[oceansky]

In competitive Pokémon there are usually different tiers of which Pokémon are accepted. In most legendaries are limited or fully banned.

For the mainline games it usually does not matter. You can beat it with any single Pokémon pretty much.

[666lumberjack]

The median legendary pokemon in any given generation is typically quite mediocre in terms of viability/power, so I'm not sure it's quite correct to say that most tiers are free of legendaries. Even in ZU, the lowest possible tier, you have Pokemon like Mesprit, Regirock and Articuno kicking around in spite of their relatively high stats.

It is completely true to say that the so-called 'box legendaries' specifically - with base stat totals in the 670-700 range - tend to be excellent Pokemon and with rare exceptions are banned from 'standard' formats for being overcentralizing.

[oceansky]

I did say "free or restricted" because of that. Like VGC itself limiting to one or two box art legendary.

[scott_w]

If anyone wants to see an example of this, JRose11 on YouTube is doing exactly this for Pokemon Red/Blue and putting a list together of completion times. It’s been a multi year project but I’d totally recommend starting at the beginning and losing yourself in the rabbit hole.

He also does some bad Pokemon challenges to see if it’s possible to finish with, say, a Weedle (mostly no).