Which Legendary Beast is BEST in Pokemon Gold/Silver?

They're legendary Pokemon, but are they actually BEASTS when it comes to defeating the 16 Gyms and all the difficult trainers?

Thumbnail by @SamWithoutAPlan
Edited by @SimplyAJ
Music by @makegamemusic

Rules:
Rules: (1) Only use the one Pokémon in Battle, others for HMs are fine. (2) No Items in battle (3) No Glitches/cheating (4) Set Mode (5) No evasion moves (6) No Hidden Power (7) Must get HM05

[jacobkohr]

Gonna be really interesting to see how things go with Lugia and Ho-oh especially since they start with base 100 power stab moves in gen 2.

[jzyyz]

Deleting Bite on Raikou so early feels like a blunder - that's its only coverage option that utilizes its base 115 SpAtk, making it stronger in most cases than Headbutt, and with the same flinch chance. Could have used it for Bruno's Onix, allowing retention of Reflect, and possibly Jasmine's Steelix (even though Steel resists Dark, the phys/special stat difference in both Raikou and Steelix is massive). I suspect it would have saved time on the various Hiker type NPCs not shown in the footage as well.

[jaynelson]

This is why Jrose is top tier. He's giving us 3 videos worth of content in one.

[GymLeaderGBP]

AJ stepped up big time on this one. Always spot on editing but this one really takes the cake

[youtube-kit]

Deffo agree on the hidden power call if you don't manipulate IVs. The disparity in times between good and bad IVs would be big in gen 1, but would be absurd if you had a good pokémon with a 70 BP HP ice to tear through the mid-late game vs. A pokémon with dunno, a 30 BP HP grass or bug getting brick walled by Lance's Dragonite or something.

[Eliward]

I’m respecting the hell out of this because most people would make this 3 separate videos

[paulgrimes]

I think Suicune did the best overall, but Entei was such a surprise come-back king that it's an honorable mention. Raikou is just let down by it's move-pool, but then again, somehow it got the best time in your play-through. So, they all win in different ways, but Suicune seemed to have the most consistent time of things.

[chrisr]

I thoroughly enjoyed this "side by side comparison" style of video. Keep up the great work!

[enitheway]

Yes, I would like to see a similar run with Legendary Birds. Mainly due to how much differently would Moltres perform in Gen 2 compared to Gen 1 from starting move set alone.

[AzureFlute]

I wasn't expecting a Beasts race challenge from you! This is great!

[teelo]

Plot-twist: none of the above because they all just flee on the first turn

[TheRampantTragedy]

Regarding spinners, although these runs are typically done vanilla with the only modification being a GameShark code to edit the starter, you may want to consider modding the game further. For example, you could change the behavior of optional trainers to remove their "vision" range, causing them to only battle you when you interact with them. Just something to keep in mind if you plan on doing a lot of runs in Gen II and beyond.

[eco]

Imagine being a trainer and being happy with your lvl 6 Bellsprout. Then a new guy who just startedshows up for a battle and pulls out a legendary Pokemon you didn't think even existed

[jaeusa]

I'd give it to Entei. It didn't need to significantly change tact in order to close out.
The level and time differences are really so minor that I think it would be unfair to give them heavy weight in the comparisons. I think the fact that it could just go in and unga bunga with Return rather than Curse, Rest, Toxic, Protect shenanigans really speaks to it carrying itself the best.

[Onmur]

Oh, baby, a triple!

In the Bugsy fight, Suicune could have used Bite, instead of Water Gun, since it has effectively the same power, and could have flinched Scyther out of Fury Cutter.

[Nightwolfmoviemaker]

Great video. I think rain dance+thunder would make a difference, only takes a turn to set up and then you can spam thunders; big power increase from spark

[franslair]

I feel like Red's Snorlax in gen 2 is kind of a reverse Brock from gen 1. It's an insane wall for primarily special attackers and if your solo run pokemon can't deal with it it will have a bad time. Unfortunately the solution is generally going to be curse + return.

[CraftsmanOfAwsomenes]

I think Entei has to have it since you were feeling out your strategies during that run, and since the time difference is so minor. If you did another Entei run knowing what you learned it would definitely be faster.

[anonymous-mathematician]

I couldn't help myself when he mentioned the inconsistency of his strategy in Cianwood, so here's a little math:

Entei was a two-shot with surf from Poliwrath, which was a four hit K.O. with headbutt from Entei, both moves are 100% accurate.

There are now two ways to lose this battle:
1. Get no crits in the first three attacks and also less than two flinches
2. Get only one crit in the first two attacks and no flinches.
If one gets two crits, Poliwrath has no time to take Entei out, similarly for a crit and a flinch or two flinches.

Bulbapedia states that headbutt flinches with a chance of 3/10, crits in gen II occur with a fixed unboosted rate of 17/256.
As crits and flinches can occur at the same time to the same effect, we can use to separate binomial distributions to find the probabilities of losing:

For case 1:
(1-17/256)^3 * [(1-3/10)^3 + 3 * (1-3/10)^2 * 3/10] ~= 64%,

and for case 2:
2 * (1-17/256) * 17/256 * (1-3/10)^2 ~= 6%.

Therefore the success rate of this strategy is about 30%, which even exceeds the bound of 25% that Jrose set for himself.
Even though it looks inconsistent it is not as bad as it seems (if I did my math right)

Thank you for reading my nonsense, if you made it to here :)

[KiryuuYoshiya]

my personal bias goes out to raikou. it gets massively shorted in gold and silver because it doesnt learn thunderbolt, leaving you with either spark or thunder, as well as physical moves on its mediocre attack stat for coverage. the fact that it clutched out first at that level is nuts. its also just my favorite out of the three ;)

now... birds 🐦