Bellsprout

Oddish arrived in the first generation with the same setup — Grass and Poison, three stages, a stone at the end — but with a tuber-like body. Bellsprout is the opposite: all stem. Four kilograms spread over seventy centimetres, two leaves at its sides and a yellow bell-shaped head held up by a neck that doesn't look capable of holding anything.

Pokédex entries insist on two things. One is its thinness, which isn't a flaw here: its body bends and sways to dodge attacks, and it catches its prey much faster than it looks like it should. The other is its diet. It prefers warm, humid places, where it catches small Bug Pokémon with its vines and devours them; it spits a corrosive fluid from its mouth that can melt even iron. The official category, Flower Pokémon, doesn't quite cover it.

One entry breaks from the tone of the rest. It says that Bellsprout has a human face and that, because of its appearance, people have speculated that it could be some kind of legendary mandrake. It's the root of European folklore that screams when pulled from the ground, dropped without any further explanation into the profile of a route Pokémon.

Within its line, it's the stage that still walks around on its own: Weepinbell is already hanging from a branch and never comes back down.

Its 300 base points are distributed with an asymmetry worth looking at closely. Attack, at 75, is its best figure, ahead of its 70 Special Attack. Special Defense is stuck at 30 and Defense at 35, with 50 HP behind them, so almost any neutral hit takes it out. And 40 Speed doesn't save anyone.

Chlorophyll only half-fixes the problem. Under sun, its Speed doubles, and that 40 becomes enough to outspeed practically everything in the format: in Little Cup, it's one of the standard sun sweepers and appears on most weather teams. What sets it apart from the others isn't raw power, but Weather Ball, which becomes a Fire-type attack in sun and deals with the Steel-types that would otherwise block it, as well as the Grass-types that resist everything else it carries. The rest of the plan is Solar Beam with no charge turn, Sludge Bomb for the secondary type and Sleep Powder to put anything that survives the first hit to sleep and dodge Sucker Punch.

The problem is simple: if it doesn't take the opponent out in one hit, the opponent takes it out. And some walls shut it down completely. Chespin has Bulletproof, which makes it immune to Weather Ball and Sludge Bomb; on top of that, it resists Solar Beam and, being a Grass-type, can't be put to sleep by Sleep Powder.

Without sun and in a normal playthrough, its role is the same as ever in the first half of the game: Sleep Powder at level 13, PoisonPowder at 15 and Stun Spore at 17, three status conditions chained together before it gets a decent attack. Power Whip, with 120 power, doesn't appear until level 52.

One Egg Group, Grass, and a fifty-fifty gender split. That makes breeding one of the shortest formalities in the first generation: any female specimen works as a starting point, and the partner can come from half the plant catalogue. The 20 incubation cycles are about 5355 steps.

The egg produces seven moves it can't learn any other way, and two of them justify the trip. Sucker Punch is a 70-power Dark-type priority move that plugs the hole left by 40 Speed when there's no sun. Strength Sap raises its Attack whenever an opponent goes down. The other five (Synthesis, Ingrain, Tickle, Worry Seed and Clear Smog) are all about hanging on, which is exactly what it does worst.

It evolves into Weepinbell upon reaching level 21, with no extra conditions. From there, getting to Victreebel requires a Leaf Stone, and that step doesn't depend on level: it can be forced as soon as you have the item, with the usual cost of stone evolutions. It grows at a medium-slow rate.

Its habitat is the forest and its catch rate is 255, the top of the scale. A regular Poké Ball at half health is usually enough. It gives one Attack effort point and 60 base experience, the sort of species figures you'd expect from an early-route Pokémon.