>>44378080The fire/fighting typing was controversial after both Blaziken/Infernape had already done it before, and done it much better while being much more pleasing designs in general.
So already, Emboar was doomed to fail out of the gate, not being either competitively as viable as his predecessors not pleasing to look at.
I often wonder if things could've been better if Emboar had debuted in gen 3 instead. It makes sense as a next logical progression over Typho (I mean in terms of typing & strength) and then one could argue GF was at least improving the Fire/Fighting concept over time, rather than being seen as a downgrade.
Emboar -> Inferape -> Blaziken (Speed Boost & Mega)
is at least better than,
Blaziken -> Infernape -> Emboar
which looks like a descent into mediocrity.
If not that, well, the answer would be to simply not have it as another Fire/Fighter to begin with, and a whole different theme. Dark, Steel, Ground, hell even Normal would've set it apart from the others. But as things stand, it will always be in Blaze/Infer's shadow.