10 FireRed & LeafGreen Pokémon Available Weirdly Late in Game

One of the best parts about the Pokémon franchise is that you can go back and replay games using entirely different Pokémon on your team. That's great for replayability, and it's a really fun way of using some of the truly amazing designs that give Pokémon a solid place in our hearts.

Sometimes, though, we go back and try to build different teams and hit a pretty significant wall: the Pokémon just isn't available at anything resembling a convenient time. This is a pretty big problem in some of the earlier games in the series, where Pokémon availability was generally low and gatekept hard. FireRed & LeafGreen especially have a bunch of Pokémon that leave us thinking, "Why can't I get this earlier?"

10 Chansey

Late to Find, Hard to Catch, Not as Useful as It Could Be

Chansey is an annoying Pokémon to catch in FireRed & LeafGreen because it's a rare spawn gated behind the Safari Zone mechanic. This is really frustrating, and it means most players don't actually ever get one until they grind for it.

And by the time that happens, you've usually sorted out your entire team already. Sometimes, it's even already post-game, and you're just grinding for Pokédex completion. Chansey is great, and it has some scenarios where it excels, but in a typical playthrough, it's pretty hard to justify swapping another member of your team out for Chansey by the time you get one.

9 Shellder

What Do You Mean I Can't Catch One Until After the Sixth Gym?

Shellder and its evolution Cloyster are solid Pokémon, but in FireRed & LeafGreen, they're pretty hard to find and use. They technically appear in Pallet Town, the very first area the player ever visits, but if you're looking to catch one, then, sorry, you can't.

That's because, like many Kanto water types, Shellder is locked behind Fishing Rods or Surfing mechanics. You can't catch Shellder until you have the Super Rod, and you don't get the Super Rod until you've obtained the Poké Flute and moved Snorlax from the road. That's absurdly late in the game, and if you want to actually use a Shellder, you'll have to backtrack to Pallet Town or Vermillion City, or wait until you reach Cinnabar Island, by which point you probably already have a water type because you need to Surf to get there.

8 Horsea

Horsea, Horsea Everywhere... And Not a One to Catch

There's a small case for having Horsea be somewhat more difficult to get in that its ultimate evolution, Kingdra, is a powerful dragon-type Pokémon. In the early generations, dragon types were hard to beat, so it makes sense to gatekeep them.

Except Kingdra can't be obtained until the post-game after you get the National Dex, and neither Horsea nor Seadra are especially powerful Pokémon. Despite that, Horsea is locked behind the Good Rod. Gating Pokémon behind progression mechanics is solid game design, but that means Horsea is only available at the sixth Gym, which feels weird for such a basic Pokémon.

7 Slowpoke

Why Is It Surfing and Fishing Exclusive? It's Got Legs!

You can't get Slowpoke at all in FireRed, since it's a LeafGreen exclusive, so that's fine. But in LeafGreen, where it appears on a massive number of routes, it's gated behind Surfing and Fishing Rod mechanics.

Conceptually, it sort of makes sense for water types to be gated behind these mechanics, so I get it. But Slowpoke is such an iconic Kanto Pokémon, and it's perfectly happy moving about on land, that it just seems really weird that you can't get one until around or after the sixth Gym — and then only by Surfing or Fishing. Maybe it's okay to wait so long for such an icon, but it feels like it should be available earlier.

6 Tangela

A Unique Pure Grass Type Gated Behind Surf

Tangela is a cute little Pokémon that most people overlook, largely due to its out-of-the-way location. In the originals, Tangela could only be found in a single spot, just south of Pallet Town. In FireRed & LeafGreen, it's also available on One Island's Treasure Beach.

But both of those come pretty late in the game. Tangela is the game's only pure grass-type Pokémon outside of the Sevii Islands, but it comes so late that most people will have already built a team. If you picked Bulbasaur as a starter Pokémon, you won't need it. If you haven't, you probably picked up Bellsprout or Oddish already. Or maybe you grabbed a Pikachu. But by the time you get to Tangela, it's unlikely you'll need one.

5 Aerodactyl

You Can't Get This Until Cinnabar Island

We get given a piece of Old Amber right at the start of the game, assuming we did a little exploration in Pewter City. It sits in our Bag pointlessly for most of the game, until we eventually reach Cinnabar Island, where we can revive it from a fossil.

It's a powerful Pokémon, but we've still got to train it after we revive it from the fossil, and since we get it just around the seventh Gym, it can be hard to integrate into what's often a fully planned and settled team. It's definitely a great example of delayed gratification, but maybe it comes just a little too late to be a natural part of the game.

4 Magnemite

Found in an Optional Area

Magnemite is such an iconic Kanto Pokémon that it feels like it should be more readily available in FireRed & LeafGreen, but it's insanely easy to completely miss during a normal playthrough.

You can only find Magnemite in the Power Plant, which is a totally optional dungeon you can only find if you've done a lot of exploration and backtracking after finding Surf. These days, most of us already know about the Power Plant because this is not our first Kanto rodeo, but it's still surprisingly easy to miss Magnemite. By the time we get access to one, we've either already got a Pikachu or Raichu, or we've decided we don't need an electric type at all.

3 Poliwag

Locked Behind the Good Rod

Poliwag is a cute little tadpole Pokémon. It's not especially strong, and although its final evolution, Poliwrath, is a decently hard hitter, it's not game-breaking in any way. I recently replayed FireRed, and I thought to myself, "Let's use Poliwag." I was going to pick Charmander anyway, so I thought I could do with a water type, and for some reason, I thought Poliwag was available pretty early on.

Except it's not. To get Poliwag, you need the Good Rod. To get the Good Rod, you have to complete Lavender Town's Pokémon Tower quest, which means you have to have completed Silph Co. to get the Silph Scope, since you need to pass by the Snorlax in your way. Fortunately, as soon as you find the Good Rod, you can catch a Poliwag, but it feels weird for a classic Kanto Pokémon to be locked behind mechanics that mean you just can't build a team around it at all.

2 Crobat

Close, Yet So Far...

Crobat is one of my favorite Pokémon, so as a kid, when I learned that Crobat would be in FireRed & LeafGreen, I put a Zubat on my team and diligently made sure to keep their friendship high. I was rewarded, or so I thought, when it finally evolved into a Golbat. "Just one more level," I said, and then I'd have my very own Crobat.

Nope. Not a thing. In FireRed & LeafGreen, your Golbat won't evolve into a Crobat until after you get the National Dex. Okay, fair enough. I see the design choice here. Except your Golbat will try to evolve every single time it levels up, despite being blocked from doing so. The game hits you over the head with the fact that you can't get Crobat yet despite having a Golbat on your team. Despite being able to catch Zubat extremely early in the game, the earliest Crobat in FireRed & LeafGreen is a post-game addition once you've found the National Dex.

1 Espeon & Umbreon

Only Available From a Post-Game Trade With Other Games

Eevee has always been a mid-game gift Pokémon in the Gen 1 Kanto games, so you know exactly when you're going to get it, and it's a guaranteed thing. If you're looking for one of its other extremely popular evolutions, you can grab them as soon as you get an Eevee and the corresponding evolution stone.

So you might be forgiven for thinking you could get Espeon and Umbreon, too. But you'd be wrong about that, because FireRed & LeafGreen make sure that you can't get National Dex Pokémon until after the Elite Four. But that's okay, right, since you can evolve your Eevee into Espeon or Umbreon once you beat the Elite Four... right? No. In FireRed & LeafGreen, you can't evolve Eevee into Espeon or Umbreon at all, since there's no day/night cycle in-game. The only way to get these popular Pokémon is to evolve an Eevee in Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire, or Emerald, and trade it. Which is not so good news when you're playing the Switch re-release!