Let's Play Pokemon Sword: Isle of Armor, Part 2: Walking With Pokemon?!

So after completing the first two trials, I spent a long while just... wandering around the Isle of Armor again, catching Pokemon and shaking trees to get items and looking for all these funky new Armorite Ores and Galarica Twigs. Oh, and Diglett-hunting. And frankly, I'm just having fun just exploring and training up my Pokemon the traditional way instead of just shoving experience candies down their throat.

And there's a bunch of interesting stuff. There's the Digging Pa outside of a cave, who will take some armorite ore for me to... dig for watts? No thanks, Digging Pa, I get enough watts from both the Isle of Armor and the old Wild Area. What do you take me for, some chump who hasn't beaten Eternatus? Digging Ma also shows up, but she basically allows me to gamble, pay one Armorite Ore for the chance to get more. She broke her dumb shovel basically immediately, though, so I'm down one Armorite Ore. There are also a bunch of random people showing up wanting to trade Galarian forms for non-Galarian forms, as well as people who will sell me 'seen' Pokedex entries for 100 watts. Sure.

I also traveled through the waters surrounding the primary island and found a bunch of interesting stuff while dodging those dang Sharpedos. The Mow Rotom island is one I've visited before, but there are a bunch of interesting stuff all over the place. There is this weird six-pointed island on the top left that has five raid dens, and a Liligant of all things guarding each raid den? And the center of the island is a weirdly-cut grass shaped like a beehive comb with Combees? Do Combees and Liligants hang out together now? On a different island, there is a lady who will wipe your pokemon's slate clean for ten Armorite Ores, which I assume is an EV-reset thing. Nice! I don't really care for competitive Pokemon right now, but I dabbled with competitive builds a lot in Generation VI and I absolutely know that these sort of things are extremely useful to build that perfect fighting machine.

Also, as the soup lad in the dojo tells me, Max Mushrooms will spawn faster (or is it will only spawn?) when I clear Max Raid dens in the Isle of Armor. God damn it, okay, fine, game, I will play your stupid max raids. Honestly, my biggest problem is that these max raids are absolutely miserable if you're doing five-star raids with Pokemon that have AoE moves in their repertoire, and the AI is just absolutely idiotic sometimes. And I can't even run away with a full AI team to reset the AI or the Pokemon I bring, which, again, is annoying. At least I have a lot of Watts and Wishing Pieces stockpiled, so I can just run around spamming for three-star raids and below to trigger the appearance of these Max Mushrooms. The Isle of Armor's max raids also drop Armorite Ore, which is going to be useful for move tutor stuff

The internet tells me it's approximated to be one mushroom spawning in the Isle of Armor after you complete three raids, which, with the animations off and me just button-mashing the game when I watch Youtube, doesn't really take that long, but honestly, between the terrible AI and the annoyingly repetitive shield mechanic, that's probably the best thing I can say about the max raids -- at least for the most part it's easy to mash and ignore in the background when I do something else. Which isn't really something you want to be said for a game, but here we are.

And all of that effort is basically to make Gigantamax Inteleon, one of the new Gigantamax forms that are added in this expansion. Honestly, at this point I can take it or leave it with Inteleon, but he's still my starter and I feel like it's almost an obligation to allow him to be this one-man sniper. The animation for Giga Inteleon is pretty cool, admittedly, with how he initially spawns as a regular lizard with a super-long tail before coiling it up into his sniper's tower. And his sniper rifle is just a rod of water, which is pretty awesome -- it gets this past the censors by not being a real gun, while also feeling like it's a sensible, organic usage of a Pokemon's water-manipulating powers.

Speaking of new Gigantamax forms, got to use them since they're new, right? I got my new Bulbasaur up into a Venusaur, and Giga Venusaur... umm... he's sure a chonky lad! I actually think I significantly prefer this to Mega Venusaur, even if they both work on the same principle of 'the plant gets bigger'. The fact that the gigantic flower itself is the focus of this mega form, and it's become some sort of bizarre giant mushroom that also gives the impression of emo hair is pretty funny. I also like how the leaves look kind of overgrown, like this is a more feral Venusaur than the original or the mega form.

Going on with the story, Mustard calls Klara and I that the third, final, ultimate trial is just a Dynamax battle. Okay, I suppose this DLC really didn't have too many battles (are there literally no trainers to fight other than Klara and Mustard?), and apparently the mysterious locked door in the dojo leads to a giant dirt-patch stadium with a dynamax power spot. Klara buggers off to 'prepare her heart in the battlefield', which I actually didn't find suspicious at all since I thought it's just a regular video game thing where the NPC shows you where to go by offering to stand in the place you're meant to go.

Mustard also talks about how Klara has great talent but only really tries the bare minimum, and only by meeting me that she is starting to push herself to her limits. Okay, though, but she's like, running around with a single level 50 Venipede before she met me, so unless her talent is pressing B to prevent her Venipede from evolving, I'm going to have to call bullshit on that. Also, turns out that Klara's whole going to the battlefield early is to... put toxic spikes all over the battlefield.

Which... which would actually do something if I hadn't had half my team be poison types myself (Toxapex, Toxtricity and Venusaur). It's an asshole thing to do, but I do admit that this gives the fight some extra oomph. Of course, switching out from my Hatterene (why did I have her lead the party?) to Toxtricity ends up with the Toxic Spikes being absorbed into my poison-type gecko, and it's basically a beat-up of Klara's Skorupi and Weezing. I absolutely forgot that Dhelmise is not Steel-type and lost it to the Weezing first, though. And then it's Gigantamax Venusaur against Whirlipede, and this is the first time I actually ever used the Giga-Venusaur. Apparently his move, G-Max Vine Lash, leaves behind damage over time? The Whirlipede goes down easy and Klara summons her own Dynamax, a Galarian Slowbro. No Gigantamax for her, I assume she won't get Gigantamax Slowbro (if such a form exists) until later in the story. See, should've saved those mushrooms.

And Galarian Slowbro is... interesting! the pink-and-purple colour scheme does fit with Klara's bubblegum princess aesthetic, and apparently in this form the Shellder chomped down on Slowbro's arm and it's now a Samus Aran style arm cannon. And it's also Psychic/Poison... which, of course, the Psychic part of the equation one-shots my poor Venusaur. It's almost fifteen levels below Klara's team, and I really didn't expect Venusaur to do anything. I just wanted to see the Gigantamax form. I tossed out Hatterene completely forgetting that she's part-Fairy, and a Max Ooze ends up taking the poor creature out. I have more Pokemon, though, and a Dragon Darts attack later, Slowbro is down.

Klara is all depressed and stuff, but she's at least a good sport about the cheating and tells me that I can tell the master. What she did was kind of scummy, but she kind of needed the advantage against me, so I won't snitch... but apparently Mustard knows about the cheating all along and tells me that kindness is my strength and cheating is okay because... Klara just didn't want to lose to her rival? Yeah, no, Mustard, that's not a good life lesson to be telling the kids at home.

Klara gets let off with a slap on the wrist and the punishment of taking care of the dojo's Pokemon (which is, what, just the Poliwrath and the Scraggy?) and Mustard takes out the secret armour... surprise, surprise, the secret armour is a Pokemon, and it's Kubfu the kung fu bear, and we get a cute cutscene of it jumping around, doing kung fu kicks and atatatatata-ing against Mustard's palm. And then it's shy and hides behind Mustard's leg. Yeah, this is the star of the expansion pack and... y'know what? Humanoid-style Pokemon isn't my thing, and I really didn't think I was going to like Kubfu a lot thanks to its weird pillar-legs and weird stick-fingers and those giant eyebrows... but he's actually cute in motion. I don't actually mind him at all, he's a cute bear.

Mustard then talks about how I need to be friendly with my new wushu bear and look around the island and find the dojo students that are good at standing in spots (the little !!! reaction that said dojo students make are hilarious) and talks about how I need to be friendly with Kubfu and like camp out and have battles and walk with it.

Hold the fucking phone. WALKING WITH POKEMON IS BACK! WHAT THE FUCK! This was completely unspoiled for me, and it is a huge feature that they had in Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee and I was fully expecting to show up in Sword/Shield (before the whole, y'know, rushed-to-the-deadline game thing) and yaaaaay I can walk with Pokemon now. Sure, it's just on the Isle of Armor, but I think I spent an unreasonable amount of time just running around and testing out the new walking/running animations for my Pokemon. And I really shouldn't be surprised since I've seen them run around in the overworld before, but I dunno. I just really ended up getting super duper excited about this. This is awesome.

I could go around and continue the main story, but as usual, I became distracted. Honey talks about how she needs a lot of watts and wants to upgrade the dojo. Okay, I get it, it's the typical resource sink base-building feature in a game. I burn through a couple thousand Watts to try out, and she ends up calling in a hair stylist (who hides in the room because of the secrets of the hair styling is not for me to know), and a Rotomi terminal... that doesn't boot up! Honey goes into this rant about how Macro Cosmos is a scumbag company because how dare they sell hardware and software separately and this brand-new PC doesn't come with Windows 10, damn monetization, it's like releasing a video game that's only 75% complete and they will release the remaining bits in little increments of downloadable content a couple of months down the line!

Ahem.

Anyway, after the Rotomi's software gets installed (did they just buy a Rotom to haunt the PC or some shit?) the next thing Honey orders is a vending machine. Okay. I tried out the faceless haircut person and there are a couple of new hairstyles, including Chairman Rose's hairdo and the punk mohawk. Plus the dojo topknot. Google tells me that female characters get Marnie's hairdo... which is a lot more preferable than Chairman Rose's "I want to stand out on my first Twitch stream" hair.

Hyde shows me the Cram-o-Matic, which will recycle four crap items and maybe give me one good item. I tried it with the Apricorns as he suggested, but instead of giving me one of Kurt's Johto balls, it just gives me a regular Poke Ball. Oh well, RNG be like that sometimes.

Anyway... I end up going around and cooking, because a bunch of new item vendors show up in the farm plots outside of the dojo, and I figured out... hey, why not cook? I played the cooking minigame maybe three times in my entire original Sword playthrough? And you know what I appreciate? The Curry Dex. I had completely ignored it in my first playthrough and now having a lot of random cooking ingredients means that I can dick around and try to see what they all make. I'm pretty sure that the multiple variants just depends on the berry taste thing from previous generations, but I mostly just had fun seeing what sort of nonsense we can get up to with burgers, whipped cream, instant ramen, bananas, Farfetch'd's leeks, Slowpoke's tail (god damn it, Team Rocket apparently managed to get the Slowpoke tails exported to Galar)...

Some of the Curry Dex entries are bland and non-descriptive, but some are hilarious. Cook your curry with bread? "Even if you don’t like the idea of eating two kinds of carbs, they’re quite filling. It’s an extremely amateurish meal." Toss in sweet berries with whipped cream? "It’s practically a dessert now." Instant noodle curry? "When the instant noodles and the curry were combined, they became exactly what you’d expect: junk food." The snark in these entries! I'm sorry. I got completely distracted, I've never actually seen any of these curry dex entries before.

And then it's more exploration and Pokemon catching. Seadra! Blissey! Scyther! Shinx! Pinsir! Kangaskhan! Stoutland! Skarmory! Clauncher! Mustard wants me to go around and have Kubfu see the sights all over the Isle of Armor, which I think is a neat way to instantly boost up Kubfu's happiness rating. Thanks to the curry minigame I got Kubfu at full happiness after two viewing spots, but I went to all of them anyway. The Potbottom Desert doesn't really give me a particularly good view, and I don't think I've actually fully explored the Brawler's Cave before. There is a Druddigon randomly wandering around! It's absolutely pretty and the art team does a fantastic job at showing water inside a cave. Challenge Tower also has a properly pretty view of the whole Isle of Armor, which is nice.

And then there is this Loop Lagoon area, which I don't think I've been in before, because it requires surfing around the island to reach. And it's an adorable little island full of Sandygast! Yay Sandygast, I love Sandygast! Probably a lot of people fucking died on this sand beach but yay Sandygast! Sandygast's dex entry in Sword is hilarious! "Grudges of the dead have possessed a mound of sand and become a Pokémon. Sandygast is fond of the shovel on its head." Yep, it's a literal ghostly being formed by the grudges of the restless dead but hey it loves its cute red shovel!

Also, at this point, I took a brief detour back to the Galar mainland to purchase some Pokeballs, farm some gold and wishing pieces, and to check out this 'Style Card'. Apparently all it does is to allow me to purchase some hideously expensive... business suits? Okay, that's actually kind of cool. Between this and the Chairman Rose hairstyle, though, I think that this basically allows players to cosplay as either Rose or Marnie if you want to. God damn it, though, there are a lot of other cooler male characters in the game than freaking Chairman Rose!

I also talked to the Diglett dude, and I got a bunch of Alolan Pokemon, which... makes sense, actually. My memory on the order is a bit foggy, but I do know that I get an original-flavour Slowpoke, and Alolan versions of Meowth, Vulpix, Sandshrew and Raichu. S'neat!

After getting Kubfu's friendship up, Mustard brings me to the swamp and tells me that I now have to choose between two choices. The Tower of Waters and the Tower of Darkness, because the training Kubfu will undergo in the towers will be different, and I can only pick one. And also, Kubfu needs to be around level 70 to easily breeze through the towers. Okay, grinding time, then.

Thanks to some advice from a friend, I'm also told that I need at least another batch of Max Mushrooms for the Kubfu quest, so I began doing a bunch of max raid battles to also stock up on experience candies. And... for some reason, at this point I start meeting a lot of Gigantamax Pokemon in the raids? Is the rate increased in the Isle of Armor? I know that I've only ever caught a Giga Butterfree in the regular wild area (plus the Giga Meowth and Eevee from the event) and all the other Gigantamax Pokemon I encountered all broke out of their balls, but it's particularly easy here. Within around five or six raids, I got myself a Gigantamax Kingler and a Gigantamax Appletun (which is supposed to be Shield exclusive, isn't it?) and met (but failed to catch) a Gigantamax Toxtricity and Gengar. Okay, then. Party-wise, I benched my Venusaur in favour of Appletun. Yay fat chubby stubby dragon.

And then it's Tower of Darkness time! No real reason why, I didn't even look up at what the difference between the two Urshifu forms are. I just thought that Fighting/Dark is a cooler typing than Water/Fighting. Sorry, Poliwrath. I entered with a level 67 Kubfu, and it's five floors of trainers, and I have to clear them out in one go. Old-school Elite Four rules, got it. There's some neat kung fu dialogue here talking about having to learn to use both light and dark and synergy and stuff, which is cool. My Kubfu easily beats up the level 65-70 adversaries in the tower, going from a Zorua to a Scraggy to an Inkay to a Krokorok. It's simple, but Kubfu isn't like the most durable creature around, so I don't mind it.

Of course, waiting at the top of the pagoda is our master Mustard, who figured out in advance which tower is going to be my choice. "A stream that is too clear is avoided by fish, sometimes you need a bit of darkness." And with that bit of zen advice, Mustard... throws off his jacket and his hat, and apparently he's in full martial arts master underneath, holy shit, that's fucking awesome. It's an almost-expected trope at this point, but seeing Mustard suddenly assume a badass kung fu pose, jump around, punch the air and have his eyebrows rise up super saiyan style... it's actually pretty awesome.

And then his Kubfu outspeeds my Kubfu and his Kubfu one-shot my Kubfu with an Aerial Ace god damn it Kubfu Kubfu Kubfu. Also, despite Kubfu being a legendary Pokemon, I guess there's just a bunch of them running around in Mustard's dojo, then? The idea of legendary Pokemon being unique has basically decayed to nothing huh.

I returned back up, though, and this is the Tower of Darkness. I need to embrace my inner darkness. So... that means to cheat, by slapping a Quick Claw on Kubfu, saving in front of Mustard, and then save scumming until the Quick Claw activates and my Kubfu ends up aerial ace-ing first. What? It's the Tower of Darkness.

And with the ability to fight pragmatically displayed before my shifu, Mustard congratulates me for training Kubfu well, and Kubfu for not being a shy bear baby. Apparently, Leon did this trial before but failed because he got lost and was unable to enter either tower. Silly Leon. Does that mean that Leon has a Kubfu stashed somewhere? Also, I guess that's what happened to the Charmander -- Leon was the one who took it. With all that done, Kubfu gets to read the Scroll of Darkness on the top of the tower and with a 'babear', he evolves into Urshifu: Single Strike Form. Fighting/Dark with the move Wicked Blow, which will always result in a critical hit. One Punch!

The story is honestly pretty shallow, but I am enjoying it a whole ton. Maybe it's just because I really do like the martial arts trope and that's just my jam, but I did enter this DLC expecting nothing but the wild area, but it's just so much fun to explore and play through the story and discover all the random quality of life changes like the bicycle and the Pokemon walking next to me thing. Good stuff all around, I am certainly enjoying myself!

Random Notes:

• As of the time of writing, there is this huge Zeraora raid event where everyone in the world needs to clear 1 million Zeraora raid dens and we'll all get a free shiny Zeraora... if we have Pokemon Home. That service is a paid subscription, though, which is irritating. Also irritating is the fact that the most ideal way to do raid battles is with three other players means that I also have to subscribe for the online Nintendo service thing. Bah. 
• For all my bitching about the Max Raid AI trainers, we do get a new option in one of the dojo students who uses an offensive Poliwhirl, so that's at least one more trainer in the pool of AI trainers that I can trust to not fuck things up. 
• I found my baby Venipede in the Forest of Focus. I briefly thought about using a Scolipede in my team, but I did that already in Black/White, and I want to try and use new Pokemon in this playthrough. The dex entry noting that Venipedes are actually rival species with Sizzlipede is fun and, I think, actually true for most real-life centipedes!
• I taught Inteleon Scale Shot, one of the Armorite Ore tutor moves, and it's an interesting one? The animation's just a shower of scales being shot at the enemy, but it's a multi-hit move that boosts speed while lowering defense. The idea of becoming faster but more fragile as you shed your scales as ammunition is a very awesome one, and potentially two to five ticks of a speed boost by using a single move is a pretty cool one even if Inteleon's not the ideal Pokemon to slap this effect on.
• I do find it interesting that there are absolutely no trainers in the Isle of Armor. For a franchise whose post-game areas are almost always intended to just be mostly trainer battles, this is certainly a refreshing change of pace. 
• So since Avery is a psychic-type trainer, what tomfoolery did he do to cheat in the battle?
• Klara keeps saying 'kla-razy' in her fights. Between her and Mustard saying 'well mustered' all the time, everyone in this DLC likes to make puns on their names a bit too much. 
• I got Klara's league card after beating her up, and apparently her backstory is that she's a failed underground pop idol and she wants to become a gym leader to extend her popularity. Sure. 
• I'm going to assume that the addition of the hair stylist is a late decision when they were finalizing the game so they didn't have time to fit in the usual hair styling overworld items (which would look out of place in the dojo anyway) and just cooked up this hilarious bit of handwaving about how the hair stylist will want to hide out and protect the secret art of styling punk rock hair. Also, does the hair stylist watch me change? Creep!

Let's Play Pokemon Sword: Isle of Armor, Part 1: Armor Time

So yeah, the new Pokemon Sword/Shield DLC came out a couple of days back. And despite my reservations about there being DLC for these Pokemon games, I have more or less came around to it, I guess? I still don't like it on principle, but at least they're selling it in a single purchase of an Expansion Pass, and sort of treating it as an alternative to buying a second version of the same game a la Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon is certainly a bit of a palatable comparison. But that's a discussion for another date, because, well, we're off to the Isle of Armor!


I won't lie, I really haven't touched my copy of Pokemon Sword for a while, and the last time I did was when they had that Galarian Slowpoke event as a little mini-prologue for the Isle of Armor DLC. And the DLC starts off at Wedgehurst Station and I bugger off via a fun little usage of the loadscreen map showing me riding the train, then hopping onto a Corviknight taxi and moving out of the Galar mainland to the Isle of Armor, located on the east side of Galar. There's a couple of quick introductions as some random lab-coat lady upgrades by Rotom Pokedex to add in however many Pokemon that the team finally managed to make updated models for the Nintendo Switch. I completely did not try to look up anything about these DLC at all, beyond the very first announcement trailer, so any Pokemon inclusions (or exclusions) are going to be a surprise. I also don't know if they're going to add any new Pokemon other than Kubfu, who shows up a lot in the trailers, so... yeah. Again, this is once more a mostly blind playthrough.

And right after arriving into the Isle of Armor station, the game quickly tells us a lot about what to expect from the area. Some random dude talks about how he was supposed to sign up for the dojo, but he gets intimidated by some fierce-looking trainer. And enter Klara! I like Klara a lot, her aesthetic of combining the loud green-and-purple Poison-type gym outfit, her bubblegum-pink hair, her white jacket and her Dustox hair ribbon do end up making a pretty memorable design. I briefly met her in that Galarian Slowpoke preview thing, but she's just kind of an airhead.

Turns out that Klara's personality is that... she's kind of a bitch and a show-off, and I love that. Again, while I'm not saying that all of the friendly rivals are trash (Hop and Hau had stories, at least) they're certainly boring, and Klara has the added bonus of not only being a rival, but also being your senior and your senpai on the Isle of Armor.

The whole thing ends up with a misunderstanding, though, when Klara tries to talk to the new recruit for the dojo, but instead assumes that I'm the actual new recruit and that Im "mocking" her when I picked the truthful answers that, no, I had absolutely no idea what's going on. Obviously, this is Pokemon so it's not like there's going to be like a Witcher II or Skyrim style "select your allegiance carefully" choice, but it's interseting that the game does give us the chance to either be honest or to absolutely take advantage and bluff my way into the dojo.

And right away I realize one problem that's going to impact my enjoyment of the Isle of Armor -- I'm carrying around a level 80 Centiskorch on my lead, and the rest of my party is in the 70-80 level range. Klara's Pokemon? A level 58 Venipede and Slowpoke. Yeah, even putting aside that she's the sort of silly late-game trainer who doesn't evolve her Pokemon for some reason, the sheer level difference is going to make it a bit hard to not just steamroll everything on the island. And I get it, the DLC is constructed in a way that you can head off to the Isle of Armor at the moment you reach Wedgehurst, and it's not really meant to be post-game material... but really, couldn't they have given Klara something more instead of just scaling up the levels? Like, if I'm at the point of the game when Klara has level 58 Pokemon, wouldn't she be walking around with a Scolipede and a Slowbro? I dunno.

Klara panics when she gets defeated, and is all scared that if I join the dojo, I would eclipse her popularity and no one would pay attention to her, so she gives a bunch of excuse and essentially bribes me to not enter the Dojo because maaaaybe I'm not good enough? The Dojo is where Leon trained, after all. And hey, she also gives me a Style Card as a little bribe, which would apparently allow me to get exclusive items in boutiques and hair salons. I know the DLC adds a bunch of new cosmetic choices, and this is an interesting way to implement it, but this does raise a bunch of interesting questions... is this sort of exclusive shop access club card thing a thing in real life? Is there, like, a secret Hot Topic or Uniqlo membership card that will allow me to purchase real life DLC clothes? The mind boggles.

So anyway, I swap out my entire party of level 70-80 Pokemon from my original Sword playthrough for a bunch of the B-team that I was sort of working on building up and never really actually allowed them to catch up to the higher levels. Taking Klara's Pokemon as a measuring stick, I ended up picking Pokemon from my 'I like these guys, I'm going to train them up' box and crafted a new team. Dhelmise (I've always wanted to use one in Sun/Moon but never had the patience to catch one),  Toxapex (who's the highest at level 68, since I actually did train her up), Toxtricity (also started off at around 65 or so, and also one of the higher leveled members of my team), Dragapult (who basically just fresh-off evolved), Fringe the Hatterene (yes, it's the one from the in-game trade) and... a random level 10 Arctovish. I know we're going to get Kubfu at some point in the storyline, so that's going to be a little temporary team member that I'll allow to leech experience.



Speaking of which, I've never actually seen Dhelmise's Anchor Shot attack in this engine and it looks badass. Dhelmise is honestly fast turning from a Pokemon I like into one of my new all-time favourites just in this short playthrough.

And... hey, I could go immediately to the dojo and actually see the story of the DLC play out, but I quite literally got distracted by the new giant Isle of Armor for like an hour or two before actually setting foot in the dojo. One thing that I've always criticized about Galar's original Wild Area is that... it's so boring. Once the novelty of an open-world area has worn off, it's basically just two huge flat fields with a couple of ponds and bridges and sandy areas thrown in. And I'm not complaining that much --  while it's a neat first effort, ultimately the only real thing that the original Galar Wild Area is that it's big. There's really nothing else to it. Isle of Armor, on the other hand, feels so much more interestingly designed. Sure, volume-wise, it probably isn't that much different than the original Galar field, but instead of just flat land, there are like, caves, there are far more visually interesting locations like a beach, a swamp, a mountain, a bunch of caves... it's all interconnected and the exploration ends up feeling so much more interesting. The first impression of the Isle of Armor is certainly far, far more positive to me compared to my first impression of the original Galar Wild Area.

And... there's a lot to see. I admit that I have been kind of grumpy in previous segments about how adding the missing 500+ Pokemon is just like, something that's really kind of the bare minimum of what the DLC should do, but I really do like that the areas and the Pokemon that spawn there do feel like there's a lot more thought being put into it. I don't want to rag on the original Wild Area again, but suffice to say that the creatures that show up on the cave or desert or swamp areas actually make sense to pop up there. The biomes and the Pokemon that live there actually feel like there's a fair amount of thought put into it instead of basically just having the population rotate depending on the weather regardless of whether it made sense or not for Snover or Sneasel to spawn en masse at a random grass patch in a grass field. Again, it's nit-picking, but it's things like this that I really do appreciate.

The vibe of the Isle of Armor does seem to be kind of a tropical island, although it's not quite just Alola redux. There are a bunch of Pokemon that's 'new' to Sword/Shield, and right off the station there are a bunch of Buneary, Jigglypuff, Chansey, the curry-headed Galarian Slowpoke... and a giant-ass Wailord in the distance. That, I think, was the first thing I headed off to. Wailord being absurdly tiny compared to his canon size in anime, manga and older 3D games has been something that the fandom has been ragging Nintendo for, and I guess Wailord is here just to show that, yes, in the overworld, Wailord is still as large as a whale. It's just that in the battle system, he's shrunken down. Fair enough.

Also, when you surf (cycle-ride) through the sea around the Isle of Armor, you get assaulted by fucking Sharpedo, and I absolutely love the way that they're depicted here, just bursting through the water like... like, well, torpedoes. The Sharpedos are dicks.

And then I just ran around the mainland in the beaches and foresty area near the terminal. We've got Kingler scuttling around the beach, a random Mow Rotom in an island grinning like a shit, Wingull and Pelipper flying near the beach areas, Klefki jingle-jangling in the grass, Abra teleporting in and out of the grass (which is something that Sw/Sh has done with Ralts, but is still cool as hell), Starmie... walking on the beach? That's ridiculous but kind of something that doesn't take me for surprise. Like, I know Staryu and Starmie can walk, I think I saw them doing that in like the anime or the Mystery Dungeon games, but I kind of usually imagine them floating around. There are also Psyduck and Rockruff, too. I have around 50+ quick balls, so capturing a lot of them isn't particularly hard, even if they're mostly at level 55-60.

On the bridge leading to the dojo, there's a very familiar tuft of yellow grass sticking out of the ground, and it's.... an Alolan Diglett! There's a hiker that apparently caught a lot of Diglett in Alola and brought them to the Isle of Armor, but somehow lost all of them. And when he said 'a lot' I thought like he meant... twenty or something. But turns out Mr. Diglett Man lost a hundred and fifty. 151 if you count the Diglett I found in this encounter. Ha, I get the reference. Gotta catch 'em all and all that. I appreciate this, it's sort of like an easier version of the Korok hunting fetch quest from Breath of the Wild, or the Zygarde cells from the Alola games, and I definitely am happy that there's this extra little side-quest.

Speaking of things I really like... there's a random bike person near the dojo who calls me over and offers to customize my bike, and THANK GOD. See, one of the biggest complaints I had in Sword and Shield is that it's got the same amount (or even more) of character customization as the past couple of games, but if you try and ride the bicycle you're shunted into this absolutely ugly bike shirt with the alternate colour options all looking like shit. So yeah, having my bike be repainted into a badass red-and-black colour, and I ditch the terrible vanilla Sw/Sh bike outfit for a far cooler-looking black-and-dark-purple (I use the 'dragon' variant) Rotom shirt with red trims. It's a small thing, but one that I definitely appreciate.

A bit nearby Mr. Bike Lad is a swamp/wetlands area that definitely reminds me of Sinnoh's Pastoria Great Marsh, although that might just be because it has a lot of Quagsires, Woopers, Skorupis and Drapions. Can I just say how much I appreciate that the Isle of Armor isn't just entirely newly-introduced Pokemon? Pokemon that are originally found in Galar also show up here, which makes this feel like an extension of Galar since you get to see the likes of Drednaws and Cramorants hanging out with some of the newly-introduced Pokemon, and, again, it really does feel like they put a lot of thought in designing the population of a marsh area or a beach-front area instead of just haphazardly looking through the list of available creatures and slapping them in. One of my favourites has to probably be the little underground cave network that you enter through the rivers, filled with amphibious creatures like Chewtles, Golisopods and Poliwags.

There are also a bunch of interesting new items! Apricorns now drop from berry trees, there are a bunch of those random feathers from Unova, I could swear some of the berries are new, and there are items like 'Armorite Ore' and 'Galarica Twig' whose purpose I'm still not entirely sure about. And there are a bunch of TR's just sort of laying around.

I also tried out a max raid against a Dunsparce, hoping that maybe they made the max raid a lot smoother and less just 'spam attacks while the raid Pokemon puts up multi-hit shields over and over again' but sadly the max raid battles still suck. Thankfully, there are a lot of other random Pokemon out there. Bouffalant! Tauros and Miltank hanging out in a grass field! Corphish and Crawdaunt swimming alongside the Arrokuda in a pretty river! Tentacool in the ocean! Amonguss and Foongus in a cool forested area! Emolga sitting on tree branches and you have to whistle to call them down! Mienfoo hanging out a Victory Road-esque set of stairs leading up to a pagoda on a mountain! A river that leads into a cave where Golisopod and Woobat and Dwbble and Chewtle hang out! Comfey! Magnemite! Tangela! Passimian! And, interestingly, it seems like they've assigned the "Pikachu Clones" as the wandering Pokemon that's not inside the grass, because I've met Pikachu, Marill, Morpeko and Dedenne showing up like this. Plus Emolga in the trees. And, hey, Marill's considered a Pikachu Clone now, I guess.

Of course, through my wild exploration I basically find out that the two prominent pagodas are called the 'Tower of Darkness' and 'Tower of Water' and I need to progress in the plot to enter either of them. So... yeah, around two hours of just running around exploring and taking a lot of items and throwing quick balls at these Pokemon (and evolving some of them) that I finally end up actually going to the dojo.

And in the dojo, we meet Klara talking to the wife of the dojo's master, Honey, and Klara is basically all panicking about how the new student arrived. Again, I tried to pick the honest answer of them getting the wrong person (and in the dialogue, Honey lampshades that the name given is different with mine), but all this leads to is Klara going "oh I'm so happy you decided to come after all". We get some information dump about how Leon used to train on this dojo, and how Klara is training to become a poison-type gym leader, and there's a brief shot of some gray bear Pokemon watching from the top of the dojo. Right, Kubfu! He's supposed to be a thing.

The dojo's pretty neat, we've got a lot of overworld models of things like gym equipment and the Japanese-style doors and whatnot, and I do like that there is just a random Poliwrath (and I'm not 100% sure, but I'm pretty sure this is another one that was not in the original Sw/Sh) and Scraggy hanging out with the dojo students. I'm quickly introduced to Hyde, Honey's kid, who's wearing headphones and is a tech dude that gives me an Exp. Charm that the game explicitly tells me has a machine inside of it instead of it just being a 'mere' charm.

The master of the dojo is this kooky old man with super-long eyebrows called Mustard, and I feel like his vibe is basically those 'hip' grandpas that walk around dressed in like, teenage T-shirts and hoodies. I like him a lot, actually! Mustard wants to test me in battle, and there's a bit of oddity that we see this battlefield in the middle of the dojo... but apparently the team didn't actually render it for battles so the fight against master Mustard takes place in a formless cloud void? My Dragapult is actually lower-leveled than Mustard's Mienfoo and Shinx, but I still take him out very handily. See, that's the sheer difference that the stat boost of a pokemon's evolution can cause. Also, I know this is the early part of the DLC storyline and I know it's super-nitpicky, but I wish that even if it's unevolved Pokemon, they probably should've given Mustard and Klara like, three or four Pokemon at least, yeah?

Mustard quickly figures out that I showed up on the dojo more because of a misunderstanding, and he's not stupid, but he's super friendly and happy to just hang out and say that I'm welcome to hang out as a student as long as I've got the will to learn. Mustard gives me my dojo uniform so I can look like all of the other dudes in yellow training gi, which is a full set of clothes that also involves a new bag and turning my hair into a topknot.

Klara also wants a uniform, because despite being my senpai and being around a fair bit longer, she's never actually gotten the uniform. So I guess she's actually barely earlier than I was in joining the dojo? Whatever the case, though, a pink blur stole Klara's uniform... and it's three curry-head Slowpokes! Or rather, Fastpokes, because apparently Mustard's training somehow causes these Slowpokes to move very, very quickly. Mustard tells us that this is the first of three trials to get the 'secret armor' of the dojo, and Mustard tells everyone to go go go and hunt down the speedy, running Slowpokes, beat them up and the ones that return with Klara's uniform wins the trial. There's an adorable bit with the camera lingering on just a while longer after all the students run out and then this poor Scraggy is just toddling along behind them.

Exploring the dojo, there's a dining room, plus a little room where I can both rest and change my clothes -- which is great, a small thing I really liked about XY is that you can change your clothes at a booth in the Pokemon Center which Sword and Shield (and I'm 90% Sun and Moon too) didn't have, so it's a neat bit of convenience. And then there's the living room... where good ol' shifu Mustard is... playing Pokemon Quest on the Nintendo Switch, while his table is filled with half-eaten snacks. My god, this is so funny. There's an adorable Tympole plush, and a bizarre robotic Cramorant contraption that Hyde has made, and apparently it requires watts? Hyde refuses to take any of mine, though, so I guess it's later in the story.

See, the thing is that the Slowpokes are darting through the overworld leaving gigantic dust clouds like Speedy Gonzales, and no one is able to catch up to them... except for me. And not because my character is any skillful, but because I've got an expensive bike that can keep up to speed with the Slowpokes rampaging around the swamp. The other dojo students are bikeless peasants! Kinda wished that the game didn't make it so obvious that I only won because of this unfair advantage, but eh. I try to beat up the Slowpokes with my Dhelmise's Giga Drain and it's at this point that I found out that Galarian Slowpoke has lost their Water typing and is pure-Psychic. Okay! The Slowpokes themselves were simple and all used non-damaging attacks like Psych Up, Rain Dance and Healing Pulse, so it's a simple matter to beat them up. I also randomly rammed a Zorua (some of these character models are small and hard to see when you're on a bike) while pedaling after the Slowpokes, so that's a cool yokai fox in my collection.

Apparently the others all caught up to the Slowpoke but are unable to defeat them, which, uh... how? The Slowpokes didn't even fight back, not really, but I guess when all you have are unevolved Venipedes, I guess you struggle against the Slowpokes? Some of the random background characters fail the test because they didn't even catch up to the Slowpoke much less fight them, but then Honey brings in Bulbasaur and Squirtle and tells me to choose from one of them. They can gigantamax, and hey, it's a bit of an apology for the fact that Charizard became the spotlight-stealing squad in the base game. It's still just the kanto starters and I would demand for equality and ask for my gigantamax Serperiors and Feraligatrs, but hey, I get Bob the Bulbasaur. The Bulbasaur line is my jam, so I swapped out the Arctovish for Bulbasaur, at least until he soaks up enough experience points to become a Venusaur.

Also, again, I know that I'm the player character, but it must suck that Klara and the other students don't get anything, huh? The stronger one that already has the unfair advantage of a bicycle gets a free Gigantamax-capable starter Pokemon. Okay. Honey explicitly keeps the Squirtle, which, if the last game is anything to go by, means that at one point I'm going to have to fight her with a Blastoise.

Around this point, I'm also introduced to a random student that becomes a new move tutor, and this is where I spend my Armorite Ore, apparently. All of the moves, I think, are brand-new and are like a combination of unconventional types and effects. Their names are fun, too. Terrain Pulse, Triple Axel, Grassy Glide, Scorching Sands, Skitter Smack... It's all pretty wacky, although I admittedly didn't really give them much of a look. I'll probably spice up some of my new team members with some of these new moves. And, honestly, I'm actually having a lot of fun just dicking around with my new team of randoms, because I didn't really have a whole ton of a chance to use them in my original Pokemon Sword playthrough. Dhelmise and Hatterene are a lot of fun to use, particularly Dhelmise -- I have to keep reminding myself that he's Grass/Ghost instead of Ghost/Steel or Ghost/Water! He's the algae, not the anchor!

The second trial is apparently mushroom-hunting, because Mustard wants Max Soup, which is made up of Max Mushrooms, and this magic soup will... allow Pokemon to Gigantamax? That is freaking awesome! This is actually something I wished they had in the base game proper, because I felt like the way you actually get Gigantamax Pokemon is kind of nonsensical bullshit that encourages abandoning your old Pokemon for newer, 'special' ones, so that's certainly a neat addition. Anyway, I have to hunt down the Max Mushrooms, which grow in dark humid places. Which is apparently usually the Forest of Focus (the Amoonguss-infested forest I wandered onto earlier)... but a swarm of Greedents showed up and ate everything. Mustard tells me -- and only me -- to check the Warm-Up Tunnel. And sure, there's the excuse that I'm a newcomer to the isle of armor, but that really feels like yet another unfair advantage, no?

I actually haven't entered the Warm-Up Tunnel in my madcap exploration, and it's basically the Generation 1 cave, filled with Cubones and Sandshrews. There are three Max Mushrooms in a spot, and Klara runs up and demands them. And... I actually do want to give them to Klara, but she instead treats it as an insult and that I'm giving her attitude and pitying her. Which leads to a fight. She now has an extra Koffing and her Venipede is now a Whirlipede, but ultimately none of them are an actual threat. Case in point, my Hatterene is almost 15 levels below her Koffing, and I still took it down with two hits. Klara buggers off and allows me to take the mushroom. Behind the Warm-Up Tunnel is the Pot-Bottom Desert, although I didn't really spend too much time exploring it.

Back to the dojo, and apparently everyone end up getting lost in the forest and I'm the only one to find mushrooms... and then Klara shows up, late, and she actually got the mushrooms and is actually crying from the effort? There's this bit where Klara wants and near-demands that her mushrooms be the only ones used in the soup because she wants to share her hard work... and Honey tries to tell me that Klara's not trying to steal my thunder (she's totally trying to steal my thunder) and that it's character development... but hey, that leaves me with three mushrooms I get for free that I can use to make a Max Soup!

The entire dojo eats the max soup on the dining room, and then Mustard makes jokes about 'hey, do you feel dynamax energy welling up inside you?' except, well, nope, that doesn't work with humans. Then god damn it, Mustard, stop wasting valuable resources that my Pokemon could eat! One of the random yellow-shirted dojo mooks becomes Mr. Soup Man, who will prepare Max Soup for me. Which, of course, I make and immediately feed to my Centiskorch. Nice, that saves me the trouble of looking for one and replacing the good buddy Centiskorch I traveled with. I will need more of this soup, thank you very much, because at least my Inteleon and Corviknight deserves to achieve this new form. For me it's more of the principle of the matter, but the fact that you can finally get the option to allow any member of a certain Pokemon species to Gigantamax and it's not just reserved for special, specific ones you get from the max raids is definitely something I am a huge fan of. And, like, now people can dynamax their EV-trained or shiny partners, and that's definitely awesome.

The third and final trial is apparently a regular old battle with Klara with dynamax stuff, so I'm assuming that Klara's either going to get a gigantamax version of one of her Pokemon, but this is where I sort of stopped with the story mode and sort of buggered off to run around the Isle of Armor's overworld again and look for random new Pokemon to capture, look for Diglett and harvest some Max Mushrooms. Check in tomorrow or the day after for more of this playthrough. I'm doing this at my own pace, after all, and I do want to take this DLC a bit slow.

Random Notes:

• If you play Shield, you get Avery instead of Klara as your rival-senpai, and while tastes are subjective... man, Avery looks like such a dork. Like, part of it is maybe simply due to the fact that I find the sports jersey-and-shorts combo to look pretty bland (in general, not just in Pokemon) but at least Klara's poison-type palette fits with her loud aesthetic and the white jacket does help to make it less obvious that she's just wearing the jersey. Avery, though, just has a hat and that weird tie-esque thing, and while he's going for the vibe of a magician or a posh gentleman, it's hard to take him seriously when he's wearing shorts. 
• Klara's pre-battle pose involves her pushing the button on her poke-ball and holding that pose. I actually don't think I've ever seen someone do that outside of maybe the anime, but this is an actually pretty sensible way of clicking the button as opposed to how the pokeballs are usually just thrown and the button is only involved when the ball hits a Pokemon, huh? 
• Speaking of klara, her cute white Dustox ribbon has little 'tails' that move up and down according to her mood. It's adorable. Also adorable is her battle theme. 
• Klara having a Venipede means that it's almost certain that Venipede exists on the Isle of Armor, and I NEED ONE. 
• The internet tells me that the giant Wailord doesn't respawn, so I rebooted the save file to make sure that the giant Wailord will be a fixture in the overworld of my save file. 
• The new badass bike's colours also come with a bunch of sparkles... which sometimes distracts me when I'm trying to look for sparkles indicating overworld items. 
• I forgot why I tried it out, but unlike the original Gold and Silver games, Galar and the Isle of Armor are connected when you try to use Fly, and that's a nice bit of convenience right there. You only have to bother with the train stations the first time you enter the Isle of Armor. 
• I would use some of the pokemon I captured in the Isle of Armor, but I'm still trying to make it a point of using mostly new Pokemon, which is why my team is still made up almost entirely of Alolan and Galar Pokemon. 
• I wasn't even trying, but even then I've already gotten around twenty Digletts by this point. 
• Squirtle says 'drip' and Bulbasaur says 'vine'. Okay. 
• The game does give me the option to swap back from the dojo outfit to my regular look (and evidently, Klara switches back) and it's nice. I believe I'll go through most of it in the new dojo look, which actually is kinda neat, but it's still a nice little option.
• I love the little detail of the red Dynamax/Gigantamax clouds appearing above the soup when Honey is cooking, and when Mustard does his little joke about humans getting dynamax powers from the soup, there's a brief moment where my character seems to glow with the dynamax aura as a joke. 

Reviewing Pokemon's Human Characters - Hoenn

The third generation always had a special place in my heart, due to the fact that the third generation was basically when I first really got into Pokemon beyond 'hey, that cool cartoon with that cool game'. This was when I started reading about Pokemon online, started buying and reading the manga, tried to catch the anime every week, started really reading up on every single Pokemon's dex entries... the fact that they had remakes of the first generation games out is also something that ended up causing me to basically dive in head-first into what the peeps in '90's call 'pokemania' and never really exited.

Well, the humans in the generation are also slightly more interesting, too, due to the sprite-work of the GBA allowing for more details than what the GBC allowed. So let's go through this generation! I had originally intended this to be a single article combined with the Johto guys (which I didn't think I would have much to talk about), but man, combined with the Battle Frontier and the new OR/AS guys, plus my decision to talk about generic trainer classes does mean that this article kind of ballooned up from what I intended it to be.

(Also, yes, I know, Isle of Armor is out. I've purchased it, but I'm taking my time actually playing it. We'll probably do a couple of shorter, lighter text playthrough because apparently word down the grapevine is that there really isn't a whole ton of super-interesting content. We'll see.)

I considered putting some of the spinoff characters like the ones from Pokemon Colosseum, Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness, Pokemon Ranger or Pokemon Ranch here but then it'll be way too cumbersome. Maybe if/when I get enough time or if these articles do well I'll do a special Fiore or Orre version or something.
_______________________________________________________________________

HOENN


Brendan

• Position: Player Character/Rival
• Japanese Name: Yuki

So the male and female protagonists in Generation III is something that's a bit more interesting that subsequent generations would sometimes play around with. When you pick your gender, your opposite number ends up being your rival, which is probably why the names 'Brendan' and 'May' are a bit more familiar to the fandom at large compared to, say, 'Ethan' or 'Hilda'. Brendan and May are both relatively similar if they end up being your rivals, being the child of Professor Birch and being relatively supportive of you as the first of the many 'friendly rivals' that the franchise would have from Generation III onwards. And while it's perhaps a way to make it so that kiddies don't feel bad when they lose to a fictional character in a video game, we kind of lost something when we lost Silver and Blue's heckling. 

Brendan's design is also the first protagonist that tries its best to distance itself from the 'jacket, shorts/jeans, cap, backpack' uniform look that Red, Ethan and the next couple of protagonists would have. And while it does take a bit to really get used to Brendan's design, I did find that the rather sharp edges of the reds and blacks of his original design (which was all over the place in R/S/E's aesthetic, I feel) was pretty sharp. Of course, the biggest thing that people asked about in regards to Brendan's design is that... thing on his hair. Does he have white hair and is that a bandana? Or is it just a bizarre sock-hat? Turns out that as his manga and 3D portrayals would show, that's just a bizarre hat. Said hat sort of dangles and flops about when your character model runs around the overworld, though, so through the many, many hours I've sunk into the Hoenn games, I've gotten used to this bizarre sock-hat. The Hoenn games do try to distance themselves from the feel of the previous two games, so this certainly works a lot in giving Brendan a unique silhouette and vibe to the other male character avatars. 

In Emerald, the protagonists got a bit of a rework, gaining some green highlights and looking a bit sportier. I'm not the biggest fan of the new green highlights and the somewhat more orange hue to Brendan's shirt, but at least he doesn't look like he's going to be sweltering in heat when he walks out of his house into the tropical region of Hoenn. In the Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire remakes, Brendan basically got a bit of a tan and is wearing a streamlined version of his Emerald getup, albeit minus the inner pants. A pretty standard protagonist design, I feel, but one that manages to look different despite being a wee bit goofy. ORAS also adds this whole 'contest' look to the protagonists, which I've never really paid attention to... and I really love the fact that the normally somewhat stiff-looking Brendan has completely rocking it with that rockstar jacket, one too many bangles, that fur on one side and that fancy chain. Also, yeah, the fandom is right, the sock-hat doesn't flatter him at all. 

May

• Position: Player Character/Rival
• Japanese Name: Haruka

May is the female avatar for this one, and, again, I think there's a bit of a conscious effort to make the male and female character avatars sort of look like gender-flipped versions of each other, at least from a clothing standpoint, and while it's not quite as criss-crossed as Brendan's, May's original outfit also is mainly red and black with sharp cut-off points. She's also got a white mini-skirt (or is that just part of her shirt?) over her bike shorts, and a more sensible-looking bandana. Her hair's... that probably takes a fair amount of time to get those parts of her hair looking like that consistently. I do like this look a fair bit.

May's Emerald redesign also swaps red for orange, and adds a bit of green, but the change works a bit better for May than Brendan, I feel, by limiting the green to her bandana and fanny pack. She also cut off her sleeves and her shirt basically extends all the way down like a dress, and while I still prefer the original colour palette it's a pretty neat redesign that makes her still have the same general vibe as her original look in Ruby/Sapphire while also making it distinct. 

Unlike Brendan, May gets redesigned even further in ORAS, swapping the futuristic outfits she wore in Generation III for a simpler tank-top, and the weird maybe-skirt-maybe-dress white bit gets turned into short-shorts she wears over her bike shorts. It's actually kind of interesting to see that May's got a lot more tweaks to her design whereas Brendan is basically just a redrawn version of his Emerald artwork. Like Brendan, she gets a contest hall outfit... and not that it doesn't look cute or anything, because it sure does, but it's kind of... disappointingly obvious, I guess, that the girl protagonist gets a super-frilly pink idol dress. 

Again, I really don't have a whole ton to say about the protagonists. They are kind of forgettable rivals, mostly notorious for not fully evolving their starter pokemon until Emerald. They stuck pretty close to me, though, being very memorable and pretty much one of the first images that jump to my head when you say 'Pokemon protagonist', becuase of how prevalent the Ruby/Sapphire anime (May replaces Misty as the main female lead), games and manga were in my high school days. 

Roxanne

• Position: Rustoboro City Gym Leader
• Japanese Name: Tsutsuji
• Type Specialization: Rock

Hoenn's answer to Brock, Roxanne is the first gym leader you encounter in Hoenn and basically has a near identical-team to Brock... Geodude and Nosepass, with Nosepass being a (then) non-evolving rare Rock-type monster that looks pretty exotic compared to what you would've met at that point, but isn't that much tougher than a Geodude. Also, unlike the original Generation I Brock, Roxanne's Pokemon actually knows Rock-type moves. Emerald is also the start of when gym leaders start to regularly have post-game rematches with you, and Roxanne would update her team with a bunch of fossil Pokemon, which, I feel, suits her profession as an academic a lot better than Brock.

She's meant to be a youthful academic, with both her anime and manga counterparts focusing on the fact that she's basically cum laude in the local Pokemon Academy and is chosen to be a gym leader because of that fact. Her design is honestly pretty simple -- just a long-sleeved dress (said dress gets swapped for a vaguely schoolgirl-inspired one in ORAS) and some stockings, but comparing her to, say, the previous generation's Jasmine or Karen, you can tell that the game designers get to show off just how more complex the character designs in the sprites can be. She's neat.


Brawly

• Position: Dewford Town Gym Leader
• Japanese Name: Touki
• Type Specialization: Fighting

Brawly being a Fighting-type gym leader has always been a bit bizarre to me. His whole deal is that he's a surfer bro dude, he lives in an island, and all his outside-game appearances show him being a surfer bro. His gym, meanwhile, has a gimmick of the room being dark and you have to make your way through the dark maze and fight trainers to make the room lighter. And he's... a Fighting type gym leader? It's very neat that  he's a bit more subversive than boring old Chuck or Bruno, but it's kind of bizarre that a Fighting gym leader's biggest and most memorable trait is that he's a surfer bro. I'm not complaining, I just find it odd. Some later material try to justify this by having Brawly use surfing and moving with the waves as a way for him and his Makuhita to practice how to 'counter' the moves of stronger opponents, judo-style, but ultimately in the game he's a bit of a bore, even with the comparatively larger amount of dialogue that the post-Generation-II games have. 

His original Generation III design is literally 'just a dude', whereas the far more energetic-looking ORAS redesign gave him a shirt that kinda looks more like a wetsuit, plus some surfing goggles and gloves that preserves the look of the original while emphasizing the surfer bro parts. 

Wattson

• Position: Mauville City Gym Leader
• Japanese Name: Tessen
• Type Specialization: Electric

Wattson is another gym leader that I honestly didn't find all that memorable, being just a happy fat old gentleman with a full beard that just likes telling jokes and being boisterous and going 'wahahahaha' all the time. He's a fun presence after the relatively more restrained Brawly and Roxanne, though, even if I never really felt like his Generation III outfit of a hoodie and chunky pants really work. The ORAS look, with the tacky Hawaiian floral shirt draped over the yellow worker outfit, feels a bit more fitting for his very loud personality. He's all right, even if his gym and the force-field walls puzzle is admittedly a bit boring. 

Wattson actually does have a bit of a character arc and some motivations, in that he wants to expand Mauville City. In the Generation III games you basically help him out with a sidequest heading to fix the generator in the electric-Pokemon-themed dungeon of New Mauville, but in ORAS Wattson's dream actually comes true and the city has succesfully expanded into a side-city apartment complex, Sea Mauville, thing to help deal with Mauville's overpopulation. Hooray Wattson!

Flannery

• Position: Lavaridge City Gym Leader
• Japanese Name: Asuna
• Type Specialization: Fire

The gym leader of Lavaridge Town is always popular in the fandom for some... obvious reasons, but I've always liked her for her pretty hilarious dialogue in the game. She greets you by going ""Welcome... no, wait. Puny Trainer!" and the game makes it clear that Flannery has just very recently ascended to the role as Lavaridge's gym leader, succeeding her grandfather who apparently left to become a member of the Elite Four (who we never meet anywhere, although as a kid I've always thought this was implied to be Sidney). The ORAS remakes, allowing for the character models to actually have facial expressions, went even more over the top with Flannery's awkwardness and her attempts to project this kayfabe persona of a badass, lady who has a gym in this steaming, volcano-inspired gym (I've never quite got what those launchpads in Flannery's gym are meant to be). 

Flannery's basic Ruby/Sapphire team, of course, consists of two Slugma and a Torkoal and it's pretty pathetic (all the gym leaders have pretty harder teams in Emerald) but hey, Flannery's energy is pretty damn infectious, and it's clear that the game writers do put in a significant amount of thought in writing her dialogue. She's pretty cool, I feel... her visual design is all right, but ultimately I think the addition of a lot of extra dialogue does make people like Wattson and Flannery feel a bit more than just a generic powerful trainer. 

Norman

• Position: Petalburg City Gym Leader; Dad
• Japanese Name: Senri
• Type Specialization: Normal

Norman is a very, very boring gym leader, right? He's literally just a dude with jeans and a zip-up shirt, and a very boring haircut. He's sure a generic 'cool dude', but if I didn't already know beforehand, I'd probably think that this is an artwork for a generic trainer. And I feel that Norman is meant to be generic, y'know? He's meant to have that everyman kind of vibe, even in his more detailed (if more casual) ORAS look. He's the normal-type gym leader, and while his gym does have a dojo-style vibe to it, it's also very straightforward.

See, the thing about Norman... he is your dad. The only generation in my memory where your protagonist's father isn't only known, but also an actual character, Norman is your protagonist's dad and is also the fifth gym leader. Where in the Kanto games you can't challenge the first gym you encounter on your journey because the gym leader is actually secretly a crime boss, in Ruby and Sapphire your dad simply tells you that, no, bugger off and be an actual strong trainer before you can challenge your dad. And Norman's actually a pretty fun fight, packing a bunch of Slaking in his team. Sure, he doesn't really have a whole ton of actual personality beyond being a nice, reasonable dad (his manga counterpart, on the other hand, is a very, very tough love kind of dude) but the fact that he's your dad does give his boss fight some neat gravitas. I don't find Norman to be particularly memorable nowadays, but a younger me really, really loved Norman's boss fight for the whole dad thing.


Winona

• Position: Fortree City Gym Leader
• Japanese Name: Nagi
• Type Specialization: Flying

Oh man, Winona. See, all the previous gym leaders (even Norman, whose Slaking is powerful but gimmicky) were kind of pushovers, even with the buff they got in Emerald. No so for Winona, which is perhaps a gym leader that I remembered having a lot of trouble with back in the day. Forget Whitney and her silly heifer, Winona's packing an Altaria with Dragon Dance and Earthquake. Altaria doesn't even look that threatening, but there's just something about the multiple rematches I had with Winona that made me truly respect the power of setting up. See, as a kid, like every other eight-year-old that played a Pokemon game I've always thought that any move that didn't deal damage was worthless, and it was Winona and her goddamn Altaria that really hammered home how powerful set-up moves can be. The rest of her team aren't exactly pushovers themselves. That Skarmory can be tough to take out withour a fire-type, and that Tropius had a Sunny Day/Solarbeam combo. 

Ahem. Design-wise, I've always found Winona's look a bit more... exotic? So far, all the gym leaders in Hoenn have been regular dudes with regular clothes, but Winona's like wearing some sort of getup that I think is meant for... sky-divers or somthing? I'm not sure what it's meant to be, but it sure looks bizarre, and wouldn't look out of place in like a superhero comic or something. That funky helmet with goggles and Thor-wings are also pretty neat. I've always liked Winona, she was a pretty cool boss fight. 

Liza & Tate

• Position: Mossdeep City Gym Leader
• Japanese Name: Fu & Lan
• Type Specialization: Psychic

I've always thought that it was pretty god-damned cool when you first meet Tate and Liza. "Surprised? There are two gym leaders!" I sure am, kids, I sure am. See, double battles were a thing that was introduced in Generation III, and Liza and Tate are two gym leaders in one, playing somewhat on the trope of psychic twins. They are cheerful psychic twins (who, of course, complete each other's sentences), though, instead of creepy Shining twins. In both their original Generation III and their ORAS redesigns, they had some Chinese-inspired aesthetic, and I do appreciate that it's just there, and they don't, like, pattern their whole gym or anything around it. Still, it's a neat novelty that there are two gym leaders, and I've always love this fact about them. 

In their original Ruby and Sapphire portrayals they were honestly kind of forgettable due to them only having a pair of Lunatone and Sorlock. In Emerald, though, their gym got a massive overhaul that caused a majority of the battles with the spinning statues and switches to be double-battles, and Liza and Tate themselves got a significantly upgraded team... which was another one that gave young me a headache. I really did remember really going 'oh, so this is how a cool team built around these cool moves work'. That Claydol of hers can set up screens and unleash earthquakes (which hit both of your pokemon but none of theirs), Xatu is there to set up Sunny Day for Sorlock's Solarbeam and generally be annoying with Calm Mind and Confuse Ray, the Lunatone had screens and Hypnosis and Sorlock had moves that synergize with Sunny Day, namely Solarbeam and Flamethrower. And honestly, some fifteen years down the line... sure, those are pretty simple tactics compared to actual competitive Pokemon, but comparing Liza and Tate to a lot of modern gym leaders whose fights are pushovers... yeah, respect the Chinese twins. 

Wallace

• Position: Sootoopolis City Gym Leader (R/S, OR/AS); Champion (Emerald)
• Japanese Name: Mikuri
• Type Specialization: Water

I've seen people note how Wallace's three different artwork pieces from Sugimori end up looking like an evolutioary line. Ruby/Sapphire Wallace i just a fancy-looking dude with regular clothes and a fancy hat and hair. Emerald Wallace is like a coccoon with that cloak wrapped around him. And ORAS Wallace is him after he's embraced the fabulousness, and... well, that sure is a design. That's a very memorable design for sure, and it's genuinely surprising that the team allowed a dude character to be as... I'm not even sure what the right word is, so I'll settle for 'fabulous'. Neat!

See, the thing about Wallace is that he's not just one of the most powerul Pokemon trainers in the land of Hoenn, he's also a master in the region's Pokemon contests, the little mini-game where Pokemon parade around and get points on how pretty their moves and looks are. And Wallace loves participating in contests, something that the anime and manga took and ran with up to eleven, giving him characteristics of a flamboyant gay man while also making him a ladies' man at the same time (because it's the 90's). At no point in any of his portrayals back then that his love for beauty is portrayed as a weakness, though, and he's in fact consistently noted to be one of the most powerful trainers in Hoenn. He's the final gym leader in Ruby and Sapphire, and the champion of Hoenn in Emerald (a tough sonuvabitch there, too), and also participates in a lot of story beats due to the fact that whichever crazy weather-manipulating kaiju the evil team releases, they will end up showing up in Wallace's home town. Anyway.... Wallace's pretty cool, a neat combination of the 'beautiful but powerful' fish Pokemon he utilizes, while also being a very, very powerful trainer in his own right. I do like the association of water (and aquatic creatures in general) with both baeuty and battle prowess. 

Juan

• Position: Sootoopolis City Gym Leader
• Japanese Name: Adan
• Type Specialization: Water

In Emerald, for... no real in-story reason, Wallace replaces Steven as the champion of Hoenn, which I thought was a neat change even if I'm not sure what the in-universe story for that is. So because Wallace ascended to champion-hood, he ends up calling in his old master, Juan, to take over Sootoopolis, and Juan's... a pretty fancy-looking debonair dude with a pretty cool outfit, hairdo and mustache. He's noted to be Sootoopolis's previous gym leader before abdicating the position to Wallace, and then reassuming it when Wallace became champion. Juan is sort of kind of ignored outside of Emerald, though, not appearing in any capacity in the ORAS remakes (not even as a bonus boss!) and his only appearance outside of Emerald was in Black 2/White 2's tournament. He's pretty cool, and I do like how his Water-based team isn't just a copy-and-paste of Wallace's. He's got a terrifying Dragon Dancing Kingdra that can also Rest. I think Emerald's gym leaders just gave me a fear of Dragon Dance full stop. Juan's neat.

Sidney

• Position: Elite Four Member
• Japanese Name: Kagetsu
• Type Specialization: Dark

Just like most Elite Four members pre-Unova, Hoenn's Elite Four are also kind of dry. You don't really meet them prior to entering the Pokemon League, and unlike the gym leaders, you don't get to call them up on your phone and have them get extra dialogue. That said... Sidney manages to give a fair bit of personality with the couple of lines he's given. Design-wise he's pretty boring, just some dude in a fancy, slightly wild-looking suit (he's maybe inspired by a yakuza member or something?) and a hilarious lick of hair. But up until that fantastic ORAS artwork with that 'ya wanna fight, punk?' expression, Sidney's design has always been visually not interesting. But he's actually a genuinely friendly guy, just wanting to have a good time and a good match and praising you after you beat him. "I lost, but it was fun! So it doesn't matter!" Again, it's pretty neat that the Dark-type expert actually just merely dresses like a yakuza, but is a very nice guy beneath. It's just kind of a shame that we get back-to-back Dark type experts that are a bit subersive with Karen and Sidney.

Phoebe

• Position: Elite Four Member
• Japanese Name: Fuyou
• Type Specialization: Ghost

Speaking of subversion... Phoebe is like, a Hawaiian (Alolan?) dancer or something, dressed like she's on a vacation to the beach, with giant flowers in her hair and a cheerful looking outfit... but she's actually a Ghost-type trainer, a stark contrast to the previous Ghost expert, Agatha (I completely forgot about Morty whoops) which has a somewhat sinister vibe to her. Phoebe is noted to have actually developed an ability to commune with the dead after training, but otherwise she's just kinda there? I've always thought her team was kinda lame, with two Dusclops and two Banette, plus a single Sableye. Like, sure, there aren't a whole ton of Ghost-types to pick from, but I've always found her boss fight to be just a mite disapointing. Just a mite, mind you, because one of her Dusclopses has TM moves like Earthquake and Ice Beam, and that can really fuck up someone who thinks all she has are just Shadow Ball and nothing else. 

Glacia

• Position: Elite Four Member
• Japanese Name: Purim
• Type Specialization: Ice

Glacia's an ice-type lady, and she's... she's just a lady, y'know? In a dress, and I've always thought that her original Generation III artwork suggested that she was kind of an older lady that aged up very gracefully. She's kind of boring compared to the rest of the Hoenn Elite Four, though, just being a lady who looks like a lady and has dialogue befitting a lady. The others had interesting designs (or dialogue, in Sidney's case) but the most interseting about Glacia is that she claims to have come from a region that's not Hoenn, but eight regions down the line and we still have no real idea where she came from. Her team was also pretty boring, featuring three members of the Spehal line (two Sealeo and one Walrein) and two Glalie. Are there really that little Ice-types in Hoenn? And if there really are, why not, like, include something like Cloyster in the Hoenn regional dex? Or have the Elite Four be of another type? Or have some 'themed around Ice' Pokemon the way Lance had 'themed around Dragon' Pokemon in generation one? I dunno. 

Drake

• Position: Elite Four Member
• Japanese Name: Genji
• Type Specialization: Dragon

Drake is a dragon-type expert, but he dresses like a crazy old marine captain that walks around bare-chested, and there's always something hilarious about him, I feel. Do ship captains even have anything, really, to do with dragons? Drake doesn't even have a lot of aquatic dragon, at least until the single Kingdra in Emerald. Drake really doesn't have a whole ton to him, mostly just talking about how dragons are powerful and primal and stuff, mostly reduced to a boss fight. His Salamence and Flygon were pretty powerful dudes, I remembered, but I surprisingly don't have a whole ton to say about Drake. At least all of his Pokemon are Dragon-types and aren't repeats of each other, because Generation III finally has enough dragons to fill a party. 

Steven Stone

• Position: Champion (R/S, OR/AS); Bonus Boss (Emerald)
• Japanese Name: Tsuwabuki Daigo
• Type Specialization: Steel & Rock

Steven is just cool, isn't he? Design-wise, he's kind of mundane, but it's hard to say anything bad about a badas in a suit, and Steven rocks those massive rings he has on every other finger. In the manga, those rings can extend and are attached to Steven's suit by chains, which is kind of neat! Steven Stone is the first NPC that you really meet and is kind of an attempt by the game to surprise you by going 'hey, this helpful, seemingly innocuous NPC you met is actually the champion!' unlike Lance in Generation II, who was already going around hyper beaming Rocket grunts. Steven is introduced to us as part of a fetch quest by his dad, who wants to deliver a letter to him, and he's just this nice guy who keeps showing around and talking about fossils and the legends in Hoenn and giving you gifts and stuff, and he ends up helping out with the Groudon/Kyogre crisis... and turns out he's the champion! No way! 

Even moreso than Roxanne, Steven is noted to be an avid archaeologist and ruin maniac, which allows him to be knowledgable about the backstory of the game's main legendary plot, and also gives him a neat theme for the game designers to build a team around. Steven is technically a Steel-type expert according to everyone in the game, but he's only got three Steel-type Pokemon (his ace Metagross, Aggron and Skarmory), whereas an equal amount of his team are Rock-type (Aggron again, plus the fossils Cradily and Armaldo). I really do like the composition of Steven's team, which is patterned more around his love for archaeology. We've got two fossil Pokemon, the mysterious ruin-themed Claydol, the likewise enigmatic (but more modern) Metagross, the cave-dwelling Aggron and Skarmory is there so he can fly around. And honestly? Champions with a team that you can't sweep with a single powerful type make for the best champions... and Steven's team is actually pretty well built. That Metagross is a powerhouse, that Cradily will make you cry if you don't find a way to one-shot or two-shot it, the Skarmory is a set-up beast, and the Aggron has random TM moves like Solarbeam and freaking Thunder. And while he's no longer the champion in Emerald, he's still around as a bonus boss. I think it's simply because he got tired of being a champion and just wanted to return to his hobby of rock-collecting. He's pretty cool, and during the ORAS period that one animated special with Steven riding around on a Metagross fighting Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre is pretty damn awesome. 

Also, having the champion of a Pokemon game share more or less the same name as you? That's pretty cool for a younger me, I must say.

Team Magma Grunts
It feels like we've been here for a while, but we're not even close to being done. So in Generation III we've got not one, but two evil teams. Originally which team was the villainous one depended on which version you bought, so if you're playing Ruby, the crazy Team Magma is trying to take over the world with Groudon, and in Sapphire, Team Aqua's trying to take over the world with Kyogre. In Emerald (and I guess what forms the 'canon' story), both teams are actually crazy and are trying to awaken their respective legendaries. And... and Team Magma and Aqua get a lot of flak for having a rather silly goal of "expand the land!" and "expand the ocean!" respectively, and honestly in the games a lot of their bumbling and nearly causing a weather apocalypse could've been avoided if they had actually checked to see if the colour of the plot device they stole matched the legendary monster they're trying to awaken. Their plan is basically a combination of an amalgamation of generic Bond villains (at one point they try to blow up a volcano with a laser; and they have secret coastal bases) and a bizarre cult, only instead of hailing Cthulhu they want to resurrect an ancient Godzilla-esque creature with weather-manipulation powers.

All their Pokemon are near-identical to their cross-game counterpart, too, basically using the same old Poochyenas and Zubats almost exclusively, and swapping out Numels for Carvanhas depending on the team. Again, presumably it's to make the vibe of the two games not too different, but I appreciate it more when Emerald and the remakes actually gave the two teams a bit more identity. In OR/AS, Team Magma gains their own bizarre version of the Hail Hydra salute (pictured) where their arms vaguely form an M. I like them a lot more with their bizarre tweed undersuits in the redesign, they look like such dorks.

Maxie

• Position: Team Magma Admin
• Japanese Name: Matsubusa

Visually, I've always vastly preferred Team Magma over Team Aqua, at least in their original iteration. I'm not particularly great at talking about fashion, but I've always thought that Team Magma has this pretty cool style that's like... I'm not sure how to even describe it. It's sort of cult-like with the grunts having hoodies and horns, and Maxie wears some fancy kimono-esque dress-shirt thing? I've always liked Maxie's look, even if he does look like a generic Bond villain. Again, Maxie's original characterization is honestly always been pretty bland and safe, just a generic doomsday villain that has an obsession with the cover legendayr.

The OR/AS remakes gave all the evil team members a significant revamp, however, including giving all Team Magma members this, uh.. tweed felt undershirt thing going on? I'm not entirely sure. Maxie also got an upgrade into a completely different kind of a Bond villain, being like this stuffy-looking dude in a business suit and a glasses. Said glasses are important, they house his Mega Evolution keystone, which I thought was hilarious. But... I dunno. If he was just a badass in a nice suit (like Giovanni or Lysandre) he would've been a lot more badass, but the turtleneck thing he's got going on is so ridiculous. Man's an eco-terrorist leading a cult that's obsessed with drying up the sea, he can dress however he wants to.

Tabitha

• Position: Team Magma Admin
• Japanese Name: Homura

One thing about Team Magma and Aqua's blandness, to me, was always how much their dialogue was interchangeable... and that's because they are. Developing two games at once, the dialogues of Maxie, Archie and their respective goons are basically identical to each other over in the opposite game, just swapped around to say 'land' instead of 'sea', 'Kyogre' instead of 'Groudon', and the like. It's kind of a shame, really -- for the longest time, the only real characterization for Team Magma and Aqua came from the manga, which takes some real great liberties with the characters (Tabitha looks like this) to make them interesting antagonists that end up making members of our good guy cast be confused which side is the evil one. But we're talking about the game itself.

And in the game? Magma Admin Tabitha (a.k.a. the dude one) is just a dude grunt in a different pose, and the only interesting thing about him is that he's got a name that's traditionally given to a girl. OR/AS gave all the bad guy admins some unique dialogue and a lot of extended scenes, and in Omega Ruby, Tabitha becomes a fatter dude that goes 'ahyahyahyahya' a lot. Are they just making members of Team Magma the nerds and Team Aqua the jocks? Tabitha's new personality is less of a character and more of a trope, being this originally confident goon that ends up being beaten down by you so many times that they end up having a hard time keeping the facade up, but ultimately the most memorable thing about him is still his visual design. 

Courtney

• Position: Team Magma Admin
• Japanese Name: Kagari

Courtney, on the other hand, went from 'boring Team Magma Admin' into the fandom's darling overnight thanks to her portrayal in Omega Ruby, and I must say, I actually approve! Again, she gets significantly redesigned so that she's not just a regular grunt with a different pose and a longer skirt, and I'm not entirely sure what that thing around her tweed pencil dress is supposed to be, but it sure is neat-looking. Most importantly, though, is that Courtney is essentially a goddamn robot in Omega Ruby. Not that she's actually one (that we know of), but she has a dead-fish expression throughout the entire game and speaks in terms like 'Target... acquired" and "commencing... experiment" and speaks with a lot of A.I. sci-fi tropes and even goes crazy near the end as she gets obsessed with your player character. She's an interesting one in this new one! I like her a lot, and she's probably the most interesting out of the newly-revamped admins.

Team Aqua Grunts

I liked the style of original Team Magma a lot, but Team Aqua's whole crazy pirate vibe was always the cooler one of the two. The striped shirts, the pants with the bubble markings and the pirate bandanas all look pretty damn cool, and they really highlighted it even more with the OR/AS upgrade, giving Team Aqua's goons more pirate-y ripped shorts instead of the impractical-on-the-ocean huge tube pants. I'm not sure how those super-long striped stockings work on the dudes, but they sure are rocking it! Also, all the members of Team Aqua get a noticeable tan in the remakes, which make sense since they're all sea-faring people.

Sadly we don't actually see them being pirates, since the plot of Alpha Sapphire is still basically the same with Sapphire where they are crazy eco-terrorist Bond villains, but it's the thought that counts. Team Magma's whole reason for expanding land at least could be somewhat understood because they want to make more land for people (and presumably profit for it) but I guess Team Aqua just really really likes the ocean. The manga and the remakes give them a bit more depth by saying that 'the sea is the origin of all life' and stuff, but Team Aqua's members are all to crazy and rowdy for me to believe that they're led by any sort of higher purpose. I've also always thought that it's always a shame that the Team Aqua never really had a lot of variety considering the sheer amount of water Pokemon in Hoenn. It's only ever Carvanha (and the odd Wailmer or two in Emerald), and even when Alpha Sapphire had the chance to change teams, it's Grimer that they gave random Team Aqua grunts. Some water-loving team they are!

Archie

• Position: Team Aqua Leader
• Japanese Name: Aogiri

While I'm a bit more neutral on both of Maxie's looks, not really preferring one over the other, Archie is vastly improved by his OR/AS redesign. The original Archie was... what? Some sort of vaguely-maritime inspired yakuza boss who forgot to wear his undershirt and just decided to rock that exposed chest? The remakes gave him this awesome crazy pirate wetsuit deal with a waist-cape and a gigantic anchor necklace, and that's where he keeps his mega stone. He looks a lot more like a supervillain pirate, even if I think his underlings all rock the Team Aqua vibe a lot better than he does. He looks pretty cool even if at this point I've ran out of things to say about the Hoenn teams without resorting to their manga counterparts. Archie's facial hair screams 'villain' pretty well. 

Shelly

• Position: Team Aqua Admin
• Japanese Name: Izumi

Shelly went from a redhead with a puffy hair into a tanned lady with still-glorious hair. Costume-wise, I feel like she also changed a whole ton, but that's probably because the Team Aqua admins actually look significantly different compared to the grunts in the first place.  Compare original Shelly and the vanilla Aqua grunt with original Courtney and her respective grunt! Both versions of Shelly are pretty awesome-looking, although I'm not sure what those weird bulges are on the lower half of her outfit in the remake. There's really not a whole ton to say here, though. Out of the two Aqua admins, Shelly is the more mundane, cool-and-competent one. There's really nothing to be said... really kinda wished that the remakes gave these sub-bosses unique teams or something, y'know? At least the post-game story has these lieutenants be the big bads trying to like, further Archie or Maxie's goals after they have been reformed, but it's not quite as memorable. 

Matt

• Position: Team Aqua Admin
• Japanese Name: Ushio

In the original Sapphire, Matt was basically just a dude without a shirt, and it's like... he's sort of flexing or something? The ORAS redesigns took it a step further. Clearly at some point ORAS!Matt had some sort of shirt or vest, but as the tattered remains on his waist proves, he probably flexes a bit too much and he's probably more stacked than a Machoke. I love Matt in Alpha Sapphire, too, where he's clearly the admin that the game crew paid a bit more attention too, like Courtney. They don't quite go as over-the-top as giving Matt a gimmick speech pattern, but he's just so hammy and boisterous, saying that he "loves his bro Archie" and he's going to "love you to bits", and mocking Tabitha as a "little Makuhita man." He's just here to trash-talk his oppnents and have a good time beating people up with his pet shark.

Also, for the longest time I thought that the Aqua symbol on Matt's chest and abs is a tattoo because he loves Team Aqua a lot, but people have pointed out that it's probably him making like, un-tanned parts of his skin or something? A tattoo is infinitely cooler, but the mental image of Matt lying on top of the Team Aqua base suntanning himself and trying to get an Aqua symbol juuuust right on his chest is funny. 

Professor Birch

• Position: Pokemon Professor
• Japanese Name: Odamaki

Professor Birch is mostly interesting for just how different he is to Oak and Elm, and that's because unlike the two professors before him, Birch's whole deal is that he's an on-field Pokemon researcher, going into the wilds in his shorts (that's a bad idea, by the way, those Wurmple stings are going to be painful) and stuff. He specializes in researching Pokemon habitats, and I do like it that from Birch onwards all the professors have their own unique specialty. Makes poor Elm just that much more boring, huh? He's also the father of your rival, but that really doesn't become any sort of a factor in the games themselves.... I can see that this man is clearly a dad, though, with his dad gut. Birch's a bit more boisterous and bubbly, and you first really meet him when he's being chased around by a Poochyena or Zigzagoon in the wild, and he dropped his bag with all his Pokeballs. Not super memorable, and that's going to be a running commentary on me that none of the regional professors have much in lieu of memorability beyond unique designs, but at least the image of Birch being chased around by a little angry dog is funny.  

Wally

• Position: Pseudo-rival (Emerald, OR/AS)
• Japanese Name: Mitsuru

Wally is sort of a... pseudo-rival? You meet him early on and he is this sick kid who has to keep moving around before eventually settling on Verdanturf City where the air is a lot more suitable for him. And his design is honestly always pretty boring, just a generic kid with pajamas. In the original games he's always kind of just kinda there, a neat little recurring theme that you meet like three or four times in your journey after you help him catch a Ralts, and being consistently on the back-foot compared to you... even compared to Brendan/May. And then you meet him at the end of Victory Road, and suddenly he's got a pretty impressive team of five fully-evolved Pokemon. It's even more impressive in ORAS, where he gets a unique stage, a unique music, and also is one of the few trainers in the story to use post-Generation-III Pokemon, having evolved the Magneton and Roselia he had in Ruby and Sapphire into their final forms, plus having a mighty Mega Gallade. He's all right, and I don't think he's quite enough of a presence to be that memorable, but I've always loved that he eventually managed to become a little badass. In ORAS, he even has a Life Orb/Gale Wings Talonflame in rematches, the cheeky little shit! Anyway, Wally's always kinda neat, but I really wished they had dnoe more with him.

Honourable mentions for other Hoenn NPC's whose only visual artwork are from the TCG, anime and manga: Mr. Briney, the kooky old man who owns a boat and sails you around; Lanette the scatter-brained PC manager; her sister Brigette who runs Pokemon Box Ruby & Sapphire and later shows up for the 3DS's Pokemon Bank; Professor Cosmo, who's just there to be held hostage but also gives you some hints about the Bond-villain volcano laser; Wanda, Wally's sister who gets separated from her fiancee in Rusturf Tunnel and is unable to meet up with him until you help them break the rocks; Mr. Stone, Steven's dad who gives you a free cell phone and tells yo to deliver a letter; Captain Stern, whose submarine is hijacked by the evil team for their plan to dive into the ocean. 

Scott

• Position: Battle Frontier Owner
• Japanese Name: Enishida

No, I will never forget the Battle Frontier! I love that area, even if Nintendo forgets all about the Frontier Brains since 2004!

And now we've entered the characters introduced in Pokemon Emerald, which, while the main story is going on, has a recurring character with a unique model called Scott who watches you and talks about how good you're improving. Turns out that he's basically like this crazy billionaire who's made a gigantic theme park, only instead of Universal Studios Japan, this is the Pokemon world so he's made Battle Frontier, a giant island with unique facilities where you enter in with Pokemon and fight in gimmicky situations. I love this, but evidently since the Battle Frontier would be phased out very quickly in favour of generic Battle Towers, apparently the majority of the fandom didn't care enough or the creators just couldn't be bothered to program in as many variations. 

I know I wouldn't have anything to say about Scott. He's neat and he's got a neat Hawaiian (Alolan?) shirt and stuff, and with his sunglasses he does look like a rich billionaire... but as a kid I got it in my head for some reason that Scott's likely the final boss after you beat the seven Frontier Brains. But he isn't, he's just a funny dude that introduces the Battle Frontier to you. Both the anime and manga had entire seasons revolving around the Battle Frontier thanks to the longer gap between Generation III and IV, though, so these guys get a fair bit of screentime there. 

Noland

• Position: Battle Factory Head
• Japanese Name: Datsura

The Battle Factory is a giant office-inspired building that basically tests your knowledge about Pokemon as a whole by giving you a group of Pokemon to choose from and you can only select three for a run, and after every victory you're able to swap in and out. It's pretty cool, sometimes maybe you want that unimpressive-looking Linoone who's jacked up with random TM moves for coverage, or maybe you want that boring-but-speedy Electrode simply to get a sweeper. Or something. Noland himself is a pretty regular-looking guy who also uses randomly-generated Pokemon. I'm sure he reminds me of something, but I'm not sure what. He's like, just some dude, perhaps a bit more detailed than a named NPC would be in Generation I or II, but ultimately he's kind of boring. 

Lucy

• Position: Battle Pike Queen
• Japanese Name: Azami

Lucy heads the Battle Pike, a gigantic tunnel shaped like a Seviper that seems to be based on game shows, there are random encounters that you can enter in every room, and depending on your luck (or reading the hints) you can basically reach all the way to the end of the requisite runs and battle Lucy with no battles, or you might fight tooth-and-nail to reach her while random rooms cause your Pokemon to be paralyzed or poisoned for no real reason. 

Lucy's a pretty cool looking and snazzy design, looking pretty hot and badass, and I do like that she's basically patterning herself after her favourite Pokemon Seviper without it being too obvious (like, say, Riley from Gen IV). Love that pair of bangs that are coloured like a Seviper's fangs. Lucy's team is always fascinating because she doesn't base her team on a type or even strategy, but she uses exclusively Pokemon with a serpentine body, which means that her two teams in Emerald include her ace Seviper; the two sea serpents Gyarados and Milotic; the giant ground snake Steelix... and Shuckle? I've never thought about Shuckle as a worm-like or serpentine Pokemon until I fought Pike Queen Lucy. Actually, I've never thought about Shuckle at all until Pike Queen Lucy's Shuckle was a literal wall that constantly frustrated me as I keep trying and failing to beat her. Damn that Shuckle! Anyway, Lucy's great. All respect for her. 

Tucker

• Position: Battle Dome Ace
• Japanese Name: Heath

Speaking of fabulous characters, Dome Ace Tucker's pretty fabulous, too, huh? I guess it's probably around this time that these sort of more flamboyant characters start to get more positive portrayals in general Japanese media. It isn't enoguh for Tuckhave a skin-tight purple suit and fancy traditionally-feminine hair, though, he also has those gigantic Tinkerbell fairy wings on his back. His characterization is basically a gigantic narcisstic showboat but hey, if you dress like that, you can rock being a gigantic showboat. The Battle Dome is basically a generic Battle Tower with a faux-tournament setting, but since everyone you face is an AI trainer it really doesn't matter. Like all the Battle Frontier Heads, Tucker has two teams, one for each time you challenge him, and like all Frontier heads Tucker isn't afraid to use a mixture of starters, pseudos and legendaries (he's got a Latias in his rematch battle)... but the one consistent Pokemon he has in both his teams is his Swampert. Aww, he loves his big fat frog-fish. 

Greta

• Position: Battle Pike Queen
• Japanese Name: Kogomi

Greta looks like a very traditional athletic martial arts practitioner, albeit her outfit is a bit more colourful than most... that blue and pink really blend with each other pretty well, yeah? Greta herself leads the Battle Arena, a martial-arts-tournament style system where your victory isn't based on whether you KO all your opponent but on points given depending on how you win. Greta herself is kind of a boring 'strength!' trainer, with her dialogue being very generic. Despite looking like a Fighting-type expert (and, mind you, she does use a Heracross and a Breloom), Greta's Pokemon is pretty varied, and the only one that stays consistent within her two teams is, unexpectedly, an Umbreon. Neat!

Brandon

• Position: Battle Pyramid King
• Japanese Name: Jindai

Perhaps the most interesting one out of the Battle Frontier Heads is Brandon, who's basically a huge Indiana Jones style arhaeologist, sans fedora and whip. He's got a pretty neat getup and design, even if it does look kind of boring, but the Battle Pyramid is always my favourite part of the Hoenn Battle Frontier, where you actually walk around in dungeons avoiding trainers and wild pokemon and scavenging for healing items while you make your way to the next level and so on before you finally earn the right to fight Brandon. He's a boisterous adventurer who talks about how great it is to have passion and stuff, and an easter egg in ORAS tells us that he's the star of a reality show where he runs around looking for legendary Pokemon in ruins. 

And for such a typical-looking person.... Brandon's Pokemon really shows what a great ruin spelunker he is. Your very first battle has Brandon wielding a team full of Legendaries -- the three Regi golems, in fact, which is a huge, huge surprise and I thought it was the coolest thing as a kid. Your rematch has Brandon show up with the three legendary birds from Kanto. And, sure, the other Frontier Brains might use one or two legendary Pokemon, a Latias here, an Entei there, but Brandon's the only one whose team is exclusively made up of legendary Pokemon... a fact that he retains in all his other appearances, and in the anime and manga, using legendaries are a bigger deal! He's cool. Also... a Brendan and a Brandon in the same game? Someone was probably named that in the English localization team. 

Spenser

• Position: Battle Palace Maven
• Japanese Name: Ukon

Spenser is the leader of the Battle Palace, another vaguely dojo-inspired facility. Only unlike Greta's (where your Pokemon is given marks), in the Battle Palace you don't issue orders to your Pokemon and you have to trust that your Pokemon can battle properly and land that super-effective move or something. It sound neat in theory, but ultimately it's kind of the most boring of the Battle Frontier in Emerald because it just involves you deciding when to switch Pokemon and hope that your mons are smart enough to use coverage moves. Spenser himself uses a Slaking in both his teams, the only one that remains consistent... and he has to really trust that huge lazy gorilla-sloth.

Design-wise, Spenser is kind of a generic old mysterious shifu archetype (and the subversion is that he puts up a front of a rowdy old man when he first fights you), but there are parts of him I've always found to be interesting -- he's got Unown tattoos on his shoulders and his staff is patterened after Kyogre's patterns. This doesn't really get followed up at all in the games, but the manga does give Spensers unique outlook on life some backstory in that he's someone who tried and failed to use the Orbs to control Kyogre before. Huh!

Anabel

• Position: Battle Tower Maiden
• Japanese Name: Lila

Anabel is always the most boring of the Frontier Brains to me. She's a lady called Anabel, she leads the Battle Tower (the most straightforward one, it's just fight then move on) and her design is... that's sure a fancy shirt you got there, but you're really just kind of boring, Anabel. Her signature Pokemon is a Snorlax (always annoying in these Battle Towers) although both of her teams feature one of the Johto legendary beasts -- a Raikou and later an Entei. She's also extremely boring.

That all changed when, for some reason, after more than a decade of the Emerald Frontier Brains being kind of forgotten, Anabel (or, rather, 'an' Anabel) was chosen to show up in Sun and Moon as an amnesiac person who had dimension-traveled to Alola from a different timeline after nearly being killed by an Ultra Beast, dresses up in a smashing suit with a fancier-looking hair, and basically ends up being a serious extradimensional-monster-hunting secret agent. And she's extra-useful because she is a 'Faller', not coming from the Sun/Moon dimension herself, which makes her ideal bait to draw the Ultra Beasts towards her. This is a very wild and surprisingly out-there remake of her character, and it's genuinely interesting that out of all the underutilized characters it's Anabel that gets to be a member of the Pokemon version of X-Files.

Zinnia

• Position: Lorekeeper
• Japanese Name: Higana

The remakes, Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire, added a bunch of extra characters, because they also added a whole new epilogue called the 'Delta Episode' that focuses on your protagonist dealing with unlocking Rayquaza's true power atop the Sky Pillar and also a meteorite containing Deoxys threatening the Earth. And also the Magma/Aqua admins being villains. Tying this all is Zinnia, a mysterious girl hailing from the 'Draconid Tribe' and holding the position of Lorekeeper, which all sounds a bit too D&D-fantasy for a Pokemon game... but Generation VI and VII did kind of experiment a lot with the genres Pokemon can be. As a character design... Zinnia's cool, with a tattered cape and everything, but perhaps looks a bit too... modernized for me to buy that she's from some kind of dragon tribe or something.

Zinnia primarily uses a small army of fully-evolved dragon-type Pokemon, and the animation team has her basically crouch and have an almost bestial pose when you fight her, which I find was pretty cool. Zinnia herself is trying to actually help out Team Magma/Aqua (depending on your game) to revive Groudon/Kyogre, which, in turn, would allow Rayquaza to awaken, which, in turn, would allow her to use Rayquaza to stop the even bigger threat of a giant meteor coming to Earth... but of course, Rayquaza becomes buddies with you instead. Her main plot is kind of honestly not the best-written one with a bunch of plot holes here and there, but throughout the story she keeps talking with her Whismur (who she doesn't battle with), named Aster, and it's very heavily implied that she's doing all of this in the memory of her mother or mentor or something, also named Aster. Her story's a bit heavy-handed, but I did like it for what it is.

Aarune

• Position: Secret Base Expert
• Japanese Name: Giri

Ruby and Sapphire actually had a whole ton of random little gimmicks which really blew my mind when I jumped from the GBC games to the GBA games, but not all of them had enough focus to them in-game. ORAS tries to highlight this by introducing specific new NPC's to introduce you to said gimmicks. So the Secret Bases (you can make a fancy treehouse in like, specific trees and cave cracks and stuff) is given an NPC called Aarune. He sure is a cowboy-looking dude, and he sure is boisterous! He's pretty much just a massive exposition machine, but he's neat. I don't really remember him at all to have an opinion either way. 

Lisia

• Position: Contest Idol
• Japanese Name: Lutia

The Pokemon Contests in Hoenn are a very neat concept where your Pokemon perform and get judged like a pet contest, but while they are a Huge Deal in both the anime and manga, which had major members of their respective casts be a 'Coordinator' instead of a regular battler, in the games themselves the contests are almost an afterthought that future generations would discard for less-interesting and less-elaborate minigames. ORAS gives us Wallace's niece Lisia, who sure shares her uncle's fashion style! She's associated with an Altaria and, like Lucy, clearly models aspects of her outfit after Altaria without being too obvious about it. I don't really play enough of the contests in ORAS to really remember what she's like. She's basically just 'young Wallace' from her dialogue. Neat, I suppose.