by Steve Kallenberg

Created on: June 16, 2009

Of all of the extremely powerful pokemon in the game, I think that Gyarados competes for the top spot hands down. He is a ferocious beast, a freak of pokemon nature, evolving from possibly the saddest creatures in the game (Magikarp) into one of the biggest and greatest. His transformation is incredible. He goes from a big, but pointless fish to a giant sea serpent monster thing, which I don't quite understand, but hey, it's pokemon so anything is possible.

Gyarados's stats are amazing. He has among the highest HP in the game and wicked Attack, Defense and Special stats. He grows really slowly, so it requires a lot of time and patience to train a Gyarados, but the rewards are gratifying. Every level increase for this particular monster seems to surpass that of any other pokemon. If he faces pokemon at his level, his fierce attacks and huge HP make him all but unbeatable.

Now, he is not completely invulnerable. Being officially a water and flying pokemon,he has a rather significant weakness to strong electric attacks. He has other weaknesses as well, such as grass, ice, and rock, but these are not as prevelant. Just don't get a Gyarados matched up with a Jolteon or Zapdos or he's in trouble.

That said, Gyarados also has advantages against fire, rock, fighting, ground, and bug pokemon. naturally he learns Dragon Rage, Hydro Pump, a disaster move for fire pokemon, and the universally monstrous Hyper Beam. What makes things better for him is that he is extremely versatile. He can learn so many different TMs it's scary. he can learn normal moves like Body Slam, ice type moves like Blizzard and Ice Beam, electric moves like Thunder, and Fire moves such as Fire Blast. All of these TMs are extremely powerful. Going up against a Gyarados is often perilous because of how unpredictable it is. You never know what kinds of moves it possesses usually until it's too late.

Playing the game, I try to get a magikarp as soon as humanly possible and train him up to level 20 where he can turn into the beast of water fury. Then I feel comfortable going pretty much anywhere on the map, even to the power plant outside Cerulean City. As long as my Gyarados can get the first hit, the wild pokemon I face need not discover that he's a water type. And I almost never face the Elite Four without him. His versatility and super powerful statistics give me plenty of reason to declare Gyarados the best character in the game.

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