Really, a lot of the early challenges in Pokemon Red And Blue it depends on which starter you choose. If you start Charmander, Brock and Misty will be really tough for weakening your first friend, but if you go for Bulbasaur, you’ll sit really pretty for those early gyms. However, there is one Gym Leader that provides a natural challenge for most players since her typing is largely overwhelmed in these early games: Sabrina. The psychic trainer’s team of mind-bending, telekinetic lunatics got a multi-episode arc in the anime because she was so broken Red And Blueis meta.
The psychic type has only two weaknesses in these games: ghost and bug type attacks. Ghost-type Pokemon are found exclusively in Lavender Town’s Pokemon Tower and consist only of the Gengar series in the early games, and Bug-type Pokemon are notoriously weak. So your options for fighting Sabrina are pretty limited. Even if you had more options, that wouldn’t change the fact that Sabrina’s team isn’t fucking around. Your Kadabra, Mr. Mime, and Alakazam are all pretty tough, and each has good offense, defense, and status abilities in their arsenal. Psychic typing was so busy back then that Game Freak had to introduce dark Pokémon gold And Silver just to even things out.
Before we continue, let’s give Brock a credit Pokemon yellow. Since you have to use Pikachu as a launcher in this game, you are almost left with no options as Pikachu’s electric attacks don’t affect Brock’s team. The only option you have is to make it through with less-than-effective moves, or to overlevel a Nidoran enough to learn Double Kick. It’s one of those moments that makes it clear how the game was clearly built around the original grass, fire, and water starters, and how removing those options from the early game could change everything, even if Rocko’s team were a few levels down is when it was in Red And Blue.
