Ranking the Pokemon: #124- Nidoran♀

Nidoran♀ (that's the female edition) is another Pokemon you can catch early in the game, if you go to the left at Viridian City rather than the more direct straight ahead path. You can also catch the male version, but he's slightly better, at least initially, so we'll only do some girl gossip here.

Nidoran♀isn't awful, and when fully evolved, Nidoqueen can learn some nice moves and do solid damage with 'em, but as a little unevolved cub(ette?), she's only okay, and it's mostly because most unevolved Pokes are terrible. Fun fact: I'm sure I'll touch on when I post about the male version, but this chain of evolutions were actually well ahead of their time. Starting with Gold and Silver, most Pokemon have genders and could be bred, but in the R/B/Y days, it was androgynous or bust. The Niddies didn't like that, though, so they decided to sex it up before it was the trendy thing to do. And for that, we can only commend them, because without their bravery, we'd never have the ability to, say, get Psybeam onto a Psyduck.

Grade: C-

Previously: #125- Spearow