Saturday, December 7, 2024

No. 949: Toedscruel

"This isn't a war," said the artilleryman. "It never was a war, any more than there's a war between man and ants."

Toedscruel artwork by Ken Sugimori

Original Tentacruel was a boss, so it should come as no surprise that Toedscruel is also a boss. Adding black to the color scheme is very striking, and completely fixes my issues with Toedscool. The big ol' snoot is a fair replacement for that ominous beak/claw, too.
 
The jellyfish -> mushroom remix works great, I think it looks ominous standing around like a freakish alien. Then it hops around, and you lose the mystique somewhat...

What's funny is that Gamefreak feels obligated to give every mushroom Pokemon access to the move Spore (the only 100% accurate Sleep-inducing move), but Toedscruel is fast. A fast sleeper would be broken, so they dealt with it the same way they did other potential super-threats like Regigigas or Slaking: Give it a terrible ability that actively makes it worse! As a result, all of Toedscruel's status moves automatically go last, meaning it can't put its high speed to use if you want to put things to sleep.

That said, unlike those other unfortunate Pokemon, it doesn't interfere with the rest of Toedscruel's stats or moves. So feel free to use it in-game like any other Pokemon, spamming Earth Power and Energy Ball.


Overall: 9/10

3 comments:

  1. It's also funny that every single mushroom Pokemon is Grass-type even though mushrooms aren't plants and have nothing to do with grass.

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  2. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

    ReplyDelete