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Does Pokemon Sword/Shield Have The Worst Villains (Spoilers)
- Thread starter Z-Beat
- Start date
this types of comments are so dumb when you can clearly know that they are also better in other things, this even gets broken by simply saying that they aren't as bugged as Gen 1/2 or when counting the DLC
Gen 2, 6, and 8 have the worst villains for different reasons.
Gen 2, they're just Team Rocket's leftovers. It feels really underwhelming when the villains' main goal is... To get the villain from the last game to notice them.
Gen 6 pisses me off with how Lysandre is portrayed as a sympathetic character. His plan is literally "kill all poor people so the rich can have all the resources for themselves". There is nothing relatable about that.
Gen 8's villains are completely unfinished. It's so obvious that everything related to the Darkest Day was shoved into the story at the last moment. Rose is completely incoherent and has no reason to even fight you at the end.
Gen 2, they're just Team Rocket's leftovers. It feels really underwhelming when the villains' main goal is... To get the villain from the last game to notice them.
Gen 6 pisses me off with how Lysandre is portrayed as a sympathetic character. His plan is literally "kill all poor people so the rich can have all the resources for themselves". There is nothing relatable about that.
Gen 8's villains are completely unfinished. It's so obvious that everything related to the Darkest Day was shoved into the story at the last moment. Rose is completely incoherent and has no reason to even fight you at the end.
Haha, I guess I blocked this from my memory because I burst out laughing all over again.
I liked that aspect of them, though. they had a purpose that wasn't crazy. though I guess BW2 did something similar but better
Sword and Shield barely has a story, so it all kind of coming out of nowhere right at the end makes it seem worse than it actually is. Gen 6 slaps you in the face with Team Flare/Lysander's weird genocidal shit from super early on and it just feels oppressively dumb.
Such a shame, since the stories for both "villain" teams in Sun and Moon were really good.
Such a shame, since the stories for both "villain" teams in Sun and Moon were really good.
Team Galactic would be my 4th least favorite.
They're literally just Team Aqua/Magma with the serial numbers filed off.
It's not just that Rose would get all the help from Leon he wanted if he just waited a day. It's that Leon wanted to wait because of the big tournament... that Macro Cosmos was sponsoring. Rose prematurely set off a doomsday scenario entirely because he double-booked two events on the same day and didn't know how to reschedule either of them.
Yeah they're Aqua and Magma but I feel like it works better, if you assume creating that new universe would work out the way they expect it to. There's just no way expanding the land or the oceans makes sense though lol
I gotta say that despite the plan itself, Aqua and Magma were at least very well characterized in ORAS. It's too bad they couldn't really change their goal too much
Macro Cosmos could have been good villains. They were basically Amazon or whatever mega corporation, too bad nothing is really done with them.
Team Yell were just shittier versions of Team Skull.
Team Yell were just shittier versions of Team Skull.
Aw man, I had forgotten just how lame and silly that whole exchange was. Why the hell couldn't Rose wait a single day, Jesus.
And to top it all off it was done via still images rather than an actual cinematic. Though at least it was on screen that time, and not like the other half of the plot.
While i really dislike Rose and the weirdo brothers and the game is still fresh in my mind, its still Team Flare
Helps that i hate gen 6, but Lysandre is really really dumb and his dumb spreads over everyone near him. At least other teams had a couple of people who had raised eyebrows for their villainous shit, everyone just eats the dumbass crap Lysandre says with the hugest smiles and its infuriating
Thats what i like about them. They're kinda pathetic, and people dont even really respect them. And even in this sorry ass way they still manage to accomplish quite a lot of things (like taking over freaking goldenrod city).
It was refreshing to not only have a villain who doesnt want to control/destroy the world for once, but one that is kinda beating a dead horse too.
Helps that i hate gen 6, but Lysandre is really really dumb and his dumb spreads over everyone near him. At least other teams had a couple of people who had raised eyebrows for their villainous shit, everyone just eats the dumbass crap Lysandre says with the hugest smiles and its infuriating
Thats what i like about them. They're kinda pathetic, and people dont even really respect them. And even in this sorry ass way they still manage to accomplish quite a lot of things (like taking over freaking goldenrod city).
It was refreshing to not only have a villain who doesnt want to control/destroy the world for once, but one that is kinda beating a dead horse too.
Galactic blew up a lake, that grabs your attention. The experiments they perform on the captured Uxie, Azelf and Mesprit are genuinely creepy as well. The Admins stand out since they do have some surprisingly strong pokemon for when you fight them (That Purugly comes to mind). The only really negative is Cyrus can be a little bland? That's partially due to his emotionless persona he has which is more of a mixed response. Add to that they have some of the best songs in the entire series and it's fair to see how people like them.
(BDSP, do not mess up this soundtrack).
I find Gen 2 to be compelling because of how pathetic they are. They're the last whimper of a dying criminal organization that once held this area in a vicegrip able to openly take siege on the HQ of global tech company without any forethought and with no larger goal in mind other than continued power and control. They're putting all their resources and effort into one great big master plan of calling their old boss for help. What makes it even better and sadder is that going by the Celebi event, it almost would have worked.
Also, I feel like you're misinterpreting Lysandre and Gen 6; it's more that it's stupid and doesn't work at all rather than anything as malicious as the implications from that interpretation. Lysandre wants to free Pokemon from cruel trainers and people who would drain the environment or misuse Pokemon to their own ends which is why he set up Team Flare to gather a group of people who would form the basis of the new world and treat Pokemon and the planet right. HOWEVER, Team Flare is also a pay-to-join group who's membership ended up being made of pretty exclusively the rich and corrupt who abuse Pokemon and the environment to their own ends. Lysandre isn't damning poor people to die to claim its resources, he's being a genocidal idiot.
What does Galactic have to do with the other two at all? They're end goal is literally the destruction and recreation of the universe without emotion. The other two are just eco terrorists fighting over human advancement or ecological preservation.
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Yeah I agree, but they have the "destroy the world" thing people usually don't like about other games, so I was expecting at least a few more mentions. Not a bad thing though!
Sword and Shield has the worst characters and champion in Leon and his shit Charizard, but Rose is fine. It was a kind of different concept for a villain, for Pokémon at least.
I'd say the worst villain is Lusamine in USUM for being ruined from what she once was.
I'd say the worst villain is Lusamine in USUM for being ruined from what she once was.
Team Plasma is stupid entirely because of Ghetsis.
Like sure, "we need to destroy the world today so it doesn't get destroyed in 1,000 years" is clown logic, but Team Plasma relies on the notion that everyone including Team Plasma themselves are too stupid to realizing that Ghetsis is having them on. He just ruins absolutely any semblance of nuance in that story.
Like sure, "we need to destroy the world today so it doesn't get destroyed in 1,000 years" is clown logic, but Team Plasma relies on the notion that everyone including Team Plasma themselves are too stupid to realizing that Ghetsis is having them on. He just ruins absolutely any semblance of nuance in that story.
Almost all of Plasma knows that their actually the villain team. The reformed version that shows up in two is made up of almost entirely of low level grunts or members that had a change of heart.
At least Elio and Selene have better clothes and looks in USUM, right?
It was also the second time it happened in the series, so it hadn't overstayed it's welcome yet. They also did the "Destroy the world" storyline better than Aqua/Magma did as well.
False: music, Pokémon and character designs, QoL, competitive mode, and more are all great aspects of SWSH which can easily beat other games in the series. And with the DLCs you get 2 of the best locations too.
it's character design is better than Gen 6
and the DLC has better level design than any of the previous 3D games. but that's only the dlc. the base game is trash
He's technically head of the villain team, only SwSh's villain team isn't a villain team but just a fanclub that got mildly out of hand.
Easily. The worst part was how obvious it was that Rose was the head of the "real" villains even from his first appearance in a trailer just for his "villain team" to only show up in the last hour or so of the game. The villains not only sucked, they were barely even there and still managed to be memorably bad. Team Flare's not too great either, but I'll at least give them points for being present in the story consistently.
Plasma > Galactic > Aether Foundation > Team Rocket (RBY/FRLG) > Team Aqua/Magma (ORAS rewrite) > Team Flare if you've watched the anime and can force yourself to believe they're anywhere near as decent in the games > Team Rocket (GSC/HGSS) > Team Aqua/Magma (RSE) > Team Flare if you've not watched the anime and thus have no basis for the aforementioned mental trickery > Macro Cosmos
Yeah, Rose is awful. Somehow the postgame episode's villains manage to be slightly better. This is in spite of the fact that they are also awful. Game Freak dropped the ball on story big-time with this game in almost every conceivable way.
Marnie's cool, Bede's surprisingly good as a modern Pokemon rival, and the raw adrenaline rush from the Stadiums truly delivers. But side-showing the main plot until the last possible second -- who the heck decides this is good?
Yeah, Rose is awful. Somehow the postgame episode's villains manage to be slightly better. This is in spite of the fact that they are also awful. Game Freak dropped the ball on story big-time with this game in almost every conceivable way.
Marnie's cool, Bede's surprisingly good as a modern Pokemon rival, and the raw adrenaline rush from the Stadiums truly delivers. But side-showing the main plot until the last possible second -- who the heck decides this is good?
Leon, who is depicted as being a total airhead for anything not involving battles, had to point out to the villain that their plan made no sense, so what does that tell you?
a lot about Sword and Shield reeks of a game that was rebooted mid-development.
also, this thread reminds me that Pokemon games suck as straight RPGs
OP
OP
Yea…from worst to best: 8, 6, 3, 4, 5, 7, 1/2
A cult, an evil corporation, and the mafia are all really fun and well executed ideas. Team galactic is a bit ridiculous but still fun. Team magma and Aqua are pretty stupid but the ecoterrorist angle is alright. Team Flare is really stupid and pointless but I guess there's a plot. SWSH's villains and entire plot just don't make any sense, offensively so.
A cult, an evil corporation, and the mafia are all really fun and well executed ideas. Team galactic is a bit ridiculous but still fun. Team magma and Aqua are pretty stupid but the ecoterrorist angle is alright. Team Flare is really stupid and pointless but I guess there's a plot. SWSH's villains and entire plot just don't make any sense, offensively so.
What does this game do better than previous pokemon games? The narrative is objectively the worst in the series, the game has no sense of discovery and exploration and needed two really bare-bone dlc to expand on the hilariously bad and repetitive "Wild Area" with some of the worst pop-in and lag a person will ever experience.
Team Yell is hilariously bad. The end-game is non-existent in the base game. The world design only works when you're moving forward and Dynamaxing is arguably the worst gimmick so far.
The game has some banger music however.
You can say my comment is stupid all you want but I've played every single mainline pokemon game and in my opinion SWSH is the weakest game in the entire franchise.
Since this is a Pokemon villain, it's as good of a time as any for me to point out how suspect it was for the first female villain in the series (Lusamine) to be this sort of neat character with a cruel personality and great climax but then in the updated release of her game, the writers felt it necessary to tone her down. To terrible effect I may add.
I think you're meant to assume that after getting walloped by the wolves in the lore, it just reverted into that egg-like state you see the remnants of.
Team Flare is bad but I warmed up to Lysandre a bit after talking to one of the npcs who did a lore dump on him. The idea of a wealthy businessman with initially good intentions for changing and improving the world only to continuously fail and be stopped by others to such an extent that he grew to view it all as pointless and doomed. It's super edgy but kind of cool. XY had a lot of interesting ideas, shame they weren't able to execute them all too well
I got the 8th badge and never went back because the game is so bad and apparently Victory Road isn't even a thing anymore? Like, I don't think I, as a character, did anything meaningful until that point and I was already on the last badge! Not to mention the joke that the 8th gym is.
Might continue just to see how terrible of a twist it is that Rose turns out to be the evil guy.
There's nothing barebones about the DLC, and the base game still had more content than gen 1, 3 and 6 not counting third versions or remakes. Dynamax is the best gimmick so far and I have played every game too. Funny how opinions work!
It's so weird because up until that point every main antagonist was improved in some way by their respective re-releases, or at the very least received some more info about their character. Lusamine is the only one who got... objectively worse.
I don't think any of the villains from the even games were very good, as much as I like GS and XY.
-Gen 2 featured the remnants of the bad guys from Gen 1 trying to get a leader who lost to an eleven year old back so they can probably lose again, by the end literally the only person left in Team Rocket is an American guy who can barely speak Japanese. There's a lot of evidence that this story changed quite a bit in development and while there is nothing absolutely conclusive, I will say that after learning a few things about Karen, we missed out on something much better.
-Gen 4, at least in base DP, had Cyrus who was very clearly trying to end the world in a pretty cruel way to the point he really shouldn't have had any followers. They cleaned this up in Platinum a bit but at the time he was boring as hell.
-Gen 6 featured a guy essentially wearing a shirt that said VILLAIN on it in sequins with his 0-personality admins and Henry Killinger on fire. As much as I love the replayability of Gen 6, the story is not the reason why.
-Gen 8 had Team Yell, which were just Team Skull again (which, honestly? Fine, just wish it had actually been them), and Macro Cosmos. I do like Oleana and wish she had been developed more in the actual game and not through a cartoon, but Rose's motivations don't make sense to the point I feel like something was actually missing from the game.
So does Gen 8 have the worst villains? Eh. It doesn't have interesting villains, but my personal least favorite are either DP Cyrus or Lysandre.
-Gen 2 featured the remnants of the bad guys from Gen 1 trying to get a leader who lost to an eleven year old back so they can probably lose again, by the end literally the only person left in Team Rocket is an American guy who can barely speak Japanese. There's a lot of evidence that this story changed quite a bit in development and while there is nothing absolutely conclusive, I will say that after learning a few things about Karen, we missed out on something much better.
-Gen 4, at least in base DP, had Cyrus who was very clearly trying to end the world in a pretty cruel way to the point he really shouldn't have had any followers. They cleaned this up in Platinum a bit but at the time he was boring as hell.
-Gen 6 featured a guy essentially wearing a shirt that said VILLAIN on it in sequins with his 0-personality admins and Henry Killinger on fire. As much as I love the replayability of Gen 6, the story is not the reason why.
-Gen 8 had Team Yell, which were just Team Skull again (which, honestly? Fine, just wish it had actually been them), and Macro Cosmos. I do like Oleana and wish she had been developed more in the actual game and not through a cartoon, but Rose's motivations don't make sense to the point I feel like something was actually missing from the game.
So does Gen 8 have the worst villains? Eh. It doesn't have interesting villains, but my personal least favorite are either DP Cyrus or Lysandre.
It's just a what if scenario, which is why I don't understand the anger towards it. I even agree that it's not as good, but the original is still there and is still just as canon as it was on release. We got to see a side of Lusamine that wasn't taken over by the toxins of Nihilego, which also confirmed she was still a very flawed person even without them, just not as bad. It kinda completes the picture in a different way than other third versions did before. The problem was with other elements of the story not fitting with one another.