Combusken

The meadow is the habitat assigned to it by the Pokédex, and the entries back that up: it runs across plains and mountains to strengthen its legs. In practice, nobody ever runs into one there. It appears when a Torchic reaches level 16, and the chick stretches out to 90 centimetres and 19.5 kilograms, becoming an animal that already walks upright.

Underneath the design is a gamecock. The official category, Young Fowl Pokémon, sounds domestic; the behaviour described in the entries is anything but. Two traits come up in all of them: kicking and noise. Ten kicks per second, with its legs as its only serious weapon — one entry says its lower limbs have “both strength and speed”, and that is the whole animal in a nutshell. Its cry, on the other hand, is dismissed by its own entry as “very loud and annoying”. Few species carry an insult in the official Pokédex.

The fire, which burned inside it during the previous stage, now comes out through its beak as it kicks. The Fighting type enters right here, too: that is what truly separates this form from the previous one, more than the extra weight. It is the middle step of a three-stage line, and it looks the part — it has lost the chick’s roundness and is still twenty levels short of Blaziken.

Its 405 base stat points are divided with almost bureaucratic symmetry: 85 Attack, 85 Special Attack, 60 HP, 60 Defense, 60 Special Defense and 55 Speed. It hits equally well from both sides and fits equally badly into either one. None of that is enough.

Blaze, its regular Ability, only kicks in below a third of its HP, when it is usually too late. The one that changes the maths is Speed Boost, its Hidden Ability: one stage of Speed at the end of every turn, with no limit on how many times it can activate. That 55 stops being a problem around the second turn, and from the third onward the attack order flips against almost any opponent. Protect and Substitute, both available via TM, exist to buy those turns; Swords Dance via TM or Bulk Up at level 45 make the most of what comes afterwards.

The two types complement each other well offensively: Steel types are hit super effectively by both, and only Flying, Psychic and Fairy resist both attacks at once. Defensively, it is another story. Water, Ground, Flying and Psychic hit for double damage, and with 60 Defense and 60 Special Defense, any one of those four is enough.

Outside formats that restrict battles to Pokémon that have not fully evolved, where Eviolite makes those three 60s somewhat defensible, there is no reason to hold it back: Blaziken keeps Speed Boost and improves every stat. In a normal playthrough, it rules from 16 to 36, with one problem — its only Fighting-type move throughout that stretch is Double Kick, 30 power per hit, which it learns upon evolving. Flame Charge at 9 and Aerial Ace at 20 cover the gap without exactly shining.

It belongs to a single Egg Group, Field, the most populous in the Pokédex, so breeding it is straightforward. The difficult part is everything else: only 12.5% of specimens are female, seven males for every one, so a line of your own starts with finding that female or resorting to Ditto. The 20 incubation cycles amount to about 5355 steps.

Of its eight Egg Moves, the ones that justify the effort are Feint, a 30-power priority move for finishing opponents off; Counter, which returns twice the physical damage received; and Last Resort, 140 power with the condition that it must be used last. Night Slash and Crush Claw add coverage that its TM list does not cover as cheaply. All of them are inherited at the Torchic stage.

The two evolutions ask for nothing unusual: it reaches this stage by hitting level 16 and leaves it at level 36. No items, no time of day, no friendship. Its growth rate is Medium Slow, with 142 base experience points, so the middle stretch feels a little long.

Its catch rate is 45, on the low side, although the figure rarely matters: by normal means, you get it by evolving the starter, not by throwing Poké Balls in a meadow.