>>44554497If the Gen VI, VII and VIII rivals weren't so horribly written I'd probably rank them higher. Barry's a solid rival both in terms of his team and the distribution of his battles across the game, plus you get that awesome multi-battle with him against Mars & Jupiter on Spear Pillar. Bianca's just a solid character, I think her character plot kinda ended too early in BW but her general characterization and B2W2 showing where she went after BW help really cement her. I'm not sure if N should even be considered a rival since he's more so the Villain Boss Character, but regardless like Barry he has a solid distribution of battles, he's one of the only characters who doesn't just bend over backwards when his beliefs are challenged by the player's mere existence and he has a banger of a battle theme.
A and B rivals don't have much difference in terms of quality, I just think that Silver needed more presence since he's much more of a background element than other rivals and Shauna although suffering the least from XY's fucked writing still gets screwed over in the plot and number of battles.
C Tier is one of two things, they're either a non-presence who just exists to be a boss battles (Tierno, Trevor, Trace & Marnie) or they're a character who has a heel-face turn that is a blink and you miss it moment (Gladion & Bede), seriously their character growth is fucking dumb.
D Tier is boring and uninspired, what the fuck was the point of Serena/Calem, Hop's annoying and May/Brendan didn't need to be a rival when Wally should've been a rival from the get go.
Wally's in F Tier because he is a non-entity in his own game, I don't give a shit what kinda shit ORAS tried to pull in Victory Road, Wally's presence in the game is close to non-existent, he should've had way more battles and been more involved in the plot. Hau's in F Tier because he's genuinely fucking annoying and the only redeeming factor is that his Champion Theme sounded better than Kukui's.
