Rhyhorn, Rhydon, Rhyperior (SM)

A rhinoceros? That's so cool!

Location: Blush Mountain (Island Scan on Sunday)

Stats, Evolutions
Rhyhorn has high HP, Attack, and Defense for an unevolved Pokémon, but everything else is terrible. The biggest problem is that it has low speed and low special defense, which means that it can't do much against special attackers.

Rhydon still has the same stat distribution after evolving at 42, which is just a bit far but not bad. With those huge physical stats, it can take on most if not all physical attackers, and those high HP make it quite beefy. It's the Pokémon that benefits from the Eviolite the most, reaching oh-my-freaking-god defense and usable special defense that despite being low it's helped by its high HP. Sadly, Rhydon can't evolve into Rhyperior until the postgame, because you can't find the Protector and trade it with it until the post-game, but its stats are not bad so it doesn't matter, unlike that one seahorse.

Movepool, Abilities, Typing
Its unique move is Skull Bash. It has a lot of raw power, but it requires a turn to charge. It's very good for physical attackers since it increases its physical defense once selected, and it hits very hard once it stops charging. The best it also has is Chip Away, which ignores defense changes on the opponent, and Rock Blast, which is one of those multi-hit moves. At level 33, it gets Drill Run, an already powerful ground-type move with an increased chance of a crit. Then it gets Stone Edge at 41, which is rather inaccurate but hits very hard.

Upon evolving, it gets Hammer Arm, which allows it to stand up to Steel and Ice types due to being a fighting-type attack. It decreases its speed, but this thing won't be missing any speed anyway. Then it gets Earthquake at 48 and finally Megahorn at 55 for some bug-type inaccurate coverage.

It gets some coverage via TMs, but don't teach it special moves unless you purposely want it to be bad. Smack Down will hit them birds kinda hard and ready to be finished by a ground move like Drill Run, Brick Break is a less risky and weaker Hammer Arm, Payback makes use of its awfully low speed, and also worth mentioning is Rock Slide for STAB and Poison Jab for coverage. Definitely teach it Swords Dance.

Both of its abilities are pretty much useless. Lightning Rod is redundant considering that it's already immune to electric type attacks, and Rock Head is useless because the only recoil move that it gets is Take Down, which is awful.

Its Ground/Rock typing is amazing offensively. It hits for effective and super effective damage to all but exactly 4 Pokémon, none of which are found in Alola! Defensively, it's not that good. It's weak to 6 types, two of which are 4x weaknesses and special focused, and another two of which it's supposed to be strong against. I'm actually tempted to say it's good defensively, though, because it harshly punishes the things it's strong against. Immunity to electric-types, 1/4x effectiveness to poison-types, 1/2x effectiveness to flying-types...

Important Battles
Sadly, you won't get to use it a lot. It's bad for Totem Mimikyu, and it needs to evolve and get Hammer Arm to be good against Nanu. Hapu, Kommo-o and Hala make it suffer a lot, but then it's terrific in the rest of the league, having an advantage against Olivia, Kahili and Kukui but doing badly against Acerola.

Conclusion
It's slow as molasses and it's also lacking in special defense, as well as having many, many weaknesses, but it makes up for it with sheer, raw physical power alone, as well as being able to take quite the physical beating unlike bricks like Rampardos and Victreebel and to deliver it back. The raw power part in particular is amazing, as it gets nothing but hard-hitting moves and its two STAB types can cover the rest of the game by themselves. It's also the biggest beneficiary from the Eviolite, as you will never feel the feel to evolve it (it doesn't fully evolve until the postgame) and it makes its special defense usable and its physical defense huge, and it also punishes the things it's strong against very harshly. The worst thing is that you won't be able to use it as much as you'd want to, as well as the aforementioned issues, the fact that its abilities are useless (not that it matters anyway), and that it takes a bit to evolve, but this rhino is just a notch weaker than its Ruby Pokédex entry seems to imply:

"Rhydon's horn can crush even uncut diamonds. One sweeping blow of its tail can topple a building. This Pokémon's hide is extremely tough. Even direct cannon hits don't leave a scratch."

It makes it seem like an unstoppable force of nature, but whoever wrote the Pokédex didn't realize that it can keel over to many things, including squirts of water and sprouts of grass. Wow. It's not like everyone has a crippling weakness anyway.

Rating: 73%