Which evil team leader do you think was the best in the games?

I would personally say Cyrus, though N and Ghetsis are very close seconds. All three are both done very well from a story perspective, are competent enough to nearly achieve their goals, and are on the harder side to defeat in battle. N especially, since he has a legendary on his team.

I like Archie, Maxie, and Lysander from a story perspective, but their Pokemon teams are quite weak, so actually fighting them feels like a letdown. I haven't fought any of the team leaders in Alola/Galar/Paldea yet so no comment there.

So I guess the worst would be Giovanni. He doesn't have much of an actual evil plan in the games beyond "be a crime boss", and most of his reputation is from stuff he did in the anime or manga. His team of Pokemon is among the easiest to beat, almost on par with Gen 3 Archie and Maxie. I have not played through the Rainbow Rocket stuff in USUM, so take my opinion with a grain of salt, though. It's possible I might change my mind after playing that.

That being said, if you count Archer as a team leader, which I don't, he's at the bottom. No contest. His incarnation of Team Rocket doesn't do anything besides cut off Slowpoke Tails, get their HQ raided by the player and Champion, and their grand plan is to call Giovanni for help, but he never bothers to show up even though the radio broadcast does go off successfully. To top it all off, Archer's Pokemon team is a pushover with only three Pokemon, two of which aren't even evolved.
 
Maxie and Archie are fairly interesting, as they are collectively the first to have an actually ideology behind the things they do instead of being generic baddies.

N is compelling, but tacking on Ghetsis as "puppeteer" is kind of annoying, especially given how hard they telegraph he's the one actually in charge. It feels like GF wanted to back away from the ethical debate around the franchise after they had already engaged with it.
 
Best: Ghetsis. Liked the whole plan of getting people to relinquish their Pokemon. Felt like an interesting point for the average person (and the player) to think about. Represents the only real means of major weaponry in the Pokemon world, beyond swords. (Ignores the guns in the early anime. Put that aside.) Seems tough to wrest control back from them if they convince everyone to release their Pokemon. Doubts training a Pokemon to easy under their rule. Exists in the same universe as Kalos's ultimate weapon and powerful Galactic bombs, on the flip side. Might manage something still.

Wishes Ghetsis had more charisma, though. Recalls them being obviously evil.

Oh, one more point on Ghetsis's plot: Roping the gym leaders into the conflict. Made the world feel more connected.

Worst: Rose. Aims to fix a power crisis 1000 years down the line. Solves this by causing a catastrophe while you are trying to beat the game. Actively detracted from the game.
 
Best for me it's Cyrus. I like Ghetsis too but Cyrus' ideals speak much more to me.

Worst is probably Archie, whose plan is pretty weird. Lysandre is like down in the list mostly because he wasn't well written, but he could have been a very interesting villain.
 
I also double up with Cyrus. The ideas and concepts which he spoke in the game seems quite reasonable to me at times, although the backstory about him also gives idea why he was like that.


Worst should be Piers according to me, and that's only because I didn't like the concept. But both Maxie/Archie are also below, as it was about their rivalry only, more or less.....
 
Best:... none really. None of them are particularly memorable.

Worst: Rose/Macro Cosmos.
The whole part where some future crisis which none of the currently living humans will live to see just absolute has to be dealt with right this very second never made sense.
I do love Sword/Shield, they're great games mechanically speaking. Plot wise that was one of the dumbest things I've seen in a series which already has subpar story telling normally.
 
I'd say the best was Cyrus from a story perspective, especially in Platinum where we learn more about him. His gripes about society being filled with too much strife and conflict ring especially true in 2024, and the idea of making him a cold and unemotional character fits well into that.

I also like Giovanni and Evice from a "this dude's very clearly evil" standpoint. Sometimes villains with simpler plans and motivations are better.

Now onto the bad:

Chairman Rose didn't even fit the basic definition of a "villain" so that makes him the worst by default. It doesn't help that his plot was basically shoehorned in the game literally at the last minute and is basically a one-act scenario (i.e., his grunts/admins don't pose a continuing threat throughout the game.)

The Executives from the Johto games seemed like they were trying to lead a disorganized mess that was struggling to pay their bills.

Archie's plan was totally unhinged since Hoenn already had too much damn water but I still think he's a cool guy and I wouldn't mind having a beer with him.

Lysandre literally went from, "this guy seems like an interesting villain" to "what is this I don't even" in record time. If your big bad boss starts shedding tears while explaining their grand scheme, they have officially lost all credibility as a villain.
 
Ghetsis was the best in my opinion, he's easily the most physically threatening (even attempting to outright kill the player in B2W2) and I like how he recognizes he's too obviously evil to convince everyone to release their Pokemon; so he manipulates N to spread his message instead. There are some problems with the execution (I wish it wasn't so obvious he's the villain and the one pulling the strings, I'd prefer if they kept it more ambiguous whether he believed in what he said before the final confrontation), but I can't think of any other evil team leaders that are as compelling as he is.

As for the worst, I'd say it's Lysandre. He's waxes on about how the world "isn't beautiful enough" and how he wants to eliminate "suffering". But there's virtually 0 suffering to be found anywhere in Kalos. The region is stuffed full of scenic locales, there appears to be precisely 0 poverty, sickness or hunger. The only known war was 3000 years ago (for reference: 3000 years ago in our world the settlement that would eventually form into the Roman Republic / Empire was still hundreds of years away from being founded). Other villains have at least somewhat valid / understandable motivations (even Chairman Rose's could work in theory if the "energy crisis" was imminent and not in 1000 years). But Lysandre's observations just fundamentally don't line up with what we actually see in-game to an extent that it completely ruins his character
 
Ghetsis is definitely the best villain imo, he feels more threatening than the other villains and is the only one who is an actual final boss in the games. Also, Lusamine is a great villain in Sun and Moon but is unfortunately a victim of character assassination in USUM.

Sword and Shield definitely had the worst "evil" team leaders. Piers and Team Yell aren't evil in the slightest, nor do they feel threatening in the slightest. Chairman Rose has the worst motivation out of every villainous leader and feels like a forced villain to have an excuse to bring the legendary Pokémon into the story.
 
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