>>37168922Ruby and Sapphire were the first ones to introduce the friend/rival dynamic and also the only ones to swap them besides the remakes. It makes sense it wasn't going to be as well done.
That said, I'm not exactly sure what you mean, really. Besides the theme and his appearance in the Maison they really didn't do anything different with him.
And part of that is the shitty region design. 7.8 memes aside, after spending up to Lilycove building up the other PC as the rival there's nowhere really to go with building up his character since it's 90% water past there.
