>>35536825Venusaur had a secondary typing and a movepool, and also a much better design than literally my kid brother's generic plastic brachiosaurus toy. Gen I Venusaur also had broken mechanics at its side to make it viable in-game (super-crit Razor Leaf gave it a decent STAB, something Meganium has never really had as a starter, plus the whole Leech Seed + Toxic glitch made for some speedy stalling), and Gen III Venusaur still had a good matchup against a couple of the gyms to hold on to in addition to an always-useful-ingame immunity to being Poisoned.
Using Meganium has never been fun for me. I dealt with it as best as I could in Gen II, sticking with it to the end, and in HG I even held onto it until juuuuust outside of Victory Road, but it never clicked. The fact that almost all of Johto is a deathtrap for Grass-types does it no favors as well. You get two gyms of being fucked in the ass right out of the gate, one not-shit matchup against Whitney, Morty (bad matchup for Grass because all his Ghosts are part Poison), Chuck (actually not a bad matchup), and then the region ends with three gyms in a row where the featured type either resists Grass or will destroy Meganium with STAB if they get a hit in (though I will grant that Grass isn't a terrible option because of the secondary typings in Pryce's gym, you still have to grind like hell to get any mileage out of Meganium here because taking Ice hits is dangerous and it has weak STABs backed by low offenses).
The other Johto starters at least have proper good matchups against a couple of gyms along with the moves and power to get shit done in a timely manner, especially HGSS Feraligatr. And besides, generally speaking Fire and Water are just plain better types for an in-game team.
>>35536837You do you, but I have some real gripes about Meganium that don't apply to the other two or Venusaur and I'm pretty sure some of them are also objective facts. Johto isn't a good region for Grass-types.
