Topic: Pokemon Sword & Shield

Maybe just pure Fire? We've not had that since Typhlosion.

Those are always underappreciated. It feels like it always needs to be a type combination.

@Octane Agreed, and Fire has had the fewest pure starters by a fair margin:

Grass: Meganium, Sceptile, Serperior = 3
Fire: Typhlosion = 1
Water: Blastoise, Feraligatr, Samurott = 3

It could be that Game Freak have ditched the idea though. There has been a definite move towards anthropomorphic-themed starters since around gen 4/5 (e.g. Wrestlers, samurais, ninjas). I'm not sure I'm a fan of this tbh - I personally think it results in some fairly ugly final evolutions.

@Morpheel Yeah they did a Ghost starter in Gen 7.

They also did a Dark starter in both 6 and 7. Your point.

And lets not forget 4 generations of Fighting starters in a row

@Buizel Yeah, I agree. I also think that the recent two grass starters hardly looked like grass types at all. I'm not sure why this is a thing. I guess because it's easier to make ''fan art'' of anthropomorhic designs than of something like Torterra or Venusaur

@Octane Tbh my main disappointment starter-wise is that, 8 generations in, they've not really toyed with different base starter types in the main series.

We know alternative approaches to starters can work based on Yellow, Colosseum/XD, and even LGPE. Why not take the risk?

Maybe this is just an unpopular opinion of mine!

Is it wromg to want a Fire starter that isnt on two legs?

I fear when we get to the snake one itll sprout legs.

@Buizel I don't think that there's a trio of types that works the same way as water, fire and grass does. At least not in the sense that it's super effective one way, and not very effective the other way. But that doesn't mean they can't do something different. Is there a trio of types that are all neutral against each other for example? That could work. Or have the option to pick between two instead of three. Or a weird Eevee thing that has multiple branching evolutions. So you start one with one, but there's a handful of evolutions possible. I don't mind the current set-up to be honest, but I'm also not against something different.

@Octane Psychic, Ghost, Dark is one possible combination.

I think the other one thought about was Ground, Rock, Ice.

@Knuckles-Fajita Dark is super effective against ghost and psychic, it also resists the former and it is completely unaffected by the latter. I don't think that's a good idea.

@Octane It might have been Psychic, Ghost, Fighting. Something stupid back when Gen 4 was coming out.

I never said it was a plausible idea, just things people floated around once upon a time as they do every generation.

@Octane Actually, there is at least one triangle that works perfectly: Flying, Fighting and Rock. There are also many triangles that are almost perfect but one of the Pokémon is either immune or doesn't resist the other type. All three being Dragon type would be kind of fun too since Dragon is super effective against itself.

I guess the starter triangle is a tradition but they usually add some secondary types and those don't follow any rules so why should the primary typing have such a strict rule. I don't really like Pokémon Colosseum but it was cool to start with something different. Same goes for Mystery Dungeon. Sure, it has the usual starters but they have more than just one trio available so it's already much better and then there are also some extra Pokémon. Now that I think about Mystery Dungeon, I kind of want the quiz from those games to a mainline game so you wouldn't even know which Pokémon you end up with.

@Late Back in my day pure flying was impossible!!

Colosseum is still my favourite Pokemon game lol. I like the double battles, you can play around with so many more strategies, and I also like the higher difficulty in general.

@Octane I've always wondered why they don't make more pure flying types. It just doesn't make any sense that we have 800 Pokémon and only one is pure flying type. In addition, Noibat and Noivern are the only half flying types that have Flying as their primary type instead of secondary type.

I didn't own a GameCube so I didn't play Colosseum until much later. I have memories of Colosseum but they are not from the game itself but from wanting a GameCube and seeing the box art many times in magazines and toy catalogs. I also have a memory of either seeing a demo video or playing the game/demo in a hypermarket. I guess the game just didn't live up to my high expectations once I finally played it.

@Late Gen 5 and 6 is when GameFreak went full-on edgy with the flying type. And then they kinda gave up on it

It was a suggestion based on personal opinion?

@Gravitron what about fire/eleitric might happen

The final evolution requires them merging with a Pikachu and they all become part electric.

This was alluded to above, but there were rumors flying around shortly before Gen 5 (I think) was fully revealed that there would be a new starter triangle that was composed of Fighting > Psychic > Dark. That sort of unofficially became true with the final starter evos in X/Y.

Yup I remember those, fine vintage rumors.