Post subject: Pokémon: A look back at generation 4

Generation 4 is coming to an end, but before making the leap into the next one, it's time to take a look back at the last four years and how the world of Pokémon has changed (or not) since then! This column reviews the recent past of Pokémon game history in 17 points. Why 17? Because that's how many I could come up with.

As the norm dictates, columns of mine are very, very long reads. So cancel all your appointments, grab a drink and sit back!

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1. A simple upgrade was the best solution

In terms of new game mechanics, generation 4 stood out by introducing the least of them. Generations 2 and 3 were both a quantum leap ahead, whereas this one only gave us the long overdue physical/special split (more on that in the next item). Were they fresh out of ideas? Maybe. However, all the changes previously introduced, as radical as they were, didn't make the game detract from that feel the series has had ever since its creation in 1996, and if they had any ideas that didn't make the cut here, it may have been because they were too radical, or bringing about change just for the sake of change. However, I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing. We have seen some franchises crumble apart because their designers were too hasty in moving the series forward.

Generation 3 is the black sheep of the series, and while that reputation may be undeserved to some extent, it is true that there are some things that needed fixing. Chiefly, the amount of sea routes. If you ask 100 people what they liked the least about RSE, I guarantee at least 90 of them will tell you "the sea routes", myself included. 17 of them meant half of all the routes in the game were sea routes, and DPP brought that total back down to four (219 and 220 south of Sandgem, 223 between Sunyshore and the League, and 230 between the Fighting and Resort Areas).

Another common complaint leveled at generation 3 Pokémon was that they were too similar to previous Pokémon. The Wurmple and Corphish lines immediately spring to mind, for instance. Generation 4 slashed down on Pokémon that might've been considered a copy/paste job, and introduced more creative designs. Too much for some people to comprehend, in fact... they claim that they don't look enough like previous Pokémon. Uh, that was kinda the point? Too similar, people complain. Not similar enough, people complain. As far as I'm concerned, it's mission accomplished.

Don't get me wrong, RSE was a very enjoyable experience, but even I have to admit that they did some things wrong. So to take a huge leap forward before getting a chance to fix them would have been a tragic mistake. "Generation 3+", as some people have taken to calling gen 4, was a necessary step, and it was far more successful with the fans than its predecessor.

So now that we've reached that point, Gamefreak has a genuine choice to make for generation 5, a choice they obviously already made since they're far into the development process: another upgrade or a small revolution. The latter wouldn't be without consequence, because the last time they did that Pokémon was pronounced dead by many. The truth, however, is the complete opposite: had they not had the balls to revamp everything, especially at the cost of backwards compatibility, we would've been subjected to countless GSC rehashes, and Pokémon probably WOULD have been dead for a long time by now. It's because RSE changed so much that the series isn't just a dying cash cow that gives out less and less milk, but a strong, healthy one that happily wags its tail as it chews on its dinner. And it's also because DPP perfected what RSE brought about, instead of being as mindlessly hungry for change as Chester A. Bum, that it hasn't been prematurely barbecued.

2. Split verdict for the split

There's no doubt that when the physical/special split was first imagined, the primary reason was logic. There was no reason why a move like Shadow Ball should've been physical, whereas the very physical Crunch was special. And let's not forget the elemental punches, which were merely a solution for the few special attackers who didn't get Flamethrower/Fire Blast, Thunderbolt or Ice Beam, instead of something Hitmonchan, the punching wonder, could actually use.

But it was also obvious that another reason for this split was that it would benefit the Pokémon with a higher attacking stat that they just couldn't use that much. For example, Kingler, who had a beastly base attack of 130 but a miserable special attack of 50, was stuck trying to exploit the former with Flail or Body Slam. And Sneasel, already a Pokémon with questionable stats, had two special types that ran off a special attack of THIRTY-FIVE!

So it's no surprise that these Pokémon, and many other neglected ones, improved a lot with the advent of this new split. There were even a few surprises, since prior to D/P coming out, it was also believed to be the death warrant of other Pokémon, the most notable being Sceptile. With Leaf Blade turning physical, to run off its weaker attack stat, the panic button was mashed and mashed. Only the reassuring presence of Swords Dance in its movepool didn't make it even worse. But what we weren't counting on was the addition of 113 new moves, the likes of Energy Ball, Grass Knot and Leaf Storm among them. So now Sceptile could be viable on both ends of the damage spectrum, which wasn't really the case in generation 3. As a result, while Sceptile clearly fell out of OU, the split at least lessened what would've otherwise been a very drastic fall. Let this be a lesson to us. No theorymoning until Black and White come out!

However, what was commonly overlooked was the fact that while lesser Pokémon would get a sizeable boost, OUs that were capable in both attack stats would also improve a lot. Case in point: Tyranitar. Other than its Fighting-type bullseye and its sluggish speed, one of the few small flaws Tyranitar had was the lack of physical dual STAB. With Crunch turning physical (and Dark Pulse being introduced as a special replacement should the need arise, such as on variants of Boah), this was no longer an issue, and Tyranitar would move on to become even more of an ubiquitous force than it already was. Salamence is another notable example, with Dragon Claw as a reliable physical Dragon move, Draco Meteor for that one-use extra special oomph, and a titanic movepool to back all that up (and let's not forgot Platinum's introduction of the Outrage tutor!). The end result: Salamence became so strong it was difficult to wall, and for most of 2007 it remained the best Dragon in the game, before the potential of Garchomp was truly understood. And following Latias' re-banning, Salamence is now the newest suspect to be tested. One can wonder how it took so long, as Salamence offers an attacking versatility Garchomp simply cannot bring to the table.

From an overall perspective, the split was a success, but not a complete one. It did help to make many more Pokémon viable, but the fact that several of the top forces also gained a lot from it means it failed to even the playing field.

3. Second time's the charm

Heart Gold and Soul Silver were Gamefreak's second attempt at a remake, and a second attempt at making GSC in general. When it was first announced, I was very skeptical as to how it would turn out. After all, both GSC and FRLG have had their fair share of flaws. The former was plagued by an incredibly low level curve, which resulted in the difficulty factor being greatly lowered (and I think we can all agree it didn't need that.)

There are two main culprits to blame: first is the fact that you could go either west or east of Ecruteak once you beat Morty and the Kimono Girls, and they couldn't afford to make the Pokémon in the Mahogany area too high-leveled if the player chose to go east. Which begs the question: why did the guy in the tollbooth east of Ecruteak not block you until you'd beaten Jasmine? Make up some reason, even a stupid one, but doing that would've made it so the Pokémon you fight in the Rocket hideout would be in the mid-20s instead of the late teens! And the second culprit is the presence of Kanto in the game... with such a massive post-game, the result of having the E4 at their regular levels would've meant the Kanto gym leaders would've been in the 60s and 70s. Not such a good idea... however, most of the gym leaders turned out to have levels below Lance's, destroying the point of that level curve in the first place!

And speaking of Kanto, it was completely crushed compared to RBY. Most of the routes were shortened by at least half, and depopulated. That means there wasn't much of Kanto to explore... and let's not forget the really lousy remixes of RBY's soundtrack.

Likewise, FRLG wasn't without its issues. The biggest one has to be the fact that it's just Red and Blue with a fresh coat of paint. Revamp the graphics and sound to match RSE, add the game mechanics from generations 2 and 3, and call it a day. Oh yeah, there's the Sevii Islands, but is it really a big advance? No, of course not. And let's not forget the music... they tried to make it sound like a GBA game, but the end result was just plain terrible, to such an extent that I liked the original's music better.

So as you can see, I had every right to be skeptical. Would HGSS merge both the flaws of GSC and HGSS into one big black hole of fail, or would they learn from their lessons to make a Platinum-killer? Nowadays I'm kicking myself for doubting Gamefreak, as it turned out to be the latter. Except for the Platinum-killer part. But it's close! Yeah, THIS close. The one thing that wasn't fixed was the level curve in Johto, because they still had to include Kanto. But they still managed to increase the difficulty throughout the game without needing to crank up the levels too much. I remember when we found out about the first two gyms' rosters, which had significantly increased levels since GSC, everyone was rejoicing because they'd fixed the level curve. And then Whitney's roster came out: down by one level from GSC. Oops.

And what about Kanto, the most disappointing part of the original? Much to my amazement, it was blown back up to its regular size, areas that didn't make it in GSC (Viridian Forest, Cerulean Cave, etc.) were brought back, there were many more trainers to fight, the music in Kanto was greatly improved... Overall, the game felt like anything BUT GSC with a fresh coat of paint. It did away with all the issues that made GSC fall way short of its true potential, and added new stuff like the Battle Frontier, gym leader and E4 rematches, the best Game Corner game in history (at the expense of being able to buy coins, what were they thinking?), the best Safari Zone in history, and so on and so forth.

For effort, I give an A+. They put everything they had into this game, and it really showed. Will they be able to keep up the pace? Only time will tell.

4. I'm a PC, and I invented censorship

Yes, it's PC as in politically correct.

Now that this is out of the way... in today's lawsuit-happy world, you do not want to offend or wrongly influence anyone, unless you want to be separated from a good chunk of your wallet. And with such a high-profile series as Pokémon, one that reaches out to tens of millions of people, you have to tread even more lightly. The odd thing is that back in the days when Pokémon was THE big thing (1998-2001), there was no censorship going on whatsoever. You had gamblers, firebreathers, Hell's Angels, casinos that ate more coins than you could make, everything. And I don't think anyone sued back then.

So what happened? It's with FRLG that the alarm first rang. For the international releases, Gamblers were no longer Gamblers, they were Gamers. And just to get across the point that gambling addiction is bad, they became hobos. The line "I'm a rambling, gaming dude!" was especially bad, as the loss of the "-ambling" rhyme completely destroyed the phrase's point to begin with. Did they Ctrl+H the string "gambl" and replaced it with "gam" at the last second before the game was sent to be mass produced? Who knows?

But it got a whole lot worse in generation 4. In DPP's English releases, Gamblers were now known as PIs, even though their lines have nothing to do with private-investigating and a whole lot more to do with luck and gambling. Their battle sprite even flipped a coin! Now that was a half-assed attempt at censorship if I ever saw one. As a side note, the slots in DPP were far more generous than their previous iterations: instead of being coin guzzlers you could never really win at, they introduced that Clefairy mini-game that gave you an avalanche of free coins if you didn't completely suck at it. And I don't think it's physically possible to suck at it.

It's with Platinum that things really took a turn for the worse, as Nintendo decided to remove the slot machines from the European version! This marked the first time that censorship actually affected gameplay. Such a shame too, just as the slots were becoming a viable way to obtain coins. The question I had in mind back then and still have now, though, is why Europe only and not anywhere else?

Of course, HGSS would push the envelope even further by removing the slots from every version outside of Japan. The plus side is that in return, we ended up with a mini-game that's way better than the slots, namely Voltorb Flip. No more need to rely on dumb luck all the time! Now we only need to rely on it sometimes, and there are ways to make guesswork easier too. Unfortunately, this improvement came at a price - we were no longer able to buy coins! Naturally, this was most people's favored way of obtaining them from day one, so it annoyed a lot of people enough to claim Voltorb Flip was a bad game. Naturally, they're conveniently forgetting that the mini-game itself has nothing to do with the lack of buyable coins. Then again, maybe it's not 100% true... I believe the fact that you can't lose coins at Voltorb Flip means Gamefreak thought the ability to buy them became redundant. So as odd as it may seem, in a way people are hating on Voltorb Flip because you can't lose coins in this game.

And with all those examples, it's reasonable to expect that we're not done with stupid censorship yet... hopefully from now on it'll be handled in a way that can make all parties satisfied. By the way, don't you just love the irony of a game based around animal cruelty falling to censorship for every reason BUT animal cruelty?

5. But no one gets offended anymore

And the sad thing is, all this may be to shut up people who don't care anymore. The aforementioned animal cruelty? No one gives a hoot anymore. Is it because the whiners became jaded? It's a possibility, but I think the cause lies elsewhere. Back in the aforementioned 1998-2001 period, Pokémon was hot stuff. And as such, it drew a lot of attention from all kinds of groups. And not just gamers and anime lovers, either. Everyone had a look at the franchise. And that includes the perennial whiners who are never happy about anything, and either belong to, actively or passively support activist groups like PETA, who claim to act for a good cause but ultimately have views so extreme that they end up having all the credibility of Sarah Palin talking foreign affairs.

And back then, they meant business. The obvious animal cruelty aspect was covered, but that's not what people remember most from that era. No, it was the outrageously ridiculous religious baloney. Remember how Alakazam's psychic powers were... heck, I don't even know what the problem was with that, because I'm not clinically insane. But apparently it insulted Bible-thumpers greatly. Oh, and of course we can't forget the concept of evolution. Despite Pokémon evolution being closer to metamorphosis than actual evolution, which is a phenomenon that occurs over centuries, if not millenia. I could write an essay on how much I have trouble grasping the concept of creationism considering the constant advance of science, but I'm not here to talk about that, right? Oh yeah, and the fun didn't stop with generation 2 either. The shape of Heracross' horn sent the same nutjobs into an absolute frenzy, as did Ho-Oh's ability to revive dead Pokémon.

But soon Pokémon fell out of the public eye, and then... nothing. It's not like generations 3 and 4 were devoid of content that would offend activists. Most notably, they started introducing actual deities, culminating with Arceus, allegedly the creator of all Pokémon. And who cared? Nobody. The masks were off: all those critics that jumped on every opportunity to bash Pokémon were only in it for the sacrosanct dollar sign. With Pokémon no longer the titanic fad it once was, there was no attention to gain anymore, no money to snag.

And this is why I think the fear of controversy over Black and White's titles is somewhat unjustified. Had Black and White been announced sequels to GSC, then maybe, but two generations and 9 years have passed since then.

6. Spin-offs became more than just a cash cow

In Pokémon's early days, spin-offs were merely meant to milk the phenomenon for all it was worth. Junk like Pinball, Puzzle Challenge, Puzzle League and Channel was the norm, though there were also a few good ones, like the Stadiums, which were more meant as expansion packs for RBY and GSC rather than their own games. But you don't need me to tell you that, because the rentals were absolute junk. Psychic Abra or Confusion Alakazam? Pssh, give me my own Psychic Alakazam. Nonetheless, for those who could get the most out of them, the Stadiums were pretty nice game, at least compared to the other spin-offs. I'm not mentioning Snap because while I hated it enough to lump it with the likes of Pinball and Puzzle League, it does have enough of a cult following to tell me it's not THAT bad.

Generation 3 attempted to do something new: actual Pokémon RPGs on a home console. And two failed attempts, the second of which was touted as fixing what was wrong with the first one, but instead perpetuated it, convinced Nintendo not to try this again. However, it was two other games that came around relatively late in the generation that would end up paving the road for spin-offs having actual quality rather than being just there for the quick buck: Ranger and Mystery Dungeon. Both of them were enjoyable experiences that offered something no previous Pokémon title could offer (an interesting storyline anyone?), although they were both plagued with issues that prevented them from reaching their full potential. Mystery Dungeon in particular had the aggravating Friend Area system, and the inability to send a newly recruited Pokémon to those places, massively slowing down the recruitment process. But in both cases, if those flaws could just be ironed out, we could end up with potential masterpieces.

Enter generation 4, and with it, Ranger 2 and 3, but most importantly, Mystery Dungeon 2. You can tell HAL and Chunsoft, who were in charge of developing those series, really took good note of the original Ranger and MD's shortcomings, and did away with them without changing the fundamentals of the game. In Ranger 2 you could take any Pokémon out of their natural habitat at any time, which really came in handy when exploring new areas, so it wasn't just you and your partner.

Recruiting was also made a lot friendlier in MD2, with no limit to who you can recruit and when, and how many Pokémon you could recruit in all (if there's a limit, it'S MASSIVE). Your backpack started out at about the size of the one in MD1, but kept growing larger as you progressed through the game, at the cost of Kangaskhan's storage being restricted. And the game was much, much more difficult. Oh boy it was. Hardest Pokémon game ever, without a shadow of a doubt.

But that's not to say the game was imbalanced - it actually did as good a job as the battle system and damage formula allowed for. The original was a broken mess utterly dominated by multi-hit moves and a select few Pokémon, most of them starters. The sequel rebalanced the whole thing by destroying the multi-hit moves' accuracy, and yet they still remained among the best killing moves in the game. Starters no longer had higher stats than nearly everyone else, with everything having fairly similar stats (there were some differences, of course), and legendaries were brought out of their MD1 suckitude by having higher stats, especially the large ones that prevented you from having four party members in your team, such as Rayquaza. Of course, there was a moment of panic when Serebii mistranslated the effect of one of Togekiss' special items as effectively granting infinite PP to one of the best movepools out there, but then it turned out it only prevented moves from using up PP every once in a while instead of always. Oops.

But the exceptional gameplay experience wasn't all, either: MD2 is arguably the best game in the franchise in terms of both soundtrack and story. It also adopted the "deluxe version" format Crystal, Emerald and Platinum followed before it with Explorers of the Sky, which added new dungeons, new items, Giratina-O, both of Shaymin's forms, special episodes giving background on some of the game's characters and bringing closure to the story of Grovyle and Dusknoir.

Pre-conceived opinions be damned, Pokémon's spin-off lineup, while still featuring duds like Poképark Wii and Mystery Dungeon WiiWare, has improved tremendously since the old days. Now try telling THAT to IGN. 4.9 for the Vast Ice Mountain Peak music? Seriously?

7. The era of fodder is over

I already mentioned the Pokémon of generation 4 as an advance from a design perspective, but it's also very clearly a massive step up in terms of usability. All the previous generations had a bunch of Pokémon that couldn't be described as anything else than jokes. Generation 4 introduced a few very weak Pokémon, such as Kricketune, Pachirisu and Lumineon, but none of them are nearly as miserable as the Dittos, Magcargos, Spindas and Luvdiscs of this world. And further up the pecking order, Gamefreak's increased focus on Pokémon viability shows as well. And nixing the new evolutions to old Pokémon for a moment, the likes of Lucario, Infernape, and Rotom are now well etched into our habits, and lots of others are viable choices as well, even if they're not full-fledged OUs.

I kid you not, the first 15 minutes of DPP represent really well what's in store for you. Staraptor is a great improvement over all of its predecessors, to such an extent that you're pretty much crazy if you use the likes of Pidgeot, Fearow or Dodrio. Despite what VGCats may think, Bidoof doesn't exactly fill the "vendor trash" niche, as it evolves into something that actually has the potential to put the hurt on the unprepared, thanks to the addition of Curse in Platinum. Gluttony improved Linoone by a lot, but until further notice Bibarel remains king of the ultra-common Normal-types. And of course, generation 4 easily features the best starter lineup in the series. Infernape is one of the two Fire-type OUs, and a very well ranked one at that, as it fixes absolutely everything that was wrong with Blaziken, and then some. Empoleon's unique typing and surprising versatility means it's well deserving of its OU status. The weak link is Torterra... while not a bad Pokémon by any means, it suffers from being about #50 among 4x Ice-weak Pokémon (there really are too many of these), so no one ever uses it. But it's really a lot better than its ranking indicates.

But one of the most welcome additions to generation 4 is the introduction of no less than 22 evolutions to already existing Pokémon. Most of them were really screaming for one, such as Lickitung or Nosepass. Some of them left us scratching our heads, though. Dusclops, and before Banette at that? Magneton, especially since it was already so good at dealing with the game's ultimate physical wall? And Rhydon, with the addition of an ability that increased its survivability by a lot? Turns out, all three were justified. With Skarmory no longer being the be-all-end-all physical wall (a title usurped in part by Gliscor), Magneton needed to reinvent itself, and a massive stat boost provided just that. Even after evolving, Dusknoir is always in constant danger of being booted out of OU, and most unbelievable of all, Rhyperior's been booted out a long time ago. So in retrospect, those three really weren't bad moves. But everyone can agree they could've evolved other Pokémon. Like, you know, Farfetch'd?

All in all, with Diamond and Pearl Gamefreak really pulled out all the stops in order to diversify the game across the board. And even though the complaint that we're seeing the same stuff is still going strong, remember, we still have between 45 and 50 OUs at any given time, whereas we only had 35 in generation 3.

8. The innocence is gone

That is, if there was any left in the first place. The statement "Pokémon is for kids" is still thrown around as much as it used to, but it seems to get more and more wrong as time passes. Generation 4 will probably be remembered as the one where Pokémon stopped being for kids and started being for nerds. For one, the top level of the metagame keeps getting more and more impressive, and as such mastering the game becomes harder and harder to achieve. Pokémon has truly become the digital equivalent of chess. And one could say it's an even deeper and more complicated game, with the most crucial decisions (pertaining to team building) being made before Stealth Rock is even laid down.

But perhaps the thing that made the game evolve past its mere child-like image the most in the last few years was the addition of increasingly detailed statistics on all aspects of the metagame. It used to be only how many times each Pokémon was used on each ladder, before eventually adding how common each move, nature, ability, EV spread, etc. was. Then teammate stats were added, and eventually people calculated how much damage each type/category could inflict on the entire metagame. Various mathematical concepts, while still not household names, popped up to describe the game in any given period.

This turned out to give players a big hand when it came to building teams. Which Pokémon and sets showed up the most wasn't left to gut instinct anymore, now we have cold, hard numbers to back those guesses up. This, in turn, accelerated the development of the metagame: as counters to common threats became dominant, those former threats disappeared and made room for counters to the counters, and so on and so forth. And that's without mentioning the rise of very creative gimmicks of variable effectiveness, such as FEAR (though Cleffa's the best at that gig now, so the name isn't quite accurate any more) and Stallrein.

So next time some 8-year old tells you Garchomp isn't uber because their Blastoise (no doubt with Surf, Hydro Pump, Water Gun and Ice Beam) can kill it in one shot, you're free to point and laugh.

9. Big Brother is watching: Platinum

Whether it was voluntary or not, generation 4 marked a major change in Gamefreak's treatment of competitive battling. I already covered the physical/special split, which was meant to salvage formerly useless Pokémon, the reduced amount of fodder Pokémon, as well as all those evolutions to old Pokémon. What's most notable about that last one is that 17 out of the 22 weren't in the original Sinnoh Dex at all, which meant their purpose was NOT for in-game, but for competitive battling. 17 Pokémon just for us! Of course, Platinum expanded the Sinnoh Dex to include them when Gamefreak realized 150 Pokémon in a regional Dex just doesn't cut it in a post-generation 1 world, but for the first two years of their existences, the likes of Electivire, Togekiss, Yanmega and Gliscor only existed to give competitive players more options.

Then came Platinum, and with it the expected slew of move tutors. Of course, tutor compatibility is mostly determined by logic, so the balancing factor isn't that big since everyone benefits from it. Case in point, after six years of waiting Salamence finally got its hands on Outrage, and it, coupled with the very recent ban of Garchomp (more on that later), propelled it near the top of the OU leaderboard.

Meanwhile, the already excellent Lucario grabbed Ice Punch to downgrade Gliscor from surefire counter to surefire counter of sets that don't have Ice Punch. But it wasn't all OUs improving, as Kingdra, a respectable Pokémon that wasn't quite cut out for OU, obtained Outrage as well. As a result, it finally had a deadly physical dual STAB to use Dragon Dance with, and immediately broke into OU. Likewise, most Flying-types learned Heat Wave for some reason, giving them an amazing tool for extra type coverage and making the move itself something else than an attack that was completely obsoleted by Flamethrower and Fire Blast.

But that wasn't all... Gamefreak also specifically targeted lower-tiered Pokémon with new level-up moves. Very few Pokémon that were OU prior to Platinum actually obtained moves that way, most notably Vaporeon, Jolteon, Skarmory and Azelf, but obviously they gave them completely useless moves, with only Jolteon getting a move it might've gotten some use out of (Discharge), but didn't. In fact, most new level-up moves across the board were timid, with a lot of Bug Bite and Feint. But there were a few that really fit their users well, with Curse Bibarel, Curse Steelix, Leaf Blade Victreebel, Leaf Blade Bellossom and, in ubers, Nasty Plot Darkrai among the notables. Other than the last one, all of these Pokémon were desperate for a hand, and really enjoyed the help. Then there was the beast known as Bullet Punch Scizor... but I'll get to that later.

Platinum also gave three Pokémon a golden opportunity to atone for their past failures by giving them alternate forms. Rotom, who had an interesting typing combined with Levitate, but no stats to use them with, gained 80 stat points through five alternate forms, each retaining the same typing but adding a signature move to the mix. The Heat form featuring Overheat was by far the most popular for brutalizing those accursed Steels, among others, though the Wash form with Hydro Pump and the Cut form with Leaf Storm enjoyed a certain degree of popularity.

As for Shaymin, it was given a new form, the Sky form, which attempted to make up for the horridness of the Land form circa D/P. A lack of moves combined with a stat spread that prevented it from specializing into any one of its very few options immediately made it the weakest legendary ever - except maybe for the doomed failure that is Regigigas. Even Seed Flare, arguably as broken as Sacred Fire, with its 120 power, 85 accuracy and 40% chance to lower special defense TWO STAGES, wasn't enough to break the Regigigas comparisons. So Gamefreak's answer was... excessive, to say the least. Crank up special attack and speed. Give it Serene Grace, upgrading Seed Flare from disgustingly broken to "is this guy uber yet?". Add Air Slash, with the same awesome flinch slot machine as Togekiss (and Jirachi's brand new Iron Head). Add Earth Power for type coverage, and you got a monstrosity that had no business in OU. The community reacted accordingly, and after a few months Shaymin-S was booted out of OU. As for Shaymin-L, all those new moves, including the Air Slash hand-me-down gave it a certain degree of respectability.

Finally, Giratina. Did it improve as much as the other two, with its new Origin form? Hell no. But that's not to say it didn't improve. Which, in retrospect, shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did. Originally (no pun intended), I considered Giratina-O a failed experiment, for one reason: it was stuck with only one possible held item, the Griseous Orb. But I was overlooking the fact that Giratina-A, despite having the best defensive stats in the entire game, had problems actually walling, because of Ghost/Dragon's several weaknesses. The Origin form swapped the attack stats with the defense stats, which had the effect of giving Giratina a stat spread that was more appropriate for what its typing allowed it to do: attack. This, compounded with the addition of Outrage (Levitate sez: hey i'm here too), would make Giratina-O into a potent sweeper, stallbreaker, spinblocker, and so on. And even if it's stuck with the Griseous Orb, it's easy to forget it has another effect besides the form change: boost STABbed attacks by 20% at no cost whatsoever. A godsend for someone who loves punishing opponents with STABbed moves as much as Giratina-O does.

Oh, and let's not forget Platinum marked the first time a move's stats were changed in the middle of a generation. Diamond and Pearl had pumped Hypnosis' accuracy to 70, and the results were immediate: the move was literally stapled on everything that could learn it, from Gengar to Bronzong to Yanmega to everything else. There was Stealth Rock, but Hypnosis was the other OMGBOOM move. Sure, its accuracy still wasn't up to Sleep Powder's standards (which was probably what prompted the change), but Hypnosis' learnbase is a lot larger... and better. The game designers eventually realized their blunder and brought it right back down to 60, effectively crippling it and making it "just another move". Most of its major users lost some usage as a result, though in most of those cases other factors also contributed. (And we're still waiting for that Stealth Rock nerf, by the way.)

Love or hate the changes Platinum brought about, it did have the benefit of refreshing the metagame, and bringing new faces into the spotlight... and Gamefreak was just getting started.

10. Big Brother is watching: HGSS

Yeah, I split this one in two because I was starting to drag on, even by my standards. But nonetheless, HGSS dropped perhaps the clearest hint that Gamefreak is indeed keeping a very close watch on us. Why? Look no further than the Super Fang tutor. And yes, for those who overlooked it (I know some people did), they made a Super Fang tutor. It had long been touted as one of the best moves in the game, one that should never, EVER be given to any Pokémon with anything resembling power. And why wouldn't we think that? Without it, Raticate and Pachirisu would have been considered as fodder on the level of Luvdisc or Magcargo. However, Bibarel should've given us a little hint that it wasn't that good. Even in the pre-Curse days, Bibarel could be a fairly interesting Pokémon, and while it DID use Super Fang a lot, it didn't hang on to it like a lifesaver in the way the other two did.

But the point is that Super Fang was believed to be overpowered at the time. And this led to Gamefreak being supremely careful in picking the Pokémon that should get it. Remember how I said before that logic, for the most part, dictated what obtained tutor moves? They made a very convenient exception when it came to Super Fang. Of course, a lot of Pokémon with the ability to bite obtained the move... but another criteria, a lot more implicit, was taken into account. Tiering. Between OUs and ubers (Smeargle notwithstanding, of course), only ONE Pokémon obtained Super Fang, and that was the obvious Mew. (For the record, I have yet to see a Super Fang Mew.) Yes, while it will never be confirmed, I'm positive Gamefreak actually took a look at the tier list and decided not to give a move that was believed to be overpowered to OUs and ubers. Else why didn't the likes of Tyranitar and Salamence get it?

But Super Fang turned out to be a flash in the pan. By far the best Pokémon that obtained it was Crobat, who was a heartbeat away from OU at the time. And after getting it... it's still a heartbeat away from OU. It was put forward by some as a revolution for Stallrein... it ended up doing very little (though Walrein is the best user of the Super Fang + Brine combo, however trivial it may be compared to Stallrein). As it turns out, Super Fang is a valuable asset for the underpowered, but to anything with enough tools to put up a fight it's just sort of there.

Block and Gravity were other tutor moves that were expected to bring about some change to the metagame, but in the end they flopped even harder than Super Fang, as not a single Pokémon uses them enough to show up in the monthly stats. The latter in particular was definitely exposed as the gimmick it was, as tantalizing as those huge accuracy boosts were. You could call it an example of Bibarel vs. Snorlax syndrome: something that starts off worse but becomes better after setting up is outright worse, because you don't always have a chance to set up.

So in the end, Gamefreak was rather cautious with tutor moves this time around - after going a bit overboard with Outrage and elemental punches and Heat Wave and Superpower and all that jazz, they decided to be more tame this time around. But like they did with Platinum, they targeted specific Pokémon for improvement, this time with egg moves for non-legendaries and level-up moves for the unbreedable legendaries. The one people immediately noticed was Brave Bird Ho-Oh, and for good reason. For the longest time Ho-Oh was left with no real STABbed option outside of Sacred Fire... problem solved. Ho-Oh's usage skyrocketed in the months following HGSS' release, before petering out a bit afterwards. No surprise there... while Ho-Oh is definitely a better Pokémon with Brave Bird than without it, it's still fundamentally flawed in design and unable to deal with the massive power of the more high-end ubers, even with Sacred Fire in its corner.

The other notable was Extremespeed Dragonite making a return from Crystal, and the effect was immediate, as no longer was Dragonite near the OU cut-off line. However, no other OU received that kind of help. Sure, some of them DID get new moves... but they all invariably sucked. Power Trick Gliscor is my personal favorite (in a bad way), as it boosts its attack at the expense of its defense... whereas a single Swords Dance boosts its attack much, MUCH more without touching defense at all. Oops.

Outside of OU, there were a few Pokémon that were the subject of wild speculation because of their new toys. Would they break into OU? By how much? Brave Bird Honchkrow, Nasty Plot Mismagius and especially Head Smash Aggron were the primary suspects (no, not in the Smogon sense of the term). Ultimately, though, the first two's rankings barely changed, as Brave Bird failed to obsolete the recoil-free (and somehow still very rare after 14 years) Drill Peck, and Calm Mind's special defense boost still is of some value to lots of Mismagiuses compared to the extra firepower Nasty Plot provides. As for Aggron, even comparing the pre-HGSS era to today, it DID make massive gains... but they looked even more impressive last fall, when it threatened to break into OU. Nowadays it sits near the bottom of the top 100, but compared to where it was before...

In the end, from an overall perspective, the announced revolution didn't happen, with the HGSS metagame merely being a slight evolution of Platinum's rather than the huge overhaul the latter was. But we don't need such massive shake-ups every year, either... right?

11. Screw the rules, I have money!

But despite Gamefreak shows every sign of paying attention, Nintendo... doesn't. A popular subject of ridicule among the competitive community is the ridiculous rulesets for official tournaments that only Nintendo seems to have the secret of. I mean, I know we shouldn't expect them to use the standard Smogon ruleset, especially the bans on non-legendaries Wobbuffet and Garchomp, but some of that stuff they came up with was flat-out ridiculous.

Perhaps the best example of this is the ban on Tyranitar and Dragonite. If you remember, despite the presence of a level equalizer in PvP games, its use was banned for the longest time in official Nintendo tournaments. And the maximum level allowed in these was 50. That meant that since Pupitar and Dragonair evolved at level 55, their final forms couldn't be achieved by level 50, hence the ban on these two. The issue, of course, isn't with the ban of these two Pokémon, but the ban on the level equalizer. It's there for a reason, use it! Idiots.

Eventually, they released a level 50 Dragonite via event, and the sole purpose of this move was to allow it into tournaments. It had no special moves, though it did carry moves it could only learn after level 50, like Dragon Dance and Outrage, and the TM move Thunderbolt. And let's not forget that since it can't level up once else it'd lose its eligibility, the only way to make it gain EVs is through vitamins. Brilliant. So let's sum it up, okay? Salamence is allowed with nary a single restriction, is all-around superior to Dragonite, and can be EV trained just the way the player likes it. So would anyone seriously use that Dragonite? Of course not. Tyranitar would've been a much better target, since it's not utterly obsoleted by anything, and since Garchomp was allowed as well without restriction... do I need to elaborate?

Oh, if only it stopped there. If only. The Pokémon VGC tournament ruleset has this beat by a country mile. The idea behind this tournament is one that is popular in some circles... but scorned by high-level players, and for good reason. The only Pokémon banned here are "event" Pokémon, including Manaphy and (lol) Phione, and the Soul Dew is off-limits as well. Other Pokémon deemed "uber" by the tournament rules are allowed, but with some restrictions (maximum of four in a six-Pokémon team, maximum of two among the four chosen for any single battle). Those Pokémon are Mewtwo, Lugia, Ho-Oh, and the RSE and DPP uber trios. Everything else is fair game, including Wobbuffet, Garchomp, Latias and Latios.

Of course, there's a reason why ubers are kept to their own metagame and go unallowed to seep into standard: even with the restrictions, every match will be centered around the ubers. From what I've been told, the Kyogre/Palkia tandem is absolutely devastating in the actual tournaments. Is that no surprise? The entire uber metagame revolves around Kyogre's and Groudon's perma-weather conditions, and this anything-goes balance, while a fun diversion from standard matches, is just that, a diversion.

And let's not forget about Item Clause, which is still a mainstay of most, if not all, official tournaments, despite this not being 2001 anymore. Item Clause was implemented in generation 2 because a trio of held items (Leftovers, Chesto Berry, Lum Berry) dominated all others, and we needed a bit more variety than four Leftovers and two Chestos on every team. But now? We got the Choice items, the Life Orb, loads of useful berries, and so on and so forth. So what's the point? There isn't a really dominant item anymore, so Item Clause has gone the way of the dodo a long time ago. Except in official tournaments.

However, I have to give credit where credit is due. Nintendo of Greece hosted a few Wi-Fi tournaments, and they arguably havethe best ruleset an official tournament has ever had. The ban list was exceptionally close to Smogon's, with Wobbuffet considered uber (something you wouldn't expect from any official rulemaker). There were a few differences, though, most notably Shaymin-L as uber. Latias and Latios were allowed, but the Soul Dew wasn't, and you couldn't use both in the same team (not that you'd ever want to). And perhaps as a nod to the Pokémon battling community, Garchomp had restrictions slapped on it that made it near unusable: it wasn't allowed on teams featuring Tyranitar or Hippowdon, and most importantly, it was barred from using held items. Brilliant, as held items are, perhaps more than anything else, the difference maker in what makes Garchomp broken. So let's give Nintendo of Greece a nod for actually paying attention to what the community does.

12. One-trick pony for a one-'mon army

Reserving a full conclusion for a single Pokémon is rather unconventional in an article that's meant to look at generation 4 as a whole, but it's a Pokémon that was under the radar when it started, then suddenly made the metagame into a smoldering crater halfway through. As I mentioned before, Platinum and HGSS targeted specific Pokémon for improvements in a variety of ways, some of them successes, some of them failures.

One such Pokémon that needed an extra oomph was targeted - a certain Bug Pokémon that struggled to find a niche for itself in generations 2 and 3, but with the addition of new tools in its arsenal, it arose as an interesting alternative to the likes of Heracross and Forretress, but still remained within their shadow, just on the outskirts of OU. So Gamefreak decided to give it a move that exploited both Technician and STAB, while covering the low speed. And thus Bullet Punch Scizor was born. Now it had just the thing to break into OU, but would it be able to leapfrog Heracross? Yours truly actually wondered that out loud in his first month of LPing. Well, any doubters were promptly shut up - it not only sped past Heracross, but past every single Pokémon in the OU tier! It only failed to nab the #1 spot in the very first full month of the Platinum metagame (October 2008), and that was because of a massive Heatran spike that only served to attempt to counter the fiend. But it nabbed the #1 spot afterwards, and never, EVER relinquished it.

What's worse, Scizor's advantage over the others began to rise and rise and rise, and the peak occured in October 2009, where Scizor made 57% more appearances than #2 Salamence. That's not a typo, for every Salamence you could find there were 1.57 Scizors. This advantage fell a bit since then, but it still has a massive lead on everything else to this day, which makes it somewhat odd to the untrained eye that Salamence is getting a suspect test but not Scizor.

So one can only ponder, what was Gamefreak thinking? I'll tell you what they were thinking. Bullet Punch has 40 power, with a typing one can only describe as bad. So it was up to STAB and Technician to try and make up for it. And I can't blame the game designers one bit for thinking they'd be enough to make Scizor punch through that last hurdle that separated it from OU, but not enough to lay waste to everything. So please be somewhat indulgent on the guys, even if Bullet Punch Scizor sometimes might seem to be better off as a "what if?" that would remain without an answer forever.

13. More legendaries: both blessing and curse

One of the most common complaints about generation 4 is that it introduced too many legendaries, and I don't know anyone who disagrees with that. After the five originals and the six GSC alumni, RSE added ten of them, which was already borderline to begin with. But DPP outdid that by introducing no less than 13 new legendaries. That... is a lot. The most common complaint is that the more legendaries there are, the less special they are. And when legendaries make up over 10% of all the new Pokémon introduced, that's a claim I can get behind.

In my opinion, there should be no more than 10 - generation 3, for one, did it perfectly. There's the legendary trio and the uber trio, and there's no way we'll avoid these six in any future generation. Then two post-game legendaries, two events, and that's it. Where DPP went overboard was in that department. With three post-game legendaries (Heatran, Regigigas, Cresselia) and no less than FOUR event Pokémon (though Manaphy's status is questionable, since it can be accessed easily enough through special missions in the Ranger trilogy), the legendary total starts to bloat. What's especially sad is that Cresselia and Darkrai had the potential to make great version mascots for a future generation, thanks to their lore. What a waste.

Speaking of lore, at least Gamefreak is trying to give each legendary somewhat of a point. In the first three generations, several of the legendaries were just... there. The game was just, here, there's this powerful Pokémon, try and catch it. However, generation 4 succeeded in making them more interesting, with only Heatran more or less not having a point. I've seen people who dared claim that this was actually a step BACK, for reasons I can't really cite because they make no sense whatsoever from a logical standpoint. Yeah, probably the nostalgia nuts who only swear by the early generations because they're older, and not for any logical reason. And of course, those are the same ones who want more story in future games, and when Gamefreak actually tries to give backstories for individual Pokémon, they're all THIS SUCKS NUH. Hurray for hypocrisy!

Another effect the increased number of legendaries has is on the actual competitive game. Say what you will about there being too many legendaries, but it actually made the uber metagame a lot more compelling. Back in RBY, there were only two ubers, so any uber metagame it may have tried was simply OU with Mewtwo and Mew tacked on. Not fun. GSC introduced Lugia, Ho-Oh and Celebi (for those who weren't aware, yes, Celebi was uber in GSC), but only five ubers still made ubers a lackluster experience. However, the last two generations brought forward a lot of uber Pokémon, making the metagame a fun diversion (as I pointed out in #11), instead of a boring diversion. Of course, whether Kyogre's and Groudon's excessive influence over the metagame is good or not is debatable, but that's not the point I'm trying to make.

Of course, several legendaries don't have what it takes to be considered uber, and their influence on the OU metagame is just as clear. Heatran, for example, is notable for being the only viable defensive Fire-type in the entire game. Azelf provided a needed upgrade to the faltering Alakazam, and the likes of Jirachi and Celebi are also mainstays. And with the dominance of pseudo-legendaries, a topic that gained a lot of attention this generation, it's good to see that there are Pokémon that can keep up with them.

The downside, however, is that too many OUs with a BST of 580 or 600 will eventually create a power creep effect, where it becomes harder and harder to compete if you don't have that kind of stats. And while there are a lot of Pokémon that can, in fact, compete, nearly all of them are in the 500+ range. Remember Dusclops in RSE? It had a BST of 455 back then (14 less than perennial unintentional joke Pokémon Pidgeot!), and still was OU. Well, it wouldn't have been able to keep up that kind of pace. It evolving into Dusknoir allowed it to catch up in terms of stats, and still it's rather close to the bottom of OU month after month. The fundamental issue is that the more and more Pokémon there are, the higher the requirements will be in order to be viable, and the inception of too many legendaries, while adding more Pokémon that can meet these requirements, raises the bar for the other Pokémon a lot faster.

Nonetheless, there's no reason to keep our fingers close to the panic button. Even with so many new legendaries and other really powerful Pokémon, there are still a dozen more OUs in gen 4 than in gen 3. So the next time you see another godforsaken Gyarados, you can tell yourself that the game's still more varied than it used to be, even if it doesn't always look that way.

14. Tiering got messy: Uber vs. OU

It was only a matter of time before the line between uber and OU stopped being clear-cut, and if you ask me it's a small miracle that it took until this generation. But is it such a surprise? In generation 1, Mewtwo and Mew (in that order) were so far above the rest it was ridiculous, so a ban was clearly in order. Then Lugia and Ho-Oh came around, and while neither them nor the newly nerfed Mewtwo were as broken as Mewtwo's RBY iteration they were still far above the rest. Celebi was a little less clear-cut, though, but its vast movepool was enough for most to consider it uber.

But as more and more legendaries came raining down, doubts started to arise about the status of some of them. Throughout generation 3, Latias and Latios without the Soul Dew were the subject of much debate, but ultimately they were kept (with good reason, as generation 4 would end up proving) within the confines of the uber tier. And while all Deoxys forms were considered uber at the time, the Leaf Green and Emerald forms raised an eyebrow or two. But it seemed the mentality at the time was, when in doubt, stick it into ubers. There wasn't enough doubt, however, to keep Celebi there, and from that point on it was considered as a very competent OU, but nothing more.

But it was generation 4 that will forever be remembered as the one that changed the way Pokémon are tiered. The biggest reason for that is because there turned out to be even more apples of discord, and as a reaction the community gave itself the tools for determining whether a Pokémon was too good to be OU in the form of suspect ladders, which were a new added functionality of the Shoddy Battle simulator. But it was before Shoddy was even created that the arguments started, and they were rather heated, since they were entirely based on theorymon. Remember, at the time Diamond and Pearl weren't even out yet in North America, so most of us didn't even play the games.

And the very first Pokémon that was under scrutiny was yours truly's favorite, Tyranitar. In March of 2007, it was discovered that Rock-types' special defense was boosted by 50% in a sandstorm, a new effect for this weather condition. And many players were on DEFCON-1, on the basis that Tyranitar's effective BST now fell just a few points short of Kyogre's and Groudon's. That boost would also provide amazing synergy with the likes of Regirock, Rhyperior and Cradily. Not only that, but as I mentioned earlier, Tyranitar just loved the physical/special split, so now it didn't have a bunch of good physicals and a bunch of good specials, but a neverending list of both. Obviously, as anyone who's played the game for the last three years will tell you, a horrid defensive typing and low speed kept Tyranitar in OU (but couldn't prevent it from being an everlasting force there). Add the fact that it's usually not a good idea to double up on types, even with a defensive boost, and the end result was that not once was Tyranitar ever examined after the theorymon was disproven. And as a bit of trivia, to this day Tyranitar is one of only two Rock-types in the OU tier, the other being Aerodactyl.

A few months after the NA release of Diamond and Pearl, the uber vs. OU topic came up again, and this time the subject was Manaphy, a Pokémon that was widely considered at the time as a potent force in OU, but not really gamebreaking due to the lack of Kyogre in that metagame to support it. At least whenever I saw the subject being discussed, that was what just about everyone said... and then one day, everyone woke up to Smogon's official uber list, and Manaphy, much to my amazement (and a lot of others', I'm sure), was listed as a definite uber! Not even on the bubble or anything, it was uber. Just like that.

And despite the doubt I and others had, it wasn't even looked at on suspect ladders until stage 3 came around. Early on it looked like Manaphy would indeed end up in OU, but as the more powerful suspects were banned for good (more on that later), Manaphy became more and more potent, and as a result it remained uber. The good news, though, was that this time there was actual battle experience to prove Manaphy's tiering. Will it be the new Celebi, barely uber in its debut generation, but a solid OU afterwards? Only time will tell.

As far as suspect tests go, the first one was conducted in August 2008, and the subject was Garchomp, which was tearing everything apart in OU at the time. It had a surprisingly quiet 2007, where Salamence's ability to hit solidly on both sides of the spectrum kept it on top of the Dragon food chain, but as people slowly began to realize how to play with Garchomp so that one could get the maximum output out of it, it grabbed the #1 spot from Blissey and never looked back. After a while, it was becoming obvious that something needed to be done, as no single Pokémon had been as dominant as this before in OU. And thus the concept of suspect testing was born - and the very first one made history, as for the first time, a non-legendary was banned to ubers on the grounds of being simply too powerful (as opposed to being a broken gimmick like Wobbuffet). Later on, its status was reviewed in stage 3 of suspect testing, and despite the post-Platinum metagame being less kind to it, it still managed to hold on to its uber status.

There were several other suspect tests afterwards, a rather short-lived one being Wobbuffet. After a few weeks in OU, it was swiftly booted back to ubers, to no one's surprise. An unbanning that lasted longer and happened around the same time, though, was Deoxys-E. At the time, it was thought of as the worst Deoxys form, since it was relatively fragile and didn't hit that hard, with its only asset being its speed. But as it turns out, speed can be just as valuable, if not more, than defense when it comes to playing a support role - something Deoxys-E could provide in spades. Spikes, Stealth Rock, Taunt, Trick, Reflect, Light Screen, Knock Off... However, it did take some time for people to realize its potential. It started off as a good OU, but not anything that was gamebreaking or something. Then people got creative and tried having it play a support role that could milk its massive speed for all it was worth... and it eventually became obvious it WAS too good for OU, though not for the reasons that were initially imagined. More interesting is the fact that this little OU stint taught players how to use it in ubers, and as a result the Emerald form became the most popular of Deoxys' forms in ubers.

In the meantime, Shaymin-S was booted to ubers fairly quickly after Platinum's release, without any need for a suspect test. I already covered that in point 9, so I'm not going to repeat myself here.

One thing I already mentioned previously was the argument over Latias and Latios belonging or not in OU when not using the Soul Dew. After a test, Latias was deemed able to compete in OU without breaking it, and it stayed there for quite a while, until the tail end of stage 3. Speaking of which, it was one of the five Pokémon being tested there (and I already covered the other four), and a vast majority of people were in favor of keeping it in OU in the first few rounds. However, the same phenomenon that happened with Deoxys-E and Garchomp occurred here as well: people started tapping into its full potential, and it went from an excellent defensive OU Pokémon to simply too good for that metagame. And as a result, the near-unanimous consensus that had formed during the early rounds shattered, and Latias was sent back to ubers.

Even now, as generation 4 is coming to an end, we're having one last test, this time involving Salamence. The departure of Latias, one of Salamence's greatest nemesises, allowed it to perform a lot better, and with the gifts it obtained since Platinum, it moved on to become the trickiest foe to take down in OU (even though it's still less common than Scizor). How will that one turn out? I'm betting on a ban... Salamence has qualities Garchomp only wished it had, after all.

[continued in the next post]

15. Tiering got messy: OU vs. UU

Despite the amount of controversy sparked by the re-tiering of several Pokémon in uber and OU, it was far from being the only area where discord struck. The definition of "underused" changed vastly since this generation began, and while I was highly skeptical at first, to say the least, it turns out the change was actually a great idea.

The problem with tiers other than OU and uber, before the UU revamp, was that they were entirely based on theorymon. There was no real battle experience to back the reasoning behind any given Pokémon being BL, UU or NU. And at one point, it came back to haunt everyone. The end result was that some Pokémon that should've been allowed in UU were BL, and some that had no business there were UU nonetheless.

So in the end, UU was dominated by the latter category, which included the likes of Clefable, Claydol and Swellow. In response to this, Steelix was demoted to UU in order to deal with those top threats... ultimately becoming the top threat itself. This resulted in a vicious cycle of demotions that were intended to fix the metagame, but broke it even more. It eventually got so bad that the UU metagame was eventually completely reset. What this meant was that the new metagame would start off including every single Pokémon that wasn't uber or OU, and the top threats that broke the metagame would be voted on and banned. These Pokémon would then form the BL tier, which would become more of a UU ban list than the actual tier it used to be.

However, compared to the relative stability of the OU metagame, where anything that wants to come in and out has to go through a very rigorous process, UU is very dynamic... too much so for my tastes, actually. The reason for that is because any Pokémon that drops out of OU is sent not to BL, but straight to UU, and those who turn out to be too good for UU are then sent over to BL (recent examples of this include PorygonZ and Cresselia). Likewise, UU Pokémon can experience a surge of usage in OU, and successfully breaking in that tier disqualifies them from UU by definition (one notable occurence was Roserade).

For that reason, and because I don't care much for UU, I'm not going to cover every case in-depth, because I want to be done with this column before generation 12 comes out. Suffice to say that these changes to UU were absolutely necessary, and generation 4 will be remembered as the one where we accepted to get dirty enough to implement these changes.

16. Type balance... going... going... gone!

Perhaps one of the best things generation 2 brought to the game was the huge improvement in balance between types. Of course, there have always been those types that were just bad, like Poison and Normal. However, there was no longer a single type that monopolized the spotlight the way Psychic did in RBY. Generation 3 was pretty much the same, despite bringing so many changes they had to drop backwards compatibility.

However, the more offensive generation 4 brought about loads of high-powered drawback moves. Perhaps because of the unimpressive competition in the drawback-free department, the likes of Flare Blitz, Brave Bird, Close Combat, Superpower and Leaf Storm immediately became wildly popular. However, all those moves, as useful and powerful as they were, all shared something in common: they could be resisted fairly easily, leaving the user in a state of vulnerability that varies depending on the drawback inflicted.

Enter the Dragon type. In generation 3, all of its moves were special, and the strongest one was Outrage, and at 90 power, it wasn't exactly worth being locked into. This left 80-power Dragon Claw as the better alternative. However, the improvement generation 4 brought the type was, to put it bluntly, excessive. Dragon Claw turned physical, and was replaced by the 90-power Dragon Pulse. But it's the drawback moves that really brought the Dragon type into a class of its own. Outrage's power was cranked up to 120 (while Petal Dance and Thrash, who needed it a lot more, were left to rot), and a new Overheat clone, Draco Meteor, was created.

I don't know if Gamefreak was thinking that the lack of super-effectives would balance out the lack of NVEs, and that's the only reason I can think of as to why they didn't think of it as a bad idea. But that balance never came to pass. Instead, these two moves were used as weapons of mass destruction through some of the strongest neutral hits the game had to offer, especially STABbed. Did I mention that ever since Platinum came out, the only Dragon that failed to be OU or uber in any single month was the obvious Altaria? On top of the ubiquitousness of the Dragon type, that meant the added bonus of Dragons chewing through each other with Dragon moves as well.

One of Garchomp's greatest assets prior to its ban, without a doubt, was the ability to use Swords Dance in tandem with Outrage, a base 102 speed that allowed it to barely outspeed several threats and a Yache Berry to get a near-guaranteed kill, which led to it being the second non-legendary sent to ubers, and the first on the basis of something else than an overpowered gimmick. The ban was controversial back then, but time proved that it was the right thing to do. Even today, several "Garchomp's not cheap, he's just fast" proponents exist, and they fall into two categories: those who think Garchomp's loss of effectiveness is significant enough to unban it (a statement I disagree with), and those who simply don't fight at a high enough level to realize Garchomp's immense potential.

When Garchomp was banned, Salamence was free to rule over the land of Dragons once again. And in a matter of mere days - not weeks, DAYS - Platinum came out, bringing with it the Outrage tutor. Remember that Salamence didn't have access to this move before then, and had to make due with the Dragon Dance + Dragon Claw tandem. This improvement allowed Salamence to make an immediate impact (though tempered at the start by Scizor and Heatran, two Dragon resists, dominating the ladder), on top of allowing Kingdra to make its long overdue entrance into OU. Later on, Latias was unbanned, and it and Salamence kept each other in check for a long time, preventing either of them from really breaking the game as they had the potential to do.

However, as I mentioned earlier, Latias eventually became too tough to handle regardless, and was banned, with the immediate result that Salamence is currently getting its own suspect test. Is it a coincidence that all three of the most controversial Pokémon, tiering-wise, are Dragons? I don't think so. Had it not been for Outrage's improvement and the inception of Draco Meteor, all three of them may have been OU, and Latios may even have had a suspect test (though that's just pure theorymon talking).

One major consequence of Dragons taking over the metagame was that using Pokémon that could resist their powerful onslaughts was urgently needed. However, only one type could do so without requiring astronomical defenses - Steel. As a result, as much as you needed lots of Dragons to fire off devastating attacks, you needed lots of Steels to resist your opponent's. Indeed, looking at the ladder's top slots shows Steel has become more common than Dragon itself, with the likes of Scizor, Heatran, Metagross, Jirachi, Lucario, Skarmory and Magnezone all highly likely to show up and ruin your fun.

If anything, I wonder how Steel took so long before rising to the top like that. With an unrivaled 11 resistances and one immunity (to what else but Poison), it was already designed from the start as the ultimate in defense. Perhaps the type's miserable offense (which was improved this cycle with Iron Head, Flash Cannon and Bullet Punch) was a turn-off... then again, only Mawile and Registeel don't have access to secondary STAB of any sort, though Metagross' and Jirachi's, for instance, are fairly unappealing. And you also had defensive typing disasters such as Rock/Steel... nonetheless, it's only logical that Steel eventually came to reign supreme. It just so happens that the unique Dragon resistance became more valuable than all the others.

I did mention earlier that Gamefreak seems to be paying attention to the metagame... if so, we can probably expect nerfs of some sort. The ball is in their court, it's time for them to make important decisions. But if nothing is done, we could expect more of the same for four more years...

17. Shoddy Battle: from shoddy to success story

It would be unfair to wrap this column up without mentioning the rise of Shoddy Battle as the number one Pokémon battling medium, a scenario that ended up proving all my predictions wrong. With the advent of Wi-Fi battling on cartridges, I believed the need for a simulator would fade away, as the DS provided the means to battle anyone in the world. Boy, was I wrong! The primary issue was that to battle using a DS, you still needed to breed Pokémon with the right natures, IVs and egg moves, and EV train them properly. You needed to do it six times, and once again every time you wanted to change a team member, something that occurs very often in a metagame that mutates constantly as much as it does. And as I mentioned before, attention to detail became more critical than ever before, since players became more and more skilled and the game developed into the digital equivalent of chess.

Enter Shoddy Battle. When it was first made public, it was sorely lacking in many aspects. Several Pokémon, moves and abilities were missing, most notably Adaptability, which meant PorygonZ, one of the most anticipated new Pokémon, had to make due with the less reliable Download. Furthermore, several glitches hampered gameplay significantly, the most notable being one that doubled Close Combat's power to a ridiculous 240. This made most Pokémon that obtained it into terrifying forces, and Primeape among others became much more of a powerhouse than it ever should've been. The fact that its fifteen minutes of fame occurred because of a glitch says a lot about how underwhelming it is.

And despite all these shortcomings, people still played it a lot. That's right, the ease of team-making that simulators typically provide managed to compensate for Shoddy being nowhere near finished. I thought Shoddy wouldn't be long for this world, especially with Smogon working on their own project, Competitor. But in the meantime, Shoddy filled a niche that desperately needed to be occupied.

It was eventually completed, the bugs were ironed out, and the real fun could begin - in more ways than one. Not only was a generation 4 simulator complete, but new features were soon added, including a ladder and monthly rankings for Pokémon on each ladder. The final product turned out to be so good that Smogon eventually dropped Competitor altogether and became affiliated with Shoddy. The wildly popular monthly stats were expanded to include moves, EVs, natures and abilities for each Pokémon, as well as teammate stats.

Later, a new version, Shoddy 2, was announced. The improvements announced included a better interface, as well as the ability to not only partake in double battles, but also triples, and so on. That's right, both complete teams could be on the field at once! In addition, it was meant to support a few things the original couldn't, most notably the EV restrictions on Arceus. Some people believe to this day that Arceus can't be used on Shoddy because it's simply too good for ubers, which isn't true. The actual reason is because the only way to get a legit Arceus was through a level 100 event, that couldn't be EV trained through anything but vitamins. And it just so happened that Shoddy couldn't support a maximum of 100 EVs in a given stat for one Pokémon, so Shoddy 2 was also meant to finally bring Arceus, even with its current restrictions, in ubers.

Another promised addition that was much more controversial was the weather glitch that was introduced in Platinum, and returned in HGSS. For those not familiar with this glitch, it occurs whenever Pursuit KOs a Pokémon while a permanent weather condition is in effect. As a result, the weather goes completely haywire in ways that are difficult to explain - a YouTube search would be your best bet. The addition of this glitch to Shoddy wouldn't have been such an issue but for the simple notions that both Pursuit and permanent weather effects are wildly popular, with Tyranitar and Hippowdon both OU and Abomasnow lurking not too far behind. Tyranitar is especially problematic, as Pursuit is a very common move for it.

So the crux of the argument was, should Shoddy be the way the game was intended to be, or the way it actually is? I personally believe the former is the way to go, on the principle that a medium that doesn't have a certain bug is, by default, better than one that does. However, the developers thought the opposite, and planned to add the glitch in anyway.

However, this debate ended up being for naught, as a variety of issues prevented Shoddy 2 from being completed, at least for the time being. But given that we're only a few months away from the launch of generation 5, it's highly unlikely that it will ever be done. Instead, I assume that all efforts will go toward building a generation 5 simulator when the time comes. And hopefully neither will feature the weather glitch.

But in the end, Shoddy 2 becoming vaporware shouldn't overshadow the unexpected, meteoric rise of the original. It rapidly became THE way to do Pokémon battles, not only because of convenience, but because nearly all the good players tossed cartridges aside to play on Shoddy, requiring one to fight there if they wanted to improve past a certain point.

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And thus ends this lengthy review of generation 4 (my longest column yet!). What do the next four years have in store for us? We all have different expectations when it comes to more specific aspects, but I believe all of us are hoping for a fun experience that will build upon what the last 14 years brought us. Here's to the fifth chapter of one of gaming's greatest success stories!

Oh lord...

Honestly, I think the franchise has lost steam, and it's at least taken one serious backseat; at worst, it's creators and few remaining advocates are fighting to keep it alive.

The series may not be as popular as it once was but it's still absurdly popular.

Considering that I have given the games almost 500 years of my life, they are important to me.