Coming back years later and evolving cyndaquil randomly isn't fixing johto's mistakes. You can't heal a broken leg with a bandaid.
I'm talking about the mistakes with the Pokemon.
It's such a common misconception that evolution always fixes problems that Pokemon may have
I'm sorry but let's look at Snivy for example, same moveset as it was when she was first was caught (and no, I don't count leaf blade), and was remained that way for more than 100 episodes.
Yeah let's see how evolution DOESN'T help her problems of being stale.
In Johto only one Pokemon evolved, Chikorita, and yes I'm only referring to Ash's Pokemon. I don't see why "randomly" evolving them (as if such a concept could exist, since there's no such thing as randomly evolving a Pokemon) would not fix any of the problems.
I mean is Ash worse off now that he has a Quilava? I don't know but I'd say Ash is somewhat better off.
And before we bring up the whole Torterra debacle, because I know someone is dying to bring it up. It's not like Torterra was really used in a whole lot of battle.
3 battles:
1 was against an Elite Four Member, yeah we all know why that didn't result in a win.
1 was against Volkner, can't have the ground type do good in an electric type gym.
1 was against Paul, and outside of the idiocy of that fight, Torterra suffered from not being the one who was meant to win.
None of Torterra's battles were written in a way it could've believably win, although one was definitely an unbelievable loss. I get the Drapion is super effective against Torterra, but having it use synthesis, and then just hit with an attack that should've dealt less damage than all that poison type attacks, yeah idiocy.
I would $50 that had Torterra been in another battle, just any other battle, not against someone where the loss/win of said character affects the plot of the storyline, that Torterra would've won.
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But yeah, this isn't about Ash's Totodile/Croconaw/whatever, it's just a boring water Pokemon filler, that Palpitoad better be used in.