Quoted By:
I'm actually a professional character designer so this should be interesting.
I got Dusknoir.
Oh, Dusknoir... I have a bit of a relationship with this Pokemon... I don't really like it, to be honest. Duskull's line are pretty iconic Ghost types; back in gen one and two you could count all the Ghosts on one hand. As an edgy kid, I really wanted a skull-based Pokemon but I accepted that it was probably a bit strong for a kid's game. Regardless, they made one and I loved it - back in gen three Dusclops was in my top three favourite Pokemon. Duskull and Dusclops work perfectly thematically; Dusclops looks like a fucking titan and that's his role in battle.
Then, in line with the power creep, they made Dusknoir. This thing is one of the unfortunate ones of the fourth-gen evolutions because it loses a lot of the theming of the previous evolutions. It went from being a skull ghost, to a cyclops tower, to a hand-pumpkin-spectral radio receiver...I don't know, it's too much. The pumpkin is acceptable since skull-cyclops-pumpkin are all elements of a face, but why the hands? Why the radio transmitter? It's like they made a Pokemon out of a mash of unused concepts and it comes off as unmemorable as a result.
I think Duskull and Dusclops were stronger and more memorable as a two-part line, so I would have just buffed those two and not done Dusknoir at all. If I HAD to make it work I'd have expanded on Dusclops' design somehow. In particular, the dark ring around the eye really takes away from Dusclops' intimidating eye.