an "ugly" design, Electrode sticks out as one of the laziest designs; it is just flipped color scheme and a somewhat dorkier face. At least Voltorb's design makes sense as it is done to mimic a Poké Ball, but Electrode could've have a design that have at least a Great Ball or Ultra Ball, or make references to the Poké Balls in Gen 1. I can tolerate it but it is definitely feels like such a letdown design-wise.
- Probopass: Hear this; I loved most of the Gen 4 cross-gen evolutions. That includes Rhyperior and Lickilicky. Probopass is one rotten apple of them all, as not only the execution of the design comes off as uncanny, but it's Type and stat distribution did nothing good for it. Rock/Steel is not a type that would really work if the Pokémon is defensive... which Probopass is. It doesn't hit hard enough either, with only 55 Attack and 75 Special Attack respectively, and it have no helpful status moves, which means it's bulk doesn't means much as it cannot reliably recover. Now, it can do the Lock-On + Zap Cannon combo, but switching during online battle and the overall inconsistency and risk during in-game doesn't make it worth the risk.
- Dedenne: This concerns the species in general; I may as well like Clemont's Dedenne more than the species itself as it is not meant to be a powerhouse anyways. Even as a Pika Clone, all it does is to put such a poor use of Electric / Fairy, as it cannot learn Fairy Wind, Moonblast or even Dazzling Gleam via level-up; it learns Play Rough for it's much weaker base Attack stat. It also doesn't feels really stand out among Pika Clones, as even Togedemaru and Morpeko have better in-game performance by comparison, with Togedemaru having nice uses in VGC formats. Dedenne just never stood a chance, and having the debuting Type in XY (Fairy) really left an awful first impression on Dedenne as well.
- It seems tempting to put all of the Electric-type Pika Clones (if you count Mimikyu as a Pika Clone, I wouldn't mind this fella even if I would find it annoying to fight against) to be among the worst but that would be way too easy to do it; I decided to focus on the worst of them all, and Dedenne have all of the pitfalls that would make it stand out in a bad way.
- Tornadus, Thundurus and Landorus: The most blatant example of the "Filler Legendaries", to the point where toning the amount of new Legendaries starting at Gen 6 was the right move in hindsight. As far as their base form is concerned, they are far too similar of each others even if they are supposed to be separate, and while they do receive the more diverse Therian form for each, they also plagued online play (not necessarily competitive unless you refer to Smogon in games they are in). Even then, they still get accusation of not just being ugly, but also feeling very pointless to begin with. At least Tornadus gets the distinction of being the only pure Flying-type until Gen 8 rolls along, but that alone doesn't saved it.
- Skwovet line: Had anyone else nominated them? Even if Greedent have a somewhat better statline compared to other early rodent Pokémon minus a certain Obstagoon, being part of the annoying mechanic and have an especially awkward design just didn't cut it. Such a shame there is two really poorly received rodent lines in a row (Gen 7 and 8), not helping that Greedent have to compete with Obstagoon, who is definitely more in-line with Stoutland among the early route Normal-type being much more useful in the long run.
im 20 and i had no idea tsareena was dominatrix-themed until reading this thread
thanks for corrupting my innocent mind, assholes
thanks for corrupting my innocent mind, assholes
Doesn’t help that in USUM, Tsareena gets Power Whip, sealing the final nail in the coffin.
Tsareena takes the "queen of fruits" designation the mangosteen has and runs with it in, uh, a different direction than one might have expected.
Lopunny has never really bothered me, can't say why. At least from a design perspective. More questionable is that it evolves from Buneary with high happiness, and Buneary is one of the few (the only?) non-legendary Pokémon to start with a base happiness of 0. Heck, the two are the only Pokémon to have learned Frustration and Return by level!
Lopunny has never really bothered me, can't say why. At least from a design perspective. More questionable is that it evolves from Buneary with high happiness, and Buneary is one of the few (the only?) non-legendary Pokémon to start with a base happiness of 0. Heck, the two are the only Pokémon to have learned Frustration and Return by level!
has tsundere never hit you
(also idk if luxury balls work?)
i think that plusle/minun as being worse offenders, doubles being almost non existent in the main campaign and them not being good in them either
I think Lopunny real cute. I like that she is shy and has to cover up her bunny tiddies. She’s classy like dat.
Tsareena, meanwhile, is overdesigned and looks forced. Same with Salazzle. Lopunny got “uncomfortably sexualized children’s character” right because the design is still simple and natural. Them other hoes are just bad designs trying to force the theme where it doesn’t fit.
Come to think of it, why is Salazzle posed like she’s playing basketball in the official art lol
Tsareena, meanwhile, is overdesigned and looks forced. Same with Salazzle. Lopunny got “uncomfortably sexualized children’s character” right because the design is still simple and natural. Them other hoes are just bad designs trying to force the theme where it doesn’t fit.
Come to think of it, why is Salazzle posed like she’s playing basketball in the official art lol
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Decidueye is the worst Pokemon to ever exist
I'm not explaining why, fuck you and fuck this dumb owl
edit @ below: fuck you Phione is great
I'm not explaining why, fuck you and fuck this dumb owl
edit @ below: fuck you Phione is great
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WHERE IS THE PHIONE HATE?! Is it because that trashcan is so forgettable that no one mentions it?
OK, but seriously, this has to be the most pointless Pokémon ever. I seriously don't get what is the point of getting an additional Pokémon by breeding the already rare Manaphy (a Pokémon that is obtained by hatching an egg, making this situation even more baffling), only to turn out to be a lesser version of it THAT CANNOT EVOLVE.
I've seen arguments that state that if Phione evolves that would decrease the rare factor of Manaphy. Even assuming that Manaphy being more accessible for everyone is a bad thing, why simply not making Phione the initial stage that hatches from the blue egg, and THEN evolves into Manaphy? You know, like an actual evolution line? Gen 7 and 8 did this with Cosmog and Kubfu, little babies that grow up throughout the story and their evolution feels rewarding.
Just look at all the pointless discussion this monster caused because not even Game Freak and Nintendo care enough if it's a legendary, mythical or not:
Just look at those pathetic base 80 stats and its lacking movepool. In the lowest of the low since its conception.
Easily my pick for worst Pokémon of all time.
OK, but seriously, this has to be the most pointless Pokémon ever. I seriously don't get what is the point of getting an additional Pokémon by breeding the already rare Manaphy (a Pokémon that is obtained by hatching an egg, making this situation even more baffling), only to turn out to be a lesser version of it THAT CANNOT EVOLVE.
I've seen arguments that state that if Phione evolves that would decrease the rare factor of Manaphy. Even assuming that Manaphy being more accessible for everyone is a bad thing, why simply not making Phione the initial stage that hatches from the blue egg, and THEN evolves into Manaphy? You know, like an actual evolution line? Gen 7 and 8 did this with Cosmog and Kubfu, little babies that grow up throughout the story and their evolution feels rewarding.
Just look at all the pointless discussion this monster caused because not even Game Freak and Nintendo care enough if it's a legendary, mythical or not:
Just look at those pathetic base 80 stats and its lacking movepool. In the lowest of the low since its conception.
Easily my pick for worst Pokémon of all time.
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Maybe I'm reading too much into the whole thing
Also apologies to Cobalt Empoleon, I didn't notice that you mentioned Buneary's happiness before I did.
Anyway, I made a tweet recently considering which Pokémon I would put in a team of my least favorites. I decided on Cinderace, Glaceon, Sky Shaymin, Salamence, Infernape, and Zeraora in no particular order, with dishonorable mentions to Gallade, the Latis, and Ash Greninja.
Some of them have competitive reasons, some of them don't (notably my hate for Cinderace has NOTHING to do with it competitively). My hate for Salamence and Infernape has decreased over time but I would be lying if I said I liked them now.
Now, now, you may hate the owl but don't project your hate onto others (unless I guess they like Decidueye though that's a pretty petty thing to hate someone over).
Couldn't find any mentions of it, but Relicanth is consistently a terrible Pokemon for in-game usage. It almost always comes very late (RSE, ORAS, and USUM, for example) or comes post-game (like Platinum). Even then, in RSE ORAS, and USUM, it has to be stupid rare and have a 5% encounter rate at best. Finally, Relicanth is almost never doing anything that would be worth the hassle of obtaining it.
1. relicanth is "good" for the regi puzzles
2. i think its supposed to be dunsparce rare/really not good which is probably ok for 1mon/gen
I think Electrode's design is saved by a few strong highlights.
For one, with a smiling mouth and angry eyes, it literally has one positive and one negative side. It's a battery, after all.
The other is its lore, with its oft-stated tendency to explode for any or no reason, including being bored. Seeing how early generations of lithium-ion batteries had similar tendencies, Game Freak was right on the money there.
It also serves as a mimic in RBY, like those evil chests you sometimes find in Zelda (or to a larger degree, Dark Souls). Though one might question how a trainer could possibly mistake a 1.5 meter sphere for a Poké Ball. Perhaps it plays with perspective to appear as if it's small and close by instead of big and far away? If only it learned Minimize, this wouldn't have been such an issue.
Relicanth is pretty one-to-one with real coelacanths, which could be a positive or negative, depending on your perspective.
It also has some MASSIVE physical bulk, unfortunately hindered by its typing. It also wishes it could run Rock Head and Swift Swim simultaneously for speedy, recoil-less STAB Head Smashes.