Kingdra

It closes out the Horsea and Seadra line, and it does so by changing animal halfway through. The first two are seahorses; the third looks more like the common seadragon, a fish from the same family that drags leaf-shaped appendages behind it and swims with a calmness that is anything but small-fish-like. Its official category no longer mentions the seahorse: Dragon Pokémon.

The Pokédex entries always place it in the same spot, the bottom of the sea, at depths where no other species lives. It sleeps there and stores energy. The legend it has carried since Gold and Silver is that its yawns cause the whirlpools on the surface, and that it only shows itself when a storm breaks out: then it rises and goes hunting for prey. One of the entries says that, if it crosses paths with Dragonite, the fight is violent.

It is 1,80 m tall and weighs 152 kg, large-animal figures for a line that starts with an aquarium fish. Its shed scales are said to shine so brightly that they have been given to royalty.

Its 540 points are distributed as evenly as possible: 95 Attack, 95 Defense, 95 Special Attack, 95 Special Defense, 85 Speed and roughly 75 HP, which is the weak spot. There is no standout figure and no real hole either, so it works just as well attacking from the physical side as from the special side, and it can take one hit from either.

Swift Swim is what defines it. With rain on the field, those 85 Speed double and it go from mid-speed to moving before almost anything else. It learns Rain Dance at level 65 and can set the weather itself, although it loses a turn doing so. Dragon Dance, at 58, is the other route: raise Attack and Speed and use Aqua Tail or Waterfall. On the special side, it gets Hydro Pump at 51 and Draco Meteor by TM, which has 130 power but leaves its Special Attack in the dirt for the rest of the time it stays in.

Its two types barely get in each other’s way defensively—Dragon and Fairy are the only things that really hit it—but they do offensively. Water and Dragon leave a huge gap against Steel-types, which resist both, and Fairy-types, which are immune to one of the two. Ice Beam and Iron Head are the usual patches. Outside rain, 85 Speed and 75 HP leave it stuck in no man’s land.

It belongs to the Water 1 and Dragon Egg Groups, a combination that opens doors in two fairly different directions, and its gender ratio is 50 % female, so breeding does not depend on any lottery. The 20 incubation cycles come out to about 5355 steps.

Five moves can come from the egg: Disable, Aurora Beam, Splash, Flail and Haze. The Ice move is the one that pays off, because it covers the weakness to Dragon before TMs become available; Splash is there because of family inheritance and does nothing.

Evolution is the awkward part. Horsea evolves into Seadra at level 32 with no conditions, but Seadra only becomes Kingdra if it is traded while holding a Dragon Scale. You need two people or two consoles, and the item is useless on its own. Ironically, wild specimens can be holding exactly that Dragon Scale.

Its habitat is the sea and its catch rate, 45, is that of a Pokémon that puts up a fight: without weakening it first, regular Poké Balls bounce off more often than they connect. It grows at a medium rate and, when defeated, gives 1 Attack, 1 Special Attack and 1 Special Defense.