>>43498471I think that I've come up with a pretty good asshole rival battle.
>Give them a clear second ace outside of their starter so that they can have an identity outside of something determined by what you picked.>Give them ambush battles or something akin to them where you'd be completely unprepared with not recourse but to fight them. >If you have to go with the are you ready, yes or no type of battles, have them lock you in place so that your'e forced to fight them.>Also make it so that you can't turn back and grind because fuck you.>Give them a battle with a difficulty spike like suddenly having five pokemon or having the first third stage pokemon in game that isn't like a butterfree or something.>Also have them go for the jugular in the fight. Give some of his pokemon priority moves that he'll use on low hp pokemon. That or give his pokemon an extremely high damage move to use.>Have them walk away with a patronizing attitude if they win. Force the player to either take it or reset.>Lock resetting behind several minutes of cutscenes from a prior area to be extra assholes about it.>If you win, have the rival still act dismissive. As if the win didn't bother them. However, show that their pokemon are being mistreated in some way and are angry at the loss.>Have some important npc hand them a useless item before the fight and give the player a really useful tm or something. Just so the player can feel superior.>Have it turn out that they already have pokemon that knows the move so the useless item was more valuable to them.>Have them hand you an extremely useful, one of a kind, item as a reward for winning on the condition that they mention that it's only because they don't need it at all. 