Your Favorite Pokémon Starters Ranked

Yesterday, we posed an important and undeniably difficult Pokémon question to readers: Of the 22 different starters from the 27 different Pokémon games, who is the best? You can find the results below.

As is the case with these sort of roundups, this is miles from being anything resembling a scientific poll. I looked at the comments and tallied up the votes on this reader discussion, and for the surprisingly few that picked up to three starters because they couldn't bring themselves to decide, I counted all their votes. It's more about figuring out the general tone and seeing who is rising to the top of a cast of great Pokémon starters.

Litten, Oshawott, Piplup, Popplio, Snivy and Tepig were the big losers from the poll, with not a single person raising their hand for any of them. No readers selected these as their favorites. Litten and Popplio have a good excuse – they are the upcoming starters from Sun and Moon, and all we know about them is their type and what their initial forms look like. Surprisingly, Rowlet did get a vote. Someone has already claimed the owl as their favorite, despite not having played with them yet. This actually goes against our poll (which you can currently find on our homepage) asking who among the new starters is the best.

Readers who voted in that poll currently have Litten on top. This poll is still ongoing, so feel free to cast your vote if you feel there has been an injustice.

With the losers all sorted out, now it's time to look at the winners. Third place was a tie with Cyndaquil and Squirtle receiving the same number of votes. Second place is another tie with Mudkip and Torchic. And finally, Charmander came in first with the most votes. Here's the ordered list starting with fourth place: Bulbasaur, Pikachu, Totodile, Chimchar, Turtwig ,Fennekin, Treecko, Chespin, Chikorita, Froakie, and finally Rowlet. As mentioned above, the remaining starters received no votes.

AmethystLeslie was one of the few who couldn’t pick and wrote, “I've never had a favorite. Most of the starters I've used have been very good.” Ethan Ricks on the other hand represented the more typical comment by saying, "If someone says something about Froakie I'm gonna start swinging. He's my boy!"

Danger is G0 went the scientific route (sort of) by using a reference, but not citing their source. “I saw a video on YouTube where a dude actually crunched the numbers and determined that in the red/blue versions Squirtle was statistically the best.” Finally, No you get a job fundamentally misunderstood the question, but made a pretty good point by writing simply, "Agumon."

For more on Pokémon Sun & Moon, check out all the assorted observations we had after watching the game's two trailers. For our ranking, from dumbest to coolest, of all 151 of the original Pokémon, head here.