Everyone has their favorite Pokémon, but who is the actual best like no one ever was? This is a debate that has plagued the series for 30 years, and for my own emotional well-being I don’t get too invested in it. But even as someone who doesn’t play Pokémon competitively, I’m always interested to hear what people who do have to say about which one is the best under the hood. Wolfe “WolfeyVGC” Glick is one of the most prolific competitive Pokémon players, has won the official World Championship tournament, and creates YouTube videos about competitive play on the regular. So when he creates a video ranking every single Pokémon, I am sat.
The video is nearly four hours long and ranks 1133 Pokémon, which is a much higher number than the 1025 Pokémon currently registered in the Pokédex. This is because Wolfey placed regional variants and other forms as their own entries, rather than lumping them all into one. Wolfey worked with a small panel to rank Pokémon based on their competitive viability, their design, and how “iconic” they are in the grand scheme of the franchise. Obviously those are subjective parameters, and Wolfey says as much, so nobody needs to get mad about where their favorite ended up. It’s all in good fun and is really just a thought experiment. Don’t mind me, I’m just scrubbing through the video looking for my favorites so I can argue about their placement.
But if you clicked on this, you’re probably wondering who Wolfey’s panel deems the best Pokémon. If you don’t feel like watching the many hours of video, I’ll spoil it for you: Kyogre, the god of the sea and Pokopia’s surprise grandpappy, takes the top spot, narrowly beating out its land-based counterpart Groudon.
Kyogre has a special place in my heart because it was one of the restricted Pokémon that I won the World Championships with, alongside Rayquaza. Beyond that, it also has a special place in my heart because Generation III was my first Pokémon generation. I remember fighting my brother’s Kyogre with my Groudon and being like, “I chose the wrong game, hello?” And I think it is a testament to the Generation III Legendaries that despite the fact that six more generations have come out since then, and I’ve played them with a much more fully developed brain, Kyogre still stands out in my heart and in my head as the best of them all. And I don’t know, maybe this is a personal experience. Maybe, you know, I just have like, big fish brain, right? But I suspect that it isn’t. I suspect that for anybody who played Generation III, even if you played it years after it came out, there’s just something special about Kyogre and Groudon that stays with you for a long time.
Congrats to Kyogre, but even bigger congrats to Wolfey for seeing through the Alolan Raichu propaganda and ranking the OG much, much higher than the regional variant. You’re an ally.