Unown

Gold and Silver hid a slab puzzle in the Ruins of Alph, and behind the puzzle was this: a flat body stuck to the wall, a large eye and an appendage shaped like a letter. The second generation wanted a mystery with more atmosphere than combat value, and it pulled it off.

The Pokédex entries do not resolve the question, which is exactly what makes them work. One says it is unknown which came first, writing or Unown. Another admits that the matter is still under study and that nothing has yet been discovered. The official category, Symbol Pokémon, points in the same direction.

Each specimen is born with one fixed form that never changes: one for every letter of the Latin alphabet, plus the exclamation mark and question mark from the third generation onwards. That is the only difference between them. It is 0.5 m tall and weighs 5 kg regardless of the letter, and the stats do not vary by a single point from one form to another.

It does not evolve, does not come from any other species and has no line companions. It is classified as black, and its habitat is listed as Rare.

The numbers can be read in two seconds: 72 Attack, 72 Special Attack and 48 in everything else — HP, Defense, Special Defense and Speed. Total, 336. The spread is symmetrical and therefore useless: both attacks sit in the middle, Speed does not outrun anything and neither defense can take a neutral hit.

The real problem is not there, but in the move list. There is one. Hidden Power, at level 1, Normal-type and with 60 power, and that is it: no TMs, no tutor moves and no Egg Moves. In Generation VIII it was the only Pokémon capable of learning Hidden Power, when the move was removed from the rest of the cast, and that exclusive did it no good.

Levitate grants immunity to Ground-type attacks, which is the only useful part of its entry. As a Psychic type, it hits Fighting and Poison hard, Steel and Psychic stop it, and it cannot touch Dark types. Defensively, Bug, Ghost and Dark hit for double damage, and with 48 HP that means one turn.

There is no format where using it is worthwhile, not even as a wildcard. Its role in a normal game is that of a collectible encounter: catch it, register the form and put it in the PC. Defeating it yields one Attack EV and one Special Attack EV, a mixed spread that gets in the way if a specific stat was being trained, and gives 118 base experience.

There is nothing to breed here. It belongs to the Undiscovered Egg Group and is genderless, so it cannot be paired with anything, not even Ditto. The 40 Egg cycles listed in its data — about 10 455 steps — are never used, because there is no egg for it to hatch from.

The only way is to catch it, and there it is generous: a catch rate of 225, among the highest in the game, so an ordinary Poké Ball is usually enough. The difficult part is not keeping it in the ball, but finding every form.

In Gold, Silver and Crystal, they appear in the Ruins of Alph in Johto, and each completed slab mural opens a chamber with a new group of letters. FireRed and LeafGreen moved the system to the Tanoby Chambers in the Sevii Islands. Diamond, Pearl and Platinum repeated it in the Solaceon Ruins. Generation V left it out of the routes: it could only be transferred from earlier games. In Pokémon Legends: Arceus, they were scattered across Hisui, outside the usual ruins.

It grows at a Medium rate and starts with 70 base friendship, figures that make no difference for a species that does not evolve under any condition and does not learn a single move by levelling up.