are you going to try to argue or even talk about your own likes and preferences on pokemon design philosophy or are you just going to be marvel quippy about random things my guy
i don't know if it's just your first day on the internet and you're trying to fit in or something, but somebody responding derisively and dismissively to something you say on a message board is not "marvel quipping". what you read as "quipping about random things" was itself probably the most efficient rebuttal to your post when paired with the quoted section it is a direct and clear critique of. short and sweet gets the point across, but i can belabor the obvious if you really need me to.
lol why are you acting like saying theyre filler is insane. gen 5 was filled with pokemon that exist just because the team realized they needed a pokemon in xyz niche and they couldn't pull from their old library. Basculin for example exists because they forgot to add more water pokemon, so they just scribbled a fish and threw it into the game, and I'm saying this as one of the like 4 basculin fans that existed before basculegion came around.
ignoring the weird posturing as a "fan" of a pokemon you clearly have some weird contempt for (in order to make the bizarre assessment of it seem more credible because "even basculin fans think it's filler!!"), realizing you made a pokemon game with exactly 1 fish in it (a giant pink sunfish) is a pretty sensible reason to take care to correct that. HOWEVER, there is reason to believe that similar to the "iwata's compression made room to fit kanto in GS!!" misinformation pokemon fans love to unwittingly parrot, the supposed sugimori interview describing basculin as a "late addition" is either entirely false, or basculin's supposed "lateness" is overstated by readers creating narratives about it over the years. this is because basculin is already present in development builds of the game before the overwhelming majority of the game's new pokemon even had their designs finalized, with basculin appearing in a finalized state around the same time as most other pokemon (and even before some final pokemon even appear for the first time at all.) assuming sugimori was being honest, it being a late addition was likely not referring to or suggesting that it was added at the last second, but possibly that they realized during the planning stages that they only had one fish in the whole game and made sure to have another one.
They needed a cacti design for the desert but cacnea was out of question, so maractus was made.
this is the first of many times i'm going to have to say this because you did this over and over, but cacturne and maractus are very obviously different pokemon. they are not similar in appearance, and do not play the same. they are different types, get different moves and tools, have differently paced evolutions (given one doesn't evolve at all), have different abilities, and most importantly, have very obviously different demeanors and personalities. calling the two "redundant" is, ironically, as "shallow" an observation as it gets. it'd be a bit like saying pidgeotto and hoothoot are redundant, because it requires doing everything you can to ignore points of distinction between the two to the point of being borderline comical.
this doesnt even count the amount of intentional concept redos of gen 1 either: gigalith is golem, swoobat is golbat, foongus is voltotb, conkeldurr is machamp, bouffalant is tauros, audino is chansey, they even created a second man made legendary experiment in genesect lol
"gigalith is golem" is essentially entirely defining these pokemon by having trade evolutions. roggenrola and geodude do not play the same. they have different move distribution throughout the game (a notable example being that roggenrola line can't explode for almost the entire game, while the geodude line is frequently the introduction to selfdestruct as a move outright), different typings, and probably most importantly radically different body plans at all stages of evolution.
"swoobat is golbat" is somehow not the most laughable comparison on this list, but it's close. swoobat is a psychic type. golbat is a poison type. swoobat is specially-oriented. golbat is physically-oriented. they're both bats, but they look nothing alike and are wildly different takes on the idea of what a "bat pokemon" would look like.
"foongus is voltorb." two things serving a similar overworld mechanical role, especially when said mechanical role is the RPG mainstay of "chest mimic", while also being as different from one another as they possibly could be outside of this "chest mimic" status takes the cake. voltorb is an extremely fast electric type who is most known for exploding. foongus is an extremely slow grass/poison type known for being tanky and its potent status inflictions alongside that.
"conkeldurr is machamp." see gigalith in so far as "it's machamp because uhh they're both fighting type trade evos" while ignoring what the monster actually looks or acts like. the timburr line especially sets itself apart from machop especially due to its moonlighting as a rock type by way of being spoonfed a good rock-type move at every stage of the game, more consistently than some actual rock types were historically. and that's ignoring the other differences in fighting type tools between the two lines.
"bouffalant is tauros." short of really, really stupid ideas like making it a fighting type (i sure hope they never did that eventually), there isn't really a type a bull has any reason to be other than normal. similarities to tauros, again, are pretty superficial given that the two pokemon play completely differently from one another. they're similar in that they are based on similar animals and... that's it!
"audino is chansey" if chansey were a rare pokemon found in every location in the game, worked completely differently, and looked completely different. if anything, chansey was retroactively made into your standard for an "intentional concept redo of gen 5" by way of LGPE giving it an audino-like rare presence in most locations in the game. it's a "redundant" "redo" in that they're superficially similar but mechanically completely different. that's good enough, right?
"a second man made legendary experiment in genesect lol"
to be clear, we are comparing a robot insect with a laser cannon to a genetic abomination progenitor cat thing. all of the above apply here, again. the two are only similar in so far as they were (through completely different means and with completely different backgrounds) organisms who are a product of human science. you might as well be calling lunala a ripoff of yveltal at this point with the kind of monkey d. luffy reaching we're doing here today.
personally, i don't like this kind of design because it created a lot of redundant, shallow pokemon. The fact that newer gens are willing to just fill a niche with an existing mon needs that they dont have to waste design resources in creating 130+ creatures where many are unimpressive, and instead can put their resources at actually researching and exploring untapped niches or expanding the existing ones in properly interesting ways. its why alolas dex is the best of the franchise
if you want my design philosophy, no regional pokedex with more than 200 pokemon in it can be called "the best of the franchise," much less "good" because they are so critically vulnerable to bloat for the sake of bloat. this becomes very evident when you actually get down to the nitty gritty of designing the game, and is only really perpetuated by modern title releases
and mediocre romhacks through a combination of the developers at game freak being washed beyond saving and the franchise-trajectory-altering backlash black & white received for having a roster of monsters that was actually entirely unique to the first games to take place outside of japan. it gave the unova region a clear identity, and the proliferation of essentially every pokemon having no real location it is indigenous to due to widespread homogenization of regional pokedexes has largely left the franchise running in safe mode for over a decade now.
now, to give you an idea how obviously misguided your weird, largely baseless idea of how redundancies in pokemon design goes, i will apply your "logic" to sun and moon (this can be done to essentially anything you want if you are shameless enough to be infinitely reductive).
rowlet is hoothoot. litten is meowth. popplio is seel. pikipek is spearow. yungoos is zigzagoon. a-rattata is rattata (were they even trying???) grubbin is sewaddle. crabrawler is corphish. oricorio is rotom (yes, this is actually the level of comparison you have made.) cutiefly is combee. rockruff is burmy. wishiwashi is zen mode darmanitan. mareanie is tentacool. mudbray is ponyta. dewpider is surskit. fomantis is scyther. morelull is shroomish. salandit is also combee. stufful is teddiursa. bounsweet is hoppip. comfey is klefki. oranguru is slowking. passimian is mienfoo. wimpod is kabuto. sandygast is hippopotas. pyukumuku is corsola. silvally is arceus. minior is solrock. komala is abra. turtonator is torkoal. togedemaru is pachirisu. mimikyu is misdreavus. bruxish is basculin. drampa is altaria. dhelmise is ferrothorn. jangmo-o is axew. the tapus are the lake trio. cosmog is also abra.
are all of these stupid comparisons on my part? yes, intentionally so. is putting wigs on a dugtrio and pretending that makes it a steel type "properly interesting", especially more so than just making an entirely new design for a mole pokemon like excadrill? well, you tell me.
on second thought, if you're going to rush to "um actually the hair is made of metal" like that justifies anything maybe you shouldn't tell me.
