After finishing the story, I have some opinions on the characters of this game.
As for my favorite character, I must say that I love Nemona. I would go as far as to say that Nemona is probably the best rival in Pokémon, at least from a friendship standpoint, which is saying a lot because I enjoyed the "friendly" rivals a lot starting from generation V. I love the way Nemona is already an established champion-level battler, but she sees potential in you and genuinely wants to see you succeed. It's a different take compared to a rival wanting to be better than you while you're travelling together. Nemona wants you to reach her level first before beginning a rivalry that could make both of you better battlers. In the process, she doesn't go all-out on you until you reach that level. She keeps track of your progress, she helps out during crucial points, she has a positive, energic personality that is inspiring, and best of all, she loves competitive Pokémon just like me. We'd definitely be great friends if I was in the Pokémon world. Much love for Nemona!
My least favorite character is definitely Penny. I am not a big fan of her snarky attitude or overall personality in general. It's just so, ugh. For me, she really ruined the mood of the final aspect of the story for me with her comments and overall pessimistic personality. I definitely wouldn't want her anywhere around me if I existed in the Pokémon world, as she seems like she would be a toxic friend that would just bring my mood down. She doesn't seem to have any sense of adventure despite the fact that this game heavily emphasizes adventure, doesn't express joy or happiness, she's rude, and overall, extremely boring. I don't like anything about her from a character standpoint. However, on a gameplay standpoint, I would give her this: I love her team of Eevelutions and how strong she is in battling.
I didn't care too much for Arven. In my opinion, he was too much of an egomaniac for my tastes, but he wasn't horrible. He's constantly yelling at the Raidon exclusive to the game because of misplaced anger and I wasn't a fan of that. I guess his character was redeemed for me when he was revealed to be wanting to assist his Mabostiff that got injured, but it felt kind of cheap in my opinion. I mean, I don't know, maybe it's just me, but it seems like they attempted to make an otherwise unlikable character likable by giving him some sad backstories. He did seem like he was a decent friend though, but not as good of a friend as Nemona. I guess my overall opinion on him is neutral. I didn't like or dislike him.
I liked Director Clavell a lot because not only is he a stern school director that wants what's best for his students, but he was also consistently funny. His disguises were funny, and not only that, but he was a great battler as well.
As far as gym leaders go, Ryme was definitely my favorite. She can actually rap and I love it. She easily stood out the most for me. Most of the other gym leaders, I honestly forgot who they were already. I'd have to look them up to remember, no exaggeration. It's sad that a character in Pokémon is better than a lot of rappers on the radio today. I liked Ryme because she was lit. I can't get over the fact that she was like 60 or so, but I guess that could easily be explained as her being one of the first rappers to ever do it, who would probably be baby boomers or at least early gen X today. Either way, it shows that age shouldn't stop you from doing what you love. My least favorite is probably Larry. He was just boring. I don't understand why Normal-type trainers have to be portrayed as boring. If anything, they should be portrayed as trainers that can overcome the odds despite not having Pokémon with superpowers. Larry didn't really add much in terms of character for me. Making a trainer a Normal-type trainer should never be an excuse for creating a bland character.
As far as Team Star, I am definitely not a fan. Team Star is definitely one of the worst "villainous" teams in Pokémon history. I would rank them better than Team Yell though, but that's not saying much because Team Yell was abysmally awful. They turned out to be a group of outcasts that were picked on in school and, to be honest, they slightly gave me school shooter vibes. I didn't like any of the bosses, and their leader, Penny, is definitely my least favorite character. I also thought the idea of their bosses turning their Revavrooms into battle cars was stupid. However, I did enjoy their story arc though from a gameplay perspective where I stormed their bases and defeated their Pokémon using the auto-battle feature, which was tons of fun. I don't understand Pokémon's fascination with weak villainous teams that hardly do anything bad these days. It really sucks.
Call me weird, but I was never a fan of bad guys in stories that actually aren't bad guys. If the bad guys truly aren't doing anything bad, then I don't see the point in attempting to stop them. Why am I going after a group that isn't really harming anybody or proving to be a major threat against the region as a whole compared to previous villainous teams like Team Rocket, Team Plasma, Team Galactic, and so on? To me, it just makes the whole thing seem mundane and not worth carrying out. At least with Cyrus and Ghetsis, I wanted to take them down and felt good about it because they were bad people doing really bad dangerous things and they needed to be stopped. I felt I like a had purpose in stopping them. With Team Aqua and Team Magma, even though I can't consider them fully bad people, their goal was bad, and it felt like I served a purpose to stop them from flooding or burning the world. With Team Star, why am I invading the personal spaces of a group of outcast kids that were picked on and technically aren't causing any major trouble? To me, that's weak writing and that's unacceptable.
As for the game exclusive professor, I don't really have too much of an opinion on the character since there clearly wasn't much character for an obvious reason that I won't go into detail because it is a pretty big spoiler, but the story was unexpected and emotionally moving for sure. However, from a gameplay perspective, I loved it. This was definitely one of the most fun boss battles that I ever had in a Pokémon game.
