A Different View on Pseudo Legendaries

[Malfeasance]

I would personally want to get a Pokémon like bagon, larvitar, and dratiniti early game.

 

Okay hear me out before you burn me at the stake. I know this game prides itself on using Pokémon you usually don’t use and it’s difficulty, but that won’t be a problem. Bagon, dratini, and larvitar are almost never used and for almost half the game suck. People use Tyranitar, Dragonite, and Salamanca not their baby forms. 

 

So what I’m getting at is that in the early through mid game it’s a challenge to train them. And when they evolve it’s rewarding to have the that late bloomer grow into a true killing machine. The other option is just powerleveling them later in the game like the shivering bagon. If we’re going to get them anyway I’d rather just struggle with them from the start.

 

All in all would it really hurt to get them earlier in the game?

[Outside Indoorsman]

Yup, it probably would. The game's more or less supposed to be something you can't just brute force through for most of it, and all. I was doing a challenge tun recently - I beat Hardy, but I still had to use tactics. And having psuedo legendaries for, say, Serra, Noel, and Radomus would probably wreck their difficulty levels. Those three are more or less the fifty-sixty percent mark of the game, and where most of the psuedo legendaries hit their last form. Throwing in the "infinity minus one" mons at that point might make the fights too easy. Before that they probably wouldn't be much good, it's true. But after that, it's different.

 

Also, Ame might be convinced to move Beldum back up, but there's no way in hell she's going to do all the legwork needed to make the other psuedo legendaries accessible early on when she's likely happy with them in the hard as heck to access locations that they are in.

 

And also when Sandbox Mode exists. You can just get your own Pokemon in that way if you want a psuedo legendary early on.

[wcv]

I've done a pseudo-legendary playthrough (and let me just say fuck Serra during that playthrough), and while it was fine for the early game, and indeed maybe a bit harder than normal, once you got to Noel the difficulty really fell off. The enemies just weren't ready to deal with a Dragonite and Salamence stomping them flat at that point in the game. So, IMO you'd need to rebalance quite a bit to let them in earlier. They're fine where they are.

[Amphibi]

I wouldn't mind seeing Deino or Goomy moved to earlier in the game. Deino fully evolves at level 64, by the time you're this level you're already quite a ways into the game, iirc the badge you need to go up to 65 is Luna's. I think a cool spot to find Deino would be some type of event in Beryl Cave. Sounds really early for it but if someone really wanted a good dragon type they could just go for Trapinch. It fully evolves before Deino evolves once and has a much better level up movepool if you keep Trapinch unevolved long enough.

 

Goodra is not nearly as good as anything else you can obtain at the point of the game it's at. If Goomy was obtainable somehow on Azurine Island I doubt it would break the game or anything either. The one thing that I could see being difficult for these events would be making them challenging enough that early in the game. They shouldn't just be handed to you or anything but it's not like there can be a huge challenge near the beginning of the game. That would make it too restrictive on the type of team you need if you want it. It would also be hard hiding the events, the areas are fairly straightforward at this part of the game with minimal amounts of exploration able to be done.

 

As for the rest of the psuedos, they're obviously not very good until they fully evolve, but when they do they're stupid good. That's fine in normal Pokemon games where you end the game around level 50 - 60ish but in Reborn you're not even halfway through the game at that point. Going through the game with Garchomp or Tyranitar (possible with mystery egg) would be insane.

[SoftShadow]

On the last run I did, I replaced my starter with a Jangmo-o. Being by favorite evolutionary line and the "weakest" psuedo-legendary, it felt fair and like a nice shake up to the early game. I never found myself blasting through anybody and still had to build my team appropriately, but I never felt like I had no chance in beating someone. As far as when you acquire them in-game, they are fine where they are, in my opinion. Maybe one or two could be moved around, but we still have the Labradorra City fight, the last gym, Victory Road, the Elite Four, the final fight with Lin, and the entire postgame in all of its glory to use them in.