>>51336943>>51337017I was like 9 when gen 2 came out, and I always preferred Lugia at the time. These days I'm more evenly split, especially now that Lugia has an atrocious 3D model, but I can tell you my thinking at the time.
Lugia was strange and out-of-the-norm. It was kind of a bird, but also kind of a whale and a plesiosaur. It had bizarre physiology and psychic power, and it looked genuinely intimidating in a lot of illustrations (look at the original Sugimori illustration or its neo holo, for instance).
Ho-oh, on the other hand, was just kind of a bird. It was a glamourous bird with a lot of fancy plumage, but it wasn't all that distinctive, really. Add to this that we had a trio of birds in the last game -- and not only that, but another fire bird (one, arguably, with more magical features -- at least that's what I thought as a kid).
All this just left Ho-oh with less of an identity than Lugia (plus there's the movie and all that -- but remember Ho-oh was teased in the first episode of the anime, and that was a pretty mind-blowing moment at the time)
