#21 - #22: Spearow & Fearow

Official art of Spearow.

Yeah, what is there to say about Spearow? Nothing much, to be honest, except that it's another of so many Pidgey clones. Well, it's not exactly a clone, but these normal- and flying-type bird Pokémon are nothing short of unimaginative, to say the least. That does not necessarily mean that they shouldn't be existing or that they're bad. On the contrary, there are some awesome 'common' normal/flying-type bird Pokémon. For example, Staraptor's shtick is the fighting-type move Close Combat and with its crazy attack stat it can pull it off quite well, while Talonflame's primary typing isn't even the normal type anymore, even though its most basic form - Fletchling - certainly is. Spearow and Fearow, on the other hand, aren't all that amazing. Their designs are pretty nice, nicely fitting in into their flavor (vicious prey birds), but that's pretty much it. There is absolutely nothing Fearow can do that other birds of later generations cannot. And most of the time, those other birds are better at it, too (with the notable exception of Unfezant, but I'll get to that one much, much later). Well, Fearow can fly for an entire day without landing due to its large wings and tremendous stamina, but I'm sure there are some real-life birds who can pull that off as well.

Fearow and Ho-Oh share quite a few features: the long necks, the thin faces, the
'mohawks', the talons, the bushy tails and their feather pattern are what they have
in common.

One thing that roams around the Internet is the suggestion that Fearow should somehow evolve into the legendary Pokémon Ho-Oh. I can't even blame the people who argue that it should, because Ho-Oh is basically a more extravagant and 'fabulous' form of Fearow, as they share quite a few features. Above image sums it up pretty well, even though it might be a little bit offensive towards the LGBTQ community. (I am gay as well, but this definitely made me chuckle, so...) By the way, I'm pretty sure most people, including me, will continue to see Ho-Oh as a stand-alone legendary Pokémon. That's what we're all used to, anyway.

Official Ken Sugimori art of Fearow.

But the big question is whether or not Fearow is capable for Pokémon battles, right? Yeah, so is it a good Pokémon? Well, it is... and at the same time it isn't. Fearow is moderately strong, as its attack is an acceptable 90, and with a base speed stat of 100 it is even faster than it is strong, but nobody in their right mind would use it in competitive battling. It is decent for in-game purposes, as it learns just enough moves to fill in a decent moveset: Drill Run, Drill Peck or Fly, and Return are must-haves. The weird thing is that it cannot learn the flying-type move Brave Bird in any way, so you'll be stuck with Drill Peck or the two-turn move Fly. Drill Run is nice ground-type coverage for electric types that comes its way, while Return hits hard for STAB (same type attack bonus) damage. The remaining spot could be filled in by either U-Turn or Steel Wing. The latter covers fairy types and, more importantly, ice and rock types as well, while U-Turn (which is a bug-type move) only covers grass, psychic and dark. Grass should be covered by Drill Peck, and Fearow is better off using Return against dark and psychic types, anyway. The thing with Fearow is that its defenses are complete and utter crap; it can live one hit, maybe two, but that's pretty much it.

I once used a Fearow in a playthrough and I was all but satisfied with it. I can't say I had good experiences with this Pokémon, but maybe I just had a Fearow with bad attack IVs (a Pokémon's invidual values that indicate how well a Pokémon's stats grow; my Fearow's attack stat didn't even surpass 100 at level 50). I would like to give it a bad rating because of that, but that wouldn't be entirely fair, because I don't dislike Fearow in any way. On the contrary, I actually like its design well enough to give it a 4-star rating.

Rating: 4/5