Tuesday, May 8

Ranking the Pokemon: #88- Kabuto


Kabuto's getting the benefit of the doubt here because I really like its evolution, Kabutops. We'll also give it some credit by being the only Pokemon (as far as I know) to share the same name as a plethora of random stuff. Seriously. A kabuto is also a helmet, the name of a beetle, and like 14 different anime characters. Very impressive. Most Pokemon names are combinations of words or just misspellings of basic names of things. For GameFreak to just get so lazy as to not even worry about changing the name or  a letter would normally draw my ire, but since Kabuto is the only one that does so to my knowledge (not counting something like Slowpoke, which is more of an insult than an actual already existing thing), it'll get a pass. Or maybe I just needed an excuse to explain that I kinda forgot about Kabuto.

Anyway, Kabooty Call is pretty frustrating, because on the one hand, it's a Rock/Water dual-type, which makes it fairly unique in that regard (only Omanyte can also boast that claim), but then you realized that Rock and Water don't have any weaknesses that are cancelled out by each other (aside from Ice, which I guess is halved because of the Water type). Curiously, Kabuto is also resistant to Poison moves, but as you no doubt by now know, Poison moves are awful, and no one in their right mind should be using them. Okay, MAYBE Toxic, but even that's a stretch. 

Hmm, all that ended up being was a roundabout way of saying that Kabuto learns some cool moves, but because of its stats, their usefulness is questionable. Wow, I didn't really accomplish getting any of that across in that last paragraph. Oops. With, ahem, rock-solid Defense (and Attack), you're better off going the Rock route and using physical moves, rather than special attacks. Except in this generation GameFreak included Kabuto in their surprisingly large list of Pokes who are a certain type that don't learn ANY attacks of that type. Kabuto learns NO Rock type attacks, neither naturally or via TM or HM. Since there aren't any HM Rock attacks, that's understandable, but it really is inexcusable to not have at least ONE Rock move at your disposal. All that creates is an extra weakness, in this case making Kabuto now twice as vulnerable to Grass-type moves (for a four-times-as-much-damage-getting-done-to-you total). Ugh. If Kabutops wasn't such a BAMF, Kabuto would be even lower.

Battling Grade: C-

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