Every Single Starter Pokémon Ranked: What's your tier list like?

bdt2002

bdt2002

Guardian Signs super-fan
is a Pre-Contributor
Good afternoon, everyone. A few months back, I made a thread where I asked each of you what your favorite Pokémon games were and how you would rank them in a tier list format. Think of this new thread as a sort of "sequel" to that idea. I get that these forums aren't exactly what the moderators would call social media, but there is a part of me that can't help but wonder if this cool little series I've started is a popular idea. I'll leave that up to the OI staff team, though. For now, let's just focus on today's topic at hand.

Starter Pokémon. We've all heard the term, and for the most part we all have our favorite we like to pick more frequently than not. Famously divided between types, evolutionary stages, and regions, as of Pokémon Sword & Shield there are a grand total of 72 different Pokémon eligible for this concept. Eight regions multiplied by three types brings us 24, multiplied by three again for the evolutionary stages brings us to that number. If one also decides to add the unevolved variants Pikachu and Eevee into the mix, that puts us at 74 out of 898 Pokémon, or just over 8.24% of the total list of Pokémon we've ever seen up to this point.

What I'm eager to know is... how would you rank them? What criteria would you use? Would you only grade a specific evolutionary stage, or have different rankings for each stage? Maybe you'd choose to rank only a specific Type of starter Pokémon relative to the others of that Type. Just like in my previous thread like this, I've found a handy source that will allow us to partake in this discussion, which can be found here: https://tiermaker.com/create/all-starter-pokemon-225293

I'm not sure what else there is to say here, except for me to start off the discussion with my own rankings. With that, I hope you all enjoy this, and if there's any questions or ideas you have, feel free to message me in PMs. Take care!

My Tier List:
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imma be honest, i think you should have put torchic evolution line above chimchar evolution line but imma respect the tier list
 
I'm bad at this!

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I may have opinions about Let's Go that have caused me to abandon the idea of this being starters of core games and just rank the starters of every pokemon game I have played, and not rank the starters of any pokemon game I have not played. Despite this, mons that appear as starters in both games I have played and games I have not have been ranked according to all of their appearances, usually not to their benefit (Eevee stands out as a particularly prominent example, based on the relative positions of it and its evolutions). And, well, it wouldn't be me discussing starters if I didn't insist that the mon you choose to be your partner from the beginning of an adventure isn't required to be one of the ones the game gives you, though I at least kept it to the full evolutions for that part (magneton is there because it got that honour in a gen 3 game).
 
Ironmage said:
I'm bad at this!

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I may have opinions about Let's Go that have caused me to abandon the idea of this being starters of core games and just rank the starters of every pokemon game I have played, and not rank the starters of any pokemon game I have not played. Despite this, mons that appear as starters in both games I have played and games I have not have been ranked according to all of their appearances, usually not to their benefit (Eevee stands out as a particularly prominent example, based on the relative positions of it and its evolutions). And, well, it wouldn't be me discussing starters if I didn't insist that the mon you choose to be your partner from the beginning of an adventure isn't required to be one of the ones the game gives you, though I at least kept it to the full evolutions for that part (magneton is there because it got that honour in a gen 3 game).
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Do you have a link to that extended list?
 
khlaylav said:
Honestly, I'd like to see your rationale for the expanded ones you think of as starters.
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Siggu said:
If your question is "why are they starters?", then it's because of the Mystery Dungeon games.
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For the ones that are actually starters, MD is most of it. However, Plusle and Minun are from the first Ranger game and Espeon/Vaporeon rank so highly because of Colosseum and Conquest respectively.

For the mons in the "not actually starters but I think of them as such category," they're mons that filled the same role as a starter in one of my previous playthroughs: i.e. a mon obtained early that is the ace of the team throughout.
Aggron: OR casual playthrough, but probably more as well
Aegislash: X casual playthrough
Magnezone: USun first playthrough: artifice-themed
Vikavolt: Moon first playthrough: mono-bug
Excadrill: Black casual playthrough
Magneton: Emerald casual playthrough. While I admit that it would normally be too late to qualify, it was also the first alternative ace that I recognized
Gardevoir: Emerald frontier-prep playthrough: ghost and future fairy types
Ampharos: HG casual playthrough
 
I separated them into three lists based on evolutionary stage. Pikachu and Eevee are with the final forms since the starter variants of them cannot evolve further. I'm probably too nice lmao: but this is the honest truth from me. I have a very hard time disliking any individual Pokemon: it takes a significant amount of effort to outright dislike any Pokemon, there are some Pokemon who I'm sorta meh on or don't care about, but especially with starters I love 'em all, just to varying degrees. (Also as a side note, while this is individual starters, more often than not my liking of starters is based on them as a group/trio: so I have a clear favoritism on which trios I like the best as a group but less so individually. My brain is weird like that).

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As a whole though, side note, since I did say my liking of the starters is based on them as a trio/group, this is my personal ranking of them as groups:

1. Sinnoh
2. Alola
3. Kalos
4. Hoenn
5. Kanto
6. Johto
7. Galar
8. Unova
 
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Each placement is judging the entire evolutionary line. A lot like ScraftyIsTheBest I need a significant amount of effort to actually dislike a Pokémon, and none of the starters apply. Also, the bottom tier is for starters I feel I can’t I either haven’t actually used (or used as a starter in the cases of Eevee or Pikachu) or those where I’m not far enough in the playthrough where I have chosen them to accurately gauge them; either way, I feel I can’t properly judge them (tho tbh they’d most likely fall under ‘Like’ or ‘Meh’).

Also, a few specifics:
-Charizard is so high largely because of Charmeleon... not entirely, but significantly so.
-Any Pokémon behind Empoleon in ‘Like’ and Samurott in ‘Meh’ can really be in any order in said tier.


adman2 said:
Chikorita deserves to be at the bottom of every list. I even did a solo challenge with Meganium because it was so bad. Bayleef had to be Level 25 to beat Bugsy and use Tackle. Mud Slap was the best move against Morty, and Meganium had to reach Level 39 to win. Even Tentacool did better against Red than Meganium.
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I actually just feel bad for Meganium, if only because it was dealt such an aggressively shitty hand in its debut game. The whole region, save for a smattering of key trainers, hard-counters Grass; while Meganium’s stats don’t do it any favors, if it were in a more Grass-friendly region it’d probs perform better (for example, I think Hoenn would be much friendlier for it).
 
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adman2 said:
Chikorita deserves to be at the bottom of every list. I even did a solo challenge with Meganium because it was so bad. Bayleef had to be Level 25 to beat Bugsy and use Tackle. Mud Slap was the best move against Morty, and Meganium had to reach Level 39 to win. Even Tentacool did better against Red than Meganium.
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true. but i just dont like chikorita lmao
 
adman2 said:
Chikorita deserves to be at the bottom of every list. I even did a solo challenge with Meganium because it was so bad. Bayleef had to be Level 25 to beat Bugsy and use Tackle. Mud Slap was the best move against Morty, and Meganium had to reach Level 39 to win. Even Tentacool did better against Red than Meganium.
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But he's very adorable so we forgive him.
 
adman2 said:
Chikorita deserves to be at the bottom of every list. I even did a solo challenge with Meganium because it was so bad. Bayleef had to be Level 25 to beat Bugsy and use Tackle. Mud Slap was the best move against Morty, and Meganium had to reach Level 39 to win. Even Tentacool did better against Red than Meganium.
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To be fair, half of the issue here isn’t that Meganium is a bad Pokémon, it’s just that the Grass-Type is notoriously awful in this game. The Chikorita line still gets access to some great defensive tools that might be passed over by new or returning players alike.
 
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Rankings are mostly based on how I feel about them design-wise since I haven't used a lot of these, with a little bit of gameplay and childhood nostalgia thrown in for good measure. Pikachu and Eevee are at the bottom because you can't evolve them as starters.
 
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