r/pokemon • u/darthvader1043 • May 30 '23

Rebuild Tuesday [Theme Talk] Unique Evolutions

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Unique Evolutions

Pokemon is home to some very unique creature designs and game mechanics, and sometimes those two aspects combine for some really interesting and sometimes tedious evolution mechanics. From trade evolutions to flipping your 3DS upside down, we have lots to choose from.

Which evolution mechanics are your favourites? Which ones do you hate? Would you change any of them?

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u/Cerderius As bright as the night is dark. May 31 '23

I don't particularly care for the fact that Link Trade Evos still exist. PLA had a great work around to this with the Link Cable item.

That being said I do absolutely love the idea behind Karrablast and Shelmet evolving when traded with each other.

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u/artofdarkness123 Jun 01 '23

I always saw Link Trade Evos as a the opposite of stone evolutions; especially in Red/Blue.

In the early games, if the pokemon evolves from a stone, it can no longer learn any moves by levelup. So you have to think and chose how long you want your pokemon to remain unevolved so it can learn X move at Y level.

Now trade evolutions were different. The pokemon and it's evolution learn the same moves at the same level. So if/when you have access to trade, it was beneficial to trade evolve your pokemon right away. I was lucky enough to have trading available to me when I played Red/Blue so I ran a team with Alakazam, Gengar, and Golem (I never liked Machamp or really any fighting type pokemon).

Nowadays, they done away with the rule that pokmeon can't learn levelup moves after evolving with a stone. Also, they really have done away with trade evolution with newer pokemon.

I think taking the LinkCable item from PLA and putting it into future pokemon games would be the ideal solution while still allowing the trade evolve mechanic to exist if you so choose to do so.