Moving on with our coverage of the most annoying/boring/uninspired Pokémon in existence, we journey to the water-covered Hoenn region, and see what it has to offer us for just bottom-of-the-barrel Pokeys. We’ve previously covered Kanto and Johto, and our current team of bad pokeys sits at Jynx and Unown.
And you know what? There’s not even anything outrageously bad here in Hoenn.
You’d think that would be a good thing, but instead of finding a Pokémon that is objectively terrible (OR RACIST!), I was stuck weighing a half dozen very “meh” Pokémon against each other. The kind of creatures that I would never remember actually exist if forced to name them all.
Hoenn had some gems, sure, but its dregs are just complete snoozes!
Oh well. Let’s see how middling it got…
5. Beautifly
Okay, THIS one actually inspires some feelings in me.
Get the heck out of here, Fake Butterfree! It’s not unusual for Pokémon to have similar archetypes across different regions, but another butterfly? We already had a fantastic butterfly Pokey! We did not need another.
And the thing about Beautifly is… we REALLY never needed it! Wurmple could just straight evolve into Dustox, and no one would miss this thing. Why give us this silly branching evolution? Now when I catch Wurmples, I have to hope they evolve into Cascoon; if I get a Silcoon, I pitch that garbage! No time for you, lesser Butterfree!
If I want a butterfly Pokémon–and I do–I will just get the classic flavor.
4. Luvdisc
This should have been #1, right? When I first thought of Hoenn, I thought “Oh yeah, Luvdisc is the worst”.
But then I remembered something: Heart Scales!
So… argh. Luvdisc is useless as a POKEMON, but they are often holding Heart Scales in the wild, and those bastards were IMPORTANT back in the day! You constantly needed more Heart Scales. So you’d regularly kill yourself trying to catch these stupid little heart fish.
Which, actually, makes them even worse. Because you NEEDED them. But they were worthless. Catch it, pick off its scales, throw it back. Repeat FOR WHAT FEELS LIKE FOREVER.
3. Swalot
Hey, remember when Generation One gave us Muk?
Well Hoenn basically looked at Muk and said “Yes, but us, too”.
This is even more egregious that Beautifly because, all right, my love for Butterfree aside, I get it. There are lots of kinds of butterflies in the world.
But Swalot is literally just another purple glob of poison. WE ALREADY HAVE THIS. Except now instead of looking like a menacing mess of toxic sewage, we get… some weird Salvador Dali Pokémon? This is a goof; it isn’t threatening!
And come on, at least change the color. It’s the same shade as Muk!
2. Castform
Oh yeah, “boobs”: The Pokémon.
Seriously, who designed this thing? It’s… supposed to be a cloud, but that’s not what anyone who looks at it is going to see. You just seem this weird, white Pokey with its HEAVING BOSOM.
Apart from that, all you are left with is a Normal type Pokemon with pitiable stats and a silly gimmick whereby it changes its type and appearance based on the in-game weather. But not even ALL weather. Like… there is no Sandstorm Castform. There is no Fog Castform. Just Ice, Water/Rain, and Fire/Sun. Why didn’t we ever get a sand version, anyway?
Oh well. It’s never useful, so who cares?
1. Chimecho
This is it. The one Generation 3 Pokemon I am most convinced that, if I were SOMEHOW able to remember every other one, THIS is the one I’d forget exists.
It’s so negligible! It’s a fully evolved Psychic type (and WOW, as of Generation 3, all three of the Worsts have been at least partially Psychic) with abhorrent stats and a stupid appearance. Like… is it a windchime? Is that what it’s name is telling me? Are windchimes psychic? What is going on here?
Like I said… it’s frustrating that this fella isn’t even horrible. He’s just insipid and forgettable. Like they were checking boxes. “Oh, we need a Psychic type now”, and then someone else heard a windchime and no one thought to combine those would be moronic.
But hey… at least they gave him bad stats, too, I guess?
I really hope Sinnoh’s worst Pokémon is not Psychic. I’m starting to feel a bit Type-ist at this point.
Anyway, that really isn’t a terrible list. I am surprised. Hoenn really wasn’t that bad.
Next up, though… is Sinnoh, historically my favorite of Pokémon regions. Will I find anything to dislike there?
Until next time… take care!
SWO Productions 