>>44946188Well, Pidove is no great design or anything. It is just a bird. It has a mildly amusing wordplay in it's Japanese design, and considering Unova is based on USA and Pidove being a pigeon (one of the most urban animals), I could easily see Pidove replacing every other bird, and becoming the defacto "low level bird" in the franchise, akin to Rattata fulfilling the "rat's" role.
When it comes to the stat and number game, there is no reason why the last evolution of Pidove could not have lost Big Pecks or Super Luck and gotten a more competitive ability (it isn't unheard of Pokémon losing their abitilies, like Gengar losing levitate from Haunter), except for Gamefreak not caring about making Pokémon competitive at all.
If I had the power to Thanos snap one of the birds, Starly would be the one to go. Simply because Pidove would be the more "paste-able" in other games.
Pidove's (and most of Unova) downfall was, ultimately, how hard they tried to seclude the dex from everything else.
