>>39965338Cyndaquil lacks competition other than Arcanine, Flareon and Magmar, as Houndoom is only post-game.
Totodile ends being an inferior Gyarados. In Johto you have a lot of Water-type mons to pick yet you lock yourself on a physical water-type on a generation where water-type moves are special. You have Starmie, Cloyster, Kingdra, Vaporeon, Octilery (G/S), Lapras, Qwilfish, Lanturn, Politoed, Golduck, Slowbro, ... the list goes on. Even on the physical side it is destroyed by things such as Gyarados, Quagsire and Poliwrath, either by better stats, extra STAB or better coverage. Even if you want to believe in "sounding unique", even Seaking (or Kingler) have more fun for the thrill to roll for a Horn Drill (or Guillotine).
Chikorita was a waste towards every grass-type. Even Hoppip was better.
The Unova starters were so bad that many have picked Lilipup instead on the 1st route. Unova has near to zero Water-types, Oshawott was mostly chosen due to the only competition being Jellicent and Carracosta. Probably the only thing worth if you dislike Carracosta or don't want to use a crippling-focused sponge such as Jellicent.
Tepig was the saturation of Fire/Fighting and pretty much everyone started hating it, not to mention that Emboar was slow and had awful defensive stats, aswell as being inferior to every other fire-type other than the fire elemental monkey.
Snivy was just picked for the smug, as literally every other Gen5 grass-type was a better choice, even the grass elemental gnome haired monkey, HA came but it was late and not worth for a starter as event gift mons don't have your OT and you waste a lot of time of your playthrough on breeding.
