>>50497522The mean ones somehow have more interesting character development and encourage the player to whip their ass.
The nice ones are whiny stop-gaps between areas and are too nice in the sense that the desire to fight them is more of a slog who give no real reason to be a rival other than in name alone, and even then it feels more like a one-sided relationship where the rival thinks you are their rival and you don't feel the same.
I felt this way all throughout S/M with Hop, with him just being this snoozer who I was disinterested in throughout the entire story, and then I met Gladion who actually felt like a proper rival.
