Reimu is the generalist starter, with a slight emphasis towards her physical stats and a decent, if somewhat type-limited learnset with good access to defensive and support moves. She-rather wierdly for a starter-is a normal type, picking up flying after evolving, and has a rather nice TM learnset, varying from Psychic to Rock Tomb to Toxic.
But really, who uses TMs?
Marisa is the sweeper of the three, built around Special Attack and Speed and boasting a rather varied learnset-Thief, Swift, Thunder Bolt and even Dragon Meteor, just to name a few. (N.B. Dragon Meteor would have been quite useful for Lance, given that there are about two dragon types in the entire game.) On top of that, there are a few versions (this one is not one, I don't think) where she can be evolved into Last Word Marisa, who honestly has a Sp. Atk so high it should be considered a war crime. However, her typing is somewhat unfortunate-pure Electric, picking up Fire type in her final evolution, which, combined with a base HP stat that never goes above 80, makes her a little unsuitable for a Nuzlocke. (Funnily enough though, this gives her a type advantage against
both of the other starters.)
Sakuya is the defensive starter-and she does that well, with even her starting form having a base of 60 in both of her defenses and 75 base HP (Umad, Marisa?)
and becoming Ice/Steel after evolving. Her initial attack power is kind of a letdown (the fact I beat Renko's starter with ONE HP left attests to that), and she doesn't tank especially well in her early levels (find a Pokemon who does, why don't you...), but I'm not kidding when I say anything without Fire or Fighting type moves will struggle to even make a dent in the Perfect and Elegant Maid after she evolves. And her moveset, although mainly Ice and Steel, packs a few neat tricks... She does start as a pure ice type though, so I may need to evolve her before trying to take on Brock.
First off, let me summarize my thoughts on catching Alice:
I have no clue what the precise encounter rate on Alice is, but it is
low. Anyway. Alice is a Special stat... specialist. She presents decent stats across the board (her EX form, for example, has all but two of her base stats between 100 and 90), but her Special Attack and Defence are great. (80 base Sp. Atk in her 1st evolution? Nice.) She is a Psychic type-which is pretty neat this early on, as one or two of Brock's Touhous are packing Fighting/whatever types, and gains an Ice typing after she evolves. At this rate, though, I'll really need something to counter Fire types soon-though from playing Touhoumon Blue, those folks seem kind of rare. I have no idea what her abilities, Doll Wall and Doll Master, do-nor do I know which one she has, seeing as my savestate is set at the nickname screen-and although her learnset seems pretty neat, I don't really know what some of these actually do. (As for Artful Sacrifice, however, I have a very good idea as to what
it does...)