Hariyama

The Pokédex assigns the mountains as its habitat, and in Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald the place where it appears in the wild is Victory Road, when there isn't much game left to play. It stands 2.3 metres tall and weighs 253.8 kilograms. The entries take care to clarify that all that bulk isn't fat: it's “a hunk of pure muscle” that becomes rock-solid when it tenses up.

The design is a sumo wrestler, and it makes no attempt to hide it. Topknot, loincloth around the waist that echoes the sport's outfit, cream-coloured upper half and dark blue lower half. Before a fight, it stomps the ground to increase its strength, and it practises shoving with its arms outstretched wherever it goes — according to the Pokédex, it can split a telephone pole in half that way. Its official category is the Push Pokémon, which leaves little room for interpretation.

It likes testing itself against large Pokémon. Two different entries repeat the same boast: sending a ten-ton truck flying with one punch, or knocking it over with a slap of the open hand. According to another entry, veteran specimens leave combat behind and devote themselves to training young Makuhita. The line ends here; there is no third stage.

The stat spread is uncomfortable to look at. 144 HP and 120 Attack, followed by 60 Defense, 60 Special Defense, 50 Speed, and 40 Special Attack, for a total of 474. The HP does almost all of the defensive work: with only 60 Defense it wouldn't take much, but spread across 144 hit points, the average physical hit is absorbed without much trouble. The special side comes out worse. And 50 Speed guarantees that it will almost always move second.

It has three abilities, and all three change how you use it. Thick Fat halves damage from Fire and Ice, an unusual trait for a Fighting type. Guts raises its Attack as soon as it suffers a status condition, and it fits neatly with Facade, which doubles its power under those same conditions. Sheer Force, its hidden ability, boosts power and removes secondary effects: it makes use of Fire Punch, Ice Punch, Thunder Punch, Iron Head, and Poison Jab, but not Close Combat.

Close Combat comes at level 46 with 120 power and is its go-to attack. Focus Punch, at 38, has 150, although it loses its power if Hariyama is hit before executing it, which with 50 Speed is almost always. Its pure Fighting typing gives it good numbers against Normal, Rock, Steel, Ice, and Dark, but leaves it exposed to Flying, Psychic, and Fairy, three types that attack mainly on the special side, exactly where it is weakest. Its only Fighting-type priority move, Vacuum Wave, is special: 40 power backed by 40 Special Attack.

Where it pays off is in a normal playthrough. It evolves at 24, roughly halfway through, and joins the team with more HP than almost anything else you can carry at that point.

Human-Like Egg Group, and that is the only one. The sex ratio is one female for every three males — 25% — so breeding one of your own comes down to getting lucky with the sex or using a Ditto. The 20 incubation cycles work out to around 5355 steps, a slow egg for such a common species.

It has no Egg Moves. None: the list is empty, and everything it learns comes from levelling up or TMs, reducing breeding to choosing a nature and effort values. Defeating it yields 2 HP, which fits its highest stat.

The evolution has no trick to it: Makuhita reaches level 24 and that's it. No items, no time of day, no friendship involved. Its growth rate is Fluctuating, one of the rates that distributes experience badly: cheap at first and very expensive in the final stretches.

Its catch rate is 200. On a scale where 45 means the Poké Ball will fight you for several turns and 255 means you can just throw one and be done, 200 puts it in the comfortable part of the table, which is what you'd expect from something found in the mountains. Wild specimens may be holding a King's Rock.