Hey, fires are cool. I have one slot open on my six guy roster for whatever I want. I have very particular type requirements. The five Pokemon I need are: Water, Flying, Ground (to defeat electrics), Electric (far superior to grass in combat. So many flying pokemon to vanquish!), and a Psychic/Ghost/Dark thing. The sixth slot will either be Fighting, Fire, or Grass, I suppose, but Fighting or Fire will always come first (Blaziken was awesome in this regard, as it filled both of these. He's weak to a lot, but its hella fun). I hate Grass Pokemon. So, I do like fire, but I learned long ago with my constant type matchups that they are not wholly necessary.
My particular requirements are somewhat similar. Water, Flying, Fire, Dark and two open slots that depends entirely on what the rest of my party is like. If I don't have one that duals types as Ground, then I have to get a Ground type. Ice is another one that often finds itself in one of these, as it covers Flying, Grass, Ground and Dragon. I've also found that some Normal types can be quite strong, and can learn enough diverse moves that make them incredibly useful. I used Exploud a lot in Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald for this exact reason. Fighting often finds it's way in too, although I don't think it will in this game.
I also tend to have a preference for those that evolve twice. I get annoyed with singleforms (as I call them) and tend to get excited when I can build a strong team of threeformers. That's just a weird thing of mine, I guess.
No, singleforms annoy me, too. It would have to be very cool (or a legendary) for me to even care. Things like Skarmory, maybe.
Normals do learn a lot of interesting moves, but I find it more effective to get that 1.5 or 1.25x same type bonus and a lot of specialists. Also, I don't use straight ice types. There's no need when virtually all water types can learn Ice Beam.
Hmmm. Well, I will definitely start with Cyndaquil, because I love him. But other than that, everything in my roster is up for grabs (as in, everything I need.) That's why I loved Gold and Silver so much: there was an excellent variety to the game. I know Mareep/Ampharos was my traditional electric type, since I got him so early (unfortunately, Ampharos is quite slow... Oh well), but I can think of like three others! There's Jolteon, my all time favorite, and then there is the bizarre and awesome Lanturn. Were I to want Lanturn, this would exclude Kingdra, who is also a fantastic water type. If I chose Jolteon, then I can't have Espeon--and Espeon is also amazing--which leaves me with Misdreavous and hopefully her evolved form, Mismagius (easily my favorite D/P pokemon)... So many choices! With other versions, I could literally choose a starter and there would be a complete dearth of a lot of the interesting types I require.
As you can tell, I can talk about this a lot.
You probably won't be able to get Mismagius until you can get this games National Pokedex. It seems to be how it works - in FireRed and LeafGreen Golbat wouldn't evolve into Crobat without the National Dex.
If I can get Houndour early, I'll probably start with Totodile. I don't remember being especially thrilled with the Water types in Gold and Silver, but Totodile was awesome. If I can't get Houndour, which I expect will be the case, then Cyndaquil definitely. And Espeon. After that it's harder to determine, as I don't like using first-gen Pokemon in a second-gen game. I like Ampharos, and there are ways to improve it's speed enough to suit me, but Jolteon is always a good addition to a team. But that would mean I couldn't get Umbreon, and other Dark types appear too late for my liking. Ambipom was a lot of fun in Diamond/Pearl, so I might see if I can snag an Aipom, despite it being much weaker. Skarmory is great too, and Steel is always useful in a lineup. I'd love it if I could get more than one Eevee, so I could have Espeon and Umbreon... It's a shame so many of the threeformers in Gold and Silver were so unappealing...
And yeah, I too can talk about this a lot. XD
Yeah, from some quick research you can't get those National Dex pokemon at all until after Elite Four. You can, however, get some interesting ones in the Safari Zone, though it gets complicated.
Houndour is again in Kanto. You won't get it any earlier. There seems to be very, very few changes, if any at all.
No Water types in Gold and Silver?
I can name a bunch off the top of my head: Kingdra, Lanturn, Lapras, Quagsire. If you're really desperate, Vaporeon. All those, with exception of Quagsire because he's mostly useless, are superior to Feraligator. Feraligator just has a much higher attack than special attack, and me? I think Surf is awesome. So Kingdra, with no type weaknesses in the game from his Water/Dragon mix, is excellent. Lanturn is really cool with Water/Electric--its only weakness is Ground, which is easily covered due to his water type. Lapras is just all around excellent if you want a standard Water/Ice, and Quagsire, while being a slow buttmonkey, is only weak to Grass, which can be mitigated with some TMs teaching Ice Beam or Blizzard.
I think R/S and D/P both had much less options in the non-starter Water type department. I know I had to use Vaporeon in a playthrough, and that's just depressing when that's the best you can get.
I mapped out my team today. It's a bit more ambitious type wise than my traditional line-ups that I prefer, and I was forced into using Lugia. I remember using Lugia in a Silver playthrough long ago, and despite my initial bias against legendary birds due to extreme type weaknesses--Lugia is one of the worst on that front--Lugia is pretty powerful. So that's something. (As an aside, it seems like you can naturally grab Zapdos, Articuno, Moltres, and Mewtwo in this remake. That's pretty cool. I may replace Lugia with Zapdos, because I love Zapdos...)
I'm going with: Typhlosion, Espeon, Lanturn, Quagsire, Lugia, Scizor.
I'm a little peeved at the selection of ground types in SoulSilver. I'm sick of using Steelix or Golem in virtually all of my playthroughs, so I realized that Quagsire fit the bill adequately (not excellently, but adequately). This subsequently made me realize that a lot of my team was weak to Ground, so I took out Ampharos. This worries me, relying on Lanturn, but at the same time, having two water types (each with unique weaknesses, so a single move won't rip through them both) helps to split up the HMs. But, Typhlosion learns Thunderpunch from Move Tutor. How awesome is that?
Lugia was a natural choice, since most of the other Flying types kind of suck. This left me with a distinct hole in my team, when I realized that Scizor is really frickin' cool. I remember liking him a lot.
So, Shivertongue, wanna do a quick WiFi trade-and-trade back so I can evolve Scyther?
Pokemon is the same story over and over again. I got bored after yellow and Pokemon stadium for the 64. Here's a question for ya'll, why did everyone quit making turn based games like Beyond the Beyond, Skies of Arcadia, and the early Final Fantasies. They happen to be my favorite style for RPGS.
Yeah, Pokemon is all the same story. I know. But dang, its addicting.
Turn based RPGs are quite fun. That's probably why Golden Sun was such an excellent game, in my book.
Heh. You barely scratched the the surface. These are all out by May.
Heavy Rain
Dragon Age: Origins: Awakening
Infinite Space
FF13
Resonance of Fate
Alan Wake (perhaps the game im the most excited for)
Red Dead Redemption
God of War 3
Dawn of War II Expansion
Monster Hunter 3 (not really my thing, but it will sell like madness)
3D Dot Game Heroes
Yakuza 3
And these are just the ones that I know of...
I don't know. I don't have a PS3, so God of War is out. Alan Wake might be interesting, but maybe not. So a lot of those other ones are inaccessible or unneeded for me.