It's always struck me as kind of pathetic that Zangoose and Seviper's 3rd gen Pokedex entries dedicate the bulk of their wordcount to their opposite.
Come on, guys. Be your own person. This is just sad.
The main appeal of the duo is their rivalry akin to real life mangooses and vipers though, so it’s a good idea to let both veterans and newcomers know about their nature. A violent rivalry like that was unheard off, since both present and previous rivalries were either Legendaries or some of the simple competitive types.
The fact that every Pokédex entries talk about their rivalries in both version, leaving little room for their other characteristics, does make it repetitive after the 3rd generation though.
Gen 1 was actually for the most part very good about making single stage Pokemon stand out. Most of them actually stood out just as much as three-stage lines because they were unique for not being part of an evolutionary line, and they often made up for it by being much rarer, in many cases only one being available to catch and use.
Three-stage lines and single-stage Pokemon stood out relatively equally in the Gen 1 roster, because they made themselves rare and standout in different ways. The two-stage lines were often the blandest because they were average at best and often "common spawns" in the wild.
There were some obviously bad ones like Lickitung, but Farfetch'd was a good early game crutch who doubled as a Cut user, Onix was a great first boss Pokemon, and Porygon was unique in lore and in obtaining. Mr. Mime was also a good alternative to Alakazam for those who couldn't find people to trade with to evolve Kadabra.
The other Gen 1 single stage Pokemon were quite usable in-game in RBY as mid-late game strong teammates who were hard to find and catch, but would make valid additions to your team around the mid-game if you needed extra firepower and would serve you well until the end. Snorlax appeared only twice as a roadblock, and if you caught it you had a great tank in your hands. In the Safari Zone there are several single stage Normal-types like Tauros, Kangaskhan, and Chansey, who all are very hard to catch which is doubled down on by the Safari Zone game mechanics, and also rare, but you were rewarded with a strong powerhouse off the bat should you be able to catch one of them. The same goes for Pinsir and Scyther who were also there. Lapras was a nice gift from Silph Co. who is *really* good.
Then post-Surf you could go to some dungeons and pick up Jynx, Electabuzz, or Magmar who were good elemental users. The Fighting Dojo has Hitmonlee or Hitmonchan who would make acceptable alternatives to Machamp for those who couldn't trade a Machoke. Aerodactyl could be revived from a fossil and be a good Pokemon. And last but not least there were the three legendary birds who were scaled for end-game use and would be great if you needed some more power to add to your team. Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres were strong off the bat even with no training and save you the effort of training something up at that point if you haven't.
You get the jist but Gen 1 was pretty good about using single stage Pokemon right for in-game use as valid pre-promotes, whether as a crutch or as a mid-late game already good team member who can give your team more oomph if you were in need of one. They made up for their lack of evolutionary progression by generally being much harder to find and catch, but if you did, you were rewarded nicely.
I think later generations, on the other hand, were much more inconsistent with the value of single stage Pokemon.
Single-stage mons, in theory, are essentially Fire Emblem prepromotes.
Immediate power at the cost of plateauing later. Just like prepromotes, they're usually broken af or immediately benched with little to no middle ground. It's pretty hard to balance those, y'know?
Gen 1 had a lot of those, and barring some who were so late/rare in the game that you really might as well not bother, they were all trash.
Come to think of it, besides maybe Mr. Mime and Jynx, were there any legit good single-stage evos in RBY before the mid-game?
Dux, Pinsir, and Scyther were straight trash. Electabuzz was in the same building as Zapdos lmao. Tauros might as well have been under that truck with those awful spawn rates and Safari mechanics. Also, it's more of a late-mid game pick tbh, so your mons should've been at least getting close to their final stage.
I don't think any good single-stage mons were available around Lavender/Celadon...
The two above seems to have opposite views. Definitely divisive back in the first generation.
I do agree that single-stages were handled a lot more inconsistently in later generations. This is part of why I tend to have a low opinion on single-staged Pokémon, likely due to how poorly executed most of them are, I feel. As XY proved, weak single-staged Pokémon like Plusle and Minun works miles better for early game instead of being shoved into midgame or worse, lategame.
And to any fangame dev out there, if you want to create weak single-stage Pokémon, do us potential players a favor and not make them too rare and make sure they are available early on. In other words, don’t do gimmick mons just for sake of it. Masgot from Xenoverse got this issue by being a 1% encounter Pokémon yet pretty weak for what’s supposed to be a midgame Pokémon.
Yes, we know that “Pokémon are baby easy with nearly any Pokémon able to solo the game” but that doesn’t stop some doing it better than others. In-game tiers and Nuzlockes tiers exists for a reason.
Giving an evolution or pre-evolution is more blessing than a curse, as it don’t just buff a single-stage Pokémon or making it easier to access respectively; it also allows developers to balance them more easily without having to stick them to one place of another, especially if the single-staged Pokémon failed to make an impact in their debuting game.
Now, a certain single-stage Pokémon with 535 BST - the same that the likes of Crobat, Rhyperior and Swampert have in common - have managed to shock the world in Scarlet and Violet. Duraludon, out of all Pokémon at that gets an evolution, pushes it to endgame territory that matches pseudo-legendaries in terms of being power, down to Archaludon’s 600 BST. Even in-game, Archaludon is a veritable threat comparable to pseudo-legendary Pokémon, if not surpassing them in a way thanks to Stamina, helped by the fact that you just need an item to evolve Duraludon vs needing to level up a lot for a pseudo-legendary.
Speaking off 600 BST, cross-gen evolutions with exactly 600 BST are not something you give like candies, as much as it is unheard off in official Pokémon games until the Indigo Disk. In fact, treat them as something special, something that are rare, powerful but not exactly a single specimen, just like pseudos. If another cross-gen evolution have 600 BST or two, we’d best have a new category, something like those;
- Pseudo-Mythicals (akin to mythicals being distinct to legendaries, even if abritrary, like how Archaludon is not considered a pseudo-legendary despite the 600 BST due to not being three-staged yet and have a different EXP Group from real pseudos)
- Exceptional Evolutions (a term I use for Archaludon and the fanmade cross-gen evos with 600 BST)
- Super Cross-Generational Evolutions (indicate that it’s much stronger than an average cross-gen evo)
- Cross-Gen 600 Club (a subset of 600 Club, and refers to how Archaludon is considered as part of Japanese fans’ 600 Club due to evolving at least once, whereas mythicals and legends with 600 BST in any form aren’t included due to not being part of any evolutionary line)