Who's your favorite rival character? Whose team was the best? What makes a good rival team? Favorite little gimmicks? Improvements that should've been made to characters and teams? How do you think Hau and the unchosen protag will shape up? If you had to make yourself a personal rival character(s), what would their team(s) be?
>>26773297
Johto and Unova did it the best.
Rival-wise, Silver had a nice characterization and a good arc in which he became a nice person. So did Hugh, Cheren, N and Bianca. All of them acheived thier goals, or realised that they werent really as invested in thier goals as they thought.
Companion-wise, Ethan/Lyra were cute, and helpful. They didnt make you battle them even though battling wasnt thier interest (Like XY did repeatedly) and they werent getting constantly BTFO by thier family like Dawn/Lucas.
barry had a good team, but was annoying. Also, his idol rejected him, he never got good enough to face his Dad in the frontier and never became worthy to step inside the Fight Area cafe to hang with gym leaders. Why do people like him lol
Gary was fine, but overrated. And he's a friend like most other rivals.
ORAS rival shipping seemed excessive compared to HGSS. A small thing with Lyra's grandparents saying you look cute together or something. That's fine. Not..whatever ORAS did. Wally is great.
FUCK KALOS
>>26773364
>Gary a friend.
Into the trash your opinion goes.
>>26773378
what was he then?
>>26773364
>HGSS Silver retcon into a draco with leather pants with Giovanni as dad
lol no
>>26773297
Loved Gary in yellow being given a Sandslash to counter Pikachu along side the starter countering Eevee and the accompanying Elec/Fire/Water rotation. I really just love the adapted team gimmick, and Barry's seemed to handle it the best. Honestly I like the idea of Calem/Serena's team: Fairy, Dark, Dragon, Psychic(with differing genders) plus two sets of adapted mon in the Eevee and starters, but I just wish they'd held up better in battle.
It'd be neat, now that they've been acknowledging the metagame a little more in basic design, to have a rival that adapts to certain stat distributions. It'd be neat to have a rival that always has a wall, but whose walling pokemon changes depending on what the highest Atk or Sp.Att stat on your team is during a certain encounter. Like if maybe the 2nd encounter adds a new mon to their team, and ifthe highest Atk stat in your team is greater than the highest Sp.Att stat in your team at the time, then the pokemon the rival gains is a Physical wall, or vice versa.
>>26773297
Kinda weird that with all the growing number of pokemon available from game to game, that there are a few that have really disproportionately appeared in rival teams
>Magneton
>Roselia
>Alakazam
>Heracross
>Altaria
>Delcatty
the monkeys and Eevees seem like they should get sort of a pass for having a gimmick to incentivize them being in there, but still... And it took a shockingly long time for them to just give up on shoehorning in the regional route1 bird.