I'm glad Totodile is winning. I expected nostalgia goggles to take over on any gen one selections.
lolwut? Few problems with that. First, as a gen2, Totodile has as much claim to nostalgia (especially since a lot of younger cats started in gen2 instead of gen1). Second, Totodile is strictly worse than Bulbasaur in every conceivable way so the ONLY thing he has doing for him is nostalgia. Totodile and his evos have awful designs, terrible movepools, junky stats, terrible typing since there countless mono-waters and other water types who do the job better, etc.
By contrast, the Bulbasaur family has been sporadically competitive, has a solid movepool, and, pretty great designs (although his mega evo looks meh... but at least he has one.)
Except grass sucks and water is cooler
Except he's grass/POISON which gives him an edge against fairy-types which are generally dominant. More importantly, he's the only really outstanding grass/poison whereas Feraligatr is at the bottom of a long list of mono-waters and mixed waters, which probably why Feraligatr has never been playable in his long history where Venusaur has seen significant play.
And keep in mind that even Bulbasaur has the poison subtyping, which is useful since it prevents him from ever being poisoned. And, in later generations, moves like Sleep Powder have no effect on grass types. Meanwhile water has no useful immunities.
Good thing this topic series is about their evolutionary lines as well
ohwait
It's about EVERYTHING, muffinz. EVERYTHING. Plus evolutions are a big part of picking a starter Pokemon. You can't really separate the two... well, you can, but it's kinda silly to do it.
Answer me this then: Is Charizard a starter Pokemon?
To be fair, since it's about starter Pokemon, and ostensibly everything about them, their evolutionary line are something you can consider. It is an aspect of the starters themselves, after all. ---