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Gen 1, 2 and 3 all starters are rad, no wrong choices. Although to me Mudkip and Cyndaquil stick out amongst their gens, just me.
Turtwig and Chimchar are also rad as fuck, I prefer Turtwig.
As the OP said Gen 5 is as a whole pretty fucking shit, you have the grass type that looks cool the whole evolution but it gets no decent attack even in game, the fire one that only looks tolerable in the first stage than immediately transforms into living overgrown cancer tumor, with shitty copypasta fighting type added, but doesn't learn a decent fighting move via level up. yes I'm fucking mad and then you get the way starter who looks shit at first and then turns into cool looking guys. There isn't really anything wrong with it, unless you're like one of the many autistic on here and are like "Hurr inferior quadrupedal faggotmon" but at the same time it doesn't have a lot going for it either, it gets totally outclassed by other water pokemon and the other water starters, including shit-tier Piplup whose only redeeming quality is god-tier steel second typing.
Capcha agrees with me, pic related.