Worst starter final evolution

[Guzma]

Infernape. Like a lot of Gen 4 designs (but not the other starters from Gen 4; Torterra and Empoleon are great), it's an incoherent mishmash of clashing design traits; it just feels overdesigned. Also, they seriously made a Sun Wukomg Pokemon and didn't even bother giving him the goddamn Ruyi Jingu Bang; that'd be like making a Pokemon based on Robin Hood and not giving him a bow, ffs

Dishonorable mention goes to Typhlosion for losing everything that was appealing about Cyndaquil's ridiculously adorable design. It's not a hot mess like Infernape, but it just feels so generic and uninteresting compared to its pre-evolution

 

[Sakuraa]

The Alola starters as a whole are the worst final evolutions. Primirina I especially loath because I love Popplio and was hoping for a cool sea lion evolution, but then they turned it into a hideous mermaid.

 

[lordfridge]

I'm going to get hung, drawn and quartered for this, but I don't like any of the Rowlet line full stop.
Chespin's line is also pretty iffy, but something about Rowlet just fills me with seething hatred.

 

[RK9]

I'm going to get hung, drawn and quartered for this, but I don't like any of the Rowlet line full stop.
Chespin's line is also pretty iffy, but something about Rowlet just fills me with seething hatred.

Even if this while forum is against you, I will stick with you, my man.

Decidueye is just terrible. Using it on my Ultra Sun playthrough proved that.

 

[Rocket Zigzagoon]

By design, Emboar could be easily the worst-designed. But in capabilitities, Serperior and Samurott got knocked out by even their future-gen counterparts.

In opposite, I do find Incineroar having lots of black cat appeal, with his Dark-typing strengthening his appeal to fans of black cats and superstitions.

 

[Daenerys]

Primarina. I feel that since the majority of players are male (at least according to the polls that I've seen), the final Starter stages should be more masculine-looking than feminine-looking. So Primarina (and I guess Meganium to an extent as well) triggers me.

 

[lordfridge]

I didn't get the impression most players were male... a lot more girls are open about being into Pokemon than you used to see in the past.
Where did you see that?

 

[darkblastoise0]

Primarina is a monstruosity.

 

[Parissong]

Primarina is a monstruosity.

:C It is beautiful and elegant and its Japanese name is enchanting (Ashirène). But to each their own, haha.

I personally think Chesnaught is horrifying. Like, it looks like a white furry Godzilla.

 

[darkblastoise0]

I personally think Chesnaught is horrifying. Like, it looks like a white furry Godzilla.

At least it has a gender ratio that sounds right unlike Primarina. Anyway I don't dislike it because of the gender ratio but because it's just plain ugly.

 

[Weiss]

Meganium/Delphox ruined their evolution lines.

 

[Blazikenn]

Primarina is just hideous, hideous.

 

[Phosphene]

I picked Incineroar but honestly Inteleon is my least favorite final evolution. I think 2/3rds of the reason why I dislike it is due to its off-putting proportions and too-humanoid appearance, and 1/3rd because I'm insanely disappointed with how Sobble turned out. Primarina was a disappointment for me as well, but at least I can say its design is nice (and I have a soft spot for it since I enjoyed using it in Sun). It's just not my style of Pokemon. Inteleon is just ugly to me, full stop, to the point where I just didn't go with a starter in gen 8 rather than sticking to my guns like in gen 7.

 

[Blazikenn]

I picked Incineroar but honestly Inteleon is my least favorite final evolution. I think 2/3rds of the reason why I dislike it is due to its off-putting proportions and too-humanoid appearance, and 1/3rd because I'm insanely disappointed with how Sobble turned out. Primarina was a disappointment for me as well, but at least I can say its design is nice (and I have a soft spot for it since I enjoyed using it in Sun). It's just not my style of Pokemon. Inteleon is just ugly to me, full stop, to the point where I just didn't go with a starter in gen 8 rather than sticking to my guns like in gen 7.

You are right. Inteleon is just an ugly Greninja ripoff.

 

[Leaf_Ranger]

Well, I can't make my mind between the soccer fire rabbit or the thin spy chameleon!

 

[Cinnabar]

It's definitely Inteleon now that someone mentions it, not a fan of it in any way.

 

[Lightning Flame Blast]

While I don’t actively dislike any of them, Cinderace wins the spot because of how utterly underwhelming it looks for a final evolution and because I overall dislike pokemon with clothed designs.

(Emboar was my previous pick, though I don’t actually dislike it either. It’s now 3rd place after Cinder and Inteleon)

 

[Jyo]

I had seen I had voted, so I though I had replied, surprised I haven't
was kind of hard to pick between the 3 Hoenn starters

I pick my favorite starter based on it's design, not how powerful or popular they are
for me my most hated final starter is Blaziken, just a fire fighting chicken, something about it'sdesign looks terrible, its mega stone made it look worst

 

[Knightwolf09]

It's kinda funny how little of you find no problem with older designs. Like Meganium, who I voted for. It's nothing impressive barely memorable. But it just seems like a majority hates newer designs.

 

[Phosphene]

It's kinda funny how little of you find no problem with older designs. Like Meganium, who I voted for.

I can see what you're getting at based upon this graph:

But you couldn't have picked a worse older Pokemon considering Meganium to use as example as it is the second most unpopular final evolution at seven votes.

At any rate, I figure the difference between older and newer designs is likely due to changes in design philosophy over the years. I feel like there's a noticeable jump between gens 3 and 4 in terms of starter design which might account for the difference in my opinion. I figure an updated survey would help make the trend between age of the design and unpopularity clearer, if one exists at all.

Edit: After fiddling around with Google Sheets, I got a trendline/regression line for the graph with an R^2 of 0.439, but, if I removed the huge outlier that is gen 7, I get an R^2 of only 0.103. R^2 is a rough measure of how well the model linearly relates y to x, or, to put it differently, R^2 is the fraction of the variation in y accounted for by the trendline model. The only issue here is that, to my knowledge, trendlines can only be applied to data where both x and y are quantitative variables but in this instance only y, amount of votes, is quantitative. So I'm not really certain if R^2 actually means anything here nor how Google Sheets got those values but I'm going to report them nonetheless because I find it interesting. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯