Ever since the first games, I have been a big fan of Pokemon, particularly when it comes to multiplayer battling. I remember the absolute Psychic dominance of Red, Blue, and Yellow, and I know well the competitive trends from sequel to sequel. And even though Pokemon as a whole is not the most balanced of games, it’s clear that the creators have tried to make some concessions to multiplayer fairness, strengthening some things while weakening others.

While this effort towards balance is much appreciated however, I feel that there has been an increasing amount of homogeneity in Pokemon moves, removing some of the individuality and uniqueness of each Pokemon type.

Since the early games the Normal type has had a certain identity associated with it. In terms of effectiveness versus other types, the Normal type is the only kind that is not super effective against any other type. On the other hand, very few things resist it, so it’s fairly neutral overall. But what made Normal type attacks so special is that they had by far the most range and utility in the game. You had kamikaze attacks in Selfdestruct and Explosion. You had Hyper Beam, a powerful technique which exhausts the Pokemon after each use. You had the purely random Metronome. You had Swift, an attack which always had perfect accuracy. You had Quick Attack, a move which lets the Pokemon hit first no matter the actual difference in speed.

And so each Pokemon type had associated with it certain strengths and weaknesses well beyond that 17 x 17 grid denoting super effectiveness. But let’s take a look at what’s happened to Quick Attack since then. You now have Extremespeed, a rarer form of Quick Attack which is twice as powerful. But then you also have Mach Punch, Aqua Jet, Bullet Punch, Ice Shard, Shadow Sneak, and Vacuum Wave, all differently typed attacks which do the same thing as Quick Attack. Where is the type identity? What happened to the time when you could say that Fighting attacks tended to be powerful yet risky, or that Grass attacks tended to be fairly weak but had their place in taking out specific threats?

I will say though that there have been some advancements. The Dragon type for example has benefited greatly in terms of becoming more pronounced in its identity. Dragon is the only type more neutral on offense in Pokemon than normal, hitting 15 of 17 types for normal damage. In the first game however, there was only one Dragon attack, and because it inflicted a set amount of damage no matter what, it was almost pointless for it to be a “Dragon” type attack. But as the games continued, Dragon gained a reputation for extreme power and the ability to end matches quickly.

I just hope that with Pokemon Black and White that we move towards more pronounced differences in Pokemon types so that each of them can shine in different ways, as opposed to the exact same glimmer.