Fearow

It finishes off a two-stage line in one sharp jump in size: Spearow reaches level 20 and turns into a 1.2-metre, 38-kg bird with a long neck, a red crest on its head and a pink beak that takes up half its silhouette. The official category, Beak Pokémon, points straight at what the entire design is built around.

Pokédex entries stress endurance before strength. It can fly for a full day without needing to land and rest, and one of them adds that it can do so while carrying weight on its back. Another explains what that vulture-like neck is for: its long beak lets it hunt on land and in water, and it moves it with just enough precision to spear small prey. The last of the group is the least friendly. Walking through its territory with food is an open invitation for it to swoop down and steal it.

There is one stray description that does not fit with the others: paintings from archaic eras have been found showing a Pokémon that looks a lot like it. No game has developed the idea since.

It is brown and wing-shaped, and wild specimens sometimes carry a Sharp Beak.

442 base stat points, all pulled in the same direction: 100 Speed and 90 Attack out front, followed by 65 HP, 65 Defense and a matching 61 in Special Attack and Special Defense. A fast physical attacker with no cushion whatsoever. The 2 Speed EVs it gives when it faints say the same thing in different words.

Keen Eye, its standard ability, prevents its Accuracy from being lowered, and that is where its usefulness ends. The interesting one is Sniper, its Hidden Ability, which boosts moves when they land critical hits; it pairs with Focus Energy, learned at level 32, although spending a turn setting up with 65 HP is almost always costly.

Normal and Flying is a poor offensive pairing, because no type in the game takes double damage from both at once, while defensively it gives Fearow immunities to Ghost and Ground in exchange for three weaknesses scattered all over the place: Rock, Electric and Ice. Drill Peck, learned at level 41, is its go-to Flying-type attack. Drill Run, at 45, is the only thing that lets it hit Rock-types, which otherwise stop it dead. U-turn, through a TM, gives it the clean exit its lack of staying power desperately calls for.

It has never had a place near the top in competitive play. Smogon's analyses for the first and second generations put it in the lower tiers, and the role they give it is always the same: a late-game cleaner and a finisher of weakened opponents that comes in, makes use of its 100 Speed and does not trade blows with anything it cannot take down in one hit. The first-generation analysis itself admits that Dodrio does the same job while hitting harder.

It belongs to a single Egg Group, Flying, which lets it breed with the birds from the other regions and not much else. The sex ratio is 50% on either side, so breeding a line of its own does not depend on finding a rare female or resorting to Ditto.

Its 15 Egg Cycles work out to roughly 4080 steps, among the game's shorter stretches. It has no Egg Moves: what it inherits from its parents is TM moves and little else, and its level-up movepool is self-sufficient from the start. It hatches already knowing Peck, Fury Attack and Drill Run, then repeats Leer at level 4 and Drill Run at 45.

It evolves from Spearow upon reaching level 20, with no stones, held items, time-of-day conditions or friendship involved. Its growth curve is middling, the kind that brings no surprises at any point, and it gives 155 base experience when it faints.

Its habitat is rough terrain, and it appears in the wild on several routes in Kanto. A catch rate of 90 puts it in the middle range: quite a bit harder to catch than the 255 of a first-route bug, but much easier than the 45 of a starter or a Legendary. A regular Poké Ball and a little damage are enough.