>>57543271there's a sweet spot.
Individual regions need about 150-200. 350 max.
Kanto dex, Johto dex, Hoenn Dex, Sinnoh dex, Unova dex.
All of these were in that range.
Mind you, Sinnoh had bad issues, but it wasn't size. It balance issues.
Garchomp is motherfucking garchomp. Garchomp didn't leave OU until SV and even now it's only UUBL. And for its game, lucario is lucario. Even with full national dex access you run them.
It literally had 1 fire type that wasn't a starter and it was fucking rapidash. They gave magmar an evolution BUT DID NOT INCLUDE IT IN THE REGION until platinum. Absolutely pants on head.
Sinnoh was still a game that cared about HMs in party, so floatzel and staraptor were chosen because they were some of the best bodies attached to necessary utilities. Though some people did use Drifblim, Gastrodon, Crobat, or togekiss, or gyarados instead. Staraptor was definitely the most accessible though.
And then Luxray is electric for type coverage with the rest of your team already mostly forced by best/only in slots, and for that matter is also the only electric type not pachirisu or pikachu because like magmar electabuzz gains an evo but is for some insane reason not present.
But it did not HAVE to be this way. Other gens had been similar sizes without this problem. Hell, Gen 1 has two single family types and still doesn't have the problem this bad, just because they're relatively parasitic types balance-wise, primarily weak to themself, and the other types strong against them still have plenty of SE's left on other types.
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For bloated dexes with no identity of its own, we can look to something like Kalos. 450+, only 70 of them unique, with a whopping 111 of gen 1's 151 present, and everything else added just kind of helter skelter no rhyme or reason. That's not a dex, that's "oops we ran out of dev time, cover our ass by pandering to
genwunners, then throw some darts to cover our ass about the pandering."
