Pokemon Rejuvenation Starter Tier List — Community Opinion, V14

How This Tier List Is Judged

A useful tier list is only as good as its criteria. The community ranks starters on five axes, in roughly this order of importance:

1. Early-game strength — how well the starter performs from Level 5 through the first three chapters, including the Chapter 1 gym fight against Venam.
2. Gym and boss coverage — how often the starter's typing helps against the 18 gym leaders and story bosses, not just one or two.
3. Abilities that change the game — Protean, Libero, Speed Boost and similar tools that give free type flexibility or setup.
4. Late-game potential — final evolution performance, Crest support (for example the wiki-documented Samurott Crest) and Mega Evolution options.
5. Flexibility — how many team roles the line can fill, which matters in a game full of double battles and field effects.

Notice what is not on the list: raw stats alone. In Rejuvenation, a Pokémon with an average stat line but a great ability and coverage often outperforms a min-maxed one, because field effects and boss gimmicks reward adaptability.

The Starter Tier List Table

Representative Pokémon per tier, with the community's stated reasons. Starters not named in a tier still fall somewhere nearby — the full 25-starter comparison with notes is on the starters page.

Tier	Representative starters	Why they land here
S Top picks	Froakie, Torchic, Scorbunny	Protean (Froakie) and Libero (Scorbunny) give near-perfect type flexibility from the first route; Torchic's Speed Boost turns Blaziken into a reliable sweeper. These three dominate most community "best starter" threads.
A Strong	Chimchar, Cyndaquil, Mudkip, Oshawott, Eevee, Litten	Great abilities and coverage with minor caveats: Infernape and Typhlosion are fast and strong, Swampert walls the early Poison gym, Samurott has a documented Crest payoff, and Eevee's eight evolutions cover any role.
B Solid	Charmander, Treecko, Rowlet, Piplup, Popplio, Totodile, Snivy, Grookey	Perfectly viable with good niches — Decidueye's Grass/Ghost typing, Primarina's Fairy coverage, Empoleon's Steel defense — but each needs a little more team support to shine across all 16 chapters.
C Situational	Bulbasaur, Squirtle, Turtwig, Tepig, Fennekin, Sobble, Chespin, Chikorita	Workable, but with a slower early game or coverage that struggles against several gyms. Chikorita is the most common pick for the bottom spot in community polls, usually for Meganium's limited coverage.

Tier placements are a summary of community opinion as of V14 — no official data exists, and individual players will rank these differently. Ability and Crest facts are from the game and the official wiki.

Starter Recommendations by Play Style

Rather than a straight ranking, many players pick their starter by how they like to play. These recommendations reuse the same reasoning as the tier table above — no new claims, just matched to play styles:

Play style	Recommended starter	Why it fits
New player / first run	Mudkip	Swampert walls the early Poison gym so comfortably that many guides recommend Mudkip to new players outright — the most forgiving early game on the list.
Optimizer / wants the strongest pick	Froakie, Torchic, Scorbunny	The S-tier trio: Protean and Libero give near-perfect type flexibility, and Speed Boost turns Blaziken into a reliable sweeper — the community's most common "best starter" answers.
Wants one flexible team member	Eevee	Eight evolutions cover any role your team is missing, which matters in a game full of double battles and field effects. Requires the eeveepls password and a bit of planning.
Likes planning a late-game payoff	Oshawott	Samurott has a documented Crest payoff (Chapter 9 era) that adds Fighting-type STAB and makes slicing moves critical — a reward for sticking with it.
Wants speed and offense early	Chimchar, Cyndaquil	Infernape and Typhlosion are fast and strong with minor defensive caveats early on — aggressive players get the most out of them.
Plays for story / favorite Pokémon	Chikorita or any favorite	Every starter can beat the game, and the whole National Dex is catchable — your starter is a head start, not a commitment. Play the Pokémon you like first.

All recommendations above are derived from the tier table and the starters guide on this site — same facts, organized by play style instead of rank.

Reading the Tiers: What Actually Changes Your Run

The gap between S-tier and C-tier is much smaller than it looks. Here is what the tiers really tell you:

• S-tier picks smooth the early game. Protean and Libero mean you never hit a route where your starter is dead weight. That is a real quality-of-life win in Chapters 1–3.
• A-tier picks pay off later. Oshawott's Crest and Eevee's evolution flexibility reward planning, not just raw power.
• B and C tiers need a plan. If you pick Chikorita or Chespin, budget a second team slot for coverage early on. The game is still completely beatable — you just think about team building a bit more.
• Your starter is not your team. Rejuvenation gives you access to a huge National Dex, so the tier list measures your opening hand, not your whole deck. Most players replace or bench their starter at some point.

Tier-by-Tier Breakdown

Here is the reasoning behind each tier in more detail, so you can weigh it against your own play style:

S-Tier: the "best starter" debate winners

Froakie, Torchic and Scorbunny keep appearing at the top of community "best starter" threads because their abilities are strong at every stage of the game. Protean and Libero effectively give the Pokémon the best attacking type for every situation — in a game with 18 gyms and rotating field effects, that flexibility saves constant team patching. Speed Boost does something different but equally valuable: it turns Blaziken into a reliable late-game sweeper without needing setup turns. The trade-off is that these three are popular, so you will meet plenty of them on rival teams — but that never hurts your own run.

A-Tier: strong with a plan

A-tier picks are almost as flexible but usually need one piece of planning. Chimchar and Cyndaquil bring great speed and coverage with slightly fragile defenses early on. Mudkip answers the Chapter 1 Poison gym so comfortably that many guides recommend it to new players outright. Oshawott's payoff is documented rather than theoretical — the wiki lists a Samurott Crest (Chapter 9 era) that adds Fighting-type STAB and makes slicing moves critical hits. Eevee sits here because of raw flexibility: eight evolutions mean it can become whatever your team lacks, provided you are willing to wait and plan the evolution.

B-Tier: solid niches

B-tier starters are perfectly good partners with a defined niche. Decidueye's Grass/Ghost typing gives it unique switch-in options mid-game; Primarina's Fairy typing pays off against late-game Dragon and Dark bosses; Empoleon's Steel defense trivializes Poison attacks. The reason they do not rank higher is that their niche needs team support — if your other five slots do not cover their weaknesses, you will feel it in specific gym fights.

C-Tier: workable, slower

C-tier is not "bad" — it is "requires more thought". Bulbasaur, Squirtle, Turtwig, Tepig, Fennekin, Sobble, Chespin and Chikorita all beat the game, but each has a rougher early game or a coverage gap against several gyms. Chikorita is the perennial bottom pick in community polls because Meganium's movepool struggles to answer the leaders you meet around Goldenleaf Town and beyond. If you love one of these, budget a second team slot for coverage in Chapters 1–3 and you will not notice the difference by the mid-game.

Crests Break the Tiers — a Full Ordering, and Where It Disagrees

The tiers above are a summary of general sentiment, which is exactly why they are hard to act on: "community opinion" does not tell you why one starter beats another. So I went through a creator who ranked every starter from worst to best and explained each placement — Mister Ecks, Starters YOU Should Pick in Pokemon Rejuvenation (V13) — and compared his conclusions with the criteria used on this page.

His stated criteria are worth knowing, because they are stricter than a stats comparison. He scores each starter on four things: availability, where you actually use it, type advantage against the gyms, and movepool including reliance on TMs, plus its abilities and how many distinct niches it fills. He keeps Reborn and Rejuvenation as two separate lists — which turns out to matter enormously.

He also splits the whole roster into three bands rather than one ranking, and this is the most useful part of his framing:

Crests are the single biggest reason these rankings move. Several starters are deliberately balanced around an item that changes their typing or gives them an early move, so a list that ignores Crests will be wrong for Rejuvenation specifically:

Beyond Crests, he flags a handful of decisions that change a starter's value more than its tier does:

• Do not evolve Treecko early. It learns Giga Drain at Level 21, so holding off gets you the better move sooner. Its Unburden ability plus terrain seeds is what makes it good.
• Do not evolve Snivy early either — staying unevolved means learning Leaf Storm earlier, after which it carries both singles and doubles.
• Chikorita sets dual screens by level-up (Light Screen and Reflect) and Light Clay is available early, which is why it outranks its reputation.
• Grookey's Grassy Surge sets grassy terrain, and Coil's effect is doubled while that terrain is up — he recommends Coil plus Grassy Surge specifically.
• Sobble is his beginner pick: good learnset, good stats, a smooth curve, and Scope Lens is available very early to pair with Sniper.
• Rowlet becomes a slow pivot — early Ghost typing plus U-turn lets you bring in a frail fast attacker safely.

This ordering is one creator's judgement as of V13, not an official or measured ranking, and it is presented as a second opinion rather than a correction of the table above. Where he compared games, note that Bulbasaur behaves differently in each: in Reborn it can solo singles battles through Sleep Powder, Growth and Nature Power in sun, but Rejuvenation's version lacks Nature Power, which is a large part of why it sits lower here. Pokémon names in his narration were corrected against his own chapter list, since auto-generated captions render several of them phonetically. Confirm current-version Crest behaviour in-game before building a run around one.