As the Pokémon world continues to expand with each generation, we’ve watched plenty of flashy new moves enter the scene while some of our go-to favorites disappeared altogether. For the infamous Hidden Power, it was the latter—but maybe it was for the better.
Prior to Gen VIII, Hidden Power was a very unique attack that was commonly added onto competitive movesets for type coverage. Its type depended on each individual Pokémon’s IVs, meaning you could technically breed your Pokémon to have a specific Hidden Power type that best suited it. As complicated and annoying as it sounds, it essentially allowed any Pokémon to have a reliable attack in whatever type they wanted.
In a July 12 Reddit thread, Pokémon fans discussed the removal of Hidden Power starting in Gen VIII. Now that we’re in Gen IX, everyone has had some time to process the loss and appreciate what we might’ve gained in exchange.
While they might have initially been upset, players pointed out a lot of good reasons why Hidden Power was an issue. Perhaps Hidden Power’s biggest flaw was that it heavily favored special attackers as a special move from Gen IV to VII. For the most part, physical attackers couldn’t really take advantage of Hidden Power’s type coverage since special wasn’t their strong suit.
Related: Shiny Pokémon can spawn out of bounds because Scarlet and Violet is still broken
On the flip side, Hidden Power really hurt Pokémon with quad-weaknesses. For example, you’d think the Dragon/Ground-type Garchomp would be able to wall an Electric type like Jolteon. But a Jolteon with Hidden Power Ice could suddenly hit Garchomp for 4x super-effective damage. In fact, any special attacker with Hidden Power Ice would be able to do massive damage to the poor Garchomp. And you best believe Ice was one of the most common Hidden Power types back in the day alongside Fire and Grass.
A lot of players also brought up Gen IX’s Tera Blast in the discussion, comparing it to Hidden Power. While it’s not a substitute, Tera Blast similarly gives any Pokémon a reliable attack of whatever type they want, though it has to be the same type as the Pokémon’s Tera and they must be Terastallized. And unlike Hidden Power, Tera Blast can be either physical or special, based on the user’s higher offensive stat.
Nowadays, we might see Kingambit using Fire Tera Blast or Dragonite using Flying Tera Blast similar to how Jolteon ran Hidden Power Ice and Roserade ran Hidden Power Fire. Times have certainly changed since the days of Hidden Power, but players are always adapting and finding ways to keep the battles exciting.
