Kirlia

The third generation introduced this middle stage in Ruby and Sapphire, as part of a line designed to reward patience: Ralts appears early, with stats that can’t support anything, and takes time to become useful. Kirlia is the middle step, the point where the creature stops being a fringe-covered lump and starts to look like a dancer.

The white body opens out at the bottom like a short skirt, and the stance is on tiptoe, taken straight from ballet. The two red horns on its head have a stated function: Pokédex entries repeatedly say they amplify psychokinesis and that, when it uses them, it «alters the environment, transforms it and creates mirages». Another goes further and credits it with distorting the space around it and predicting the future.

Its character depends on its Trainer in a fairly literal way. If its Trainer is happy, it overflows with energy and dances in circles; if it receives positive feelings, it grows «with great beauty» and its psychokinetic attacks are strengthened. The official category, Emotion Pokémon, sums up how things work: it perceives first, then acts.

It is 0.8 metres tall and weighs 20.2 kilograms, an odd density for something so slender. From here, two different paths branch off, Gardevoir and Gallade, and very few species share that split in the middle of their evolutionary line.

278 points distributed without any surprises: 65 Special Attack, 55 Special Defense, 50 Speed and, underneath, a floor of 38 HP with 35 Attack and 35 Defense. It is the stat spread of a transitional stage. With 38 HP and 35 Defense, almost any neutral physical attack takes it out.

Of its three Abilities, Trace is the only one with any real mileage: it copies the opposing Pokémon’s Ability on entry and sometimes gives it something better than what it had. Synchronize passes poisoning, paralysis or a burn back to whoever caused it, and in practice it is used outside battle to hunt for natures. Telepathy, the hidden Ability, only prevents friendly fire in doubles.

Psychic and Fairy together punish Fighting, Poison, Dark and Dragon, and crash into Steel, which resists both halves: a Metang in front of it cuts off both attacking routes at once. Defensively, the combination leaves it with four weaknesses —Bug, Ghost, Poison and Steel— in exchange for taking a quarter damage from Fighting and complete immunity to Dragon. With 50 Speed, those weaknesses usually come into play before it gets to move.

It does not appear in the published sets for the ninth generation, and with that stat spread there is not much to discuss anyway. Where it does its job is in a normal playthrough, around levels 20 to 30: Draining Kiss at 12 gives it steady recovery, Psybeam at 18 is enough for the middle stretch, and Calm Mind at 33 usually arrives once the evolution is already done.

It belongs to both the Human-Like and Amorphous Egg Groups, a double membership that opens up quite a few breeding combinations. The gender ratio is 50% female, and that figure is not just decorative: only males can become Gallade, so half the offspring are ruled out of that branch as soon as they hatch.

Its 20 Egg Cycles are equivalent to about 5355 steps. It has no registered Egg Moves of its own; anything inherited is inherited by Ralts, which is what hatches from the Egg.

The two evolutions are mutually exclusive and have very different conditions. Gardevoir is reached by levelling up to level 30, with no items or requirements. Gallade needs two things at once: a Dawn Stone and to be male. Before either of those, Ralts evolves into Kirlia at level 20. It grows at the Slow rate, the kind that stretches the climb more than you expect, and gives 2 Special Attack effort points when it is defeated.

Its habitat is urban, close to people, which fits a species that keeps watch over other people’s emotions. Its catch rate is 120: middle of the road, neither the low figure of a starter nor the figure for first-route bugs.