>>40165805Onix was the first boss of the game, and as such was envisioned as an intimidating and imposing titan your team would ineffectually batter down. However, giving it high attack would mean that it would just super murder your team before it could be worn down.
>>40166217You're right on track, except Dragon Quest, which actually did have recruitable monsters, is what Pokemon was actually based on. No, really, the Akira Toriyama-like aesthetics the series had at first, down to Pokemon literally being carried in Capsule Corp merchandise. Almost certainly Dragon Quest 5, which even had a substantial portion of the game where your party was going to be entirely monsters, besides the MC. Indeed, in those games, there are monsters you can get early on that are super strong, but drop off like hot garbage, stalwarts that stay by your side the whole time, a bunch of random stuff in the middle of varying viability, and endgame monsters that completely shit on your monster raising efforts up to that point. A big part of Dragon Quest 5's appeal was going out and trying to recruit that elusive monster and seeing if it was better than the ones you had.
Remember that Pokemon was never really intended to have the massive legacy it does today. It was a one off dream project some guys made in their garage to play Dragon Quest's monster raising portion and be able to fight each other's teams.
