>>32180064Honestly, pretty sure it still is. Kinda.
Yeah yeah, I know Psuedo's have a very particular set of determining factors defining them, such as BST and amount of evolutionary stages and what not, but people forget that this is a purely fan term describing an un-defined, but clearly intentional pokemon archetype by Gamefreak. Because of this, and there being no official description, these aren't really defining qualities, but actually just qualities common among all of the psuedo's. People forget that the definition and requirements have changed over time. Previously, the definition limited them to only one per gen, needing to be at the end of the dex, specializing in Attack, and the pre-evo's following a particular stat layout as well, but newer Psuedo's have broken those trends, and thus they got re-defined.
As far as Gamefreak is concerned, they're not gonna follow those overly strict guidelines, they're just trying to design an intentionally very powerful, late game pokemon for the sake of a consistent gameplay mechanic. Theyre not gonna autistically follow things like "aw shit, our pseudo doesn't need 1,250,000 to get to level 100 given where we placed it in the game.. guess we need to re-do it!", unless it specifically needs to be. Theyre more concerned with making a late game, super-powerful pokemon that has lore that's vaguely similar to that of legendaries for the players.
Because of that, there's a difference between "Psuedo-legendary", which is just a fan term listing related qualities between a group of pokemon, and "End-game strong pokemon" which Gamefreak specifically designs for, that includes Dragonite, Tyrantiar, Metagross, Salamence, Garchomp, Hydreigon, Goodra, Kommo-o and which Volcarona very likely falls under. It's like a spiritual Psuedo.
