[Game Designer Explains] Why Regigigas was made Terrible on Purpose 

"A gameing company will never create a game mechanic only because the lore says so" Fromsoftware enters the chat:

Regigigas will wait patiently for its revenge, but only for five turns. After that, it will begin its assult.

So Bragging rights... Regigigas is supposed to be a reward for Catching and bringing the other Regi's to it? That's why

That doesn't seem super logical in Gen 4. Gen 4 is known too have way too many legendaries, some of which are event-locked. If Regigigas was average-stat already, you weren't missing on anything in Gen 4, where you had a bazillion other legendaries to work with in the same capacity and could potentially miss forever. If being something that would pain people who couldn't get it was the reason for it being weak as an immobile slab of stone, then Darkrai, Manaphy, Arceus and Shaymin would have had the same type of design philosophy. Plus, if the obtention method was so arduous, then they could have made that method less arduous. The Regis were already the reward for completing their side-quest, there was no need to make it a cross-game reward in the first place. The regis could have existed in-game, or there could have been item stand-ins for them scattered across the game, or a light braille puzzle to emulate the first side-quest to obtain Regigigas. If he existed in Gen 3, locked behind that obtuse puzzle, it would have made sense for him to be a sort of alternate trophy in-game. In Gen 4, it is absolutely needless design.

I do wonder why Regigigas can't be given anything on even the Hidden Ability slot, Pokemon gaining and losing abilities are not unheard of even on legendaries

Funny enough, Varoom now also has slow start, cause he's a car

Players: "Oh, I see! Slow Start is to establish Regigigas' identity as a forgotten titan, sleeping for so long that it takes time to reach even a fraction of it's power! Like the lore implies!" GoldenOwl: "Lore? You think they did it because of LORE?!?! You think they went through ALL through that for lore?! That has to be the stupidest, small brained, click-baited, ignorant, shallow, and flimsiest way to POSSIBLY see it. Oh mah gawd. How can you guys be this dumb? Do you honestly think lore has ANY influence about the game's design? Do you think something so banal and insignificant can influence the way a game is made? Lore?! Really?! Let me use this *Professional* experience I have in the industry and tell you why you're wrong for over HALF the video's runtime!" Players: "Oh. So...what's the reason it's not lore?" GoldenOwl: "Oh it's because that's it's identity now." Ah, my favorite Poketuber works his magic again and annoys me enough to actually get me to sign in *just* to comment! At this point, I feel like the theme of "Oh it's okay since it's bad on purpose!" has become a staple of your channel. Well. Except for your UI/UX video, where the UI actually being bad *was* good, but you said it was just plain bad. Yes, we know *why* something is bad, but that doesn't mean its existence is welcome or enriches our experiences with the game in a positive way. Like. WHY have Regigigas at all? It's in a completely different generation than the original trio, which in of themselves are enough of a reward. To add as an extra reward for the rewards you already have? But the reward is bad on purpose? So it's not a reward? If it's like the Golden Poop then it is, in fact, a passive aggressive statement from the developers saying that the player missed the entire point of the system and should feel dumb for doing so, no? But the system being engaged with is fundamentally different than the convoluted one from Gen 3? Huh? I'm at a complete loss here. And Pokemon designing something so players don't feel bad for not buying enough of the games? Are we talking about the same series here? The one that came in two versions since Day 1? The one where we had to buy entire peripherals to get our critters? The one that put Jirachi as a pre-order bonus on the Gamecube? The one that's making us pay to keep our Pokemon on life support in the cloud or be deleted forever? That series? Pokemon? You sure? At this point, the channel feels like being an apologist for devs making questionable decisions and how players are, in fact, dumb and wrong for not praising them. The first video about Onix was super interesting! But at this point, I'm not learning anything new or interesting; I'm just getting annoyed about how much this bird speaks to me in a condescending tone while making me wait and wait for its actual point to drop, only for the point to be a wet noodle that is arguably *worse* than what we thought the reason was in the first place. Please, I just want the Inside Baseball look into the *hidden* parts of a game that makes them *cool* rather than the obvious ones that make us feel bad.

While I agree with you about most things, and I can see these reasons being the ones GameFreak had, I think there's a distinction to be made with PLA: it's set in the distant past, it could have been justifiable to see Regigigas in its prime. Sure that's a writing decision and you say that doesn't influence game balance and design, but ideally writing and design should complement each other. They could've just changed Regigigas's purpose within PLA specifically to a neat post game reward from funny meme Pokemon and it could've been satisfying to fans because they want to see Regigigas being strong...afterall, why else are there so many videos about people being frustrated with Regigigas? PLA was the one opportunity where they could have abandoned Slow Start and still have Regigigas align with the fans' perception of it as a Pokemon that's terrible normally, that could be good without its ability. PLA isn't player vs player, so the viability of Regigigas in PLA wouldn't impact its viability in the main series meta I think different characters can serve a different purpose in different games. Having Regigigas as purposefully bad to not make the average player upset about missing out, to keeping it bad for the meme in the main series is fine and I'm okay with that...but I just don't think that works in PLA where so many other things are different. Especially since it's set in ancient times

Like I've seen others do in this comment section, I have to respectfully disagree with your argument that Slow start is supposed to make Regigigas underwhelming and undesirable, and I disagree even more with the botw comparison that implies we're not realistically supposed to complete the Regis quest and transfer them over to a gen 4 game. I have several counter-arguments and a different hypothesis to propose. - Regigigas is very much a pokemon you are supposed to get since it counts for the national dex completion, which has always been framed as the 100% completion objective around which a lot of mechanics in pokemon are designed. Similarly, you are supposed to transfer the three Regis since they also count for the dex completion. Game freak is perfectly able to make a pokemon not count towards dex completion when they want to, it is generaly the case with mythicals. - You are also totally supposed to own and use the GBA games in the process of playing gen 4 postgame. Not only are there a lot of other pokemons you can only get that way (mostly starters and legendaries), there's also a whole mechanic requiring to have one of these cartidges inserted in the GBA slot of the DS to encounter specific pokemon, that are even different for each of these cartridges, and that you can't get any other way in D/P/Pt. These don't come with any kind of handicap, in fact they include some very usefull pokemon for the battle frontier, like Gengar. - If the goal was to make Regigigas underwhelming and undesirable to the public, it failed spectacularly, to the point I can't believe that was indeed the goal. Casual players in 2007 would know about Regigas's looks from magazines and websites, they would know about its lore and link with the other Regis, they would be curious about the temple which is empty unless we have the full trio. Everything around Regigigas makes it very desirable, except its ability which is not something players would know beforehand. - And even then, designers may have thought that Slow start was not that big of a deal ; after all, Regigigas keeps its high defensive stats, it can Protect for 3 turns out of 5, and maybe buff during the other 2 turns. In the context of using him against, say, the Elite 4 rematches, Slow start is far from making Regigigas unplayable. This reputation likely comes from the competitive crowd, who regularly demonstrates that it is uncapable of percieving Pokemon game design from another angle than the competitive one (like with Onix, which as you very correctly stated is a boss first and a playable mon second). The combination of oober stats and slow start makes Regigigas weaker than other legendaries like Palkia/Dialga, but then it isn't considered in the same tier as them even in-game, since it's allowed in the battle frontier while they aren't (and used by Palmer as his ace). I think Regigigas is to be considered more in the same tier as the three other Regis, who are good but not insane too. All of this to say that while I also disagree that Slow start has any link to the golem inspiration (the three other regis were also golems and didn't have slow start), I tend to believe that this ability is exclusively here to give Regigigas some unique gameplay flavor, to make it an "ancient titan slowly reawakening", isn't supposed to be percieved as a fatal flaw in the first place, and serves to make the Regigigas encounter a narratively engaging one, be it as Palmer's ace or as a legendary that you are supposed to catch (with a very low catch rate) instead of defeating. In this second case especially, your battle against it is going to last a lot more than 5 turns, so you are going to see it power up and start wrecking your team as you try again and again to get it to stay in a hyperball. At least in D/P, because in Platinum Regigigas being level 1 makes that encounter a formality... But even then I think it was done to emphasize the "weakened by an eternity of immobility" part of the narrative framing. Finally, while it's true that graphics/narrative designers don't decide upon the balancing choices made by the game design team, Pokemon has always been a series where narration and gameplay work hand in hand, likely at a directorial level. The are a lot of instances where the specifics of an encounter, including a legendary pokemon's ability (see: Rayquaza's Air Lock) are only here to enforce a narrative point. I don't see why Regigigas couldn't be one of those instances.

I'm surprised no one in the comments (that I've seen) has pointed out one glaring factual error: getting Regigigas never required getting a second console, unless you had a DSi (which was released during Gen5). All versions of the DS before the DSi natively play GBA games. For that matter, Pokédex completion in Gen 3 was much, much more expensive, as it required 7 games and two consoles.

Watching this video I am just realizing that it's the same reason why the Starf Berry is so bad. If it was good, locking a good competitive, one time only item behind such a long and tedious task would be absolutely horrible from a game design perspective, but by making it bad, it's just a trophy!

Easy fix, give Regigigas a Hidden Ability that's literally useless in combat (like maybe it finds free money at the end of a victory battle idk) and hide it behind a sidequest Or introduce a Held Item which disables its user's ability Regigigas keeps its legacy identity, but now with a little extra work it becomes actually viable Weezing in Generation 8 proves that Regigigas is a pokemon actually worth using with literally no ability at all, it wouldn't be OP but at least it would be _something_ We have had an amazing pokemon in lore and design for 20 years that has been kept from us by an actively detrimental ability, it's about time they let us have this

We know from at least a few interviews that the Pokémon creation process can come from various departments, from designers wanting more Pokémon of X Type for a Region, to artists wanting to design a Pokémon around a specific creature, to mandates from above (publishers and stakeholders, like when TPC told GF to make Gen 2 designs that would be easier to turn into plushies) and more. I think the disconnect lies here: while the art team almost certainly didn't just have "Regigigas should have an Ability that halves Attack and Speed for the first 5 turns it is out" among the specs it handled to the other department(s), and that instead being a decision made by the design team, I don't think anyone, not even the guy from the video you cited (which, tbf, I haven't watched yet) is stating that was the case; instead, the "other side" is just saying that someone on the team had the *general idea* of making the Regi boss start out weaker and then grow stronger as the battle progressed in reference to the golems' mythology and then the design team decided on the *specifics* of how to achieve that. For the record, I do think that looking at this sort of thing with a designer mindset first is generally the better approach, because it's more common for design to influence other elements (and be influenced by programming limitations) than the other way around, but I think the latter is far from being exceedingly rare (especially for decisions made at a high level) and therefore it shouldn't' be a point made with the absolutism you came across in the first part of this video, imo, especially with legendaries, in the case of Pokémon, where lore is often one of the main considerations they have in mind when starting the design process.

This sounds completely wrong. The first section is just moving goalposts to say "it's not regal red, it's king crimson". Who cares who exactly calls the shot? The point is that the game balance feature is implemented due to the needs of features and departments completely alien to the gameplay. But I'm really not buying the Hastu Theorem. Obtaining regigigas might be a bit unreasonable (for the game cart thing, the braille alphabet was outright in the game manual. I spent my whole playthrough expecting that to pop up) but that's definitely not a reason to make it terrible. And in such a flavorful way instead of just having low stats outright. Why? Because it was not even the only new pokémon to require GBA carts! That same generation featured magmortar, electivire, gliscor and tangrowth. To obtain any of them you needed GBA carts, very specific ones even as opposed to any 1 of 3, and they were not crippled in any way shape of form. Unless being unfathomably ugly is supposed to be the drawback, but they share that feature with "fairer" evolutions. Ah, and also, screw the hardware thing! Needing D/P and ONE GBA cart was far, FAR more fair than the Ranger thing. DS had a built-in GBA! You literally could play the GBA game on it! For manaphy you needed a whole additional system and thanks to that my manaphy egg remained waiting for 700 days. I didn't know about about that other video, but I did know about golems and I know that regigigas starts off as a completely inert statue and with some difficulty (Pal Park being restricted to 6 mons per day sure made this slower) it can come back to life. I am convinced that giving it the image of a dormant eternal colossus very slowly being reactivated to its former glory is way more likely to be the main reason over needing to make it useless in battle. And this reason explains why slow start has survived the many rebalances done to pokemon, moves and abilities better than the "had to be bad in 2006 and it stuck" reason. There are many cases in this series where pokemon have been made broken or useless solely for flavor.

Honestly, I'm I wasn't completely sold on the idea that this was a near-strict gameplay decision. Contrary to what the video says, you don't need 2 game consoles. A DS will suffice. It will play GBA games. And looking at it from a gameplay standpoint, Regigigas wouldn't have needed to be so awful to get if the developers simply placed the other Regis in gen 4 proper. So, consider me not sold on the gameplay argument. However, I think Legelds Arceus actually debunks the story element. Regigigas was apparently supposed to be a force to be reckoned withh in the distant past. Legends Arceus is in the distant past. This would be the perfect opportunity to demonstrate what a force he was. And yet, he's still terrible. The conclusion I'm left with is that somebody in marketing was insistent that there be a Pokemon that rewards the cross-gen features of the game, and the gameplay team decided it has to be not something players would be upset about missing.

Slow start doesnt lower both offensive stats, just physical attack and speed, its why regigigas is quite a menace in OMs where it gets a special attack stat

To me it seems inappropriate to say that story and character design have close to zero influence on game design decisions. Yes I have watched the whole video, I acknowledge the explanation that Regigigas is supposed to be a trophy and is designed in a way to not force players to spend money and time trying to get a genuinely useful pokemon, and I totally agree with this conclusion, In fact with this comment I am not trying to argue that regigigas was given the slow start ability because doing so was required by the writing team or anything like that, However in this same video you showed an example of how much influence writing and character design decisions can have on the game design team, the fact that Mimiku was required to showcase the animation of the head tilting clearly had the game designers consider how they could implement that, but the influence likely doesn’t stop there, because it’s very possible, probable even, that the game design team was inspired by the fact that Mimiku was clearly intended to be pretending to be something it’s not and to be hiding under something, and this inspiration ended up resulting in the decision of giving to Mimiku an ability that reduces the impact of the first attack received and then activates the animation in question, breaking the disguise. Again I’m not trying to say that Mimiku was given the disguise ability precisely because it is disguising as a Pikachu, I’m saying that the character design and story traits of Mimiku likely have inspired in some way the game designers and therefore have had some form of not negligible influence over the game designing process. Given that I didn’t work on the design of these Pokemon I cannot prove in any way that what I described actually happened, but even if it didn’t happen for Mimiku, or if it didn’t happen to Regigigas, maybe it happened for Delmise or Tatsugiri; to me it seems highly improbable for this to never happen, it rather seems like something that would happen with great frequency, and therefore I believe it is overly dismissive to claim that character design and writing have very little influence on the game design process. Maybe what I’m talking about was considered exceedingly obvious during the scripting process and therefore it was deemed sufficient to just vaguely imply that there is some influence by never outright stating that there’s no influence whatsoever, if that’s the case this comment has the purpose of expressing that I personally didn’t find this type of influence exceedingly obvious and that I wasn’t able to notice such implications. Other than that this was a cool video :)

The idea that the ability could not be lore related because they're made by different departments is nonsense and it's debunked by many pokemon, some example given in this exact video (slaking, wishiwashi). They are not given exact instructions of course, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't have a general direction to follow or didn't get inspired to do so on their own. EDIT: seen the pinned comment. Still you do not provide enough proof that regigigas ability's choice is not lore based. It's full of mythicals that aren't really good and are basically collectables. What's the point of making a strong Pokémon then nerf it with the ability? The lore explanation explains that, yours does not As many already said, you are not supposed to get all korok's seeds, so the comparison does not make sense. One small but important imprecision is that you said you need to transfer the regis from rse to get regigigas. No, you need to OWN the regis. If one kid had the regis (that could be transferred using a single console in dual slot mode), they could be lended from one kid to another. We see a similiar reasoning again il later games with kyogre and groudon for Rayquaza in hgss, thundurus ans tornadus for landorus (big difference though is that they're version exclusives). Consider that D&P are the first games with online trade. Another detail is that regigigas is a movie legendary and was distributed by events. Maybe we were supposed to get the single regis to unlock the event but it was scrapped because it was deemed too difficult (see the azure flute in the same games)

Your explanation of art/concept and game design itself being distinct elements in the overall game-making process is sound, and I can believe it’s knowledge backed by experience. The way you describe them hierarchically, however… I can agree with it on principle, in the sense that it would be the best way to organize game development, the final say should always be with the teams involved with creating the mechanics themselves. But in all good conscience, it seems quite evident that Regigigas proves the rule through its existence as a rare exception. I’m not saying that the concept designers somehow hold total sway over how Regigigas works, but the unknown factors keeping the design team from making revisions/buffs to Regigigas simply can’t all be attributed to erudite concerns of game balance. Assuming, that is, that we don’t entertain the idea of there being a sustained and directed strain of malicious incompetency/neglect toward Regigigas. We definitely can think of some reasonable justifications for why Regigigas hasn’t been buffed. For example, an ability cancelling held item would just break Slaking, and you’d imagine it would be pretty laughable if it were a dedicated, Regigigas-exclusive item. So just change the ability itself, right? Right?? Well, they haven’t. The only way I can imagine why is that they are, to some degree, hamstrung for reasons outside of their jurisdiction.

This in completely false. Game designers definitely listen to character designers to make sure the way they play in game matches lore. They bounce off of each other. It goes both ways. Also look at slaking- it was needed in a similar fashion. Slaking isn’t a reward for insane work. Regigigas was designed top to bottom based on lore- same goes with every Pokémon. You don’t understand game design if you can’t grasp that.

I think a lore accurate Regigigas was fine upon its initial generation. But it is numerous generations removed from that original design. Many Pokemon, items, and moves have been altered to fit a game balance standpoint. As much fun as it for Regigigas to have more staying power in the back of players' minds, that is not enough to get people to use it in any capacity. The novelty of Slow Start has definitely faded and the Pokemon will stay an obscure pick. I think it's time to fix Regigigas. Either give him an alternate form, edit the ability, or give him an attack that interacts with Slow Start in some way that assists in removing the penalties or its longevity. 5 turns without swapping out is simply too much.

TL;DR: It's because the method to encounter it is convoluted and pay-to-win All I'm hearing is that Regigigas shouldn't have been created in the first place. You'll never use it if you're actually trying to win, and no one's going to be jealous that you wasted time and money to catch five consecutive turns of dead weight, so why waste the development time?

If slow start worked as an omni stat drop that wore off over time it probably wouldn't make Regigigas that bad. Slaking has a hinderance ability but it works with it. At some point the game design just seems annoying. He's so crippled that the work around are expected and get immediately shut down if you try it. Look at poor Onix.Dude was built as an early boss and has never been fixed to at least be a slow growing useful member. Making a useless Pokemon just becomes insulting at some point.

Im at 12:27 the purpose of regigigas was to be Palmer's ace or to be the only legendary with crazy stats that can be used in the battle frontier

I'll be frank, I don't like this. Was there a reason to go after another youtuber who doesn't even specialize in game design? That's youtube drama behavior and I don't like seeing it in random videos. Plus, it comes off slightly elitist to me, ala "he hasn't studied game design, so why would he talk about it?". It also doesn't make it any easier for you, because I expected some big revelation after this, bigger expectations than usual. You could have made the same point without mentioning any specific person because the idea that it must be lore reasons is rather wide-spread. Plus, some other points: - Pokemon hasn't shied away from "pay to win mechanics" before. The box legendaries themselves end up being pay to win mechanics when they are eventually allowed in VGC near the end of a generation. - something being low-level does not communicate "this is useless" in an RPG. It still has 99 levels to grow. I don't know about you, but I actually feel compelled to level up something if it comes at lv1 - the notion that "game design doesn't care about the lore" feels... off? Don't get me wrong, you probably know what you are talking about since you work in the field (and I don't, I'm an illustrator/graphic designer) but for Pokemon specifically, too many pokemon have game mechanics that seem directly influenced by their design and lore. Smeargle, Kyogre, Groudon, Komala, Minior just to name a few. I'm sure the design of how exactly they play out in gameplay was decided on by the game designers, but to say "they don't care" about the lore seems overly dismissive, when in Pokemon (again, to emphasize this franchise specifically) they seem to mix constantly.

A word of advice: don't disparage another person for disagreeing with you in your video. It makes you come off as petty and detracts from any points you make in your video as doing so turns it into a rant video instead of an informative one. Speaking of the points made in your video, I have to disagree with them. As you said yourself, you don't know exactly how the inner workings of the Pokemon development team works, so lore could have a bigger impact on how things are implemented in-game than what you're used to. For example, the people who designed Regigigas could have just as easily insisted that, "Regigigas is a Pokemon that takes time to get going" and then the game designers decided how to implement that idea. That's still the lore influencing the design decision. As an added note, I also disagree with your Korok seed analogy, but others have already described why it doesn't really work and I don't feel a need to repeat them.

Just so it's known revaroom can now also get slow start as a hidden ability. Out of ant pokenon it does fit a car pretty well

much like regigigas, this video too has a slow start and takes roughly 10 mins to make its first points

21:55 Game freak has made several buffs to Regigias movepool to counter its ability on modern day (of course that is still not enough to keep up with the power creep tho) like giving it access to protect and giving it several support moves so you can use it as a tanky support rather than having to find workarounds to its ability

He probobly was supposed to be a timed boss trying to make the players weaken and catch it before he could get his stats back up and reck them

My argument has always been that Regigigas is designed to be a unique kind of boss fight. Due to being so over leveled when you encounter it, it is supposed to present a potential threat that escalates the longer you fight it. Crush Grip whittles you down at first and if you haven't caught it I'm 5 turns, then it'll steamroll you once its attack and speed are at normal levels. It always bugged me that people never stop to consider these Pokémon abilities from the perspective of PVE because even if I wrong, I can speculate beyond claiming the devs simply wanted Regigigas to be bad Edit: I didn't realize that the one in D/P doesn't learn Crush grip until level 75

I do partially agree with your point (if indeed lore doesn't factor into the Reig's Slow Start), especially for general balance in favor of the lack of access this mon once had. I do think one way of seeing Regi (and it didn't really come to mind until watching this video) is that Regi is more akin to a legit boss fight. An extremely difficult one to actually trigger, but in essence, it's a very large and intimidating opponent with enormous stats that could easily squash most casual players. However, putting a delay on the boss' pure power gives players the opportunity to whittle down its health and get ready to catch it before it starts going on a rampage as you desperately chuck ultra and timer balls at it. One could almost think of it as the closest thing to a wild Pokemon boss with 2 phases (at least for the time).

Even though I'm not a game designer I'm sure that lore and writing has some sway over the gameplay like if you had a character that was written to be a great fire mage in the Lore but in the game play the only use water magic the inconsistency would be a problem so the teams choices have to affect each other in some way so that the overall games world makes sense to make it feel like the world in the cutscenes matches the world in the gameplay.

only flaw i saw was the claim of needing another consol for gigas. the OG DS has a GBA slot and in system transfer for RSE

I'll be honest, I think I buy the lore reasons for Regigigas being bad more than this. I'm not saying the writers or artists told the programmers explicitly to create the ability Slow Start for Regigigas, but I am fully able to believe that the devs could've had a round table discussion and one person said "I know, it's a really huge golem made of rock/clay that's covered in moss and has been dormant since time immemorial. It would make sense if it struggles to move again after all this time. Since it's a legendary it's stats will already be huge, so we can have it start out as this brick wall that if the player can't defeat quickly it'll become a monster that tears through their team," and then everyone mostly agreed. *Maybe* Regigigas was meant as a joke pokemon, but I don't think there's enough proof from the dev team itself to strongly argue this idea. It's frankly not very funny if it is a joke and nowhere in any other Pokemon media is it treated as something to laugh about. The argument that Regigigas being otherwise "pay to win" if it was good doesn't hold up to me because this is just how the pokemon series rolls. The series was already infamous among people who play games for releasing the same game twice with extremely minimal differences, and then releasing a third more polished version after. Sure, you *could* trade with friends to obtain specific version exclusive wild encounters, or evolve specific pokemon that needed to be traded, but Gamefreak knows there's a non-zero number of people that will just buy two or even three copies of the game. If Regigigas is just supposed to be a trophy for the player, 1. This is pokemon, the goal is already to collect as many of them as you can, the three Regis are already trophies to show off to friends on the playground just by having caught them in a convoluted puzzle that they haven't figured out yet. 2. Regigigas' catch rate is super low, lower than Dialgia and Palkia's (whom the player likely already used the master ball on) and are literally put in front of the player as a mandatory encounter, if Regigigas was supposed to be a gimme why not give it an easier catch rate? 3. While Regigas is level 1 in Platinum, it is level 70 in Diamond and Pearl. So it was definitely intended to be some kind of challenge to capture or defeat when it's encounter was first designed. 4. The devs could've done the much easier option of giving Professor Rowan unique dialogue and maybe a special ribbon that would go on the Regis' status screen for having all three if the devs wanted to go a little extra. I think the stronger argument is that Regigigas is a legendary and GameFreak stuck it with a bad ability that matches the lore behind it because they thought it would be a tough optional boss pokemon and didn't think through how heavily 5 turns of halved attack and speed would hit it. I don't think it's controversial to say that GameFreak has made a few truly bad design decisions over their lifetime and don't care very much about the competitive side of Pokemon. Gen 1's meta is basically dominated by a big 3 of Snorlax, Tauros, Chancey, (but only because mewtwo and mew aren't used in Overused, in which case the meta entirely defined by 3 pokemon is actually only defined by 2 different pokemon), Incredibly few of Gen 2 pokemon were actually good in gen 2, Gen 4's meta is defined entirely by stealth rocks, and Regigigas has a terrible ability that completely cripples it and puts an otherwise powerful legendary into Never Used. I bring all of this up not to condemn any of the games or gamefreak. I've really enjoyed my time play GameFreak's games, both casually and semi-competitively (by that I mean, I've played my friends a bunch on pokemon showdown over the years and had a lot of fun doing it), in fact every Gen has had it's own unique feel and vibe to it while still being fun, and that impresses me a lot. But I don't think GameFreak cares very strongly about the competitive scene. I don't think they're super worried about the competitive viability of the individual pokemon. They're number 1 priority is that a casual player is able to play through the main campaign with whatever pokemon they come across and legendaries have big stat pools.

They were considerate with Reggigigas, that's great. Looks at Urshifu who's locked behind a pay wall, that consideration did not apply here. Of course the developers just probably didn't understand how busted of a mon they made. Just like how they didn't realize how much more powerful they made Zacian when compared to Zamazenta.

I think youre overstating how complicated the braille puzzles in RSE are. They included a translation of the braille alphabet in the back of the instruction manual.

I waiting for the day where Regigigas says “I am Regi” and Regis all over the place.

So now, as someone who has defended Johto's weird level scaling (and 'final' rival battle against unevolved pokemon) for lore reasons, I want to hear an explanation from a game design standpoint point. I do have my thoughts on this (for Silver at least): the IP's message has always reinforced that true strength is gained through friendship, Silver is a loner and a bully who treats his pokemon badly so what better way to demonstrate his philosophy is wrong than to have him use a pokemon that evolves through friendship not evolve until he learns his lesson (and also have trade evolutions that he cannot get because he has no friends).

So to not make the players feel bad for not getting a strong Pokémon, they decided to make the players feel bad for wasting their time for a piece of crap. I don't think it's THAT much of an improvement. A new hat would've been a step up, honestly.

I think Bro forgot how easy is to get Regigigas in Arceus, like if it was not just moving some statues, ALSO they tell you about it in a post-game main mission! I personaly think that if Gamefreak went through all of the truble of re-making the ability but not making it hard to get (the pokemon), then it's because of the pokemon's background rather than game balancing mecanics.

Just as bonus information: back in the day, Gamefreak made a lvl 100 Regigigas event that unlocked the other regis on your DPPt game. After capturing all the regis, you could catch the statue on the snowpoint temple. Also, after the realese of the johto remakes, you could use the regis of that game to unlock the snowpoint one

Answering the mid-video question: it was supposed to be a boss! Its stats would be higher than the player's expected team and they'd have a soft timer due to Slow Start that would encourage changing up their strategy for fighting and catching Regigigas!

12:42 Before you give the answer: Collection for perfection as a secret boss (if you can count the legendaries as bosses). I mean Regigigas is not a easy to wake up. I'd like to add something. Lore never justifies a character, a world, a story, etc. If when someone asks you to present an idea, you talk about lore, you can be sure that it will never be taken if the person in front of you is even a little bit serious. Because by definition, lore is useless. Even if the lore around regigigas is interesting, it in no way justifies its story, and even less its design.

For whatever reason, this video took far longer than I initially expected. I was having some difficulty phrasing my main points in a clear and understandable fashion, and the script saw two additional rewrites and re-recordings because I was not satisfied with it. Even now, I feel unsure about whether people will understand. I also have a minor clarification on my statement regarding regarding story and game balance. Game Design will certain consider and create game content based on lore. However, the decisions regarding things such as difficulty and balance will not be influenced. For example, the other Pokemon with Slow Start is Varoom (no I am not correcting my video because it distracts from my main point). Varoom was given Slow Start as its Hidden Ability as a cute nod to it being a starting engine. Its absolutely a lore based design choice. However, it doesn't influence it's game balance, because Varoom's default ability is Overcoat, meaning it is mechanically balanced around that ability. Additionally, Revavroom loses Slow Start and obtains Filter upon evolution, meaning that the lore based addition of Slow Start did not impact mechanical gameplay balance in any way. If Regigigas's Slow Start was solely lore motivated, it could have received a Hidden Ability the next generation. But it didn't, implying that the game balance intentionally wished to keep it in its current state for some other reason. Lore and Game Balance can co-exist, and game designers will create and design content for them both. It's just that one does not forcibly dictate the other's creation or implementation. Also, for the record, I have nothing against Captain Fidget. I actually found his research into background lore and history to be remarkably thorough and informative. I just disagree with his final conclusion being that lore was the primary motivation behind such a balance decision. I mainly brought him up to really emphasize that lore and narrative are important, but are never taken as a priority when it comes to matters of gameplay balance. I see this misconception a lot in general on the internet, with people using lore to "justify" certain game decisions, when in reality, the industry doesn't work like that. Edit: I’ve also made a mistake regarding the DS transfer. Forgot that it was GBA compatible. Regardless the main point still applies - it’s just that Regigigas is now on par with Manaphy in “needing a separate game to obtain in its home generation” instead of surpassing it

"not many people knew braille existed as kids" not universally so, actually! idk about other places, but in the USA braille is not uncommonly found on indoor signage at places like doctor's offices and other such places that serve important societal functions, i think due to laws around making things more accessible to the disabled population from the 90s. it's likely a lot of kids here were able to recognize that it was braille, but didn't have the means to translate it if a book on braille wasn't available in their school library as the internet wasn't as accessible at the time. i vividly remember an acquaintance in middle school who literally did go through a book during our break period to translate the braille for the regi puzzle.

This is the first of your videos I completely disagree with. In Breath of the Wild, you only need 400 Korok Seeds, but more are planted to make it easier to get them. It is not at all equivalent to the Regi side quest as each individual Regi is a reward. You don't have 7 different puzzles to solve with the first three giving you a Regi and the 7th giving you Regigigas if you go the extra mile. Furthermore, Regigigas being at Lv1 does nothing. Players would not know how good Regigigas is, and players are used to grinding their mons to higher levels. If Regigigas was Lv100, it would be easier to see that, yes, it does indeed suck when your Lv70 mon solos it. Meanwhile, the argument about Regigigas needing to be weak isn't very strong, because they could just ban it. They havent had many pokemon tournaments yet, so a slight change in the rules shouldn't be a big deal at that point in time; and then you wouldn't have to worry about that 0.000001% chance that it's still viable Furthermore, I disagree with the statement that lore has nothing to do with power. Legendary pokemon tend to be more powerful than non-legendary mons. Surely this shows at least a cursory impact of lore on balance. It doesn't seem wrong to suggest that the team in charge of Regigigas's lore could have explicitly mentioned that it should be weaker than other legendary pokemon. In my opinion, since so few people would get Regigigas, the power level would be irrelevant and therefore they can focus entirely on using balance to drive design, such as when games use the difficulty of a boss fight to drive home just how strong, or in this case, weak, said boss is

The idea of Regigigas being a simple completion reward being a justification for it sucking so bad seems like a reasonable eplaination at first, then you realize Mr. Toots (red Faction Armageddon), The Pointer (Dead Space) and the Reaper (Bayonetta) exist. They need to find a way to mitigate the problem

"Regigigas is both money and difficulty gated, since it requires a complex puzzle to be transferred across different consoles" Celebi in gen 3 mainline: Requires Gameboy and GameCube Requires gen 3 adv game and colosseum Neither of those are upgrade paths to each other Needs colosseum bonus disc, a preorder only item. Bought after release? Too bad. Purify all the shadow Pokemon in the game and return to the tree again with an empty slot Japan version only BTW Needs another piece of external hardware in the link cable Adv game needs to have: -Beaten Elite Four -Saved at Pokémon Centre -Have 5 or less Pokémon in your team There is also a limit to how many times you can do this

There was a braille guide in the game guide, iirc Also, the DS lite could play GBA games. And I think you still needed another ds for manaphy

Devs do consider lore for game balance, Formsoft is one, heck, even Ubisoft and Rainbow 6 seige does, there was a smg with a few attachments that was busted, so the devs made it were you could not use said attachments together on the smg, in lore it was because the organization made it illegal to do so.

Golden owl: Game designers don't care about lore when balancing a game Dark Souls 3 miracles: we are a shadow of our formers selfs cuz thousands of years of time have degenerated the myth and stories that granted us power Yeah this is most likely an exception not the norm.

sometime in the future games; slow start would still be there. But Regigigas would have a hidden ability, *Adrenal Start* , which would essentially double its attack and speed for 5 turns(switching resets the turn count). [A good AG addition]

One day his body will be regi

it's wild the regigigas isn't even THAT good without slow start but they thought it was okay to give Zacian an ability that boosts its attack when switched in

honestly, this kind of stuff, the slap on the face of going out your way to complete a game, is why i decided to no longer complete games unless i really really like them, i used to try complete every game i played, but no more.

I mean, I'd still change Slow Start in three ways. Others have explained why Slow Start is still stupid. 1. Slow Start should simply cut all stats but HP by 20% for the first 5 turns. 2. The stat reduction for Slow Start becomes merely 25% for the second and third turns and 10% in the fourth turn. 3. Just make a held item that suppresses abilities. Also it doesn't reset upon switching either way.

roll of regigigus in the story. To be a legendary that you find in a dungeon that has the illusion of power.

so thats why filling the pokedex until gen 5 didnt have any reward... so many things make sense now

I understand that you're saying, and in a lot cases things aren't made terrible on purpose because the writing team says so, but to imply that's never the case is flat out wrong.

I feel like your middle section arguing with lore theorist and whatnot was really condescending and unnecessary. We come to your channel to treat Pokemon like any other game. No one else does this. Your final explanation makes complete sense and I do buy it. But I would have been less annoyed by your complaining if you had led with your reason, over arguing with strawmen. Just my thoughts. I like your content overall. I enjoyed the video so I am happy to share feedback and increase your engagement.

He can keep Slow Start... But please PLEASE for the love of Arceus, at least buff the ability! Most battles are literally over by the time 6 turns are over, let alone Regigigas surviving it! Just the simple act of reducing it from 6 turns to 2 turns would be a welcome change.

Now that you mention lore not having anything to do with Slow Start, I don't remember if there are any lines of dialogue outside of battle that indicate Regigigas having trouble becoming active or if that justification was something fans made up based on its design and Pokédex entries (which for the record, don't tell us anything relevant), and then everyone else accepted it as fact. If that wasn't the case, though, I could see it as a case of the art team creating their concept for Regigigas, then the design team creating the mechanics for Slow Start, and finally asking the writing team to add a little tidbit after the fact to justify its existence. As to what I thought Regigigas' original role for the games was gonna be, I admit I might've gotten caught up on how your previous videos focused on the single-player experience and so I started to think it was Game Freak's attempt at a timed boss fight, or at least as close to one as the game mechanics allow them. But instead of "if you run out of time/turns you automatically lose the fight or get hit with an unavoidable OHKO move", it becomes "if you take too long to beat/catch Regigigas it'll become stronger and make it harder for you to survive".

Two words: "ludonarrative dissonance." A game that ignores its lore while designing its balance is one that isn't even trying to provide the illusion of living in its own world; it's a fundamentally flawed approach that does nothing but weaken the game experience.

Okay. This video was education about many things and the original reason why it was done that way. I understand. Thank you. I'm now angry that they even put useless difficult quests in at all because of this knowledge and think that if you have to make the reward horrible because of how difficult it is to get, you have screwed up because the whole thing is just wasted space.

Oddly enough all yesterday I was doing reseach on this topic

not only was the regi quests oddly specific but the pokemon were ridiculously hard to catch

Wait, but the point of the game is to collect them all, so they would want to incentivize finding all of them, even regigigas, so this explanation does the opposite of that. That's like saying well the box legendaries should be bad because you have to play the whole game and that takes too much time, so let's make it bad. In BotW, there is no reason to get the other koroks, and the designers even said they didn't want people collecting all of them. But in Pokemon, the point is to catch them all, so they wouldn't want to decentivize that.

Why does Regigigas even exist then? It's not like the Regis are bad. In fact, they're better than their leader. They are the most immediate reward for the quest, right?

17:16 Ughhh actually, it wouldn't be until after platinum was released before you could get a ds that didn't have the gba slot for backwards compatibility that was used for transfer, but requiring beating an at the time year old at least game to the point you could do the puzzles for the original regis wasn't free by any means.

I don't understand why people continue to mention that the Hoenn regi puzzles were undecipherable and obtuse because of the braille. You were literally given a little booklet on braille with the game. Everyone could read what the walls said, it was only the rest of the puzzle that needed solving.

Another point, since regigigas isnt a box legendary, toure usually allowed to use it in vgc with other legends like the tapus. But those legendaries have stats lower than 600 with our boy gigas sitting at 680 meaning that if it were functional by itself, you could put him next to an amoongus and just tera steel tera blast the enemy fluttermane and decemate the rest of their team

That means Darkrai and Shaymin (sky forme) should have been made terrible because they're hard to obtain, yet they're one of the most OP mons at the time. Whats that? They're free from Gamestop? Well good luck if you're not living on whatever country the event is held... So yea as a kid I did felt cheated out from not being able to get Darkrai and spam Dark Void on people. Or Air Slash flinch spam in a single battle using Shaymin Sky. I dont think they really care if some people will feel bad or not for not being able to complete certain tasks in game.. Cuz one of the other ridiculous tasks in the same Gen is Spiritomb. That Pokemon literally had no weakness back then yet its really hard to obtain

I’ve been liking your other videos so far, but. If game designers don’t take lore of the world into account, it’s a lesser game. Without lore, games become infinitely less interesting, and if a designer makes mechanics or encounters contrary to lore, players notice that and don’t tend to like it. Lore can be sufficient reason to design something

The other thing to consider is how legendary battles work in the original games. They're basically timed fights reliant on luck whether or not you catch the Pokemon or not. Either the legendary runs out of PP and kills itself or the legendary grows too powerful and defeats you. Slow Start basically increases the pressure in a way, giving you five turns of relative grace, and then after that you have to deal with Regigigas at full power. Though that explanation doesn't work for Platinum, and also there are far worse legendary fights for that (Azelf is far worse because of Nasty Plot).

The lore explanation can be dismissed with a simple question: "If Regigigas has Slow Start because it's an ancient Pokémon that hasn't been active in a long while, then what's the excuse for Groudon and Kyogre?" Also, Slow Start as an ability is likely primarily designed to put pressure on the player when they're trying to catch Regigigas before it gets its full stats rather than an ability the player is intended to work with.

17:09 I'm not sure if anyone else in the comments had mentioned this already but I want to make one quick correction. You were not required to have an entirely separate console (Game Boy Advance), just one of the Gen 3 games. The original DS and DS Lite included a slot at the bottom which allowed you to play GBA games and is also the method in which you would be able to transfer from Gen 3 to 4 in the first place. Now this doesn't completely negate the point you were making, but owning a GBA game is not as drastic of a 'paywall' as owning the console itself. Just wanted to clear that up. Really love your videos. I just finished watching the Cynthia/Volo ones.

Regigigas is an achievement point, not a playable cast member. Like, sure. I get it. In the same way that like, most eeveelutions are terrible, with mediocre stat spreads and horrible move pools. But it's still an achievement to get all of them, like a mini-catch-em-all mechanic. I can think of a few other pokemon like that, such as all the pikachu clones, some of the legendary trios, getting all the starters, and so on. Like, you have your "rpg tool" pokemon, your "achievement hunter" pokemon, and then the last list of "tournament battling" pokemon. That kinda sucks though.

I'd say the only thing that would make Regigigas get up fast is either a special variant that comes from ancient times or a special form (but we're WAY past that now that Mega Evolution has been ditched) that makes it go back to it's prime.

This is an interesting theory, it looks into interesting parts of game design, and is a good video overall. But I'm kinda doubtful of it. It seems incredibly unlikely to me that story and lore had *no* influence on the ability, though like with Mimikyu, the exact way it is implemented is indeed obviously up to the game design people. A big difference between Regigigas and the example of the Korok seeds is that there are three Regis, two games, and two consoles you need to collect, and 900+ Korok seeds. Game design-wise I think that it is safe to assume that there are 900+ Korok seeds so that you could still get the full benefit of Hestu's inventory upgrades, even if you missed one random little puzzle, which I think makes it a little hard to compare the two.

Learned that the regies were in Platinum, but requiered Regigigas to open their chambers. Least to say, teen me got pissed.

even though i am not satisfied (because of my simple-minded thinking of wanting my favourite guys to be powerful), i understand now. I accept the truth. I can finally rest.

18:18 OBJECTION! The Sidequest regarding Yancy and Curtis in Pokemon BW2 is more tedious, cryptic and time consuming (let alone getting those 50? calls for the final part of the event) then ever catching and transfering three golem guardians to a more modern version of a pokemon game and then having them all around to unlock their king. Thing is.. Regigigas reappeared so often that one would wonder if Slow Start should have been reworked at this point or his stats being adjusted, and from a gamedesign point, so that he isn't just some kinda goodie to catch and let him sit somewhere else while he slowly gets out of his chair.

As an adult replaying the Gen III and IV games, I found the hunt for the Titans in Ruby and the retrieval of Regigigas to be an exciting and engaging challenge. As a child, I gave up on trying to get the Titans and had my friend do it for me, and picking up Regigigas was an irritating anticlimax.

What I'm gleaning from this is the whole problem boils down to bad game design. If they didn't make the task of collecting the Regi in the first place so convoluted. If they didn't put the game on a different console in the first place. Then maybe the road taken to attain Regigigas wouldn't be so arduous and as a result you wouldn't need slow start at all for balance. IE the designers made a roundabout side quest so pointless they shot themselves in the foot and had to nuke this titan into the ground to prevent backlash.

I have to criticize some points you made in your video. For starters, you don‘t need a "Second System" to obtain the Regies in RSE. GBA games are playable on the DS. Even when you transfer the Regies from the GBA games to the DS games you just need one system. This is very unique for Pokémon, which usually always requires two systems to transfer Pokémon. Also I disagree with your point about how Regigigas has to have Slow Start so players who can‘t get it don‘t feel left out. There‘s a whole category of "feel left out if you don‘t physically attend our events"- Pokémon in Gen 4 and earlier, called mythical Pokémon. None of them have a detrimental ability like Regigigas, even though they definitely are even harder to obtain. Ironically, Regigigas himself was also distributed as event Pokémon multiple times. But in contrast to most other event Pokémon (which don‘t have bad abilities) Regigigas can be cought in game at least. Also you argued that now it is possible to obtain Regigigas in a single game, which you seconds later contradicted by not only mentioning that it‘s a Pokémon from a PAID DLC, but you also need to trade to get both. In DPP you also need to trade the Regies. You don‘t need to own anything, if somebody else can trade you the Regies. They can unlock Regigigas on multiple save files after all. I‘m mentioning this because I don’t think you‘ve made a fair comparison to the Sw/Sh event, because without friends who can trade you the other Regie you still need two Games, two DLCs, and either two Nintendo Switches or a Pokemon Home subscription.

I can see the reasoning behind making Regigigas a joke reward, but joke rewards are an incredibly awful thing to do. All because people are kids that does not mean they wouldn't have means to get that knowledge and/or help from a parent to figure some things out. Only for the reward for everything to be something that is a complete joke. If it's in a game for kids it is intended to at least be solved somehow by them. Otherwise why would it be there in the first place and not scrapped? A dev wouldn't put all of this time and effort into making how the regis were obtained if you were never supposed to obtain them. Stuff that you're not supposed to obtain that is in the game is called cut content. For those who never got Regigigas there was no harm in not getting it, half cause they didn't know it existed and if they did know it existed likely knew it was bad. And for those kids who did obtain it? Was just spitting in their face for their time they put in. As for the argument of "it has to be bad cause that's how it was before and it's iconic now". There are plenty of pokemon that got new additional abilities that made them incredibly strong and there are pokemon with iconic abilities for them that over a decade later of their existence got deleted or removed. The whole thing is just Gamefreak wanting to keep an old bad joke that stopped being funny the first time it was told going for year after year being oblivious to the fact that nobody ever found it funny while even going out of their way to implement it into a game with no abilities otherwise.

In doubles there are 3 ways to make Regigigas and Slaking broken/powerful to make up for their ability. Galarian Weezing with Neutalizing Gas is the most commonly known way because it was a popular strategy in Gen 8 competitive. The other good ways to fix their negative abilities is to use a Whimsicott with Worry Seed to change their ability to Insomnia which will not only take away the negative aspects of Regigigas and Slaking's negative abilities but also make them wake up faster from sleep. The other way is to use the move Entrainment, Pyroar can have Entrainment and the ability Moxie and Smeargle can use Entrainment and give his ability Moody

It's worth pointing out that Crown Tundra is still something that has to be paid for which, like before, would lead to a pay-to-win scenario if they gave it a better ability.

15:20 The original boxes instruction booklet came with a translation page for Braille, as well as a page explaining it. You could 100% figure it out if you just read the booklet.

After watching this and reading the comments, I do understand why the game designers at GF wanted to make Regigigas bad, but I can't help but think that they did it in such a rudimentary way. Like, yeah. I get that Regigias is purely for collection purposes only, but what's the point of giving it average stats for a legendary and then kneecapping it with an ability? Couldn't they have just made it weak to begin with? Did they want to trick people into thinking it's powerful for some reason? I don't really know. Just goes to show you that even if a game designer's intention is sound, it doesn't mean that the way they programmed it into the game would make as much sense.

About modern Regigigas not needing the crippling ability anymore but being stuck with it because of its identity I think the best thing would be to just make "Slow Start" less crippling Personally I would change "Slow Start" to just skip a turn each time he enters the field, it would be a nod to another crippling ability while being very balanced for PvP, it would be like a forced setup move for a normal pokemon, and on top of that it would also make the phrase "Regigigas can't get it going!" better since he would do literally nothing for a turn

I still think that in modern games they should buff regigigas by increasing his attack and speed by 50% or something like that so that he’s roughly usable before slow start deactivates and then it becomes insane afterwards

My guess as to what Regigigas is from a game design persctive was to be a super secret boss like Bahamut or Yozora or anything else like that.

seeing how ragefist keeps its power even after switching i see no reason slowstart cant do the same at this point

Initially, I was thinking that it was to put a timer challenge on the player to catch regigigas or face a powerful boss, but I only caught it Pokemon Pearl at level 70 and totally forgot that it was level 1 in Platinum. Also it was nice that GF allowed Regigigas to slowly break free of its Slow Start weaknesses by giving it Rest, Protect, and Substitute to allow it to actually stall out those turns instead of locking it out of those options entirely.

I think Regigigas is a DPS check. Slow Start's condition means you have five turns to: inflict a status, drop HP as close to 0 as you want, and make at least one catch attempt. If your team is too weak, you might can still catch it, but it will begin to sweep you. That's also the angle it poses competitively and vs NPC trainers. You have to get Regigigas to survive 5 turns, which means you need to prioritize defenses until Gigy can get jiggy with his foes.

A very interesting way to look at Regigigas, but for the last point, I think that with the addition of hidden abilities pokemon's game developers could have given Regigigas a new ability while still keeping its original weakening but iconic ability, while also tying into the theme of "Completion awards" since getting the item to make pokemon change to hidden abilities is fairly difficult, & would require someone who is as focused as to go through a Regi-hunt.

the nerf still can be 2/3 of his attack and speed and only 3 turns, wich is still annoying but not so detrimental

To give my answer as to what Regigigas was meant to be from a game design perspective, 2 answers come to mind: 1. to be a trophy and 2. to be a boss fight that gets harder after a set amount of time. It's a hard to get legendary, requiring solving puzzles in another game, catching specific Pokemon, transferring some of those Pokemon and then...whatever is required in DPPt to actually get Regigigas as I never bothered to and don't care to look up specifics. That being said, I feel the series has always had Pokemon like this. As far back as the gen 1 games, Mewtwo could only be acquired in the postgame and as such could only be used against other players unless you wanted to fight wild Pokemon or refight the E4 just with an even stronger Pokemon. And then there's Mew who could only be acquired at inperson events, not counting glitches. Even the generation that introduced Regigigas has Pokemon like this, a lot more actually. Loads of mythical Pokemon you could only get from events and Game Freak themselves put a limitation on these Pokemon. You couldn't use them at official VGC tournaments or even in the games Battle Frontiers. Not everyone can attend these events and get these Pokemon so they can't be used. They're just meant to be trophies. And yet none of them were purposely made to be bad. The boss fight answer works a bit better as prior to Regigigas, the only boss fights that would get harder over time would be Rival battles, Gym Leader battles and the E4 gauntlet and those were all notably trainer battles, not a wild Pokemon battle like Regigigas. The only wild Pokemon battle that could get harder over time are any with a Pokemon with a boosting move of some sort and that would all be up to chance if they choose to use the move. 5 turns is also plenty of time to take out Regigigas if that was your goal so really, it's only a boss fight that gets harder after a while under the assumption your goal is to catch it. Idk what it's moveset would be in DPPt but it's a normal type so I imagine a ghost, steel or rock type could handle even its post-Slow Start attacks just fine, especially if you brought healing items with you. It also has nothing to save it from status, namely sleep which would momentarily completely negate its attacks. Gen 7 added a more fleshed out way to make wild Pokemon fights harder over time with the totem Pokemon battles. I never finished PLA so idk what the deal with Regigigas there is. It wouldn't have to deal with the whole braile Regi trio puzzle shtick from RSE nor the transfer stuff. It could still be a boss fight that gets harder after some time but the game also had those golden guardian Pokemon who's actual name I forget. Regigigas at best seems like a gimmicky attempt at a boss fight that was kept terrible for...reasons. Tradition?