While I agree that the GSC gym leaders have very lackluster teams (worst in the series with BW1 as a close second) Pryce isn't actually after Jasmine, he's challengeable immediately after the Team Rocket hideout event which you only need Surf for, and it's not like you skip past Chuck or Jasmine's gym along the way to Pryce.
Just curious, what exactly do you find wrong with the BW1 teams? I think the Pokemon selections are completely fine, even if some could've been better (Elesa could've had another Electric replace Emolga #2 and Drayden could've had Zweilous over Fraxure), and I'd say they're even kind of impressive in a way considering the restricted Pokedex and how Generations like 1 and OG DP 4 have struggled to make decent teams under similar restrictions. They're not above average by any means, but I wouldn't dare call them a "close second" to Gen 2's leaders under any circumstance, those are on a whole new tier of suck.
That's probably referring to me since I say it every 2 minutes, so I should probably make it clear: I'm only saying that's likely the reason for it. That doesn't mean I think it's a good reason, and Bugsy and Falkner for instance should 100% have had a Ledian and a Hoothoot or something. Hell, even throw a curveball and give Falkner a Hoppip to mess with us. I like them making the flying gym the first in Johto because it screws with expectations that the Fire starter is the worst against gym 1 while the Grass and Water ones make it a cakewalk; so screw with that expectation even further!
Oh yeah, totally. I honestly don't know which has the worst gym leader roster, 2 or 6. They're both awful in their own ways: I've already gone over how laughable Gen 2's teams are, meanwhile Gen 6's gym leaders feel like a total regression to what I call "generic boss fight syndrome": A problem mainly in early generations where Gym Leaders feel less like actual characters and more like bland progress markers that toss out stronger-than-usual Pokemon at you. In the end I think Gen 6 is slightly worse because at least I can have a hearty laugh at the expense of the Gen 2 cast, meanwhile XY Gym Leaders are just boring and forgettable. I dunno how we went from these fucks to the endlessly charming and memorable Gen 7 Kahunas and Gen 8 Gym Leaders, but I am NOT complaining at all.
I feel I'd give the point to Gen 2 here. At least that had Whitney's Miltank and Clair's Kingdra in there; a lot of the teams are badly designed, but there's some genuinely memorable and even challenging parts in there.
Incredibly tiny teams, with the 8th gym leader being the first in the series to have only 3 Pokemon, something which definitely helps take away from difficulty. The issue here is that this feels like it's done by a poor decision on type order than anything else. Both Ice and Dragon have literally 3 family lines that aren't legendaries and they're stuck at the end while the more expansive Fire/Water/Grass types get shafted into a single Pokemon in the first gym.
So the 3 pokemon holdover from gen 5 is absolutely bad and the fact they just did nothing with the gym leaders stands in stark contrast to gens 4, 5 ,7 AND 8
Go ahead, I'm curious. Just spoiler tag it if it's long
What makes it even funnier in the case of HGSS is that in the core Gen 4 games the 2nd gym leader Gardenia not only has a motherfucking Roserade (a 3rd stage fully evolved mon when ur team might not even be at the 20s yet), but she also has a Turtwig and Cherrim to precede it. They're not amazing Pokemon or anything and the Turtwig is even unevolved despite being high enough level to become a Grotle, but it's better than Kakuna and Metapod and shows more fate in the players to take on strong foes.
being 100% honest i think they made the levels and teams on everything in gsc shit so that the red fight looked more challenging. if they went with pokemon on theirr 60s for e4 and gym leaders you'd probably be close to your 80s too due to the exp, at minimun on your 70s, which means red wouldnt look AS boss as he would, since his team isnt that good when the field level is the same (snorlax is the scariest but pikachu sucks, espeon dies to most physical moves, charizard weak to so much shit with kinda bad bulk, venusaur keeps wasting turns with solarbeam and blastoise is decent but doesnt hit that hard if you have a resist)
Honestly it's probably because they wanted to cram in the two regions without the Kanto gym leaders getting to unrealistically high levels. At least that's the only explanation I can think of, and even that's extremely flimsy and poorly handled
i think steven is more deserving as a good hidden boss for the games. His difficulty isnt fabricated by horrible level scalling and his team both fits his theme of being a rock and steel enthusiast while actually having synergy and good mons. his skarmory spamming toxic is the most annoying shit ever LOL
Looking at them, I mostly agree, though I really like what they did with Bugsy and Chuck, as they use different strategies in the remakes.
I think what Kurona said is leaning toward the truth. Though DPPl's Great Marsh layout difficulty and HGSS's waiting gimmick may have shown their interests in Safari Zone-like areas was waning. They tried making them interesting, increasing the difficulty to catch the Pokemon in different ways, but by Gen V they probably felt it had become archaic so decided to stop.
Falkner: Well for Xatu and Crobat they're the Signature Pokemon for Will & Koga, respectively. But, yeah, they could have given him at least Hoothoot instead of Pidgey.Falkner- Natu, Murkrow, Hoppip, Hoothoot, heck even Zubat I could've accepted since it got Crobat as a new evolution. But nope, a Pidgey and a Pidgetto. Nice going loser, first Gym Leader and we already have a team with no Gen 2 mons.
Bugsy- Again with no gen 2 mons, but I guess there's Scyther which did get Scizor as an evolution. But even then they had plenty of new Bugs to put in for the other 1-2 slots: Pineco, Yanma, Ledian/Ariados or their pre-evos all would've worked fine. But nope, motherfucking Kakuna and Metapod. Which should've evolved several levels ago. Yippee...
Morty- WHERE. THE. FUCK. IS. MISDREAVUS. They made a Ghost type gym but didn't include THE ONE NEW GHOST?! In fact, none of the trainers or Morty himself use that Pokemon in either the original GSC or HGSS. Heck, in the latter they coulda even given him Mismagius, would've caused some overlap with Fantina and might have been too much in conjunction with Gengar but good lord it's better than Gengar line spam. Remember kids: Fantina (A Gen 4 leader) and Allister (A Gen 8 leader) have more Pokemon derived from the cast of Gen 2 than the actual Gen 2 Ghost leader.
Chuck- An absolute disgrace of Gym Leader design. A whopping 2 Pokemon at gym number 5, awesome team bro. As for Pokemon selection, copy-paste the first half of my Morty rant with every mention of Misdreavus replaced with Hitmontop.
Bruno- Pretty neat team honestly, even has a Hitmontop... wait. The Kanto Elite Four member has the Johto Fighting type... but not the Johto Gym Lead- I AM GOING TO SMASH SOMETHING I SWEAR TO GOD
Lance- The worst Champion team, no ifs and or buts about it. The final challenge of this region and half of his team is the same fucking Pokemon. Oh, and no Gen 2 mons yet again, although I guess it's more forgivable since he's technically Kanto champion and there weren't many Dragons at this point. I mean, it's not like there was a Dragon type evolution to an old Gen 1 Pokemon introduced this generation that was also the ace of the canonical relative to Lance also introduced this generation that could've patched up the glaring weakness to Rock types...
But if they did add a Pokemon like that, it would be pretty wild, no?
I always thought the following made for a nice escalation:
Only problems with Korrina is that she doesn't use Lucario in her Gym Battle. On top of that, despite having Hawlucha, her only Pokemon that isn't completely walled by a Ghost-type is Machoke who has Rock Tomb... which if you're using Honedge resists it. Also remember that for some stupid reason most Gen 6 trainers only had their Pokemon know 3 moves so each of Korrina's Pokemon had an empty move slot that could easily been used for a coverage: Mienfoo could have also had Rock Tomb or Aerial Ace, Machoke could have had Payback of Bulldoze, and Hawlucha given Aerial Ace or Acrobatics.
I kind of like that is a tutorial Gym though I also see what you mean. Maybe instead of a Lillipip they should have given the triplets a Pokemon that the Starter would be strong against before sending out the monkey they were weak against so at least the Starter got some screen time. Cilan would use a Roggenrola, Cress would use a Venipede, and Chili would use a Stunfish. While obviously this wouldn't get them strong enough to face the elemental monkey, would give them some role to play without mitigating them too much to the sidelines.
I'll give a short version of which gym leader teams I have a problem with first. Then, I'll go more in-depth with what changes I would make in the spoiler tags.
Any reason for Goldeen specifically?
What's up with Tentacruel? other than that, this is mostly solid.
Her team is like that in Yellow to reference how she only used that family in the anime. It doesn't excuse the poor design though.
Marowak is actually my first thought to flock to instead of Sandslash. Marowak seems like it fits Giovanni more than Sandslash.
IMO Foretrees is a better pick than Skarmory for them, but true.
But then he couldn't use the Swablu in rematches because it would loose the Normal typing upon evolving. Besides Swellow would probably fit him better. (Winoa doesn't use Swellow in Emerald)
Nuzleaf would be fine, but something like Cherrubi would probably be a better pick over Lombre. (that could also have let them implement version-exclusive teams, but that probs wouldn't happen)
Yes, this is probably the reason. If you look at evolution levels and level-up movepools, most Pokémon reach the end of their "growth" around level 55-60 or so. Very few Pokémon have any further content of note to offer if you level them up past that point, especially back in the days of Gen II. I think this limitation set a cap on how high levels could go during the game's story, and so the levels were scaled backwards from that point (minus Red, whose levels were placed a lot higher so he could be a challenge). This lead to a bit of weirdness such as having the seventh Gym leader barely scratch past level 30 with their ace Pokémon, or the second Gym Leader not even having Pokémon past level 16. The need for the level curve to not hit 60 until the end of Kanto really made Johto feel rather underwhelming: the region of Pokémon mostly below level 30.
Dude, you just read my mind. This should honestly go into the unpopular opinions thread, but hell with it, I'mma say right now that if that hypothetical Let's Go Johto game does happen, I would be 100% content with the Kanto postgame being scrapped entirely if they did the following:
