5th Gen N, Ghetsis, or Colress?

The Gen V games introduces 3 different antagonists: N, Ghetsis, and Colress.




N, or Natural Harmonia Gropius is the king of Team Plasma from the Black and White games. He's a boy who was orphaned and left in the woods where he was raised by pokemon, where he learned how to communicate with pokemon. Soon Ghetsis came by, claimed to be N's father, and raised him to be the king of Team Plasma. It was there that N began to realize that as long as Pokemon were being 'owned' by humans, they can never be free, so, he devised a plan to encourage and force trainers to release their pokemon.

We faced N a couple of times, where he soon develops a big interest towards us. He eventually was chosen to be a 'hero', partnering up with Reshiram or Zekrom (depending on what version you have), where he uses it to defeat Alder, to become the pokemon champion. That's when the main character has to come by N's Castle to defeat N and his legendary partner pokemon one more time. N realizes the error of his ways, thinking that maybe pokemon can be even happier with their partner humans after all.




Technically Ghetsis was revealed as the Sage Leader in Pokemon Black and White, where he and a couple of Team Plasma members go around the region with propaganda stating, 'trainers! release their pokemon!' or something akin to that. He seemed to be a supporter for N until it's revealed that Ghetsis adopted N to be his son, and that his true intentions was to use N to allow Team Plasma to rule the world.

He dons a new black outfit in Pokemon White 2 & Black 2, and created the 'Neo Team Plasma'. His intentions to try and take over Unova became more apparent when he wanted to use Kyreum's power to freeze Unova to steal every pokemon in the region. To do this, he needed DNA splicers, as well as the research of the newly appointed Team Plasma boss, Colress. After defeating him, he.. snaps. The Plasma trio tells us that his heart is no longer able to commit crime.




Again, Colress is the newly appointed boss in the Neo Team Plasma. We encounter him loads of times, the first being near outside Castelia, where he introduces himself to be someone who's interested in how the true strength of pokemon can be brought out. He then mentions Team Plasma, where he states that they did not agree with their previous ideals. We battle him a couple of times, even one time in the World Tournament, and he even helped us out by quelling a few Crustle that blocked our path.

Soon though, when we storm the Team Plasma base, we meet him again, where he reveals to be the new Team Plasma boss, where he reveals that he joined Team Plasma to pursue and research the true strength of Pokémon. After beating him, he realizes that pokemon strength can possible be improved by bonds.. or something akin to that. Then he decides that along with the defeated Team Plasma, they'd have to work hard to atone on all they've done.



Anywho, after all that's been said, Which one of these three do you like the most? Which one was the most challenging, and which one had the better development?

The most challenging is Ghetsis, without a doubt. N obviously had the best development, while Colress was the coolest of the three simply because of the "However, I DISAGREE!"-line.

My favorite was probably N, I liked his arc in Black/White 2.

I don't think N was ever a real antagonist. He was a kid who was being manipulated and pulled like a puppet by someone who was truly evil.

i love n. it's hard to think of him as an antagonist bc like zeostar said, he was this kid being manipulated and he didn't have ill will in his heart. but his character as a whole is nice. ghetsis is one of the hardest battles in the game so lol that's quite the feat. i like a good challenge. i felt like he was bleh in BW2 though, not as calculated and trying to win anyone over, but then again, he'd already been exposed by then so there wasn't any sense in trying to hide his true motives. colress...gets a great battle theme...that's about it. i didn't find him all that interesting.

Sydian said:

i love n. it's hard to think of him as an antagonist bc like zeostar said, he was this kid being manipulated and he didn't have ill will in his heart. but his character as a whole is nice. ghetsis is one of the hardest battles in the game so lol that's quite the feat. i like a good challenge. i felt like he was bleh in BW2 though, not as calculated and trying to win anyone over, but then again, he'd already been exposed by then so there wasn't any sense in trying to hide his true motives. colress...gets a great battle theme...that's about it. i didn't find him all that interesting.

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Hm, I actually couldn't get a good read on colress... like he wanted to find about how pokemon gets strong, right?
I'm curious - is there anything you would add to his character?

Dragon said:

Hm, I actually couldn't get a good read on colress... like he wanted to find about how pokemon gets strong, right?
I'm curious - is there anything you would add to his character?

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i'll be honest, i wasn't paying all that much attention to him. i recently replayed black 2, but i couldn't really tell you what i'd want them to change for him to be interesting to me personally. i mean other people find him interesting, so he's not a lost cause, clearly. thinking a little harder about him though, i know he's kind of presented as this morally grey type of person. he doesn't really believe in team plasma's motives from what i recall, yet he's still working with them to search for the answers he's seeking. so that in itself presents a should you work with criminals to seek your own truths? idk. something like that. i'm sleepy btw. lol

I really enjoy Colress design and his personality in B2W2 and how he evolved in Alola games. N was okayish, I never really cared about. Dennis is probably one of the most evil team leaders in the series. But I wouldn't mind if he wasn't the boss in B2W2.

Colress had an awesome design, as hilarious as the Internet Explorer comparisons were. I think he stands out a lot design-wise. Ghetsis also had an interesting look but what really got me was his theme song - it was really scary, and probably won't ever be topped in that department.

N is one of the best rivals (and characters as a whole) we have ever had. His story is quite complex and I love his relationship to the BW protagonist. <3 As cool as the other two are, I'll have to go for N.

Never liked N, to me he always felt more of a stalker than anything. Like that guy you're not friends with and don't really like, but you feel bad for him so you never really tell him to get lost. I remember finding N very annoying ever since I first laid eyes on him. I also hate how his name sounds more like a scientific name than anything else. Natural Harmonia Gropius? Come on. Also it kinda bothers me how Zorua and Zoroark are supposed to be his aces but still he only ever uses Zoroark once and it's not even his strongest Pokémon cuz he's got either Zekrom or Reshiram.

Ghetsis never made sense to me. He's just too out there. I would've probably liked him much more had he stuck to the "liberating Pokémon" thing. At least he'd have some reasons that'd make sense from his POV. Also he straight up tries to murder you in B2W2.

Colress has a cool design and is imo a pretty chill villain. Like, he's there, he's a villain, he's doing evil stuff and all but he's also not really weird you know? I like him.

¿Por qué no los tres? Team Plasma is my favorite evil team and I'm hella biased... 🙄

- N is probably my favorite character in the series. He's basically a grownup kid who has been radicalized by his "dad" (are they like, actually even related?) to follow Team Plasma's ideals, and him coming off as weird or a stalker is intentional. He's obviously not good at socializing with people due to the way he was raised, which is also why he prefers talking to Pokémon (or his "friends" as he calls them) instead of other humans. I can't help but feel sorry for him and I don't even really see him as a villain, he's just a heavily misguided antagonist.

The ideals he follows are completely understandable too. To be honest, I wish the games hadn't used the "Team Plasma is evil" cop-out to make the player think that wanting to liberate Pokémon was entirely wrong. I still think they did have a point because when you think about it, making creatures fight and get hurt for you as a sport is a bit... sketchy, and I'm sure there's definitely many (non-evil team) Pokémon trainers that are abusive.
N doesn't get to a final conclusion about what's the morally right thing at the end of BW2, but that's fine, because it leaves it open to discussion.

- Now Ghetsis. I see that people complain about him because he's a little too over the top and "too evil", but personally, I think he still works very well. Not every villain needs a sad backstory or a "noble" goal, there's so many villains who do truly horrible things for barely no reason and still work (think of Dio Brando or Palpatine). Ghetsis is just an overly-ambitious sociopath who doesn't care about anyone except himself. And that's fine? People like him unfortunately exist in the real world, and I don't think we ever got a character like that in Pokémon before him (I think Giovanni is the closest it gets and it's not enough imo). In a way, I see Ghetsis as an evil Blue: beating him and ruining his plans twice feels satisfying because of what he did to N and for being such a big piece of human garbage. He's supposed to be hate-able.

So yeah, this is why I like Ghetsis (as a character). He's not super complex and is probably the worst person in the entire series, but that's all he needs to work as a villain for me, especially since N and Colress already exist.

- Speaking of Colress... I very much love his design and I like the whole "I don't care about Team Plasma, I'm just doing this for science" thing he had going on, but it felt like he was still missing something to me. I still like him, but I wish we could've seen more of him interacting with Team Plasma or Ghetsis, since every time we encounter him he's alone, unless I'm forgetting something.
I think I would've liked him a lot more if he was more of a "quirky mad doctor" (yes, even more than he already was) personality-wise, but that's just me.

Anyway, I haven't played gen 5 in a while so I might be wrong on some things, but I'd choose N, with Ghetsis as a very close second 🙂

i loved battling against N the most. always having a unique team dependent on the area you're in is really something. also he seemed to have the best intentions out of all of them in the end, which is plus points. i love that you can battle him season after season in his castle in BW2 where he brings such a diverse weather team each time.

Ghetsis was the toughest out of all them, and Colress honestly just didn't stick out for me. he has a heck of a battle theme though.

I barely remember their teams, but I think N and Ghetsis were more challenging for me. Out of the three I only liked Colress as a character.

I always thought Colress was cool. Unique design but weak battle.

tbh, I feel N, and Colress aren't really antagonists or villians.

N loves Pokémon and feels using Pokémon for tools of war and fighting is a really bad global message and wanted to change that.
Colress was a scientist and just want to see how far Pokémon can go, and even mentioned Mega Evolution before it was a thing.

Ghetsis took both of these people and used what they wanted/enjoyed for evil means. World Domination.

Unfortunately, I found Colress and N not to be hard at all.
Ghetsis was hard in BW because it happens right after the N fight and you're very very low HP at that point.
In BW2 I did not find him too challenging as you can go straight into his fight without a pre-fight.

My problem with Colress is that he never really made any impact on the story. He was the leader of Team Plasma in BW2 but never seemed to care too much about it.
N was a little bit more interesting as the game actively tried to build up his character. I do admit, though, that I still didn't really care too much for him. His ideals while somewhat refreshing where also very much those of a child and as such he had a very limited perspective.

Lastly, Ghetsis in some way feels like a caricature of team leaders from previous generations. Let's take the stupidly insane ideas from teams found in gen 3 and 4 and crank that up to 11. Well, I gotta give propts to them making him the final battle in the BW mainstory and actually make him somewhat challening with a not up to par team.
I remember having a lot of problems against his party the last time I got to the end of W. But that fight is also the only memorable thing about him. Even the big refight in W2 was not that interesting...he did try to kill the player, though.

Well, I would say it's N. It was probably the best developed character in the pokemon series and he's cool af. Personally, Ghetsis is just kinda crazy, indeed I find Cyrus to be a more interesting villain than him, while N has a huge development in the games, both b/w and b2/w2 and he's just different than the typical pokemon characters. I would say Colress is the most difficult to challenge because he's really strong, but both Ghetsis and N (at the end of b2/w2) are really strong

My favorite of the 3 would probably be N, for many of the reasons people have already said, but I would also like to point out that some of Pokemon Masters story events are actually really cool to see as someone who is a fan of Generation 5's story. They actually kind of continue from where B2W2 left off and it's really cool to see.

The 2 story events that were centered around N and Ghetsis have so far been some of the highlights of the game for me, you can watch the whole thing on Youtube if you are interested.

Heres some actual discussion about those 2 events

N definitely

I've seen some people here say they think N barely counted as antagonist when really, I think it's the opposite. Colress is the one that's barely an antagonist.

N wants something that's in opposition to your goals. He wants to free Pokémon and you want to train Pokémon. He isn't evil, but he is an antagonist.

Ghetsis wants world domination and I'm guessing you don't want to live in a fascist regime controlled by him, so he's evil and an antagonist.

But Colress wants to research Pokémon, he just doesn't really care about the ethics of how his experiments are conducted. He explicitly says "What I desire is to bring out the entirety in Pokémon potential! If I can accomplish that, I don't care what it takes!"

So really, if the game allowed you to present another, more ethical way of conducting his experiments he most likely would go "OK" and stop messing around with Team Plasma altogether.

Which I suppose it's part of why he feels flat to me. Like, he doesn't really present his desires and wishes strongly enough in a story that has a lot of big characters. Love his design, though.

As for N and Ghetsis, I guess I like Ghetsis better. The conclusion of BW did N dirty and Ghetsis is at least a full blown comic villain by the time BW2 comes around. (The fact his evil redesign in BW2 slaps also helps).

minority opinion: i don't really care for N. i just... don't. i don't think he's bad per se, but i've never developed a strong opinion of him like so many other people have. i guess i've never really was that emotionally invested in black/white when he took off on his reshiram/zekrom at the very end. a bit saddened perhaps, but that was that.

ghetsis plays the part of antagonist quite well, i think. too well. in fact, i think he does it arguably better than cyrus and his whiny angst about destroying and remaking the world in his image or whatever. ghetsis is legitimately terrifying and i think what sunk that in is that at one point in i think.. bw2? he tries to freeze the player with kyurem so... he's a pretty big deal. @_@

colress falls into the same boat as N for me, somewhat. except colress reappears in SM and sends ghetsis' ass back to his timeline or whatever, so he's pretty cool for that. i think his reappearance in gen 7 is what caused him to kinda grow on me, idk.

so out of the three? i suppose ghetsis has left the biggest impression on me, but i like colress as a character, so idk where that puts me. D: