Chikorita

Where Bulbasaur carries a bulb on its back, this one has a single leaf on its head, and that’s where the resemblance ends. Its body is a miniature sauropod: four short legs, a broad neck, and a collar of round buds around the base of the neck. At 90 centimetres and 6.4 kilograms, it manages to be long and light at the same time, closer to a cat than a reptile.

The leaf isn’t decoration. Pokédex entries give it two different functions: it uses it to measure the temperature and humidity of the air, and it releases a sweet scent when it waves it around. The odd detail is how the third entry describes it — in battle, it waves the leaf to keep its opponent at bay, but the fragrance it gives off calms the encounter and ends up creating a friendly atmosphere. An attacker that dismantles its own fight halfway through.

The rest of its behaviour is what you’d expect from a Grass type: docile, lying in the sun whenever it can, with grassland listed as its habitat. It occupies number 152 and is the small form of a three-stage line, leading to Bayleef and then to Meganium. The official category keeps it simple: Leaf Pokémon.

318 points spread out without a single peak: 45 HP, 49 Attack, 65 Defense, 49 Special Attack, 65 Special Defense, and 45 Speed. The two defensive stats are the only ones that stand out, and they’re built on 45 HP, which is a small pool to apply them to. None of its offensive numbers reaches 50.

Overgrow, its standard Ability, boosts Grass-type moves when its HP falls below one third; with 49 Special Attack, the push comes late and doesn’t amount to much. Its Hidden Ability, Leaf Guard, prevents status conditions while the sun is shining, and that one is genuinely useful: under Sunny Day, it can’t be put to sleep, burned, or poisoned. The price is that the same sunlight boosts Fire-type moves by 50%, its worst weakness alongside Ice, Flying, Poison, and Bug.

As a pure Grass type, it hits Water, Ground, and Rock types well, and runs into trouble against almost everything else. What it does have going for it is an unusually useful support movepool for an unevolved starter: Reflect at level 17 and Light Screen at 31 set up both barriers, while Leech Seed at 23 and Synthesis at 12 turn dead turns into recovered HP. Magical Leaf, at 20, is the only reliable attack it has on hand — 60 power and it never misses.

Beyond that, it doesn’t compete. In a normal playthrough it does its job until the second Gym and then asks to evolve as soon as possible; in low-level formats, its role is to get in the way, set up barriers, plant a Leech Seed, and switch out.

Monster and Grass Egg Groups, the same as the Bulbasaur line, which opens up a fairly long list of breeding partners. The gender ratio is seven males for every female —12.5% female—, so breeding your own line starts with finding the female or relying on Ditto.

Its 20 Egg cycles work out to about 5355 steps, counting (20+1)×255. Six moves can come from the Egg: Vine Whip, Counter, Flail, Ancient Power, Ingrain, and Heal Pulse. Ancient Power is the one worth the slot, because being Rock type gives it an answer to Flying and Bug types that would otherwise tear it apart. Heal Pulse only makes sense in doubles.

Evolution requires nothing special: level 16 for Bayleef, level 32 for Meganium, with no stones, friendship, or time window involved. Its growth rate is Medium Slow, the usual curve for a starter, so it falls behind during the early levels and catches up later.

Its listed habitat is grassland, although it doesn’t appear on Johto’s routes: it’s given to you at Professor Elm’s lab. Its catch rate, 45, corresponds to a Pokémon that is difficult to catch, a figure it carries because it’s a starter rather than because of anything that happens in the game. In the wild, it may be holding a Lum Berry.