Machamp

Hariyama hits with open palms and wins exchanges through sheer mass. Here, the argument is different: an extra pair of arms. The second pair grows directly above the first, resting on the shoulders, and is the only indulgence allowed by a design that is otherwise a grey-skinned bodybuilder with pale lips and three pronounced crests above the eyes.

The Pokédex entries repeat two ideas and never stray from them. One is strength taken to absurdity: a thousand punches in two seconds, blows reaching the megaton range, trucks lifted without breaking a sweat, opponents grabbed with all four arms at once and thrown until they disappear over the horizon. The other is clumsiness. When a job calls for delicacy, its arms get tangled up and it fails spectacularly, and one entry finishes by saying that it rushes into action without thinking. A body built for one thing only.

At 1.60 m and 130 kg, it is not especially large for what it looks like; its width does the rest. Its official category is Superpower Pokémon, and the habitat assigned to it is the mountain.

It completes a three-stage line that starts with Machop and passes through Machoke at level 28. The previous two both have two arms. The second pair is, quite literally, what it gains on reaching the end.

Its spread is that of a hammer: 130 Attack against 65 Special Attack, with no ambiguity. Of its 505 base points, 90 go to HP and 80 and 85 to its defenses, enough to take a neutral hit and give one back. The burden is its 55 Speed, which leaves it moving last against almost anything that is not a wall.

No Guard is the ability that defines it from the fourth generation onward. No move ever misses, neither its own nor the opponent’s, and that turns Dynamic Punch—guaranteed confusion, with an accuracy that is woeful on paper—into a weapon the game never intended to be reliable. On the Smogon forums, people even debated whether it was the Pokémon, the ability, or the move that should be banned; much of its competitive history has been spent in UU. Guts, the other option, goes in the opposite direction: the worse its status, the harder it hits.

As a pure Fighting type, it hits Normal, Rock, Steel, Ice, and Dark types super effectively, and avoids the weaknesses to Fire and Ice that other fighters carry. In exchange, Flying, Psychic, and Fairy types deal double damage to it. Alakazam sums up the whole problem: it moves first and does not need to land two hits.

Close Combat, learned at level 43 and with 120 power, is its big attack, and it lowers its own defenses every time it uses it. Drain Punch, at 30, restores some of the damage dealt and helps it stay on the field. Bullet Punch, at 11, is a Steel-type priority move: weak, but it lets it finish opponents without relying on its Speed. In a normal playthrough, Bulk Up at 25 patches the hole by letting it take hits rather than by making it faster.

Human-Like Egg Group, the one for fighters and psychics with human shapes, so it has no shortage of potential partners. The gender ratio is the annoying part: only 25% are female, one in four, and anyone wanting to build their own line starts by finding one or by relying on Ditto. The 20 incubation cycles work out at around 5355 steps.

It learns everything it knows by levelling up, and the distribution is late: Bullet Punch at 22, Drain Punch at 30, Double-Edge at 34, and Close Combat at 43.

Its evolution condition is the one that has frustrated several generations of solo players. Machop evolves into Machoke at level 28 with no extra requirement, but Machoke only reaches Machamp through trading: no level, no stone, no friendship. In Legends: Arceus, that rule is broken, and all you need to do is use the Linking Cord on it, with no other console on the other side.

Its catch rate is 45, that of a difficult Pokémon: with a regular Poké Ball and the opponent at full HP, there is nothing to discuss. Wild specimens may be holding a Focus Band, which occasionally leaves the holder with 1 HP instead of letting it faint. It grows at a medium-slow rate, yields 3 Attack effort points when defeated, and starts with a base friendship of 70.