That’s an interesting way of looking at it, I don’t think you’re wrong!

Your rivals in the more recent Pokémon games have trended more towards “childhood pal” than the “bigtime assholes” you had to trounce in the older ones.

You fighting Green in Silph Co. was the only time your rival got involved in the Team Rocket plot. Even then, he was just there and didn’t care one iota about Team Rocket. I think he also took the Nugget Bridge challenge, too.

This is why Gen 5 had the best rivals.

They do indeed use the same animations. That was one of the reasons the fandom got annoyed with him to begin with during pre-release.

But Hop does get better. He just can’t get better as fast as a level grinding PC can.

I wasn’t grinding too much, and in a couple of the fights he did manage to take out a couple of the Pokemon on my team. I still never had a real problem with any of the gym leaders.

The problem with Hop is twofold:

1) We had a similar archetype of character in the previous generation. I agree that he’s done better than Hau because he had an actual character arc (losing to Bede and then up through to the end of the game caused him to doubt himself, leading up to him trying to find his purpose in…

Didn’t know people were hating on Hop. I legit felt bad for the dude every time he lost and would always go looking for him when he got depressed in the story. Hell, I almost lost a pivotal battle on purpose just to see if he’d feel better (but my damn pride got in the way).

Hop had three things going against him:

This is absolutely a case that, despite me often defending Pokémon, it really would be beneficial if they fleshed out these characters.  Make the rival more than simply that dude you stomp on everytime you meet him.

Only reason why I didn’t complain too much about it when I ran into that realization... Was cause I’m swimming in the moolah. Seriously, it’s super easy to get money now. Also helps to have Meowth with a Amulet and using Gold Rush during the gym leader battles. (got 40k+ at the fire gym from that)

Hey, something Kotaku and I actually agree on in regards to Sword & Shield!

God, I wish that the first time you spoke with the uniform shophand they were specific in telling you that you can’t wear these uniforms during challenges, only outside of Gym challenges. Would have saved me an entire day of rolling my eyes and complaining.

This is actually why many fans like the Detective Pikachu game: it’s the first time we see the rest of the world. While a mediocre kids mystery, it has no trainers what so ever, so we get to see how police, secretaries, and little old ladies go through day to day life. Some have one ‘buddy,’ some none. Seeing an…

“Does everyone compete in the Pokémon tournaments?”

My memory is weak since it’s been a long time. But yes, I mean Eva. The Boss is good too and how her death more-or-less was the catalyst to both the protagonist and antagonist’s ideologies throughout the series is a solid narrative start, but she suffers from “Not talking directly enough to actually make the dummy…

Yeah, I figured it would. The folks on the Giant Bomb east crew seemed pretty down on it over all. I think those that bothered to finish it settled on “it’s worth experiencing, but I cannot recommend it without a ton of caveats.”

Also, let’s be honest here: not every game reviewer is interested in games as art or sophisticated musings on the state of the world. Camera angles seductively portraying male bodies is an instant 1/10 in some circles.

Good review, and it doesn’t surprise me that the female characters take a backseat in this. Kojima’s handling of female characters(save Eve in MGS3, probably his better handled female character in an important role, and that’s a LOW bar to cross)has always bugged me.

Not gonna lie,