Opinions on Team Meteor

[Xiri]

I still don't believe that Solaris is evil. He says himself that his intention isn't making people suffer. In fact every time he goes to battle he tries to end fights quickly possibly even painlessly. He notes that Reborn sits on top of something which may be dangerous to stay on. Let's face it, if he had setup like a Golem to a pulse while everyone was messing around in Opal ward and had it self destruct he could of taken out Reborn. Before the attack on their hq in Tanzan he had the force to do multiple tasks. I think he is trying to save lives and possibly just going about it in what he believes the quickest and best way. Lin on the other hand is a nut job and needs to be put down.

P.S maybe I'm wrong and Solaris is just a prick. idk

Hmm yeah.... don't forget that he killed Kiki, tried to kill us and got his Tyranitar to use Superpower on Amaria (I'm surprised she even managed to survive that).

[Sarun]

Hmm yeah.... don't forget that he killed Kiki, tried to kill us and got his Tyranitar to use Superpower on Amaria (I'm surprised she even managed to survive that).

We really don't know the full extent of Team Meteor's intentions, though. Chances are, they'll most likely become well-intentioned extremists by the end of the game.

[Gaunt]

We really don't know the full extent of Team Meteor's intentions, though. Chances are, they'll most likely become well-intentioned extremists by the end of the game.

Or not...well that depends on Lin (if she survives) i think

[Dei]

Or not...well that depends on Lin (if she survives) i think

Based off what Saphira did and what Solaris is capable of doing, I don't think many Meteor people will survive this. Hell, even Solaris might not survive this in the end (or survive and realize the extent of what he has done and the next actions of his are remorse-based, of maybe that's a bit too cliché for Reborn xD)

Lin probably won't survive, though. Unless thats actually possible when your body crumbles to pieces. In which case, she probably isn't human (that'd be such an awesome plot twist, though).

[NickCrash]

I'd love to see a Ditto in Lin's place

Solaris has the mentality of a person on the verge of madness. He believes that killing some people to make his plan come true is acceptable, and he tries to enforce it in any way he can (see Kiki, Amaria, Us). About the issue with pulse Golem, think about the pulse Garbodor for a second. Did it not destroy the whole region, now known as the "wasteland"? Truth is, we don't know enough. Lin has some issues with the orphanage, but Sigmund is also allied with the Meteors. I would think that Solaris is still in a leading position, just under the scenes, so that the Meteors themselves serve under someone they really fear.

The other "teams" are a joke. An exception is Rocket which, if we disregard the anime, has no boundaries.

Giovanni was trying to save the world from Mewtwo, the experiment that failed

[Damage]

I'm not saying Solaris is a nice guy or even a good guy. I think if we were to play Reborn from his perspective he'd be the anti-hero. Meteor as a whole is better than any team that goes without question. I mean their execs are Sigmund, Taka, Corey and eyepatch guy (drawing a blank sorry) They are all well thought out and strong characters both on and off the battlefield. This lineup just kicks the asses of any evil team seen in past games.

[squirmey]

i think team meteor are a very good and dark team which i realy like but they can be a bit to serous and that makes them a bit less threatening

[Dei]

I'd say their leaders are threatening, but the people who join this group in general make the team feel like a joke. This is basically coming from someone who reads all the dialogue in the game lol.

[Rawr-Ma-Ama]

Some members can make the team a joke, while others are a bit more serious, but their leaders are just threatening and dangeorus. Like, every single one of them.

Team Meteor was supposed to be better than what it is now, apparently, from what we´ve heard in the dialogue between Eclipse and Aster. So I have my doubts about Solaris being totally evil. He´s doing a lot of terrible things, but we don´t know how many are orders and how many things are his decisions. Remember, he let us go when we were all alone with him under the great stairway. It would´ve been a great opportunity to get rid of us. What he wants is people out of Reborn, for what reason we don´t know yet, but we also don´t know if "getting people out of Reborn" was his idea or Lin´s.

Either way they want to get to what´s under the great stairway and probably use it to destroy the whole reborn region in order to start over, because everyone was promised a better life and that. Now, promises could´ve just been empty words from whomever they came. Maybe Solaris is just someone who thinks the end justifies the means, but isn´t something you could call "evil" or "good". He´s somewhere between it.

And then you have Lin as some kind of big shadow in the background. And there are hints at her once being in Sigmund´s orphanage, because both Sigmund and one of the orphans (Anna, I think) know her name. But she didn´t have enough screen-time, so I can´t really judge her now. She seems to be someone who wants things to be done efficently and believes in power over everything else. And maybe Team Meteor´s original goal might not be what she´s going for. I mean a few secs on-screen and she seems more evil than solaris who killed Kiki

Sigmund is evil. Well, he isn´t entirely evil. Like, not evil. He´s messed up. That´s what he is. And he joined Team Meteor. Not only to get back his orphans (he sees it as hsi duty to protect them and have them in his orphanage), but also "to find some answers". Not quoting directly, but that´s another reason why he´s with Meteor. He is trying to find out who Lin is, because he´s suspecting her to be someone who used to be in his care. Now, I don´t know where this is going. He might find out and die with what he found out, with us getting information from his dying breath or some kind of document or he still stands with Lin and gets killed brutally by Sapphira. I think he´ll play a role in Lin´s downfall though, like we find out where she is or at least something about her that makes her slip up at her plan or confront us directly after we dealt with the Elite Four or as soon as we do something that messes her up.

Taka is a troll. That´s what he is. He has his nice side and hates what Pulse is doing, but he constantly tells you what Meteor is doing next, only for you to find yourself in some kind of trap. Told you about next pulse tangrowth? Well, you got three meteor admins there and you had to be saved just to get a pain-in-the-ass-battle against two of them.

Told you about pulse camerupt? Well, you got ol´ Solaris waiting for you with that Garchomp that rekts most teams at this point. If not for Kiki and Cal making their pulse useless, you would´ve been killed by that garchomp for sure.

Him being nice and telling you about the plans is just a facade, he´s just smart and lets you charge right ahead into a bad situation

Sirius is... serious. That´s all I gotta say.

Edited November 29, 2014 by UnprofessionalAmateur

[Personthing]

I think team meteor is pretty cool. The Admins are nothing to scoff at and feel legitimately threatening from both a story and gameplay perspective. (I don't even have to mention Solaris, and I personally find the Sirius double battle with Cain and the Sigmund single battle to be some of the harder fights in the game)

The grunts, while some of them are goofy and some are serious, are all pretty competent. I mean their not necessarily hard, but it's pretty clear from their team composition (While not amazing, still much better than anything we've seen from a villainous team in the official games) and levels that the Meteor Grunts alone could steamroll most, if not all of the villainous teams in the official games. (Admins and Leaders included)

Edited November 30, 2014 by Mighty Kamina

[Tomas Elliot]

As I see this topic is already full of opinions posted from the point of view of average Pokemon games fans, I shall provide an opinion from a different point of view: that of a writer (because yes, I fancy myself to be a pretty good writer. I actually suck, but that's another story). Therefore, the comments you are about to read do NOT take into consideration the standard instances of the average player (as in, "I hate how in main games the teams that are supposed to be serious menaces usually use horridly weak Pokemon" and stuff like that), instead I will focus my reasoning exclusively on the narration aspect: in other words, I will analyze how effective the villainous team is in telling a story. Please do keep this in mind while reading.

So, traditionally Pokemon games have been plagued by a lack of credible villains: in the first two generations, Team Rocket was infamous not only for the weakness of their Pokemon (which is an aspect that, I repeat, I am not going to take into consideration), but for the even more glaring weakness of its motives, which made their plot very difficult to buy in. Team Rocket wanted to steal Pokemon and sell them on the black market... In a world where a 10 YO kid can just grab a Pokeball and start catching Pokemon to his/her heart content, INCLUDING LEGENDARIES. This, along with the fact that legendaries themselves didn't play any relevant part in the story, made the plot of those games really really weak, but then again, that was mostly due to the fact that the plot wasn't very important to begin with back then, and it took a back seat compared to, well, "gotta catch them all!".

Generation 3 marked the first attempt by Game Freak to give us villains that could be a major driving force in the plot, and that could be seen by players as genuinely heinous: enter Maxie and Archie, whose goal is to cause atrocious cataclysms to expand either the landmass or the sea... Why? Once again, the well-intentioned creators failed at giving us credible motives for the villains' actions, handwaving it all with a generic "I thought expanding the landmass/sea would benefit people". The premises were there, for once a story was actually being told... But then it fell flat, also because of the very simplicistic ending: "oh, a 10 YO kid saved the world by stopping the rampaging legends? Ok then, in such a case everything is fine! Maxie, Archie, you are forgiven! And you, kid hero, come challenge the Pokemon League!".

A villainous team with an organic plan and a clear goal finally debuted in Generation 4: unfortunately, the goal itself was a rather cliché one. However, for the first time we were given a game in which the actions of the villains were the main driving force of the plot, even if most people tend to forget that because the cronic problems (absurdly weak teams for the baddies, the whole plot pretty much forgotten after the final showdown, with the player focusing once again on beating the Pokemon League as if nothing had happened) were still there.

Generation 5 FINALLY gave us a plot that stays relevant from the beginning to the end, and a villain with a very credible goal and a very well tought plan. Sadly, B2/W2 were kinda a step back on this regard (as the aforementioned goal of the Big Bad went from a clever play on the mentality of Pokemon in general, to the generic "I am gonna destroy Unova for revenge, stop me if you can") when compared to B/W, but still, we can say Generation 5 was the first Pokemon game that was 100% succesful in telling a story: however, such success was a rather Phyrric victory, as Generation 6 brought us back to the usual format of villains having a generic goal and being pretty much forgotten after their plot is over, with the player going back to focus on the Pokemon League (at least there were two clever twists in the people for once ACKNOWLEDGING you as a hero, and one of the E4 being a member of the villainous team, even if this particular was rather downplayed and can be seen as one of the MANY plot holes that characterize X/Y).

So, what am I trying to demonstrate with this reasoning of mine? I am trying to demonstrate that, Generation 5 aside, the Pokemon franchise has displayed a glaring lack of truly believable villains (and strong plots built around them) over the years. Because of this, many long-time fans of the series (such as myself) craved a more adult plot, with a more serious villainous team that could be a credible menace for the protagonist and the entire society... And when Pokemon Reborn came 'round and gave us just that, we rejoiced. However, the understandable enthusiasm has caused many players to overlook some flaws that Team Meteor still has.

Namely, it's one flaw: the fear of repeating Game Freak's mistake, which leads to repeated exaggerations in the opposite direction. It's as if Ame (or whoever helps her with the plot) was hell bent into clogging the events with a limitless stream of heinous acts, with no apparent reason other that "I wouldn't want people to think Reborn is NOT darker and edgier!". I mean ok, in order to make a plot darker, you need eviler baddies. But some instances are really gratuitous, and without them the plot could have worked out just as well: for example, the mook horror show we get when storming the Giant Steelix base, with the Meteor Grunt we have come to know by name describing Saphira's attack on the Meteor main force, with A LOT of insistence on how many grunts died, didn't really serve any purpose other than reassuring the player that yes, Reborn is indeed darker and edgier, so don't worry, you are going to get your share of violence in this episode too. Of course, this is part of a general tendency in the whole game to sacrifice realism/credibility/friggin' common sense just for the sake of adding details that can make the plot darker (what with the line-up of the Gym Leaders, which are in theory a group of individuals that, in the Pokemon universe, share a rather important role for the whole society, including in its Reborn incarnation some kids who are locked up in an orphanage AND ABUSED BY THE HEAD OF THE STRUCTURE, and even a ghost), but still, if Team Meteor has a flaw, it is this: main series villainous teams are not credible because they are not dark and evil enough, Team Meteor sometimes exaggerates in the other direction.

It is a honest mistake made with a precise plan in mind, and Ame (or whoever helps her with the plot) had the merit of properly addressing all the situation caused by this extreme "darkness and edginess", without leaving any plot holes... But still, I had to point it out: is Team Meteor a great villainous team? Yes it is. Is it better than the vast majority of main games baddies? Sure it is. But is it flawless? Hell no. In a way, I find B/W to actually be darker than Reborn, the same way Sonic Adventure 2 is darker than Shadow the Hedgehog: sure, the latter has murders and abuses on minors, but the former deconstructs the basic thematics of the franchise in a very clever way. And sometimes, a clever deconstruction does more than a hundred killings for a plot.

tl;dr: praising what's good is fine, but pointing out what isn't is important too, because it sparks a discussion that leads to improvement. Don't let the understandable enthusiasm blind you

[Gaunt]

Namely, it's one flaw: the fear of repeating Game Freak's mistake, which leads to repeated exaggerations in the opposite direction. It's as if Ame (or whoever helps her with the plot) was hell bent into clogging the events with a limitless stream of heinous acts, with no apparent reason other that "I wouldn't want people to think Reborn is NOT darker and edgier!". I mean ok, in order to make a plot darker, you need eviler baddies. But some instances are really gratuitous, and without them the plot could have worked out just as well: for example, the mook horror show we get when storming the Giant Steelix base, with the Meteor Grunt we have come to know by name describing Saphira's attack on the Meteor main force, with A LOT of insistence on how many grunts died, didn't really serve any purpose other than reassuring the player that yes, Reborn is indeed darker and edgier, so don't worry, you are going to get your share of violence in this episode too. Of course, this is part of a general tendency in the whole game to sacrifice realism/credibility/friggin' common sense just for the sake of adding details that can make the plot darker (what with the line-up of the Gym Leaders, which are in theory a group of individuals that, in the Pokemon universe, share a rather important role for the whole society, including in its Reborn incarnation some kids who are locked up in an orphanage AND ABUSED BY THE HEAD OF THE STRUCTURE, and even a ghost), but still, if Team Meteor has a flaw, it is this: main series villainous teams are not credible because they are not dark and evil enough, Team Meteor sometimes exaggerates in the other direction.

It is a honest mistake made with a precise plan in mind, and Ame (or whoever helps her with the plot) had the merit of properly addressing all the situation caused by this extreme "darkness and edginess", without leaving any plot holes... But still, I had to point it out: is Team Meteor a great villainous team? Yes it is. Is it better than the vast majority of main games baddies? Sure it is. But is it flawless? Hell no. In a way, I find B/W to actually be darker than Reborn, the same way Sonic Adventure 2 is darker than Shadow the Hedgehog: sure, the latter has murders and abuses on minors, but the former deconstructs the basic thematics of the franchise in a very clever way. And sometimes, a clever deconstruction does more than a hundred killings for a plot.

tl;dr: praising what's good is fine, but pointing out what isn't is important too, because it sparks a discussion that leads to improvement. Don't let the understandable enthusiasm blind you

I....it seems i can't understand the "flaws" you are pointing to, no really Team Meteor too dark? Well yeah they're a terrorist group, don't you watch the news? Terrorists around the world do it (killing people, etc...) so why Team Meteor should be different? also B/W "darker" than Reborn? We have played different versions then (i knew there was an "adult" version of B/W i knew it!), how can a game for kids be darker than this twisted place called Reborn? It simply can't.

[Amethyst]

Regarding the "limitless stream of heinous acts" it's not for the sake of being dark and xXedgyXx. It's that one of their apparent goals is to purge the region, which means it makes sense for them to be hitting all parts of the region, and more importantly, areas without conflict are really boring.

[Tomas Elliot]

I....it seems i can't understand the "flaws" you are pointing to, no really Team Meteor too dark? Well yeah they're a terrorist group, don't you watch the news? Terrorists around the world do it (killing people, etc...) so why Team Meteor should be different? also B/W "darker" than Reborn? We have played different versions then (i knew there was an "adult" version of B/W i knew it!), how can a game for kids be darker than this twisted place called Reborn? It simply can't.

The answers to these questions of yours are already in my previous post: in fact, they make up the very part you quoted, so I don't see the point in repeating myself.

Besides, as I mentioned Ame (or whoever helps her with the plot) had the merit of addressing all the contraddictions caused by the "exaggerated darkness" I mentioned, and didn't leave any plot holes, so it's not like what I mentioned is a "problem" that can be fixed, as changing it would require a MASSIVE rewriting of the plot and really, nobody wants that.

So yeah, mine wasn't a petition to change something, nor an attempt to win people to my cause: it was merely an opinion, and as such, I am not going to defend it. You agree with me? Good for you, You don't agree with me? Good for you. I am not changing my opinion either way, and I certainly wasn't trying to change yours.

Oh and since it seems that while I was typing the boss herself took her time to address my post (which genuinely pleases me, I am saying this sincerely and without any sarcasm), allow me to clarify something: I am not saying that the extreme darkness is a bad thing. I am saying that sometimes Reborn as a whole took the "cheap" way to it: what I meant with the words "limitless stream of heinous acts" is that, in my opinion, instead of using quantity to hammer the point (as in, throw there A LOT of darker and edgier situations) we could have used quality (as in, throw in there A FEW darker and edgier situations, but expand on them a lot more) and the final result would have been the same. For example, I wish that Corey's suicide (one of the non-gratuitous violent moments in the game, and in fact one of the best and more emotionally intense moments of the game) had received more foreshadowing and more build up. But ehi, that's just me...

[Amethyst]

That's completely valid. One problem with the story with Team Meteor is I was kind of making things up as I went at the beginning because I didn't expect the game to go anywhere. I made the first two episodes as a community game and under the expectation I'd get bored and drop it after a couple weeks.

...as you can see, that didn't happen.

[Tomas Elliot]

That's completely valid. One problem with the story with Team Meteor is I was kind of making things up as I went at the beginning because I didn't expect the game to go anywhere. I made the first two episodes as a community game and under the expectation I'd get bored and drop it after a couple weeks.

...as you can see, that didn't happen.

This makes it all the more admirable how you managed to address everything as the story went on, without leaving any plot holes. Indeed it explains why the whole Team Meteor plot came out the way it did, but ehi, this "flaw" I pointed out is just like your sadism in giving us strong Pokemon and then taking them away in the next update: it's what makes Reborn, Reborn!

Still, this opinion of mine is something I have had in mind for a long time (since I first played the game over a year ago, in fact), and I confess I was waiting for the right occasion to get it off my chest

[NickCrash]

Actually, I believe that scenes like the one at the lake are trying to be a bit more emotional and show you the bad actions that the "good faction" can do, to justify its goals, to show you what Charlotte told you straight away some episodes before.
"They are just people, who support the other side. You don't have the right to feel superior to them" (paraphraze)

At the end of the day, a game featuring supernatural animals with the potential to destroy the world doesn't have to go only with realism.

[Tomas Elliot]

Actually, I believe that scenes like the one at the lake are trying to be a bit more emotional and show you the bad actions that the "good faction" can do, to justify its goals, to show you what Charlotte told you straight away some episodes before.

"They are just people, who support the other side. You don't have the right to feel superior to them" (paraphraze)

At the end of the day, a game featuring supernatural animals with the potential to destroy the world doesn't have to go only with realism.

That was just the first example that came to my mind, there are also other instances... But for this particular one I do see your point. It just felt a bit... Gah English is not my native language, words fail me... It felt as if your point was forgotten about when making the game, and then suddenly remembered twelve minutes before release, so that part was thrown in there in a rather gratuitous way. It felt rushed, but maybe rushed is not the most correct term. It gave a lot of "have I mentioned that people die in this game today?" vibes. Geez, I don't think I managed to make myself clear... ;-;

EDIT: and now I am sounding like I want to criticize the game, when I really don't want to and, as far as I am concerned, the whole discussion was over with Ame's last post... Let's not turn this conversation into a debate on Reborn's overall quality! I'll admit that would be mostly my fault, but let's try and get back on track...

Edited December 1, 2014 by Tomas Elliot

[Chase]

That was just the first example that came to my mind, there are also other instances... But for this particular one I do see your point. It just felt a bit... Gah English is not my native language, words fail me... It felt as if your point was forgotten about when making the game, and then suddenly remembered twelve minutes before release, so that part was thrown in there in a rather gratuitous way. It felt rushed, but maybe rushed is not the most correct term. It gave a lot of "have I mentioned that people die in this game today?" vibes. Geez, I don't think I managed to make myself clear... ;-;

EDIT: and now I am sounding like I want to criticize the game, when I really don't want to and, as far as I am concerned, the whole discussion was over with Ame's last post... Let's not turn this conversation into a debate on Reborn's overall quality! I'll admit that would be mostly my fault, but let's try and get back on track...

Don't hold back, sailor.

I can appreciate it when players do things like I do that seem unnecessary (such as read as much dialogue as possible) to grasp the plot as collectively as possible. One of the instances where -I- felt the same way is in the characterization of Solaris. He's the perfect example of Hitchcock's "dog-kicker" (at least for a majority of the game) and only seemingly exists from the point he orders his Garchomp to attack Amaria onward to emphasize that he is evil and ruthless. As a lore-hound, it did slightly annoy me that I was being left in the dark and the cycle was repeating itself. At that point, I had to remember that this game is -not- finished yet.

I'll put it here for emphasis. Meteor's intentions are to rid Reborn of .....pretty much anything that lives, at the very least Pokemon and humans. If something seems "extreme", it isn't to say "Hey the game is edgy", but really is to say "The end justifies the means".

[TheBackwardsLegsMan]

I really appreciate the dark themes of Reborn because it's a more accurate representation of what pokemon would actually be used for. Torture, killing, stealing, crime... It has an actual morality spectrum as well, where you have your full on evil characters, your characters willing to pay evil unto evil, generic good guys... The universe that they exist in makes Team Meteor able to be better and more developed than any other Team BadGuys in any other pokemon game. Add to that the fact that they are allowed to actually be challenging and you easily have the best team. There is descent among the members; not everyone is just a generic goon. Their motive is (as far as we know) reasonable and not just there so we know they're the bad guys.

All in all, I think they're easily the best villain organization in any pokemon game. Even by their own merits, they're no slouches as far as villains go. I like them, and the brutal challenge of the game in general makes it one of the best.

[Tomas Elliot]

At the end of the day, a game featuring supernatural animals with the potential to destroy the world doesn't have to go only with realism.

Thinking back to this discussion, I remembered about this line, and I realized that I don't agree with it one bit. I won't explain why because that would require a post even longer than the one I made on page 2, and the examples I'd provide from Reborn would have nothing to do with the topic at hand (it would be nice to discuss this extensively in some other occasion, however)... But if you read this page from Tv Tropes, you'll probably imagine what my point of view is, or at least, you'll come very close...

So yeah, this has nothing to do with anything that has been said up untill now, but I just felt like pointing it out.

[Hashill]

If anything, I think Team Meteor are creditable and interesting because the game takes steps to humanize them. Simon seems to exists to drive home the point that no, these guys aren't just baby punching terrorists. Their grunts even have names, unlike every canon evil team in the franchise, and some have miniature narratives of their own that occur throughout the game (you get to see them rise through the ranks and react to events happening throughout the game, however briefly). ZEL and Taka both exhibit regret and reluctance at what they're tasked to do (with the former's father being a high ranking member of the team probably playing a huge part in why he'd be involved at all), and even Sirius helps you briefly, even if it was mostly to save his own ass. The organization is definitely bad, but what drives its members to do what they do are, for many of them, anyway, still a mystery, so I think it's too early to judge them one way or another. I like what I've seen so far, though.

[Deleted User]

Also, something I never realized about Team Meteor until Amethyst pointed it out to me, their signature type is Rock. I didn't know they even had a signature type.

[Hashill]

Makes sense - Solrock and Lunatone are probably the closest to a meteor that is also a Pokemon that they can use.

[Tomas Elliot]

Also, something I never realized about Team Meteor until Amethyst pointed it out to me, their signature type is Rock. I didn't know they even had a signature type.

*thinks of ZEL and his (or should I say "their"?) eeveelutions*

*thinks of Solaris and his Garchomp*

*thinks of the chick with the Hydreigon*

But if Ame herself said so...