3rd Gen May and Brendan

In Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald, we were able to choose from either May or Brendan as our playable character; they were also our rivals. Overall, what are your thoughts on these two trainers—did you like them, or not so much? Which one did you wind up choosing throughout your gameplay? While battling, when did you have the toughest time going up against them?

Sorry to say, but they're definitely the worst rivals in the series to me. Not only are their appearances annoying, but their teams aren't difficult or fun to battle at all. They don't even fully evolve their starter. The only time they've ever really been difficult to me was in a Ground Monotype where his stupid Grovyle messed with me hard.

I hope ORAS makes them more interesting.

I can't say I was really overly fond of them, either. I only ever had Brendan as my rival so I'm not sure if May is better but he was generally boring? It's been a while, but I've gone through Sapphire + Emerald about 5 times over the years and still I can't remember him very well. I can't even remember if he had any character development, honestly. He was just overall very forgettable to me.

Yeah I've always played as Brendan and I have to agree the rival is very boring. As a rival, May is very friendly and timid. And her team doesn't amount to much. Wally becomes your rival at the end and his team is pretty cool but by then it's basically too latelate. There isn't really much of a classic rival at all.

As characters, they're adorable; their designs are unique, they have nice, helpful personalities and are certainly fun to play as. However, as rivals, they're not good at all. Way too friendly with each other, and there's nothing about the other character that makes me want to be their rival. With other games, Silver is mean to the player and treats his Pokemon badly, which makes me want to beat him into the ground! Barry, although a friend of the player, is headstrong and wants to defeat the league before you. Those are examples of good rivals, and Brendan/May didn't meet that criteria.

I liked May a little more, chiefly because of her personality, but I chose Brendan in all my games because I was a guy and I didn't know what my thoughts were at the time choosing a female avatar. To be honest, I liked both. I especially liked Brendan's hat!

Having always played as May, Brendan was...well, really, a bit too nice. And easy to beat. I like rivals that challenge me, you know? When I see a cutscene and their OW approaching, I want to panic because I haven't healed up. Not just...yawn.

I loved Wally, though. He was basically my hardest battle in Emerald, because I expected him to be there NOT AT ALL. It's such a shame I had to beat him...I felt kind of bad for him after.

I mostly choosed brendan. Because of his great sprite. May also had a great Sprite but i loved Brendan more.

I loved the game but really, after having Blue and Silver as your rival Brendan/May were terrible. They were more like your friends but they still wanted to battle you and I actually didn't who they were. A friend or a rival? Also, they had very weak pokemon. Having a friend is good, but having a strong rival is better in my opinion :)

I really like both Brendan and May in terms of design. However, it still annoys me that we never get to see our rival with a full team, or even a fully evolved starter... Hopefully ORAS will fix this.

I like their designs a lot, but facing them after the beneath-the-Cycling-Road-battle wasn't fun at all. They weren't that much of a challenge and they never evolved their starter. I don't understand why the Pokedex-completing rivals think that you can't go after gym badges AND complete the Pokedex? In fact, that's how we play and we're still able to complete it.

The designs of both characters were magnificent. I do prefer May due to her first episode in the anime - she drove into a tree! However, if either of the two were your rival, they were extremely weak and easy to defeat.

I chose May because my preference is playing through the games as my own gender. Plus she was too cute in the anime to boot. <3

Though.. the rivals in R/S/E hardly left an impact on me. They weren't involved in the story, were very weak when you battled them, and just didn't have very thought-out or captivating personalities. Lots of wasted potential there so I can't say I liked them much as characters in the game.

May was always genuinely challenging if I chose Mudkip or Torchic, but I really disliked how I never got to battle Sceptile / Swampert and she was irritating as hell showing up in the Pokémon League trying to take credit for my powerfulness.

As precious as they both are they are by far the worst "rivals" the franchise has ever seen. So much so that I won't even call them rivals without the little " " thingies lmao.

I just don't get what makes them your rival other than the simple fact that they're the opposite gender counterpart of your character. Let's face it they're weak as hell, and they barely have anything (if at all) to add to the game other than "here a thingyfounder" or "here fly". Like what is their purpose? To sit in front of the Department Store and block our way until they give us our final "test" which barely takes any effort?

They're awful rivals. -humph-

As protags., I loved both their designs in RS and Emerald and ended up picking both--currently, I'm May in Ruby and Emerald and I think Brendan in Sapphire. As NPCs, I don't even consider them rivals. I see them more as your friendly neighbor testing your skills and giving you nice things. They don't seem interested in besting you or even teaming up and helping you fight the evil organization. Granted, they at least made more appearances than Wally, who is supposed to be a rival. Battle-wise, when I was younger I found Brendan/May hard to defeat--especially when I started with Mudkip because Grass did 4x damage to its evos.--but nowadays I don't find them as challenging.

My opinion based on different things where a mixed bag. Design wise, they are meh. I think that as a whole they were bad rivals, but right now, during my play-trough of Sapphire to get hyped for ORAS (because i didn't really like gen 3 when it came out for certain reasons) I realized that May, (maybe Brendan too, i just play as a guy) is a ruthless ♥♥♥♥♥. She constantly gets owned, but makes comments suggesting that your journey revolves around beating her, or at the Lillycove battle for example, she pretty much brings up the first battle with her and how i learned from it like she was beating me and i had to learn from my mistakes! I just never saw it before but she is just evil in a nice girl package. Also, lets compare say, gen 2 rival Silver to May/Brendan. Silver is full of angst and has a dream he wants to accomplish, but goes the wrong way about it. I felt like although he started out thinking Pokemon where tools, he finally learned near the end that the only way to get better is to show them love, but was so full of anger that he didn't care. He's a typical A-hole but at least you can kinda figure he has a huge chip on his shoulder to be so angry every time you see him.

I did like both characters in terms of design, although May's design was better than Brendan imo. At least Brendan didn't have a meh wetsuit-like outfit back during the original Hoenn.

I picked May in my playthrough given I always play as the female character, but on the other side I do think they were among the worst rivals in the history of the games. The fact they don't fully-evolve their starter makes them look rather underwhelming compared to all other rivals who used the region's starters. Makes me want to hope OR/AS can remedy this problem.

For character design I really enjoyed both Brendan's and May's designs. I thought they really fit the theme of the region they were in. Particularly I like Brendan's Emerald outfit more than his Ruby or Sapphire one, and I like May's Ruby/Sapphire outfit much more than her Emerald outfit. I still think they're some of the best looking trainers in the series though.

For their presence as a rival in the games? I felt like they were really weak rivals to be completely honest. I think they're legitimately the only rivals who don't reach the final evolution of their starter Pokemon. That's utterly ridiculous and defeats the purpose of even having one in my opinion.

Im in the middle while you were abe to essentially slaughter your rival, they did make an impression to a lot of people. Though I have always slaughtered the competition some time without usin the starter after the first catch (my record is mudkip at level 8 and Mightyana{?} 97), I feel they were nothing like Gary( As I called him) He was a cocky little jerk but he had the skill to back it up. And since I played Mass Effect like 60 times I named Silvers rival Saren. And he atleast posed a threat arriving when you least expect it. Bottom line R/S/E were bitter dissapointment like Pokemon XD