Are Friendly rivals really that bad compared to mean rivals?

[Wolfox]

Before you comment: don't say anything like "Yes, and if you disagree you're simply wrong". This will be an easygoing and fun discussion (hopefully) about the Rival's in the Pokémon franchise. specifically, the two main archetypes: Mean and Friendly.

 

I've claimed that I believe Blue to be the worst rival in the franchise and I will stick by this. We've had 10 rivals by this time. two of which mean ones. One of these being an amazing and deep character, the other is a dick who's a dick for the sake of being a dick... so of those two we kinda have 50% of the mean rivals. friendly ones, however, we have 8. One friend who wants to help his/her father, a childhood friend who wants to go on an adventure with you and grow to be able to beat his father, a diversion between Truth and Ideals, a childhood friend who wants to take back a Pokémon stolen by Team Plasma from his sister, your Neightbour who wants to have a friendly competition while getting closer with you, and a new friend who wants to go on a fun adventure with you while growing enough to be able to beat his grandpa (remind you of someone?). Now, whether you like them or not, character wise you can easily see how much of an improvement even Bianca and May/Brandon are over Blue.

 

So, if you ask me, no. Mean rivals are not better. Hell, outside of Silver I'd say we haven't had a really good one (which is literally what I just said).

 

That's how I feel, but let me know how YOU feel about it

[Angelkitsune]

well i think meaner rivals are more tough battling wise but still i prefer the friendly ones because ya know...they're nice （。＾▽＾）

 

 

ps: i prefer Blue/Gary/or what ever over Fern srly he is the meanest (╬▔皿▔)凸

Edited August 14, 2018 by Angelkitsune

[Zarc]

In my opinion , friendly rivals are often annoying. And « dick » rivals are at least very interesting. They are true rivals , it mean they are ready to do everything to stop you and being the best instead of you , while on the other hand friendly rivals are not really rivals but more allies in my eyes. 

[Dreamy]

I think it's fine to have 'friend' characters, but if they're not really a proper competition for you, they're not exactly a proper 'rival'.    

 

However, this isn't me saying mean rivals are better. I mean, I think there's a lot more to it than just friendly/mean.

  

For an example, Barry is one of my favorite rivals, because you're always competing with him and can have a serious battle, but in the end, you'd have both had a good time, and when things get serious you know he has your back. 

Cheren, Hugh and Calem/Serena kind of have the dynamic of an actual competition, but they feel too serious and depressed when they lose. Hau seems close, but a little bit too far in the other direction in that he doesn't seem to care about winning enough. 

The likes of may/bianca are fine as "friend" characters, but aren't really rivals in my book. Wally could've been, but didn't show up enough. 

 

As for Blue/Silver; they're more just like an enemy. like, you're never really happy to see them, they're not someone your competing with (Blue maybe I guess) they're just in your way. Silver is a good character because of his development, but not necessarily a great rival.

[FairFamily]

To me mean/antagonistic rivals aren't necessairely better but I feel they fit my criteria that rivals need to have to be good rivals, easier then friendly rivals. First a rival needs to be challenging. A rival that isn't challenging, is't a good rival. This means that with the lowering of the difficulty of the games and the improvement of player skills in pokemon over time, didn't do the friendly rivals justice which were introduced in the later generations.

Second a rival battle has to mean something, there needs to be a stake/reason to win. Mean/antagonistic rivals meet this criteria , because they either have an opposing ideology and/or are just play mean and insult you. Proving them wrong is the reason to win. Fern, blue and red easely fill this but with the friendly rivals this is most of the time lacking. That being said overcomming a chalenging opponent can be a good reason to fight but pkmn tends to not go that route. Wally and Hau are the worst offenders to this principle. 

Third a good rival, makes you want to interact with him. Here is where friendly rivals easily fall flat on their face, most of the time they are boring. This is also why I think barry wasn't a good rival for me, I didn't like his attitude and behavior. Every meeting with was a test of my patience and I basically groaned when he came on my screen because to me he acted like a hyperactive monkey. That being said the interaction between character doesn't need to be positive: loving to hate is perfectly valid and mean rivals also fit this criteria easily . As long as the rival interactions (with the player) are good it helps being a good rival.

 

So yeah I will not say friendly rivals are bad (Cain is for instance a good rival) but they rarely fit my criteria for a good rivalry.

[wcv]

There's nothing inherently wrong with friendly rivals. The only ones that's really awful is Hau. And that's because he's an utterly worthless character with no redeeming qualities, has a terrible team, and is a complete and total idiot. 

 

The real reason people like the jerk rivals is because its been so long since we've had one in the mainline games (Gold and Silver came out in the NINETIES). And so people just got tired of the friendly rivals because when you have the same dynamic over and over again it gets boring. If every rival was an asshole everyone would be sick of that too. Add onto that that the "jerk" rivals have better teams and are more powerful than their friendly counterparts, with Barry as the only exception.

 

Serena should have been powerful, but Nintendo seems to have actively made her a joke, saddling her with both a mediocre at best team, and also just three or four Pokemon for the ENTIRE game. By comparison Blue (and Barry) had four Pokemon by the second gym. Same with Cheren and May really.

 

And like I said, Hau is just terrible in general. 

[AzureNate]

Personally, I don't mind having a friendly rival, so long as he/she is relatively hard to defeat in Pokemon battles and has a great backstory. At least Silver had some decent backstory, with him having affiliations with Team Rocket, since his father leads them. He wanted to become strong on his own without relying on others as Giovanni has relied on his TR grunts. Blue just had a persistent rivalry with the main character since birth, according to Professor Oak. May/Brendan should not even count as rivals, as they only care about the Pokedex completion, while you collected badges. That's why they had more character development in ORAS, although not a very significant change. Barry was just goofy and had no motive behind getting the badges other than to surpass you; just like Blue. Cheren wanted to go on an adventure and collect badges to become stronger, but after encountering Alder, it's revealed that he had no idea what to do after he became Champion. Bianca was irrelevant; she battles you when Cheren is not around (except Victory Road) and admits herself that she is not good in battles. A trainer with no confidence is not worthy of being a rival. I'm not familiar with XY rivals, so I won't elaborate on them. TLDR: I prefer a competent rival with a good backstory and motive.

[pyrromanis]

For me a rival should not be friendly towards you. That doesn't necessarily means they have to be jerks or mean, but they should be an obstacle in your journey and a way to motivate you push forward. Rivals should be faced in the moments where you are weak and always be ahead or at least on par with you.

Blue did that in almost every case, when he always beat the gym before you, been in the route before you and challenges you when you are in the middle of your journey like when you cleared the whole SS Anne or taking down Team Rocket. Having in the end beat Blue for the Champion title is the best achievement you could get after no matter how hard you tried Blue was always one step ahead of you. Blue literally makes you to be the best like no one ever was!

Silver, while he wasn't always ahead of you since you didn't had the same goal for half the game, he did blocked the way in the times where you were weak. And by the end due to great character development it still gives you the acomplishment feeling that you can beat even the most try harding trainers out there.
May/Brendand don\t really count as rivals but Wally sure does! And while he is friendly and all he does too tries to block you right before the exit of Victory Road (don't remember in which version) but he gives you the opposite feel of what Silver did. You crashed once again that poor boy ending his dreams of pushing forward making you feel bad for him.
Barry was a great rival even though he was a child friend. And that's because he always tried to compete on everything, making you actually want to overcome him.

Bianca was awful and Cheren was decent, but he lacked a lot to make him a threat or a tool that pushes you to become better. Also healing my mons before battling? Seriously?
I haven't played gen 6 and 7 but from what I have seen the rivals are a joke. They are more like companions following me around MY journey and annoy me with "friendly" battles. If I wanted friendly battles I would battle the Route trainers. I want you to be a challenge not joke of a battle! And especially Hau not carring at all throughout all the journey makes the last battle for the champion of Alola not looking that significant. Imagine if you battled your tryharding rival (like Blue) for the first ever Champion of the region. It would be epic and fulfilling and losing to him would make you question about your skills. If you lose to Hau it would be "whatever, not that he is a serious of a battler"

[Wolfox]

13 hours ago, pyrromanis said:

For me a rival should not be friendly towards you. That doesn't necessarily means they have to be jerks or mean, but they should be an obstacle in your journey and a way to motivate you push forward. Rivals should be faced in the moments where you are weak and always be ahead or at least on par with you.

Blue did that in almost every case, when he always beat the gym before you, been in the route before you and challenges you when you are in the middle of your journey like when you cleared the whole SS Anne or taking down Team Rocket. Having in the end beat Blue for the Champion title is the best achievement you could get after no matter how hard you tried Blue was always one step ahead of you. Blue literally makes you to be the best like no one ever was!

Silver, while he wasn't always ahead of you since you didn't had the same goal for half the game, he did blocked the way in the times where you were weak. And by the end due to great character development it still gives you the acomplishment feeling that you can beat even the most try harding trainers out there.
May/Brendand don\t really count as rivals but Wally sure does! And while he is friendly and all he does too tries to block you right before the exit of Victory Road (don't remember in which version) but he gives you the opposite feel of what Silver did. You crashed once again that poor boy ending his dreams of pushing forward making you feel bad for him.
Barry was a great rival even though he was a child friend. And that's because he always tried to compete on everything, making you actually want to overcome him.

Bianca was awful and Cheren was decent, but he lacked a lot to make him a threat or a tool that pushes you to become better. Also healing my mons before battling? Seriously?
I haven't played gen 6 and 7 but from what I have seen the rivals are a joke. They are more like companions following me around MY journey and annoy me with "friendly" battles. If I wanted friendly battles I would battle the Route trainers. I want you to be a challenge not joke of a battle! And especially Hau not carring at all throughout all the journey makes the last battle for the champion of Alola not looking that significant. Imagine if you battled your tryharding rival (like Blue) for the first ever Champion of the region. It would be epic and fulfilling and losing to him would make you question about your skills. If you lose to Hau it would be "whatever, not that he is a serious of a battler"

good piece, however you might hae forgotten Hugh

[AzureNate]

On ‎8‎/‎26‎/‎2018 at 4:59 AM, Wolfox said:

good piece, however you might hae forgotten Hugh

This is just my opinion, but Hugh is probably one of my least favorite rivals, due to the fact that his motive for starting his journey in BW2 is just to get a Pokemon back. Like, you encountered many NPC's in the game who mention that their Pokemon were liberated, so that somewhat makes Hugh's motive unoriginal. If his goal was to bring back all the liberated Pokemon to their trainers in Unova, after experiencing such a loss himself, would be a much better backstory. Let's not forget that when Hugh finally did meet the Purrloin (which was Liepard), he just froze up and did nothing while the Main Character had to fight the Shadow Triad in our lonesome. Not saying the fight was hard, but that's beside the point; Hugh is a coward, and tries to act tough by taking on Team Plasma in every situation possible. TLDR: Hugh sucks, like his Quilfish hairstyle 

[Wolfox]

56 minutes ago, AzureNate said:

This is just my opinion, but Hugh is probably one of my least favorite rivals, due to the fact that his motive for starting his journey in BW2 is just to get a Pokemon back. Like, you encountered many NPC's in the game who mention that their Pokemon were liberated, so that somewhat makes Hugh's motive unoriginal. If his goal was to bring back all the liberated Pokemon to their trainers in Unova, after experiencing such a loss himself, would be a much better backstory. Let's not forget that when Hugh finally did meet the Purrloin (which was Liepard), he just froze up and did nothing while the Main Character had to fight the Shadow Triad in our lonesome. Not saying the fight was hard, but that's beside the point; Hugh is a coward, and tries to act tough by taking on Team Plasma in every situation possible. TLDR: Hugh sucks, like his Quilfish hairstyle 

his reason is a bit more personal than just bringing one Purloin back. he wishes to bring back the Pokémon that his late grandfather gave his sister. his reasoning is less about righteousness but more about revenge and family. as for him freezing, wouldn't you? he just learned that the Purloin he knew and was searching for this whole time was used by the people who stole it (understandable on their end, even if Liepard is pretty bad) and will not listen to what Hugh or his Sister will say, potentially forever. I'd be frozen is anger and anguish myself too. Granted, I can't change your opinion on Hugh, only give my 2 cents about it. Hugh is easily my second favorite rival (after my boy Barry) and well, this is my reasoning

[AzureNate]

3 hours ago, Wolfox said:

his reason is a bit more personal than just bringing one Purloin back. he wishes to bring back the Pokémon that his late grandfather gave his sister. his reasoning is less about righteousness but more about revenge and family. as for him freezing, wouldn't you? he just learned that the Purloin he knew and was searching for this whole time was used by the people who stole it (understandable on their end, even if Liepard is pretty bad) and will not listen to what Hugh or his Sister will say, potentially forever. I'd be frozen is anger and anguish myself too. Granted, I can't change your opinion on Hugh, only give my 2 cents about it. Hugh is easily my second favorite rival (after my boy Barry) and well, this is my reasoning

Yeah, I have to agree with the reasoning behind Hugh freezing. Admittedly, I overlooked that information. 

[Wolfox]

2 minutes ago, AzureNate said:

Yeah, I have to agree with the reasoning behind Hugh freezing. Admittedly, I overlooked that information. 

yeah, putting yourself in those shoes I doubt you would have done much else. just thinking and dealing with the shock and the anger and sadness it gives you

 

Edit: with you I meant anyone reading this, not you specifically

Edited August 27, 2018 by Wolfox