Champion battle tier list (out of the games I've played)
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
Champion battle tier list (out of the games I've played)
Is steven ORAS or original games? Cause oras I think is a lot better ngl, as m-meta actually is quite annoying to deal with its fast speed and insane power.
ORAS because I haven't played RSE. Steven just isn't a Champion battle who ever really stuck with me, his team isn't anything special outside of Skarm and Metagross and he can't muster any of the story/worldbuilding-based sauce the top 4 have
Delphox is literally the only Psychic in that list. It's more Ghost, Dark, and either Fighting or Fairy.
we've been getting variations on this combo for the past twelve years
I mean like as a pure type trio. No grass, fire, or water in the equation.
we've been getting variations on this combo for the past twelve years
OOOOOO
Interesting!
Curious about why Diantha tracks above Steven. Steven at least has a largely unique team while Diantha is overlapping with Gym Leaders and a rival.
The only thing she has going for her is the battle music, and I'd still argue Steven's is better.
> Hau over Cynthia
I'm genuinely curious.
Leon really is underrated though, good battle. Shame Urshifu-Dark just pummels him, but it's a pretty good one.
Ironically, on the one game he does, he isn't the Champion anymore.
Side tangent: Cynthia has to be the most overrated trainer in the franchise. She's a good character - her design is great and her team is very strong - but the fandom's elevated her to these singularly legendary heights that she really hasn't deserved.
The 3rd games in a set frequently make some really weird changes to the story that seem entirely unnecessary.
The Cave of Origin gets reduced to an almost out-of-place footnote in the jump from RS to E, but at least that kind of makes sense because it's hard to integrate all 3 of Groudon, Kyogre, and Rayquaza into the story as it is; something had to change.
But why did they feel like the game needed a different league champion? Wallace is such a nothing character.
I like how Diantha manages to use a team of 5 Kalos Pokemon and a Mega. Also her arena is awesome. Also Mega Gardevoir is stronger than people give it credit for (or maybe I just suck).
I alluded to this with Steven but while Cynthia may have one of the better-made/stronger teams of any Champion she's just missing something more intangible for me. She's "only" a strong trainer, her fight lacks a more meaningful in-universe gravitas to really consider it peak like so many others do. On the flipside some time ago I reached the secret final stage of the Alolapill where Hau is my favorite rival so I actually appreciate the reversal in USUM and how it plays into his character. Kukui's still better ofc but unlike Wallace it actually feels like some measure of thought went into this change.> Hau over Cynthia
I'm genuinely curious.Hau?How?
Leon really is underrated though, good battle. Shame Urshifu-Dark just pummels him, but it's a pretty good one.
Leon is basically the perfect Champion battle and one of my favorite boss fights in the whole series. I really should devote a longer post to how brilliant this fight is but essentially it's the best-constructed team since Cynthia but now with unparalleled atmosphere, tons of thematic visual symbolism in Leon's design and animations and this incredible theme which never fails to get me ever-so-slightly emotional
Cynthia has always been above-average as a boss but incredibly average as a character.
Thing is, "average" puts her on pretty good footing anyway, since this franchise isn't really one for strongly-written characters in the first place.
*Cries in Volo appreciation*
i actually think that leons team in a vacuum is muuuch better than cynthias. like ok. spiritomb looks scary because it has no weaknesses (at the time) and then you remember it kinda does nothing. roserade can hit decently but its also weak to everything. gastrodon... well i love gastrodon but it just kinda sits there. her team is hard carried by having a garchomp in a game where getting an ice type is really annoying and where movesets are still in the transition stage from "dogshit" to "most pokemon can be somewhat useful".
if you replaced leon with cynthia, i genuienly think itd make swsh easier lol
if you replaced leon with cynthia, i genuienly think itd make swsh easier lol
True enlightenment is realizing Gigantamax Charizard is an infinitely cooler boss monster than Garchomp could ever hope to be. Not to say Chomper is bad but let's please not pretend that "KAIJU CHARIZARD WITH FIRE WINGS AND ARCANE SIGILS ON ITS GLOWING BELLY" is anything but a national treasure
If you were a Galarian citizen you would freak out at this every time without fail. You would cheer and scream and buy all the merchandise and posters. You would gorge on sigma Leon RoTok edits and pre-order his 400 page autobiography off Charizard alone. And he can back up the looks in-game too! Fire Blast/Air Slash/Solar Beam/Ancient Power is a great moveset for a Fire type to take advantage of Dynamax.
To stay in the theme of this thread, I would actively argue that Charizard DESERVED a boss fight like this. So many other popular franchise mascots had iconic in-game encounters associated with them but not the big orange lizard: Blue became The Blastoise Guy and he was not even the ace for Lance/Tucker/Red etc. Now we just need Legends Z-A or a future game to have a really strong NPC whose signature Pokemon is Greninja
If you were a Galarian citizen you would freak out at this every time without fail. You would cheer and scream and buy all the merchandise and posters. You would gorge on sigma Leon RoTok edits and pre-order his 400 page autobiography off Charizard alone. And he can back up the looks in-game too! Fire Blast/Air Slash/Solar Beam/Ancient Power is a great moveset for a Fire type to take advantage of Dynamax.
To stay in the theme of this thread, I would actively argue that Charizard DESERVED a boss fight like this. So many other popular franchise mascots had iconic in-game encounters associated with them but not the big orange lizard: Blue became The Blastoise Guy and he was not even the ace for Lance/Tucker/Red etc. Now we just need Legends Z-A or a future game to have a really strong NPC whose signature Pokemon is Greninja
I have problems with Gigantamax that has more to do with gameplays (not enough differences vs Dynamax to worth using over most of the time) and roster than the designs, with very few exceptions, because at least the designs tries to feel like truly gigantic creatures.True enlightenment is realizing Gigantamax Charizard is an infinitely cooler boss monster than Garchomp could ever hope to be. Not to say Chomper is bad but let's please not pretend that "KAIJU CHARIZARD WITH FIRE WINGS AND ARCANE SIGILS ON ITS GLOWING BELLY" is anything but a national treasure
If you were a Galarian citizen you would freak out at this every time without fail. You would cheer and scream and buy all the merchandise and posters. You would gorge on sigma Leon RoTok edits and pre-order his 400 page autobiography off Charizard alone. And he can back up the looks in-game too! Fire Blast/Air Slash/Solar Beam/Ancient Power is a great moveset for a Fire type to take advantage of Dynamax.
To stay in the theme of this thread, I would actively argue that Charizard DESERVED a boss fight like this. So many other popular franchise mascots had iconic in-game encounters associated with them but not the big orange lizard: Blue became The Blastoise Guy and he was not even the ace for Lance/Tucker/Red etc. Now we just need Legends Z-A or a future game to have a really strong NPC whose signature Pokemon is Greninja
As much as I find Charizard shoehorned as Leon’s ace, the Gigantamax form and the look, alongside the execution of it’s role in the boss fight, helped making it much easier pill to swallow. Not so much in the anime, though Journeys have it’s own writing issues in general and not exclusive about Leon and his Undefeatable Charizard.
i want to add to this: this is why i think the fandom doesnt understand that champions like cynthia do not work anymore. they are a boss design that only works when the player has limited resources and the boss capitalizes on that. its a big meaty scary thing that could be defeated pretty easily if you had better access to its weaknesses, and guess what: thats exactly what modern games give. cynthia would be as easy or even easier than leon because she doesnt get to hide behind bad ice types, you can catch almost any ice type in the wild area, give it ice beam/blizzard and destroy her team with no sweat.
the bosses need to be designed with that accessibility in mind. im not saying they have to be insanely hard, but rather their design philosophy needs to change so that their default is "challenging but not awful for a kid to defeat if they try enough"
I feel another part of it is just the fact that, for the average player, you're probably not going to have any idea what a Garchomp is when you fight Cynthia for the first time, so using Ice Types against it isn't necessarily obvious. Same thing with Spiritomb. This also goes for Steven, where you'll have never fought a Metagross prior, or Lance where you'll probably have only encountered a Dragonite by fighting him in the previous game he was in. Information scarcity that is uncommon these days, especially in the last two games.
Leon's teams include a grand total of 5 galarian mons between them, with three of those being the starters and a fourth being a regional variant's evolution, and his ace pokemon is a Charizard, which you are going to know the type of if you've been playing Pokemon for any amount of time.
While with Geeta, tera is removing part of that with her by displaying one of her Pokemon's types every turn its on the field past the initial send out, and the rest of her team involves 2 old pokemon, a past gen mon's evolution, and two pokemon you're guaranteed to have fought before (with Kofu and Tulip using them on their teams). Glimmora is going to be the only unknown factor for most players, and Tera is removing the lack of knowledge on it you'd normally have.
As a whole, I do really like Leon as a boss fight. His team is still pretty imposing, Aegislash and Haxorus are both Pokemon that have been notably strong, Haxorus being a previous champion ace, Aegislash being a dominant singles threat for the past two gens. He uses the gen's pseudo without it even being the ace, the "uses the unused starter" trope was used for Kukui two games prior, and while Seismitoad and Rhyperior aren't necessarily used on super notable teams (Seismitoad has Ghetsis at least, though it's just a side mon for him), they still fit the vibe of "this is a mon a serious champion would use" to me.
It is true that this information scarcity has gotten much less common but I would argue that AI Sada/Turo are the perfect example of it. They have an entire team of exotic new Paradox Pokemon, half of which you've never seen before and the other half only having been encountered once, with unintuitive typings you can only guess at based on their present-day counterparts.
Leon was really the best Champion. His whole deal of "Clearly a former Player Character" is a fun gimmick, his team is composed of mons that are not only good in-game, but have an out-of-game rep as OP as hell, and the Galar gyms/league battles are INCREDIBLE aesthetically. I will happily complain about SV, but they nailed Leon.
Now, I don't think Diantha is perfect, but her team is potent enough and the scenery is cool. Given how before this point, the most challenging bosses in XY were random route trainers, she's fine.
People(including the devs, to be fair) overrate the need to keep teams unique. Yes, both Korrina and Diantha use Hawlucha, but that doesn't matter significantly IMO. Will you remember that, or will you remember SD and strong neutral coverage?
Now, I don't think Diantha is perfect, but her team is potent enough and the scenery is cool. Given how before this point, the most challenging bosses in XY were random route trainers, she's fine.
I hate Wallace(and Juan) so much. They could have done so many other things to give us a different champion and make Steven a post-game challenge, instead they ADDED another water-type specialist to a game with a water-type legendary, water-type evil team, water-type gym, and all late-game routes are Surf-based. Anything else would have been better.
All I remember is that I was supremely overleveled because it was XY so she put up absolutely no resistance.
Diantha's Hawlucha reveals the folly of Flying Press as a move, because it would have strong neutral coverage if it just used Acrobatics + HJK or whatever, but instead the weird dual-type move means it gets thoroughly walled by Ghosts and mostly walled by Poison-types, which is actually very poor neutral coverage for three moves. It doesn't even have a neutral move against Magnezone!
I agree that team overlap doesn't really matter, though
I agree.
She deserves it tho
It's her lack of showcased battle prowess during the story.
Her being in the Distortion World was a huge miss because she got to Cyrus first, and then was there just chilling.
So she was roaming the region, helping out players and aura farming, but when it was time for action, she was just yapping with Cyrus.
To be fair, Champions should be evaluated in a blind run, as pretty much all of them are completely abused whenever you know as little as their team composition, or even just their ace.
Cynthia's battle was extremely well-designed in many ways, but she's not hard. The big, bad Garchomp doesn't have a Yache Berry, no one needs to worry about it.
But again, none of these fools are tough.
This is another thing to file under "awkward changes made by 3rd game."Her being in the Distortion World was a huge miss because she got to Cyrus first, and then was there just chilling.
Can we talk about Cyrus for a minute and how he's a markedly less interesting character in Platinum? In DP he really comes across as a true-believer in the stuff he says about building a strife-free world. Gives him a genuinely creepy vibe that other villains don't generally have and really underscores the cult-like demeanor of Team Galactic.
In Platinum there's a bunch of extra dialogue where he explicitly lays out that he's just conning his lackeys and putting on a front. And nothing in the Distortion World regarding him or Cynthia feels like it does anything positive for either character. And Charon and Looker just feel like pointless filler.
Like, mechanically, Platinum over DP makes a case for being the best 3rd game improvement, but everything done to the story and characters feels like a neutral change at best. The sort of thing that makes me wonder if some mandate came down to shoehorn in specific things for the sake of making it more consistent with the anime or other media. I never played the 3DS games, but I remember people being up in arms about changes made to Lusamine for presumably those kinds of reasons.