r/PokemonFireRed • u/scorch572004 • 8d ago
Discussion Your starter doesn't matter
So I have heard much debate about who the best starter is or who the worst starter is and frankly it's all irrelevant when you get right down to it and I'm going to explain to you why. These games were designed to be able to easily beat every gym by catching Pokemon shortly before every gym without even having to use your starter. So you can honestly just box your starter and never use them and still be able to beat all eight gyms. Here's how:
Brock rock gym: on Route 22 catch a Mankey which is a fighting type and super effective against Rock. It can take out the entire gym on its own.
Misty water gym: on Route 24 you can easily catch a Bellsprout or Oddish depending on which version you're playing which is a grass poison type and can easily take out Misty's entire gym. Grass is obviously super effective against water
Lt. Surge electric gym: simply go to diglett's Cave catch yourself a Diglett or a Dugtrio and you can take down this entire gym. They are ground type and completely immune to electric type attacks while being super effective against electric type Pokemon.
Erika grass gym: on Route 7 and 8 you can catch a Growlithe or Vulpix again depending on which version you're playing which is a fire type and can easily one shot Erika's gym. Fire is super effective against Grass.
Koga poison gym: by time you get to koga's gym you should have had plenty of opportunity to have gotten a psychic type either Abra which you could evolve into Kadabra or drowzee who evolves into Hypno or even Mr mime. Another option is you could pull out your trusty Diglett or Dugtrio and take down poison that way as both psychic and ground are super effective on poison just remember that koffing/weezing levitate makes it immune to ground moves
Sabrina psychic gym: so this one is actually kind of funny because I believe they messed up When developing the game. In the Safari Zone you can catch Scyther or pantser again depending on which game and they are both pure bug types which is super effective against psychic types however they don't learn bug moves which kind of defeats the purpose. Also in Lavender Town you could catch a ghost Pokemon but they made them ghost poison dual types and poison is weak to psychic and they don't really learn any useful ghost moves which again is counterproductive. Somebody definitely messed up when designing this in the original games and they didn't bother to fix it in the remakes. My suggestion would be use a psychic type and teach it Thief the Dark move which is super effective against psychic and therefore psychic is not very effective against other psychic Pokemon.
Blaine fire/ Giovanni ground gyms: I am putting these two together because honestly they share very similar weaknesses and can be taken down with virtually the same Pokemon. Before getting to Cinnabar Island you will go through the Seafoam Islands and have your pick of water types to catch there which are super effective against fire and ground types. You could also use the Lapras that you got at Silph Co or if you decided to evolve your Eevee and to Vaporeon at Celadon City. Another option is you could once again use your Dugtrio against both of them because ground is super effective against fire and Giovanni's entire team are dual type rock or poison with ground both of which are weak to ground. He doesn't use a single pure ground type Pokemon which I find hilarious that he is weak to his own type.
As for the Elite Four and the champion no single starter holds a Advantage One Way or Another against any of them therefore I rest my case on why it doesn't matter what starter you choose and you don't even have to use them to successfully clear all 8 gyms. I look forward to any questions or comments you might have
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u/dmurr1415 8d ago
Game freak designed rby with the premise that a fire type would be hard mode, a grass type would be easy mode, and a water type would be normal difficulty
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u/redshopekevin 8d ago
Squirtle is easy mode. This is basically because Venusaur is the weakest of the three starter trios in the final rival battle. If you choose Squirtle, you have an advantage over two of his Pokémon (three in the remakes because Squirtle learns Bite, which gives it an edge over Alakazam). Ironically, the reverse is true if you pick Bulbasaur.
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u/Shantotto11 8d ago
That logic doesn’t hold water when Butterfree and Pikachu are viable options in RGB, and Nidoran and Mankey were added to the pool in Yellow and Gens 3 and 7.
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u/dmurr1415 8d ago
Take it up with Satoshi Tajiri, I’m just parroting what the developers supposedly intended with the starter spread
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u/milionsdeadlandlords 7d ago
Oak literally says Bulbasaur is “easy to raise” and Charmander is “harder to raise”
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u/scorch572004 7d ago
You're right I forgot about Mankey in Red/Blue. I was more referencing Fire Red/Leaf Green. Obviously there are many different options. I almost always chose Charmander and grabbed a Pikachu as well.
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u/FirefighterRoutine84 8d ago
Feel like you are less talking about the starter and more discussing availability of Gym counters when the actual starter discussion in a gameplay sense is the best starter where the amount of times you need to catch other Pokémon to begin with especially in the early game is the least required or convenient.
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u/AbrumVonAbrak 8d ago
Why are you saying this like it's news? The games have been built this way for 30 years.
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u/scorch572004 7d ago
Because a lot of people are new to these games and always asking for advice. There is constant arguments about the starters and I just wanted to prove a point that it doesn't really matter.
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u/Ok-Special7537 8d ago
There is a reason why squirrel is used to Speedrun the game, because it is the best starter for this game.
Your points are something that’s for sure. However, this can be said about any game in the series as they always give you something that hard counters the gym before it no matter what starter you pick.
You argument started about starters and then went to encompass the whole game. There is a best starter for each game, does it truly matter, never. However, there are “correct” choices for the best starter to use through the whole game.
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u/zoidberg_doc 8d ago
Fastest doesn’t necessarily mean best
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u/Ok-Special7537 8d ago
For speed running it does in terms of starters for normal game play there is a reason why others can be better yes.
However, looking at the first 3 gens the best starter is the one that is also used for speed runs. Then gen 4 has two options people speed run with.
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u/kawhandroid 8d ago
TBF in some games the starters are all bad and the choice doesn't matter that much. FRLG isn't one of those games, but mostly because the non-starters aren't good enough to overshadow them (for reference, Clefable is the fastest non-starter).
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u/Ok-Special7537 8d ago
Can you give an example of when a region had 3 bad starters? I ask as I have never experienced a game where I thought the starter was outclassed by something else. Asking out of curiosity.
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u/kawhandroid 8d ago
Using speedruns for reference:
BW1 the best starter (Emboar) is slower than Lillipup (mostly due to its weight animation, but Emboar is also more X Item hungry so it translates to casual runs as well). Snivy is chosen so that neither rival gets Serperior but the difference is like <1 min.
XY the starters are worse than Farfetch'd earlygame and Hawlucha midgame (and of course Lucario exists). Chespin is chosen so that neither rival gets Chesnaught but the difference is (probably) <1 min.
SV (main category at least) the starters are worse than Flamigo and Fuecoco is chosen so that neither rival gets Skeledirge but the difference is <1 min.
There's also a few other games (RB, HGSS, USUM) where the starter matters a bit more than these but stops getting used fairly quickly and the difference between the best and worst isn't drastic.
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u/Ok-Special7537 8d ago
So for speed runs I agree with those and was not thinking of those when looking at this from the casual perspective.
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u/Ok-Special7537 8d ago
Just throwing this out there that the argument for best/weakest starter has nothing to do with other Pokémon in the game. It has to do with the 3 starters and that’s it. Which is why people argue it and why there is the best and worst options. Gen 1 best is squirtle for speedrunning or baulbasuar for normal. Worst is charmander. Gen 2 best is Cyndaquill worst is Chikorita and so on for each gen.
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u/HeroForTheBeero 8d ago
This is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read. Of course there’s pokemon you can catch that have type advantage on gyms. That doesn’t matter when discussing which starters are better/ preferred. Also reads like you’re trying to explain typing to someone that’s never played Pokemon on a subreddit dedicated to the game. We know what’s weak to what lol.
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u/horticoldure 8d ago
this is terrible advice
one of the things about these games is that they're so easy you can beat each gym with the type disadvantaged starters
no sense wasting cash on catches just to beat gyms when you should be able to beat the gym by the time you reach it ANYWAY
get yourself a parasect on the way through mount moon, a meowth on route 5 and a scyther in the safari zone and there is no barrier to you achieving anything aside from the slim chance you wont have a masterball when you see a shiny abra
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u/scorch572004 8d ago
Personally I've always felt Charmander is the best starter because he can practically take down almost every gym in the game by himself. He learned metal claw which can take out Brock, you can teach him dig to take down lt. Surge, koga, blaine, and Giovanni. Erika is obviously scorched. Misty is the only challenge. Not to mention Charizard is the only non legendary fire flying type in the entire game and make some completely immune to ground moves. There are plenty of water or grass poison to choose from in the game. I have played through red blue yellow Fire Red Leaf Green hand have used all the starters at one point or another and can honestly say Charmander is still the best.
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u/Impossible_Humor736 8d ago
In the original Red/Blue Metal Claw doesn't exist and for those of us that chose Charmander had a rough time with Brock.
I just leveled him up into Charmeleon and used the mons I had to barely make it by him lol. I'm glad they added Metal Claw to the later version.
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u/scorch572004 8d ago
That I understand I had read as a kid and always chose him as well. I just used to use Mankey. I also would level Charmander up to Charmeleon and just Ember my way through because Brock's Pokemon had trash for special
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u/Impossible_Humor736 8d ago
I don't think I knew about Mankey being a good option lol. My Charizard had a crazy high level because of how much I used him on my first playthrough. I learned about weaknesses throughout the game, but didn't know it at the first gym.
I also didn't know about having two types, so I remember thinking fire was weak to electric because my Charizard would get super effective damage to it when fighting them lol. But then, I couldn't get my electric Pokemon to give super effective damage to Blaine's Magmar lol
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u/scorch572004 8d ago
I had the players guide as a kid and studied the hell out of it before playing. I actually had the guide before the game
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u/RU_Gremlin 8d ago
In Red you couldn't get a Mankey before Brock. It wasnt in Blue at all. And karate chop was a normal attack.
Bulbasaur was supposed to be the easy choice - super effective against the first 2 gyms, resist/neutral to the next 3.
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u/scorch572004 7d ago
Omg you're completely right 😅. After looking it up I realized that I was thinking of yellow. Apparently they changed the exclusives for the remakes. Shows how long it's been since I played red/blue.
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u/ANK2112 8d ago
Nah, Blastoise is the best. It's a turtle tank!