On top of all this, the thing that got me to think this the most is that in a game that introduced a bunch of new, unique NPCs somehow Juan's overworld sprite is the only one that is just an edit of someone else's. & that person was steven. It has completely different hair from Juan's actual design, & noticeably lacking the distinctive coat.
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(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon
- Thread starter BriarRose
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The solution:
Replace Tate/Liza with Juan, flesh Juan out and have Wallace as the 8th gym leader and Champion
In general there's a bunch of signs that Emerald's development was insanely slapdash, namely the fact it has all sorts of glitches RS never had. I would honestly be more surprised if it came out that Wallace had been a carefully considered change with all sorts of thematic motivation instead of, like R_N said, a last minute whim for the sake of puffing up the changelog
Personally when I think "alternate Hoenn champion candidates" Wally is the first character to come to mind
Personally when I think "alternate Hoenn champion candidates" Wally is the first character to come to mind
Wallace just fucking books it to Evergrande city after you beat him and speedruns the elite four while you're still making your way through victory road
Many interpret "Too much water" as criticism. I choose to interpret it as A Challenge
Tbf, he was meant to be the Mossdeep Gym Leader in dev with the Bug/Psychic rendition of the scrapped Spider Lily mon, Ryllidy...
Tate and Liza replaced that, so I guess he went turbo mode
idk if this goes here or unpopular opinions but man why does wally exist. he has like 15 minutes of screentime and half of that is being the catching tutorial. after that, we only see him in mauville, we kick his ass and then he goes to petalburg and stops existing as a character, until the victory road where i guess hes pretty much cured. his team is boring, you beat his ass and then he is never a character again.
the remake tries to do something more with him, except its fucking worse because apparently he gets a mega stone and you just never get to know why beyond "uuuuh hes a boss character for the victory road". the new additions in oras are "you can see him get badges if you tune in the tv", which makes it clear the devs knew it was silly he just stops being relevant and you dont get to see any of his character growth, but either didnt want to or didnt have time to develop him so you get this. and then he gets bullied in the delta episode, you get his keystone back and he stops being relevant once again. Why does this quarter of a character exist. Why are the rse rivals so dogshit
the remake tries to do something more with him, except its fucking worse because apparently he gets a mega stone and you just never get to know why beyond "uuuuh hes a boss character for the victory road". the new additions in oras are "you can see him get badges if you tune in the tv", which makes it clear the devs knew it was silly he just stops being relevant and you dont get to see any of his character growth, but either didnt want to or didnt have time to develop him so you get this. and then he gets bullied in the delta episode, you get his keystone back and he stops being relevant once again. Why does this quarter of a character exist. Why are the rse rivals so dogshit
Which is part of what's confusing to me. Moving Steven makes perfect sense, and gets you both a postgame battle and a surprise new champion. But why not just move him, leave Wallace where he is, and then drop a new character into the Champion slot? Adding Juan to the mix is the part that really confuses me.
Wally would be the easiest if they were rushed(replace his VR battle with Brendan/May). Or just someone new we haven't met, you could easily put together either a multitype team or a Champion focused on an unused type with the same effort as they put into Juan.
I think the plan was to do dual rivals, and I like that they're not just "You're starting out at the same time as TWO people" the way later generations did. Brendan/May and Wally have different roles in your story and come into your life in different ways. But they definitely didn't have enough space in the story for two rivals and that leaves both of them somewhat half-baked.
I guess I should be posting this in the Unpopular Opinions at this point, but I like Juan! I don't see him as any more 'pointless' than any other character. I also like Wallace's ascension to Champion: it provides a nice little "oh?" moment for players who've already completed Ruby or Sapphire (without requiring that context to make sense) and it creates a fitting watery capstone for Hoenn as a region.
Re: Wally, I'm a little torn. I understand and relate to people who just want as many boss battles as possible, but Wally's little arc becomes way more stock-standard if he's a regular presence. On replay, you always just want more challenges to plan for, but I think when you're a dumb little kid playing for the first time the surprise makes up for the sparseness.
Re: Wally, I'm a little torn. I understand and relate to people who just want as many boss battles as possible, but Wally's little arc becomes way more stock-standard if he's a regular presence. On replay, you always just want more challenges to plan for, but I think when you're a dumb little kid playing for the first time the surprise makes up for the sparseness.
Honestly, it should've been Brendan/May you fight in Victory Road
Hated that they never fully evolved their starter in RSE
Unrelated, Em wtf
Torkoal!? This early!?
None of the other fights has it, and it's strictly if you use Treecko as Brendan. If you use May it's a Lotad
Wally suffers from the scrapped plans of making him the Mossdeep gym leader AND having Ponyta be his 2nd ace. If he had those, then maybe he wouldn't be in Victory Road
On the flipside it's somewhat funny he speedran the shit out of Gyms while we were fucking with Legendaries with anger issues. He's already noted as missing around the 5/6th badge? Meh
Hated that they never fully evolved their starter in RSE
Unrelated, Em wtf
Torkoal!? This early!?
None of the other fights has it, and it's strictly if you use Treecko as Brendan. If you use May it's a Lotad
Wally suffers from the scrapped plans of making him the Mossdeep gym leader AND having Ponyta be his 2nd ace. If he had those, then maybe he wouldn't be in Victory Road
On the flipside it's somewhat funny he speedran the shit out of Gyms while we were fucking with Legendaries with anger issues. He's already noted as missing around the 5/6th badge? Meh
I think Wally just needed one other appearance to bridge the long gap between Mauville and Victory Road, even if it wasn't in a battling capacity. Like maybe he sees you come back to Petalburg and beat your Dad, so he's there to give you Surf and see you off to Hoenn's "second half" while ruminating on how far ahead you're getting, and then the payoff is him having caught up so quickly to you at the League.
Also it just occurred to me as I was brainstorming this, but is Gen 3 the only one where your Rival/Companion characters never acknowledge or at least interact with the villain team? I feel like a lot of the moments where they would have played such a part end up filled by the off-version team (So Archie fighting Magma Grunts at Mt. Chimney, for example), despite them showing up close to a lot of the Villain team sites anyway (Rival Battle on Route 110 after Sootopolis Museum, Route 119 just past the Weather Institute, Lilycove right next to the Coastal Base). I wonder if the Reduced presence of the rival (at least your unselected PC one) is a consequence of trying to write both teams into the story instead of fully excluding the unused one. Subsequent games did continue to keep paired elements of the plot in some capacity if they were story relevant beyond just a MacGuffin/Beatstick (N catching your opposite Dragon, Ho-oh and Lugia for paired towers, Solgaleo for the extra Cosmog in Moon and vice versa, Zacian and Zamazenta as a team against Eternatus) up until "specifying" one Professor and one Raidon for SV.
To rattle off the examples I have for Team-Rival interaction.
Also it just occurred to me as I was brainstorming this, but is Gen 3 the only one where your Rival/Companion characters never acknowledge or at least interact with the villain team? I feel like a lot of the moments where they would have played such a part end up filled by the off-version team (So Archie fighting Magma Grunts at Mt. Chimney, for example), despite them showing up close to a lot of the Villain team sites anyway (Rival Battle on Route 110 after Sootopolis Museum, Route 119 just past the Weather Institute, Lilycove right next to the Coastal Base). I wonder if the Reduced presence of the rival (at least your unselected PC one) is a consequence of trying to write both teams into the story instead of fully excluding the unused one. Subsequent games did continue to keep paired elements of the plot in some capacity if they were story relevant beyond just a MacGuffin/Beatstick (N catching your opposite Dragon, Ho-oh and Lugia for paired towers, Solgaleo for the extra Cosmog in Moon and vice versa, Zacian and Zamazenta as a team against Eternatus) up until "specifying" one Professor and one Raidon for SV.
To rattle off the examples I have for Team-Rival interaction.
- Blue shows up in the Pokemon Tower and the Silph building even if just to be a jerk and leave Team Rocket to you. It's not much but he has to be aware of them at least.
- Silver has a bone to pick with Team Rocket and frequently pops up even just in a dialogue capacity wherever they are
- Barry and Dawn/Lucas confront Galactic both individually with the lakes and in Tag Battles for key moments like the first Jubilife encounter or Spear Pillar.
- Plasma and Neo Plasma both obviously come to blows with you in the heavily story-focused Gen 5 games, even stealing Pokemon from Bianca and Hugh during or before the game plot. There's also the obvious role of N if you are in the camp that considers him a Rival character too.
- Team Flare and Skull/Aether I don't think I need to elaborate on since most of the recurring characters show up if they're secondary like Hau and obviously intertwine heavily with Gladion and Lillie
- Team Yell is mostly by connection to Marnie and moreso a nuisance than a villain, albeit with one of the most direct connections yet. If you count Macro Cosmos because of Rose's antagonist role despite minimal antagonist impediment through the story, you can add Bede and Hop to the list for the League Challenge and Leon.
- Team Star is simple enough, Penny's their leader and even Nemona has a run-in with them at the Tutorial to establish they're a publicized presence for the school. That said, Professor is a 1-person operation so no "alternative" consideration with Arven in the same manner as Lillie/Aether.
Not entirely related but:
Team Plasma is so fucking annoying.
The game is this: Start -> N fight (Accumula) -> Route 2 -> Gym battle (Striaton) -> Plasma fight (Dreamyard) -> Plasma fight (Wellspring Cave) -> Route 3 -> N fight (Nacrene Gym entrance) -> Gym battle (Nacrene) -> Plasma fight (Pinwheel Forest) -> Route (Rest of Pinwheel) -> Plasma cutscenes (Castelia) -> Gym battle (Castelia) -> Route 4 -> N fight (Nimbasa) -> Gym battle (Nimbasa) -> Route 5 -> Plasma fight (Cold Storage) -> Gym battle (Driftveil)-> Route 6 -> Half of Cave (Chargestone) -> Plasma fight (Chargestone) -> N fight (Chargestone) -> Celestial Tower -> Gym battle (Mistralton) -> Cave Route (Twist Mountain) -> Gym battle (Iccirus) -> Plasma fight (Dragonspiral) -> Go Back for Desert Resort -> Plasma fight -> Back to Route 9 -> Two Plasma Cutscenes (Ghetsis on the bridge, Alder yapping) -> Gym battle (Opelucid) -> Route 10 -> Victory Road -> N fight Ghetsis fight
They. Will. Not. Leave. You. The Fuck. Alone.
BW1 is a game that over time I respect less and less because every playthrough feels extremely formulaic due to the Pokemon selection and the way the game is paced. I could be chill with a slow linear story game but the plot itself I come to dislike more and more, in contrast to me thinking another linear story game like SM has a better story. This doesn't even include all the Bianca/Cheren moments of which I also do not really care about their character arcs.
If you start a timer between Team Plasma segments I guarantee that within 20 minutes you will be back with the fuckers, exclusion being the Mistralton segment where Plasma is mostly absent. Otherwise? You will be fighting more grunts who all who look the same, have almost the same personalities, and aren't fun to read dialogue of. I could've even gone further here, like how there's the Bike cutscene when you arrive in Nimbasa.
B2W2 does a much nicer balance IMO, Plasma is very present but you can play Pokemon for like an hour without having to fight 5 copy paste grunts in a row. Even just the fact that the first time you meet a grunt he doesn't battle you and instead gives you the Frustration TM is like the devs saying "Yeah, we don't need to make you do this 500 times."
Team Plasma is so fucking annoying.
The game is this: Start -> N fight (Accumula) -> Route 2 -> Gym battle (Striaton) -> Plasma fight (Dreamyard) -> Plasma fight (Wellspring Cave) -> Route 3 -> N fight (Nacrene Gym entrance) -> Gym battle (Nacrene) -> Plasma fight (Pinwheel Forest) -> Route (Rest of Pinwheel) -> Plasma cutscenes (Castelia) -> Gym battle (Castelia) -> Route 4 -> N fight (Nimbasa) -> Gym battle (Nimbasa) -> Route 5 -> Plasma fight (Cold Storage) -> Gym battle (Driftveil)-> Route 6 -> Half of Cave (Chargestone) -> Plasma fight (Chargestone) -> N fight (Chargestone) -> Celestial Tower -> Gym battle (Mistralton) -> Cave Route (Twist Mountain) -> Gym battle (Iccirus) -> Plasma fight (Dragonspiral) -> Go Back for Desert Resort -> Plasma fight -> Back to Route 9 -> Two Plasma Cutscenes (Ghetsis on the bridge, Alder yapping) -> Gym battle (Opelucid) -> Route 10 -> Victory Road -> N fight Ghetsis fight
They. Will. Not. Leave. You. The Fuck. Alone.
BW1 is a game that over time I respect less and less because every playthrough feels extremely formulaic due to the Pokemon selection and the way the game is paced. I could be chill with a slow linear story game but the plot itself I come to dislike more and more, in contrast to me thinking another linear story game like SM has a better story. This doesn't even include all the Bianca/Cheren moments of which I also do not really care about their character arcs.
If you start a timer between Team Plasma segments I guarantee that within 20 minutes you will be back with the fuckers, exclusion being the Mistralton segment where Plasma is mostly absent. Otherwise? You will be fighting more grunts who all who look the same, have almost the same personalities, and aren't fun to read dialogue of. I could've even gone further here, like how there's the Bike cutscene when you arrive in Nimbasa.
B2W2 does a much nicer balance IMO, Plasma is very present but you can play Pokemon for like an hour without having to fight 5 copy paste grunts in a row. Even just the fact that the first time you meet a grunt he doesn't battle you and instead gives you the Frustration TM is like the devs saying "Yeah, we don't need to make you do this 500 times."
They did the same thing with Audino in ORAS, and for what? Mega Audino turning out be mediocre af, they didn't even gave it Regenerator. Don't you see, we could've got Mega Conkel-*gets shot*
And yet Mega Audino is one of my favorite Pokemon of all-time, soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
They succeeded in some areas
Mega Audino is way less baffling for two reasons:
1) Mega Evolution was already spread to a variety of old Pokemon instead of Literally Just Kanto so while it's a bit weird they did only 1 Unova Mega it wasn't completely out of place
2) Gen 5 had just ended a couple years ago so it was entirely fair for them to give the Unova cast a rest
I think "a gen 5 mega" is whatever.
"the only gen 5 mega being audino specifically" is significantly more baffling. We know why Garbodor got the green light, it was definitely for Oleana, probably because they were so married to the "refined her image" and likely felt it lent itself better to a funny g-max than idk muk since it's a literal garbage pile. Audino is associated with no one and you get it from Looker for no particular reason.
It's just an odd choice all around. If Audino was, like, Lissia's ace instead of Altaria, or if there were one or two other gen 5 megas I don't think people would look at it that much. Something like Mega Manectric or Mega Medicham doesn't really flip any bells, even if it was one of the handful of Gen 3 megas in XY; you still had a spread of mons popular & notable alongside "oh hey it's that weirdo". With gen 5 you only have that weirdo.
Personally if I wanted a singular gen 5 mega and also didn't want to hit any of the popular guys and land on a weirdo I'd probably use Beheeyem just because it plays into the weirdness going on with Looker's Faller situation.
ok consider: audino got a mega because someone really liked audino, pitched it, the team realized they had no gen 5 megas and went sure why not. ik it sounds like a lame excuse but youd be surprised with how much someone making a pitch of something they like influences the final game
I can believe it, since there's a lack of intentionality otherwise, but it still comes off as a weird choice
Wonder if Saya Tsuruta (Audino's OG designer) designed it
Though with this in mind, it’s interesting to me how, after Gen 7, Gen 5 hasn’t really missed the boat on any of the new form/variant upgrades. It always gets something:
- Gigantamax: Garbodor, as discussed
- Galarian Forms/Evos: Darumaka, Darmanitan, Yamask, Runerigus, Stunfisk
- Hisuian Forms/Evos: Samurott, Lilligant, Basculin, Basculegion, Zorua, Zoroark, Braviary (actually, Unova got more attention in this department than any of the other regions did)
- Paldean Cross-Gen Evos: Kingambit
- Paradox Pokémon: Brute Bonnet, Slither Wing and Iron Moth, Iron Jugulis, Iron Leaves, Iron Boulder, Iron Crown
The only things Gen 5 has missed out on after 2017 have been Paldean Forms and convergent species, which are both very small pools to begin with. I’d bet it ends up getting a helping new Megas in Z-A, too, in part because it only did get Mega Audino back in Gen 6.
(Not to mention, in Sun & Moon, Gen 5 got more character cameos than any other region, with Colress, Grimsley, and Burnet. Oh what’s that? The only Poké Ride mon not from Gen 1 or 7 in Sun & Moon was Stoutland? And then USUM gave Ghetsis the most unique of the RR villain scenes, with a new interaction between him and Colress, to boot. And then you get Ingo’s cameo in Arceus — the only time we’ve seen an old character make a return since 2018! And then you’ve got The Indigo Disk! Never mind Gen 1 “favoritism.” Game Freak’s Gen 5 propaganda campaign is real. Z-A is just a bit of theater to create plausible deniability.)
This doesn't really detract from the point but I'm going to be That Guy and remind you that Sharpedo is another Alola ride Pokemon.
Anyways yeah, you're right. That said in hindsight I legitimately wonder if they've done so much Unova fanservice in part BECAUSE there's no full revisit inbound anytime soon
Honestly wish we had leaked data from Jan-April. To see what the story was after Nov drafts before Groudon/Kyogre became forcibly integrated
It's clearly an error, since only May2 in Emerald has it. In all other battles in Emerald the non-starter Fire is a Slugma, and in RS it's a Numel. So presumably they were swapping the RS fires out for whatever reason(seriously, why?) and someone got confused which slow defensive Fire with a shell they should be giving out for that one battle.
But also, WTF is up with the Rivals' teams in Hoenn in general? In RS, Lilycove City(final fight) Brendan/May uses Starter, Swellow, and two out of Numel/Wailmer/Shroomish. Why is the starter only a middle stage, yes, but also why isn't Shroomish or Numel evolved? Why does your rival wait until Lilycove City to catch a Swellow available at the start of the game?
Then, in Emerald, they added an additional early battle with the rival, but left the last fight in Lilycove. They use Starter, Tropius, and two out of Ludicolo/Pelipper/Slugma. Why any of that? Why Ludicolo as the Grass on a team guaranteed to have another Water-type? Why Tropius on a team with another Grass(and possibly another flyer)? Why Slugma under any circumstances? Why is the starter still 2 levels below it's final evolution? If you're going to change it, sure, but these changes make the final teams just really bad for no clear reason.
ORAS, they fully-evolved everything and mixed the versions up. Starter, Swellow, Magcargo/Wailord/Breloom. Which is probably the best they could do. And they added a postgame battle. Where your rival has 5 mons, adding a Raichu(sure, whatever), and is also 10 levels lower than the Champion fight you just won.
Okay, post cancelled, this is all clearly clever storytelling by GF that your rival is an idiot and you are bullying them by actually trying to win. Your job is to be like Hop in SWSH and effusively praise them when they accidentally use a super-effective hit. That's the level of opposition Brendan/May deserves.
Lol he’s so iconic but it only serves as a reminder that the small, weak children aren’t worthy of your respect.
God bless us everyone!! nope!! Sorry kiddo I just KO-ed your Gardevoir with water gun. Now pay up, and mine the Elite 4 til you can afford Christmas dinner.
In Emerald the Victory Road fight came at a time when I was totally unprepared and I almost wiped in my Nuzlocke. I genuinely lost because 5/6 of my trained team got killed and the new guys didn’t have enough EVs to compensate for thr perfectly IVed Elite 4.
I prefer Steven is the Champion. It would be the best Champion fight for me, because he comes in with mons you aren’t used to fighting, with a type you don’t have a lot of experience fighting against, and has a killer ace.
Wallace just feels like another strong water trainer, like a 5th Elite 4 fight more than a fight against a champion.
I also prefer Norman’s R/S team, but Tate and Liza’s improvement does make the 7th gym more iconic.
Like your best tools in double battles are Surf and Earthquake and neither one works well. Although maybe make it so the mons you gave a Doubles gimmick to (Plusle and Minun) have a better matchup lol
I hate losing gym fights and having to re-do the puzzles lol. When I wiped to Cyrus in Distort World I was sooooo mad at the backtracking