You Shouldn't Use This Pokemon in FireRed and LeafGreen if You Want to Keep Your Sanity

Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen coming back to the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 is a great surprise for fans of the series, and it makes for a great celebration of the franchise’s 30 years. Whether this decision will evolve into more classic Pokemon games on Switch and Switch 2 remains to be seen, but for now, based on the company’s history, it seems unlikely. Still, if you plan on getting Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen on Switch ahead of Pokemon Day 2026 or thereafter, there are some things you should know about what made the 2004 games so iconic, but also sometimes very frustrating.

For starters, Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen on Switch are not remakes, meaning they preserve all or most of the original experience with ups and downs that came with the GBA cartridges. What this means is that you shouldn’t expect any revolutions in the games, for good or bad. When it comes to the bad, some features of the original games will inevitably be carried over to the Switch version, like the RNG on the slot machines, how hard some trainer battles can be compared to others, and so on. Yet, one of the most frustrating issues is tied to Golbat, and you shouldn’t put this mon on your team if you care about your sanity.

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The main problem with Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen‘s Pokedex is that it’s tied to Kanto for the entirety of the base game, with the National Dex becoming available only after beating the Elite Four and the Champion. This limits the kind of critters you can find in the wild, which ones can be obtained at all, and which ones are time-gated. This is the case with Golbat, as you can get a Zubat and evolve it into Golbat pretty easily, but you can’t get Crobat until the post-game.

Who’s That Character?

Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.

Who’s That Character?

Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.

Easy (7.5s)Medium (5.0s)Hard (2.5s)Permadeath (2.5s)

Say Goodbye to Crobat in Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen (For Now)

That’s not too big of a deal for those who don’t love Crobat anyway, but there is a bigger underlying problem. If you have a Golbat with high enough friendship, it will play the evolution animation every single time it levels up, making the experience confusing at best for new players and very frustrating at worst. Since Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen‘s version exclusive list does include some early good Poison-type mons in FireRed and decent Flying-types in general for both games, Crobat is not exactly mandatory for the best team composition.

However, it is frustrating to have a Golbat that physically cannot evolve until the post-game because of how the games are structured, and it’s even more appalling to witness the evolution animation fail every single time a high-friendship Golbat levels up. Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen‘s listing change in the eShop in the past few days even emphasizes that Pokemon Home compatibility may not be active on launch, as is usually the case, meaning you can’t transfer Crobat to your save file to skip this issue entirely. And even then, Crobat is still part of the National Dex, so it wouldn’t be usable until the post-game anyway.

Best Crobat Alternatives in Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen

Bulbasaur (Venusaur): Grass/Poison, starter option
Charizard: Fire/Flying, Charmander as starter option
Pidgey (Pidgeot): Normal/Flying, found as early as Route 1
Spearow (Fearow): Normal/Flying, found as early as Route 3
Ekans (Arbok): Poison, found as early as Route 4, FireRed exclusive
Nidoran (Nidoqueen/Nidoking): Poison (evolves into Poison/Ground), found as early as Route 3
Gyarados: Water/Flying, you can find Magikarp as early as Route 4 for 500 PokeDollars

What follows is that Crobat is not necessary to complete a good playthrough of Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen on Switch, as it wasn’t in the original. But since the Switch version is essentially a paid port, if you use Golbat and keep it long enough on your team, it’ll get to a point where you have to witness the evolution animation over and over, and honestly, I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone.