>>56655912Quite a bit better. Better than Bulbasaur, at least, since Bulbasaur is hindered by being Poison more than it is helped, and all of the tech Bulbasaur has is worthless in a main game playthrough. Getting Razor Leaf as early as Chikorita does, a free copy of Body Slam later, and being a possible receiver of Earthquake is a good set of traits to have as a gen 1 starter.
Chikorita's main issue is matchup spread. It's not a spectacular pokemon either, make no mistake, but it's far from the worst starter in a vacuum, that dishonor probably goes to either Snivy or RSE Treecko. Seriously, gen 3 Treecko is fucking piss. Pursuit is your best fucking move for like 20 levels, and Leaf Blade is the cucked gen 3 version.
Literally the only significant pokemon it has an advantage against before you become Champion are Chuck Poliwrath and Will's Slowbro. That's fucking it. The vast majority of everything else shits on it, or else at best breaks even.
>>56656118Charizard has a pretty awful matchup against Kanto, and Blastoise is probably the single most mediocre starter in the series, saved by early matchups and relative type exclusivity for a good while. The gen 1 starters are pretty bad as a group. Charizard is pretty solid, just with a bad matchup for the region. Bulbasaur and Squirtle are both in the bottom half of starters in the context of a main game playthrough, running out of the box with base abilities, no egg or post game tutor moves ect. Squirtle in particular might actually be a candidate for bottom third or even fourth, it just has fucking nothing going for it.
If you play romhacks that put starters in new contexts, these things become pretty evident. Chikorita's not great, make no mistake, it's not climbing out of the bottom half either, but it does WAY better than its performance in Johto might have you think
