Grovyle

It leaps from branch to branch to get close to its prey and stays off the ground whenever it can. It lives in dense jungles, and the leaves that grow from its body act as camouflage: among the foliage, it becomes impossible to distinguish, which is exactly what it needs to hunt from above. Pokédex entries repeat two ideas. One is the musculature of its hind legs, developed enough for long jumps and for climbing better than anything else in the forest. The other is the speed at which it crosses the branches: once it gets moving from branch to branch, nothing can catch it.

Its official category calls it the Wood Gecko Pokémon, and the gecko explains its crouched stance, toes and way of gripping bark. At 90 centimeters and 21.6 kilograms, it no longer fits in a pocket like Treecko, but it does not have Sceptile's bearing either. It is the middle stage, and the design makes that clear: the body has stretched out, the tail has split into leaves, and two long leaves have grown on each forearm, which become blades in its final form.

It remains a pure Grass type, without the second type that starters usually gain when they evolve.

Its 405 base stat total is poorly distributed for its own arsenal. The high figure is Speed, 95, followed by 85 Special Attack; physical Attack is stuck at 65, and its defenses are made of glass: 50 HP, 45 Defense and 65 Special Defense. Any reasonably serious neutral hit knocks it out.

The problem is not just its frailty, but the internal contradiction. Its best Grass-type move by level-up is Leaf Blade, with 90 power and a physical category, backed by its poor 65; the good 85 calls for Energy Ball or Leaf Storm, and Leaf Storm lowers its own Special Attack after every use. Giga Drain, at level 25, is the most sensible middle ground: 75 power and recovery.

Overgrow, its standard Ability, powers up Grass-type attacks when it has less than a third of its HP left, which with 50 HP usually means it is already dead. Unburden, its Hidden Ability, doubles its Speed when it loses or consumes its held item and fits with Acrobatics, which goes from 55 to 110 power with no held item. The combination is fun, and still clashes with that 65 Attack.

As a single type, Grass hits Water, Ground and Rock effectively and bounces off Fire, Grass, Poison, Flying, Bug, Dragon and Steel. Defensively, it stacks up five weaknesses. Against other fast unevolved Pokémon like Scyther, it offers nothing its final form does not do better. Where it does work is in a normal playthrough: between levels 16 and 36, it is what you have on hand, and that 95 Speed gives it the first turn against almost the entire mid-game Pokédex.

It belongs to the Monster and Dragon Egg Groups, an unusual pairing for a Grass type that opens up breeding combinations with lines that look nothing like it. The gender ratio is seven males for every female—12.5% female—so a targeted breeding project starts by finding that female or by relying on Ditto.

Its 20 Egg cycles amount to roughly 5355 steps. Twelve Egg Moves can come from the Egg, and that is where the line gets interesting: Leech Seed and Worry Seed for wearing opponents down, Synthesis for healing, Night Slash and X-Scissor as coverage against things that resist Grass, and Dragon Breath, the only way for a pure Grass type to throw out a Dragon-type move.

Evolution has no conditions: Treecko evolves into Grovyle at level 16, and Grovyle evolves into Sceptile at level 36. No items, friendship or time of day. It grows at a medium-slow rate, the kind that lags behind early on.

Its habitat is the forest, and its catch rate, 45, is the hard value carried by the entire starter line, although in practice almost nobody gets to throw a Poké Ball at a wild one.