Rattata is another of those regular Route 1 Pokemon that’s been iterated on countless times in the generations since, and at the very least this time there’s a distinct purple colour scheme to it to make it stand out more. Honestly Rattata does a pretty good job of giving a subtle hint at being more than just the household pest it’s based on: being more feral with such pronounced teeth, and having more distinct features such as the eccentric colour choice. Unlike Pidgey, who feels just straight up outclassed by its successors, Rattata feels like it has something legitimately distinct that none of its successors have ever tried to capture, as most of the rodents in the years since have stuck to more typical shades of brown and at least aim to be cuter (how successful they are with this varies wildly). Obviously it’s not really a pioneering Generation 1 design and far from my favourites, but I’m still somewhat fond of this little guy.

Raticate, while eschewing the nice purple of Rattata for a plainer colour, does add a lot more to the fantastical and feral angles of the family. This is a disgusting brute designed to leave a strong impression on the player in the early game and it succeeds in a way I don’t think a single one of its successors has ever really managed to emulate. The stumpy proportions put a lot more emphasis on the size of its jaw and the ferocity in its expression, while giving it a nice stylisation that has aged really well. Genuinely a solid Pokemon and while it’s not my favourite of the route 1 rodent goon squad, it’s far from outclassed by them.

Alolan Rattata is the first regional form I get to touch on with these reviews and it’s a pretty simple but effective one to start. While I want to touch on this more with other regional forms that have wilder concepts, I just want to establish that I absolutely adore regional forms and firmly believe they’re one of the best things the series has ever come up with. This Dark/Normal form takes a very typical grasslands native Pokemon and nicely readjusts it to a nocturnal and urban native species that scavenges from human settlements instead. It being quite explicitly based on a black kind of rat means it loses its distinct purple colouration, but this is in service of great theming, so I don’t mind especially. Alolan Rattata being cast as an invasive species that adapted to evade a second introduced species intended to catch it, Yungoos, is a great way to both toy with the origins of regional forms and adapt this pretty tragic aspect of ecological devastation in real-world Hawai’i. Fortunately, the Pokemon world’s far more optimistic spin on nature and the cultures it adapts means that Alolan Rattata can be looked on with more than just disgust for the humans responsible for it.

Disgust, however, is clearly the reaction that Alolan Raticate wants to get out of a player. Frankly it’s primed to succeed with that and I don’t think that’s a criticism of Alolan Raticate but rather a strength. This form of Raticate notably reduces the prominence of Raticate’s mouth in favour of using its squat body plan to convey its cultivated mass and gorging eating habits. It’s pitched much more as a boss of large Rattata hordes, and fitting of a king rat who makes all the rules, takes those visual and thematic cues as a parallel to Gumshoos. For how gross it’s meant to look, Alolan Raticate has a weirdly pleasant shiny colouration though, so that’s nice. However for a regional rodent that has been noted for having genuine early game utility with its original form, it’s a little depressing how utterly useless Alolan Raticate is in-game, with its added brutishness reflected in its new typing and stats being to its total detriment mechanically. As another side note, I find the implications of an invasive pest species like Alolan Raticate being a Totem Pokemon in Alola – something steeped in ancient island traditions – to be bizarre and somewhat fascinating, and I’m really not sure what to make of that. A lot of regional forms can feel like full on upgrades as designs go relative to their originals and I don’t think Alolan Raticate is that kind of form, but it’s a nice sidegrade with interesting design inspirations.

Kantonian Raticate final verdict: 5/10 – A good design I like more than I expected to.

Alolan Raticate final verdict: 5/10 – A simple regional form that isn’t mindblowing but works well for what it’s meant to do.