I can understand why magikarp is unavailable early on in the the game. It evolves very early on, although training a Magikarp in this game is akin to commiting suicide. It has an above average moveset, and having the ability to acquire a pokemon with base 125 attack should not really be a feature on a game that touts itself on its difficulty.

But, why on earth is Magikarp SOOOO late game. It was funny for a while, like ha ha your magikarp got stolen from the guy who stole it, and he in turn sold it to someone else from whom it gets stolen again. Kind of funny. Kind of. But the joke quickly runs stale after that ‘rogue’ guy steals it. That point in the game,that Magikarp should already have been ours. Believe it or not, Gyarados is not some sort of game breaking ‘mon as people make it to be. No, reborn wouldn’t be a cake walk if we have a Gyarados. For a game that likes to throw base 680 legends at us as bossfights, I highly doubt gyarados would hurt it’s infamous reputation as a anus-clenchingly hard piece of work. It feels really strange to me that it is possible to catch a beldum(IF YOU IGNORE ITS STUPID FUCKING HIGH CATCH RATE) before we even get to witness our Magikarp. I know the only reason Magikarp is so hard to obtain is so the creators can try to shoehorn “””humor””” into this gritty retelling of a childrens game. The joke has stretched on too far for any bodies taste. Although it was never funny to me, I’m sure others had a bit of a chuckle because I believe humor is subjective, but by god I want to put a bullet through my head after I slaved my way to the ending of the quest to see the same joke about ” le mAgiKaRp iS sO WeaK, So FunNy Xdddd!!! 😂🔫”.

So what happens at the end of the quest? Spoiler warning to anyone who hasn’t treaded this path before. We chase after some goon throughout the region( Who by the way is the only character who would respond differently to you depending on your gender, I’ll admit I enjoyed that bit), beat the daylights out of him and pry the Magikarp from his cold, dead hands. It’s at level 5.

I wanted to just quit and forget that this event ever happened. A level 5 ‘mon (Not just any ‘mon mind you, but the same pokemon that reborn likes to make fun of for being weak) so late into the game, essentially when there is only two more badges left and where *every* *single* *pokemon* you encounter is at level 90+ is NOT acceptable, no matter how much you like to associate it with the games difficulty. I know some people must have definitely went through the back breaking work of leveling up their magikarp from level 5, but I immediately benched it for the rest of eternity. It is hardly surprising though, I mean this is the game which wouldn’t let us get ralts before the city restoration project, and recently slashed budew away from the early game(????????). This questionable game design choices really prevent me from fully enjoying the game. It feels like they’re forcing us to use a specific pokemon for a specific boss battle, instead of offering us a choice.

Also, let it be known that I love this game, its difficulty and how it makes us use different Pokemon I’ve never thought I would use before, but they went overboard with their restricting parameters.Yes I know it’s a long wall of text, yes I know I’m retarded. Thx.