>>58574075He's a step ahead of you, but if you look at the story from Blue's POV. You terrify him. The one trainer he cannot beat. You show up seconds after he becomes champion and he just dreads the battle to come. Hoping that this time he'll win.
I actually prefer a more balanced story for the win loss ratio because you can lose the first two battles against him. Where you only tie it at 2-2 after the SS Anne battle.
I'd say at least the first 4 gens got champions right though. Lance isn't a literally who. Or I guess he is if you didn't play gen 1. Steven is right there with you for the whole story. Wallace is a literal who shoehorned in the last minute unless you played Ruby and Sapphire. Cynthia is also there for a good part of the story.
For later games, the ones where the professor is an important end game character. Both Kukui and Sada/Turo aren't literal whos.
Anon's point stands for gen 1's story. Outside of being ahead of you and being a great twist final boss and super satisfying to beat, Blue's absence changes nothing storywise, but it would change a good amount of how the game feels. He could've just as easily been replaced by Oak as champ instead, and there is evidence to show that Oak was going to. But having a rival is clearly better.
