>>39626379Move distribution was also torked; eg. you had Fake Tears as the Baby-only move for Bonsly, which is "eh" when both Bonsly and Sudowoodo were heavily slanted towards the Physical end. You had to spend a Heart Scale for that and Copycat, even, because Bonsly's wild level was too high to have them remembered. You might as well spend the Heart Scale for Wood Hammer Sudowoodo.
And then there's fucking Mantyke, why is it so late in the game FUCKING WHY?!?!? 90% of the Water selection in the Sinnoh'dex was available in some form by the time you were able to pass Pastoria (you didn't even need the Veilstone Badge to do so)! Why is Mantyke restricted to the second-last leg of the game?!
Another point is that Gen 4 promised a lot of cross-gen evolutions. I cannot imagine that the Baby Pokemon had a favorable reception when it was revealed that Diamond/Pearl didn't have a majority of them until postgame ("What the fuck, our pre-E4 'crossgens' are mainly Baby forms?!" kind of viewpoint).
And fuck Munchlax.
All in all, I cannot imagine they serve a heavy presence in most of the various formats of the competitive scene, which relegates most of the weight of their presence to in-game shenanigans, which, well, see above. Things have probably improved since then, but as proven, GF sets things on fire during the initial implementation.
>>39626413You have moves that only the Baby Pokemon can learn, yes. Some like the Charm Marill example is a positive example while others like Fake Tears Bonsly, at a glance, can be summed up as fuck-you hoops you're told to jump through if you want the effects of those moves.
