>>50501645Hop is just a repeat of Hau, but with some added mishandled character development (much as much of Sword and Shield's story and characters are mishandled).
He aspires to be accomplished like his champion brother, and gets devastated when he loses in the championship qualification battles. During his journey, he gets shaken on his ability to battle effectively, and goes through a period of trying significantly different things for a while.
Later after the championship, he suddenly turns to "I want to be a Pokémon Professor and help Pokémon" with no build up to this. There aren't any events or encounters that foreshadowed this, and he never interacted with Professor Magnolia or Sonia in meaningful ways.
The idea for his character arc is there, but it's not properly realised.
Bede as interactions go is fun, he's another "jerk" rival that ends up getting a comeuppance for doing wrong, but he strangely gets wrangled into the privilege of being a gym leader and just kind of ambles along with being a jerk still, it's weird. His role as working for Rose, who'd be revealed as the main "antagonist", should have had more bearing or impact.
Marnie is also something of a nothing character, she's nice enough but she doesn't really do anything other than battle, try for the championship, and lose. There are significant elements to her character like having a whole team of fans and groupies that follow her from her city of Spikemouth, as well as her older brother being the gym leader (with a notable principle of refusing to dynamax), but these don't actually reflect upon her at all, she'll actually using dynamaxing herself.
I can't say anything about Klara or Avery as I never played the expansion content for Sword or Shield, I've just heard they're annoying and unlikeable, like Melli was in Legends Arceus.
Oh, there's also Trace from Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee. He's uh, nothing really, he's bootleg pacified Blue/Gary. His name even literally implies he's a copy.
