New pokemon bad

Hi everyone, it's foo here.

With Pokemon Scarlet and Violet coming out in only a few months, today I thought I'd tell you why new Pokemon are bad, actually.

Now, I know that I'll need strong justification for why these cuties are actually devil spawn (or at least not wholly a good thing)...

So before we get into it, I want to clarify this is not an issue with designs: recent generations have been pretty great for original designs, and we may be remembering previous gens contributions with rose-tinted spectacles. But quality of Pokemon designs is completely subjective. What I want to talk about is the measurable damage these new Pokemon can cause...

PART 1: WHY NEW POKEMON ARE BAD, ACTUALLY.

The main issue with new Pokemon is when it comes to battling

As an official elderly Pokemon fan (thanks Pokejungle...), I've seen a number of new generations come and go. With my experience, one thing I can say for certain is that, despite what Karen would have you believe, not all Pokemon are born equal and some are certainly stronger than others.
It's becoming more apparent with each generation that new games tend to introduce more powerful Pokemon - I've previously made a video looking at the strongest Pokemon in each game, and how many of those were newly introduced in that generation. The take away was that power creep seems to be real and is likely to continue.
Sword and Shield had some very obvious examples in Regieleki, the fatest pokemon ever, Calyrex Shadow Rider and let's not forget Zacian, the absolute mad lad - gets an attack boost just for showing up.
So if you are excited for the new games, bear in your mind that we could meet a Pokemon even more powerful than Zacian which is a pretty terrifying thought...

But that's not really the argument for why power creep is bad. The issue is redundancy. With all the new strong Pokemon, some of our favourites from past generation may be worse in comparison, making them the suboptimal choice in most situations. Back in gen 1, Starmie and Tauros were some of the fastest and strongest Pokemon available, but by gen 8 standards they are outsped by a plethora of Pokemon, and their attacking stats would be considered mediocre at best.

Following the release of Pokemon Legends Arceus, we have 905 pokemon, 498 fully evolved, and that does not take into account alternate forms and viable pre-evolutions. The pokedex is already bursting at the seams like/more bloated than a Snorlax at an all you can eat restaurant. When even more Pokemon are added, balancing issues are inevitable.

Only a handful of Pokemon will be particularly good in any format, so when we get new Pokemon that leaves hundreds of our old favourites being at best suboptimal, at worst just bad.

And it's not just old Pokemon that suffer this fate. With such a big pokedex, many new Pokemon can also experience failure to launch, which can feel pretty disappointing. A personal example of this came in generation 8. After seeing the trailers I was pretty excited about the introduction of Eldegoss - I loved its cute design, the potential for its abilities, and I guess I related to its advanced age being a fellow elder... (groooan)

However when Sword and Shield dropped, it turned out Eldegoss's stats were mediocre and its movepool was super limited meaning that it was never going to be particularly strong in competitive Pokemon which sucked...

So basically, don't get too hyped about the new Pokemon, because they might suck. But even if they don't, they might make your current favourite Pokemon suck in comparison! And that's why new pokemon are bad, actually.

PART 2: WHY BAD POKEMON ARE GOOD, ACTUALLY.

Prepare for the biggest Pokemon cinematic twist since Pikachu aimed for the horn as I will now tell you why bad Pokemon are good, actually.

1.
Necessary if we want a big pokedex.
One of the reasons people love pokemon so much is self-expression when they choose which characterful Pokemon they choose to have on their team. Having a wider array to choose from is super positive from this point. Therefore some pokemon being bad at battling is a small price to pay for more pokemon fans being able to find a favourite.

2.
Tension in challenge runs and nuzlockes
Some of them can't battle to save their lives... which they have to do in Nuzlockes since if they faint they die!

3.
Allows for creativity in competitive when trying to make underrated pokemon work which is super satisfying.
Led to potentially the best moment in competitive pokemon history - Sejun and Pachi.
Interesting content creation - My Eldegoss team.

So basically my intention for this video was to present the issues and the benefits of having a massive and expanding pokedex - we have more pokemon to choose from, but a lot of them won't be so good in battle. So temper your hype for the new games because we're about to get a bunch more bad Pokemon...


But I'm hopeful that
we'll get an increase pokemon fan base because more new trainers will find Pokemon they can connect too
there'll be increasing creativity in competitive pokemon as more players find ingenious ways to unleash the potential of relatively underrated picks
Nuzlockers and challenge runners will have super memorable experiences as the awful pokemon they encountered on route 1 manages to carry them through the entire game

So next time someone says that a Pokemon is bad, just let them know that bad pokemon are good, actually.