Post by Cerotech Omega on Mar 17, 2014 22:55:51 GMT -8
Hey everyone. I know I should probably put my first post in some kind of Welcome board, but eff that.
We're all familiar with the Pokemon series - the myriad collectible critters, the various human inhabitants and the world they all live in. People see Pokemon as pets, as companions, or as battle partners, challenging the regional Leagues for the right to become Champion. But you saw the title for this list (I hope), so we're going to be talking to those who use them as tools for whatever sinister agenda we have to deal with this year. No matter the reason, they're meant to be part of the story experience, and shutting them down is an inevitability on your road to the championship in most cases. I'm going to be mentioning the teams from the "core engine" games, so nothing from the Ranger subseries (I have next to no experience with it anyway) or the Mystery Dungeon subseries or other spinoffs. I will also only numerically rank the teams I have personally engaged and/or shut down. With that established, let's get started.
N/A: Team Galactic
Just to make this clear now: I have not played any of the Sinnoh games, and much of my information is painted by third-person accounts. Take that as you will.
Team Galactic is a team that I personally have no opinion on one way or another, but it's leaning towards belligerence. I heard some rather nasty things about the flat-out idiotic mooks and the admins, but what made me belligerent is that people just overhype them based on the goals of uppermost management and blowing up one of Sinnoh's Three Lakes. I've seen some shit in Pokemon, and you're a generation too late to shock me with regional change. However, what keeps this group afloat in my book are the two members of note. Charon may be a selfish scientist who's in it for the coin (even though he does give a damn about his Rotom in the end) and I can understand someone with those kinds of aims, but it's Cyrus that keeps me from flat-out hating them.
Yeah, I'm not too big on the whole "Legendary Pokemon gold rush" that has infected the stories of every Pokemon generation starting with Hoenn (more on that later), nor do I like that Cyrus' goal amounted to said gold rush, but what keeps him in my good graces is that he has a damn good reason (in Platinum anyway) for wanting to zero reality. Basically, one of the old folk talk to you about him and how he was raised by his parents, and while Cyrus wanted to stay on their good side like any obedient child, they happened to be total perfectionists. They pushed him to the breaking point in his studies, and somewhere along the line he just plain broke, and everything a person can take pleasure in just didn't cut it with him anymore. He hated his own incomplete state, and wanted to rewrite the world according to what he saw as ideal.
Congrats, Cyrus - you managed to save your team from being a total disgrace. I'd still stop you - your goals should never come to fruition - but I'd press for insanity in court as a witness.
5: Team Plasma
Back when Gen V was announced, I was actually excited for the first time since I got burned out by Leaf Green. A new region, new visuals, new Pokemon (which you had to adapt to - "Start From a New Beginning" and all that), and new people to encounter and face. Basically, there were many highlights that got me to embrace the ball again.
Team Plasma was NOT one of those highlights.
I kept an eye on serebii.net as the news poured forth, and while I was spoiled on details, perhaps I was too spoiled, as I came to learn of the organization's intentions - Pokemon liberation. Sounded good at first, and a whole deconstruction on the concept of Pokemon itself at that, but someone eventually brought up the possibility of an economic collapse. Understanding economy is not something meant for the target age group for the series, but my experiences with XD basically told me of worse possibilities they would understand. Long story short, if liberation goes uncontrolled and unopposed, it would leave the region ripe for villainous organizations (like, surprise surprise, Team Plasma) to invade and conquer. Hell, they'd fund it for an inevitable return. Once I saw that, I could not see the once-enigmatic N as anything other than a gigantic tool, and before the games even hit Japan at that, and some small part of me prayed that I would be proven wrong - that my fifth eye was hallucinating at these possibilities.
Needless to say, I was RIGHT. Experiencing the game alongside my Oshawott, I couldn't help but feel that Ghetsis only got away with as much as he did because the people of Unova were idiots. If my girl weren't a mute character by design, I'd march on up and start a debate on why liberation is completely stupid. It's not illegal to express an opinion - I get that - but it would've been enough to make him think his whole plan is faeces. Later on, I ran into him again, and he made the inevitable slip-up that he wanted to create a world that he - he meant, Team Plasma - desired. That was enough to set the "Villain Alert" into total overdrive, and I wanted to finish the game for no other reason than to put him on the Party Van.
I pity N - I really do. He gets to be a pawn to this freak, and I had to steamroll him time and again out of association. Maybe in some other version he and I could have actually gotten along. But when I got to the end of the line, Ghetsis was waiting, and he chewed out his own son for being a freak of nature - for being what Ghetsis wanted him to be in the first place. That was the end of the line - I released to Level Zero, used every asset at my disposal (including my event Victini and Zekrom) and beat his entire team, hax Hydreigon included, black and blue. It wasn't easy, but I got the job done. Sadly, I wasn't going to put up with grinding to face off against Alder after that, but I did close the loop on the Six Sages and secured Kyurem in time to funnel every unique Pokemon I had to X.
I didn't bother with Black and White 2 - I didn't see a point to it, but I did get some third-party accounts on what goes on, and Ghetsis still manages to botch up his team then. I'm going to slay every argument about him being "Dangerously Genre Savvy" later on in this list, rest assured, but I can say without arrogance that, while dementia is a horrible way to die, a quick death is too good for that bastard.
4: Team Flare
I'm still playing through X, but from what I've seen Team Flare does manage to not be utterly predictable in its motives from the word go. I'm going to edit this as I find new information, but I've seen enough to think the group is nutbar in every level of management, and not in a good way.
First, you can't walk ten feet around the group without it praising its own "style" in some shape or form up to Laverre. Tacky red suits, red shades, ridiculous F pose, even flame buns for the girls - I'm starting to miss the less flamboyant dress of the other teams already. Points for having no overlap in type weaknesses for the common Pokemon layout for the group, unlike others I could name - they got that much right, and they might give Chesnaught some trouble if he weren't so damn overleveled. Keyword - "might".
The admins are less nutbar, but still manage to come across as crazy. They even went so far as to offer the manager of the Poke Ball Factory membership in exchange for $5M in funds, which I think is ridiculous, especially when they give the same offer to others. Have I caused such damage to them that they're that desperate for money? Of course, between the Power Plant and this, things are starting to look messed up enough, and that's without going into the worst part of the team I've experienced to date.
And that would be the big man himself, Lysandre. Where I'm at, it's not supposed to be known that he's the guy in charge, but I figured it out in advance even if I voided what others had to say. When you meet him in the bar in Lumiose City, he starts to go on about immortality to Diantha, who wants to change the roles she acts out as she aged. My thoughts on the guy were, and I quote, "...Creepy." I heard more about him as I went on, which did invoke some manner of suspicion, especially given his similarities to the mooks, but what sold me that he was the chief was his message to me in Coumarine Town after I finished trimming Ramos' team with my Mega Aerodactyl. He did seem happy about my comprehension of Mega Evolution, but when he expressed his disapproval of, again I quote, "covering old filth with new filth", that was it. That told me he was out to change the world according to some vague, likely narrowly-defined ideal, and when I busted Ariana later, I wanted to snap at her "And tell that dateless turbo-nerd Lysandre I'm on to him!" on her way out so he would get the memo. The encounter with him and Sycamore honestly made me question the latter's taste in company - I start having problems with how people live their lives when it starts to seriously eff with those around them.
My encounter with Mable at the Frost Cavern spilled out that Team Flare only wants to exploit Pokemon for their energy in order to ensure that only they would survive, which soured my already low opinion of the team, and that got even worse when I heard the story about Xerneas in Anistar. Seeing Dexio coming in when I arrived in Anistar, and the broadcast from Lysandre mid-chat with Calem, I sorely wanted to tell them to have everybody evacuated from Geosenge immediately, since a sealed Flare base out in the middle of nowhere is the best spot to hide a superweapon to disrupt the natural order. Let me make this clear - if you want to stay on my good side, you do not casually play soul arithmetic for your own selfish benefit! No moral human being would ever assign weight to a soul!
When I met with Lysandre behind the cafe in Lumiose, he started going out about the resource crunch, about how Team Flare is doing the world a favor. So on top of being flat-out evil, he's also a massive hypocrite - his team goes around stealing resources and charging ludicrous entry fees, the outfits are as far from stylish as one can get, and he has no shame exploiting Pokemon for his goal of making Team Flare a bunch of immortal ubermenschen, and yet HE calls US the problem even though I have seen several influential Kalosians demonstrate generosity. At that point, I felt less like a hunter pursuing its prey (in my case, the morally bankrupt) and more like Genghis Khan leading an army to Khwarezmid - I wanted nothing more at that instant than to wipe the entire group from the face of the earth.
The third-party accounts I have yet to see firsthand state that he thinks this is okay because, seeing as he is descended from royalty, he needs to do something about it. *sigh* Really? You're going to half-ass the Cyrus approach, dood? Let me tell you about a man named Fou-lu...
In days of yore, the men who would become the first mortal rulers of the Fou Empire sought to summon a god to rule in their place. That man was named Fou-lu. Through no shortage of ordeals, he did everything in his power to cater to the mortals around him, and even united the many lands of the young empire under one banner. He realized from the start that he was incomplete, his "other half" displaced six hundred years ahead. He made a deal with the mortals who summoned him - he would resume the throne once he reunited with his other half, with the mortals free to rule as they saw fit, and then he went to sleep.
Six hundred years later, he awoke from his slumber and found that the very mortals descended from his evokers, now decadent and corrupt, would rather renege on their end of the bargain, and sought to snuff out the very god they summoned long ago. He faced fire in every direction, assassins out for his blood, horrible monsters, and all before the highlight of his immortal existence - a country girl named Mami. See, she brought him in, nursed him to health, gave him an alias ("Ryong") and actually started to love him after all of it. After he silences a faux volcano god, he has to explain herself to him, up to and including mentioning his true name (that's how his assassins found him in the first place) to do it. It's about there that things go to hell and never look back.
After Fou-lu escapes, Mami is captured and dragged off to the Carronade, whereupon she was ritualistically tortured to the point of despair, and then stuffed into the weapon itself and fired right at him. He tries to endure the shot, bless his heart, but the last thing he notices while he's still sane is Mami's bell falling on the hexed land in front of him. It's at this point where he gets it stuck in his head that mortals are monsters by design, and that they all need to be wiped from the planet - a decision cemented when then-Emperor Soniel acts like everything is a mistake only to stab him with the Dragonslayer, a weapon made from the severed head of another god the Fou Empire botched the summoning for, and which was meant to kill other gods. All it did, on top of kicking the crazy train into overdrive, is sorely piss him off, at which point he literally collected Soniel's head. It takes the player party, guided by Ryu, who ironically enough is Fou-lu's other half, and a hell of a beating to get him to have faith in mortals again. "They art cruel... foolish... verily, a collection of contradictions... and yet... they art magnificent..."
Pokemon Gen VI utterly fails to convince me at this point that Lysandre actually had anything resembling a good reason for his actions because of the parallels to Fou-lu. If he actually had to deal with jerks and monsters on an everyday basis, I might have some leeway, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. He even fails to live up to whatever low standards Ghetsis managed during his two-year run, and that says a lot.
I hope Z, XZ or YZ actually manages to do something to make Team Flare more believable, because this is just a disaster. That they were less predictable puts them above Team Plasma, but barely. Compared to the coming entries, though, they don't stand a chance.
3: Team Rocket
At this point, I ruled out the most recent teams from my list. Before anyone calls me a "genwunner" or a "nostalgiafag", I wish to dash the rumors that Team Rocket is my favorite team. They're not, but I still respect them as they serve as the template upon which the other teams are built. The mooks have a limited pool of Pokemon to choose from, the higher-ups have a better pool, the team's goal is clearly malign, though you never get to know of everything, and the group is wrapped up before the eighth gym is settled without fail (Team Plasma keeps going to the end, which does little to save them from the rest of their folly).
Early teams have simple goals - Team Rocket is about exploting Pokemon for profit, which is as simple as it gets - but as they came before the "Legendary Pokemon gold rush" kicked into full swing, Team Rocket had something most of the later teams lacked: sanity. The goal was a simple one, but they had their eyes on the prize, and everything was laid out in a way that you truly got the "mafiaesque" vibe from them from the first encounter at Mount Moon to the final showdown at Silph Co. Further, because of the boon of sanity, the boss, Giovanni, recognized that as long as you were going to continue kicking ass with your team of choice, there was no profit to gain, so he called it quits by the end. This is something that the later teams fail to comprehend, which says a lot on how far gone folks like Cyrus, Ghetsis and Lysandre truly are.
Three years later in Johto, Team Rocket's at it again, but while the location's changed, their modus operandi has not, and you still have to stay somewhat alert to shut them down again. Like Giovanni before them, the management of Team Rocket Johto realize that there is no profit to your continued intermeddling, and pull the collective plug as a result. As a gag, one guy in Kanto failed to get the memo, and after you own him, he decides that he's done and goes home to Unova.
'Tis a shame that the anime Team Rocket has long overstayed its welcome - I would kill to see J&J in non-Rocket uniforms while Giovanni rides the Party Van out of the series for good. Of course, a total jackhole in the Sinnoh arc and the stupidity rampant in the Unova arc have made me stop caring about the anime period, which is a shame given how long the series has gone on for.
2: Teams Magma and Aqua
I admit - even though my first game is a Kanto game (Yellow, in fact), I feel Gen III was the best of them. Like Gen V, it was a reboot of the series, which meant that nothing carried over throughout the plot and that you had to use whatever Pokemon were provided instead of powering through with your team from Kanto and Johto (to be fair, the mechanics overhaul made this necessary, and Gen V allowed you to bring everyone along after the story was done). Sure, Hoenn had a lot of water to it (which meant more Tentacool than you can shake an Electrike at), but it introduced berry patches to grow your own stock, undersea travel (hence the need for all that water), double battles (and a gym that utilized them), and more. Sweetening the deal was the cast of characters, up to and including the villain teams - yes, there's two of them here, and they actually brought their own chemistry to the table as well.
Team Magma was a fire-themed team intent on expanding the continental shelf so that there would be more habitable space, whereas Team Aqua loved the sea and wanted to spread it out to give the water Pokemon more habitable space. While this does make their teams predictable to a degree, the two were at odds with each other from start to finish, and you had to stem the damage they were causing - there was no outright stopping them until the endgame, and it became clear as you progressed. I played Sapphire, which was a bit poignant at the end of the Aqua arc - having released Kyogre, Archie realized his mistake in pursuing Legendary Pokemon when he saw that the beast summoned a rainstorm without end, one that would flood the world completely if not stilled. Recognizing just what he wrought, he passed the Red Orb to you so you could fix his mistake before calling it quits.
While Emerald managed to further improve the games, one thing I wish it never brought to the table was the "Legendary Pokemon gold rush" that is the source of stagnation in the series today. Everyone wants a Legendary for their twisted goal this week, and you need to shut them down before they can get that far. In this case, both Kyogre and its counterpart Groudon awake, but rather than realize how badly they messed up the world, Archie and Maxie are consumed with power lust, amplified by the Red and Blue Orbs used to awaken them, and intend to fight it out to the end of days if they must. Thus you need to find Rayquaza to end the conflict before everything goes pear-shaped. As seen from Teams Galactic, Plasma and Flare, it's only gotten worse.
It wasn't until a number of years later that I was first exposed to Pokemon Special, and I read all the way through the myriad arcs up until I lost interest some time during the Diamond and Pearl arc. To my delight, the Ruby and Sapphire arc was magnificently done, with a primary goal centered around the two young protagonists and a secondary goal tied into Teams Magma and Aqua. Everything about it literally shackled you to it from start to end, and Ruby and Sapphire themselves were characterized in ways that the anime counterparts of Cilan and Iris, respectively, could only dream of imitating. As long as this standard is maintained, I would welcome a return to Hoenn where Leaf Green failed to bring me back to Kanto.
Now let us recap before we get to number one.
Team Galactic does not rank due to lack of firsthand experience.
Number Five: Team Dimbulb - I mean, Team Plasma
Number Four: Team Washout - I mean, Team Flare
Number Three: Team Rocket
Number Two: Teams Magma and Aqua
Wait a second... I just covered all the main series games, didn't I? Well, didn't I tell you that I was doing the "core engine" games? As it turns out, there are "core engine" games outside the main series on Nintendo's many handhelds, but the tragedy is that of the five console games to use the "core engine", three of them are "No Exploration, Pokemon Battles Only, Final Destination", and two of them are themed around Kanto and Johto while the third is completely detached from the series. This leaves the other two - Colosseum and XD - which actually got to the dark corners of the story that Teams Galactic, Plasma and Flare have not fully explored. With that out of the way, there's only room for one king of the hill...
1: Cipher
And They are come. Take the conventions of Gen III that Teams Magma and Aqua ushered in, the faux savviness of Ghetsis and faux appeal of Team Flare concentrated into their purest and true forms, the sanity of Team Rocket, and the dire intent of Team Galactic. Add in a tablespoon of mixture of paranoia fuel, mindrape, and pure evil, and a teaspoon of ruthlessness, then blend until consistent and let set until firm. That's Cipher in a nutshell.
While Cipher has a low-key goal compared to their successors - merely take over the world - what truly cements them at the top of the list is the extent to which they'd execute their goals whilst remaining sane and savvy about it all. The big thing that differentiates them from the rest is the "Shadow Pokemon" they developed - Pokemon psychologically tortured and infused with evil power for use as weapons against their enemies and competitors to ensure an iron-fisted rule from the shadows of Orre's criminal underworld. They, along with their cohorts in Team Snagem, also developed the "Snag Machine" - a device that disables Pokemon League-mandated failsafes within any Poke Ball that interfaces with it, allowing it to "catch" another trainer's Pokemon as though they were wild. Further, the Peons all wore monochromatic suits that obscured all means of identification to thwart law enforcement (whatever little there is in the region) and were trained in all manner of infiltration and ambush to silence threats to the group - this included concealment outside the horizon ring, holographic devices to disguise as other people, team tactics, intruder detection training, and training in handling many types of Pokemon to avoid pigeonholing. Between the raw efficiency of the Peons, the political and scientific mastery of the Admins, and the loyalty of the many criminal elements of the Orre region, it appeared that Cipher was untouchable to the everyday trainer.
Which is why it took nothing less than a total badass like Wes to bring them down... the first time.
By the way, absolutely none of the above paragraph is hyperbole - Cipher really does all of that and more. Let's break it down, shall we?
The Peons are at the forefront of Cipher's assault and defense operations, and serve as the equivalent of the Grunts of the other villain teams. But where Team Rocket set the standards that the other teams followed, the Cipher Peons took a malicious glee in breaking every single aspect of them. Grunts behave like a tripwire maze; Peons detect by sight and sound. Grunts have limited type and species pools; Peons don't, and may include Shadow Pokemon into the mix. All Grunts come in solo or event packs and are in plain sight to the player and the trainer in most cases; attacks by pairs of Peons are not unheard of, and neither are disguised Peons or Ceiling Peons, the latter of which not even Team Flare has dared to replicate. The end result is that the player trainer had to come prepared for attack by anything at any time - what works against one Peon will not work as well against another, and one cannot expect to avoid trouble for long no matter how clear the road presents itself.
Likewise, the "Pokemon can seriously harm and/or kill people" angle is not ignored, either; throughout both Colosseum and XD you will encounter various people brought low by direct violence invoked by Cipher for the sake of neutralizing obstacles to their objectives. Dakim is of special note in that he, a musclebound Admin (and thus a trainer), actually punches another person out for failure to comply with his demands. Likewise, XD proves Cipher is not above homicide; the S.S. Libra goes missing with no word to the fate of its crew, but the various Pokemon onboard are confirmed seized and Shadowed, suggesting the human crew was fatally lost at sea - and this is years before Ghetsis was even a concept. Further, Cipher proves that federal and corporate interests in Orre are not immune to their influence, as the Grand Masters of both generations of Cipher are people of great influence within regional affairs. They even beat out Team Flare for a confirmed final defeat with Evice and Nascour losing their escape chopper and forced into life imprisonment as a result. On top of that, Ardos swears that he will rebuild Cipher after the organization is brought low a second time - comparatively, Team Rocket calls it quits, Old Team Plasma has repented completely, and New Team Plasma has outright disbanded, with Ghetsis succumbing to dementia after his second outright loss. Given Cipher's track record prior to then, it's not a stretch to say that fans are waiting to fulfill his oath.
Speaking of Ghetsis, it's time we took care of his faux savviness once and for all, and reflecting upon Cipher's exploits should put everything on the table. People praise Ghetsis for being savvy enough to recognize the "fantasy gun control" at work and exploiting it, but after wiping him, I recognized deep down that should Ghetsis have succeeded, it would only be a matter of time before Cipher swept down, killed him, and took Unova as their own. That the Ghetsis fans never recognized this as a possibility should say enough as it is, but there's more to blow that up in his face. Keep in mind Cipher provided resources to Team Snagem in the Snag Machine's development before Wes went rogue, so if they didn't provide Ghetsis with the code for his "PC Storage Infiltration System", they could easily reverse-engineer it and use it themselves. Ghetsis was waiting for N to become undisputed champion before seizing the Pokemon from the storage system; Cipher wouldn't wait that long. Cipher also treats its administration with some degree of respect, and uses their input, especially from the R&D division, to further their goals; Ghetsis continuously ignored Colress' claims to friendship between Pokemon and trainer aiding in the Pokemon's development and growth despite explicitly hiring Colress to govern Team Plasma in his stead, and Colress, upon realizing his theories were correct after losing to the player trainer, ultimately signed off as a result. When Ghetsis finally went off the deep end for good at the end of the Kyurem arc in Black and White 2, even Zinzolin, who amongst the Seven Sages was the most loyal to Ghetsis, submitted his on-the-spot resignation, recognizing that his leader was too far gone. People praise Ghetsis for attempting to kill the player trainer, despite Wakin of Team Snagem explicitly commanding his Gloom to douse Michael in Sleep Powder for the purpose of stealing his Snag Machine and both Gorigan and Ardos suggesting the outright destruction of key Cipher facilities solely to kill Michael only for Greevil to talk them both down. Since Ardos is going to ensure that Cipher III is going to be under his governance, he wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger (Metroid-esque escape sequence, anyone?). Further, Ghetsis failed to recognize the player trainer's influence on N throughout Black and White, and this blind spot was the means to which his plans self-destructed right under his nose. After reading the above, can you truly believe Cipher would make such an oversight?
Long story short, I can say without arrogance that Ghetsis is to Ardos what Hazama is to Relius; one villain thinks he knows what he's doing, the other actually does. I can handle some cruelty in my video game villains, but if it's done in an intelligent and efficient manner, I'm all the more willing to embrace them, and this is why Cipher takes the number one spot by a country mile.
I'm Arin Frankhouse, aka Cerotech Omega, aka the Fifth Eye Gamer (if that name hasn't been taken already), and I look forward to your input on this list. Fire away!
We're all familiar with the Pokemon series - the myriad collectible critters, the various human inhabitants and the world they all live in. People see Pokemon as pets, as companions, or as battle partners, challenging the regional Leagues for the right to become Champion. But you saw the title for this list (I hope), so we're going to be talking to those who use them as tools for whatever sinister agenda we have to deal with this year. No matter the reason, they're meant to be part of the story experience, and shutting them down is an inevitability on your road to the championship in most cases. I'm going to be mentioning the teams from the "core engine" games, so nothing from the Ranger subseries (I have next to no experience with it anyway) or the Mystery Dungeon subseries or other spinoffs. I will also only numerically rank the teams I have personally engaged and/or shut down. With that established, let's get started.
N/A: Team Galactic
Just to make this clear now: I have not played any of the Sinnoh games, and much of my information is painted by third-person accounts. Take that as you will.
Team Galactic is a team that I personally have no opinion on one way or another, but it's leaning towards belligerence. I heard some rather nasty things about the flat-out idiotic mooks and the admins, but what made me belligerent is that people just overhype them based on the goals of uppermost management and blowing up one of Sinnoh's Three Lakes. I've seen some shit in Pokemon, and you're a generation too late to shock me with regional change. However, what keeps this group afloat in my book are the two members of note. Charon may be a selfish scientist who's in it for the coin (even though he does give a damn about his Rotom in the end) and I can understand someone with those kinds of aims, but it's Cyrus that keeps me from flat-out hating them.
Yeah, I'm not too big on the whole "Legendary Pokemon gold rush" that has infected the stories of every Pokemon generation starting with Hoenn (more on that later), nor do I like that Cyrus' goal amounted to said gold rush, but what keeps him in my good graces is that he has a damn good reason (in Platinum anyway) for wanting to zero reality. Basically, one of the old folk talk to you about him and how he was raised by his parents, and while Cyrus wanted to stay on their good side like any obedient child, they happened to be total perfectionists. They pushed him to the breaking point in his studies, and somewhere along the line he just plain broke, and everything a person can take pleasure in just didn't cut it with him anymore. He hated his own incomplete state, and wanted to rewrite the world according to what he saw as ideal.
Congrats, Cyrus - you managed to save your team from being a total disgrace. I'd still stop you - your goals should never come to fruition - but I'd press for insanity in court as a witness.
5: Team Plasma
Back when Gen V was announced, I was actually excited for the first time since I got burned out by Leaf Green. A new region, new visuals, new Pokemon (which you had to adapt to - "Start From a New Beginning" and all that), and new people to encounter and face. Basically, there were many highlights that got me to embrace the ball again.
Team Plasma was NOT one of those highlights.
I kept an eye on serebii.net as the news poured forth, and while I was spoiled on details, perhaps I was too spoiled, as I came to learn of the organization's intentions - Pokemon liberation. Sounded good at first, and a whole deconstruction on the concept of Pokemon itself at that, but someone eventually brought up the possibility of an economic collapse. Understanding economy is not something meant for the target age group for the series, but my experiences with XD basically told me of worse possibilities they would understand. Long story short, if liberation goes uncontrolled and unopposed, it would leave the region ripe for villainous organizations (like, surprise surprise, Team Plasma) to invade and conquer. Hell, they'd fund it for an inevitable return. Once I saw that, I could not see the once-enigmatic N as anything other than a gigantic tool, and before the games even hit Japan at that, and some small part of me prayed that I would be proven wrong - that my fifth eye was hallucinating at these possibilities.
Needless to say, I was RIGHT. Experiencing the game alongside my Oshawott, I couldn't help but feel that Ghetsis only got away with as much as he did because the people of Unova were idiots. If my girl weren't a mute character by design, I'd march on up and start a debate on why liberation is completely stupid. It's not illegal to express an opinion - I get that - but it would've been enough to make him think his whole plan is faeces. Later on, I ran into him again, and he made the inevitable slip-up that he wanted to create a world that he - he meant, Team Plasma - desired. That was enough to set the "Villain Alert" into total overdrive, and I wanted to finish the game for no other reason than to put him on the Party Van.
I pity N - I really do. He gets to be a pawn to this freak, and I had to steamroll him time and again out of association. Maybe in some other version he and I could have actually gotten along. But when I got to the end of the line, Ghetsis was waiting, and he chewed out his own son for being a freak of nature - for being what Ghetsis wanted him to be in the first place. That was the end of the line - I released to Level Zero, used every asset at my disposal (including my event Victini and Zekrom) and beat his entire team, hax Hydreigon included, black and blue. It wasn't easy, but I got the job done. Sadly, I wasn't going to put up with grinding to face off against Alder after that, but I did close the loop on the Six Sages and secured Kyurem in time to funnel every unique Pokemon I had to X.
I didn't bother with Black and White 2 - I didn't see a point to it, but I did get some third-party accounts on what goes on, and Ghetsis still manages to botch up his team then. I'm going to slay every argument about him being "Dangerously Genre Savvy" later on in this list, rest assured, but I can say without arrogance that, while dementia is a horrible way to die, a quick death is too good for that bastard.
4: Team Flare
I'm still playing through X, but from what I've seen Team Flare does manage to not be utterly predictable in its motives from the word go. I'm going to edit this as I find new information, but I've seen enough to think the group is nutbar in every level of management, and not in a good way.
First, you can't walk ten feet around the group without it praising its own "style" in some shape or form up to Laverre. Tacky red suits, red shades, ridiculous F pose, even flame buns for the girls - I'm starting to miss the less flamboyant dress of the other teams already. Points for having no overlap in type weaknesses for the common Pokemon layout for the group, unlike others I could name - they got that much right, and they might give Chesnaught some trouble if he weren't so damn overleveled. Keyword - "might".
The admins are less nutbar, but still manage to come across as crazy. They even went so far as to offer the manager of the Poke Ball Factory membership in exchange for $5M in funds, which I think is ridiculous, especially when they give the same offer to others. Have I caused such damage to them that they're that desperate for money? Of course, between the Power Plant and this, things are starting to look messed up enough, and that's without going into the worst part of the team I've experienced to date.
And that would be the big man himself, Lysandre. Where I'm at, it's not supposed to be known that he's the guy in charge, but I figured it out in advance even if I voided what others had to say. When you meet him in the bar in Lumiose City, he starts to go on about immortality to Diantha, who wants to change the roles she acts out as she aged. My thoughts on the guy were, and I quote, "...Creepy." I heard more about him as I went on, which did invoke some manner of suspicion, especially given his similarities to the mooks, but what sold me that he was the chief was his message to me in Coumarine Town after I finished trimming Ramos' team with my Mega Aerodactyl. He did seem happy about my comprehension of Mega Evolution, but when he expressed his disapproval of, again I quote, "covering old filth with new filth", that was it. That told me he was out to change the world according to some vague, likely narrowly-defined ideal, and when I busted Ariana later, I wanted to snap at her "And tell that dateless turbo-nerd Lysandre I'm on to him!" on her way out so he would get the memo. The encounter with him and Sycamore honestly made me question the latter's taste in company - I start having problems with how people live their lives when it starts to seriously eff with those around them.
My encounter with Mable at the Frost Cavern spilled out that Team Flare only wants to exploit Pokemon for their energy in order to ensure that only they would survive, which soured my already low opinion of the team, and that got even worse when I heard the story about Xerneas in Anistar. Seeing Dexio coming in when I arrived in Anistar, and the broadcast from Lysandre mid-chat with Calem, I sorely wanted to tell them to have everybody evacuated from Geosenge immediately, since a sealed Flare base out in the middle of nowhere is the best spot to hide a superweapon to disrupt the natural order. Let me make this clear - if you want to stay on my good side, you do not casually play soul arithmetic for your own selfish benefit! No moral human being would ever assign weight to a soul!
When I met with Lysandre behind the cafe in Lumiose, he started going out about the resource crunch, about how Team Flare is doing the world a favor. So on top of being flat-out evil, he's also a massive hypocrite - his team goes around stealing resources and charging ludicrous entry fees, the outfits are as far from stylish as one can get, and he has no shame exploiting Pokemon for his goal of making Team Flare a bunch of immortal ubermenschen, and yet HE calls US the problem even though I have seen several influential Kalosians demonstrate generosity. At that point, I felt less like a hunter pursuing its prey (in my case, the morally bankrupt) and more like Genghis Khan leading an army to Khwarezmid - I wanted nothing more at that instant than to wipe the entire group from the face of the earth.
The third-party accounts I have yet to see firsthand state that he thinks this is okay because, seeing as he is descended from royalty, he needs to do something about it. *sigh* Really? You're going to half-ass the Cyrus approach, dood? Let me tell you about a man named Fou-lu...
In days of yore, the men who would become the first mortal rulers of the Fou Empire sought to summon a god to rule in their place. That man was named Fou-lu. Through no shortage of ordeals, he did everything in his power to cater to the mortals around him, and even united the many lands of the young empire under one banner. He realized from the start that he was incomplete, his "other half" displaced six hundred years ahead. He made a deal with the mortals who summoned him - he would resume the throne once he reunited with his other half, with the mortals free to rule as they saw fit, and then he went to sleep.
Six hundred years later, he awoke from his slumber and found that the very mortals descended from his evokers, now decadent and corrupt, would rather renege on their end of the bargain, and sought to snuff out the very god they summoned long ago. He faced fire in every direction, assassins out for his blood, horrible monsters, and all before the highlight of his immortal existence - a country girl named Mami. See, she brought him in, nursed him to health, gave him an alias ("Ryong") and actually started to love him after all of it. After he silences a faux volcano god, he has to explain herself to him, up to and including mentioning his true name (that's how his assassins found him in the first place) to do it. It's about there that things go to hell and never look back.
After Fou-lu escapes, Mami is captured and dragged off to the Carronade, whereupon she was ritualistically tortured to the point of despair, and then stuffed into the weapon itself and fired right at him. He tries to endure the shot, bless his heart, but the last thing he notices while he's still sane is Mami's bell falling on the hexed land in front of him. It's at this point where he gets it stuck in his head that mortals are monsters by design, and that they all need to be wiped from the planet - a decision cemented when then-Emperor Soniel acts like everything is a mistake only to stab him with the Dragonslayer, a weapon made from the severed head of another god the Fou Empire botched the summoning for, and which was meant to kill other gods. All it did, on top of kicking the crazy train into overdrive, is sorely piss him off, at which point he literally collected Soniel's head. It takes the player party, guided by Ryu, who ironically enough is Fou-lu's other half, and a hell of a beating to get him to have faith in mortals again. "They art cruel... foolish... verily, a collection of contradictions... and yet... they art magnificent..."
Pokemon Gen VI utterly fails to convince me at this point that Lysandre actually had anything resembling a good reason for his actions because of the parallels to Fou-lu. If he actually had to deal with jerks and monsters on an everyday basis, I might have some leeway, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. He even fails to live up to whatever low standards Ghetsis managed during his two-year run, and that says a lot.
I hope Z, XZ or YZ actually manages to do something to make Team Flare more believable, because this is just a disaster. That they were less predictable puts them above Team Plasma, but barely. Compared to the coming entries, though, they don't stand a chance.
3: Team Rocket
At this point, I ruled out the most recent teams from my list. Before anyone calls me a "genwunner" or a "nostalgiafag", I wish to dash the rumors that Team Rocket is my favorite team. They're not, but I still respect them as they serve as the template upon which the other teams are built. The mooks have a limited pool of Pokemon to choose from, the higher-ups have a better pool, the team's goal is clearly malign, though you never get to know of everything, and the group is wrapped up before the eighth gym is settled without fail (Team Plasma keeps going to the end, which does little to save them from the rest of their folly).
Early teams have simple goals - Team Rocket is about exploting Pokemon for profit, which is as simple as it gets - but as they came before the "Legendary Pokemon gold rush" kicked into full swing, Team Rocket had something most of the later teams lacked: sanity. The goal was a simple one, but they had their eyes on the prize, and everything was laid out in a way that you truly got the "mafiaesque" vibe from them from the first encounter at Mount Moon to the final showdown at Silph Co. Further, because of the boon of sanity, the boss, Giovanni, recognized that as long as you were going to continue kicking ass with your team of choice, there was no profit to gain, so he called it quits by the end. This is something that the later teams fail to comprehend, which says a lot on how far gone folks like Cyrus, Ghetsis and Lysandre truly are.
Three years later in Johto, Team Rocket's at it again, but while the location's changed, their modus operandi has not, and you still have to stay somewhat alert to shut them down again. Like Giovanni before them, the management of Team Rocket Johto realize that there is no profit to your continued intermeddling, and pull the collective plug as a result. As a gag, one guy in Kanto failed to get the memo, and after you own him, he decides that he's done and goes home to Unova.
'Tis a shame that the anime Team Rocket has long overstayed its welcome - I would kill to see J&J in non-Rocket uniforms while Giovanni rides the Party Van out of the series for good. Of course, a total jackhole in the Sinnoh arc and the stupidity rampant in the Unova arc have made me stop caring about the anime period, which is a shame given how long the series has gone on for.
2: Teams Magma and Aqua
I admit - even though my first game is a Kanto game (Yellow, in fact), I feel Gen III was the best of them. Like Gen V, it was a reboot of the series, which meant that nothing carried over throughout the plot and that you had to use whatever Pokemon were provided instead of powering through with your team from Kanto and Johto (to be fair, the mechanics overhaul made this necessary, and Gen V allowed you to bring everyone along after the story was done). Sure, Hoenn had a lot of water to it (which meant more Tentacool than you can shake an Electrike at), but it introduced berry patches to grow your own stock, undersea travel (hence the need for all that water), double battles (and a gym that utilized them), and more. Sweetening the deal was the cast of characters, up to and including the villain teams - yes, there's two of them here, and they actually brought their own chemistry to the table as well.
Team Magma was a fire-themed team intent on expanding the continental shelf so that there would be more habitable space, whereas Team Aqua loved the sea and wanted to spread it out to give the water Pokemon more habitable space. While this does make their teams predictable to a degree, the two were at odds with each other from start to finish, and you had to stem the damage they were causing - there was no outright stopping them until the endgame, and it became clear as you progressed. I played Sapphire, which was a bit poignant at the end of the Aqua arc - having released Kyogre, Archie realized his mistake in pursuing Legendary Pokemon when he saw that the beast summoned a rainstorm without end, one that would flood the world completely if not stilled. Recognizing just what he wrought, he passed the Red Orb to you so you could fix his mistake before calling it quits.
While Emerald managed to further improve the games, one thing I wish it never brought to the table was the "Legendary Pokemon gold rush" that is the source of stagnation in the series today. Everyone wants a Legendary for their twisted goal this week, and you need to shut them down before they can get that far. In this case, both Kyogre and its counterpart Groudon awake, but rather than realize how badly they messed up the world, Archie and Maxie are consumed with power lust, amplified by the Red and Blue Orbs used to awaken them, and intend to fight it out to the end of days if they must. Thus you need to find Rayquaza to end the conflict before everything goes pear-shaped. As seen from Teams Galactic, Plasma and Flare, it's only gotten worse.
It wasn't until a number of years later that I was first exposed to Pokemon Special, and I read all the way through the myriad arcs up until I lost interest some time during the Diamond and Pearl arc. To my delight, the Ruby and Sapphire arc was magnificently done, with a primary goal centered around the two young protagonists and a secondary goal tied into Teams Magma and Aqua. Everything about it literally shackled you to it from start to end, and Ruby and Sapphire themselves were characterized in ways that the anime counterparts of Cilan and Iris, respectively, could only dream of imitating. As long as this standard is maintained, I would welcome a return to Hoenn where Leaf Green failed to bring me back to Kanto.
Now let us recap before we get to number one.
Team Galactic does not rank due to lack of firsthand experience.
Number Five: Team Dimbulb - I mean, Team Plasma
Number Four: Team Washout - I mean, Team Flare
Number Three: Team Rocket
Number Two: Teams Magma and Aqua
Wait a second... I just covered all the main series games, didn't I? Well, didn't I tell you that I was doing the "core engine" games? As it turns out, there are "core engine" games outside the main series on Nintendo's many handhelds, but the tragedy is that of the five console games to use the "core engine", three of them are "No Exploration, Pokemon Battles Only, Final Destination", and two of them are themed around Kanto and Johto while the third is completely detached from the series. This leaves the other two - Colosseum and XD - which actually got to the dark corners of the story that Teams Galactic, Plasma and Flare have not fully explored. With that out of the way, there's only room for one king of the hill...
1: Cipher
And They are come. Take the conventions of Gen III that Teams Magma and Aqua ushered in, the faux savviness of Ghetsis and faux appeal of Team Flare concentrated into their purest and true forms, the sanity of Team Rocket, and the dire intent of Team Galactic. Add in a tablespoon of mixture of paranoia fuel, mindrape, and pure evil, and a teaspoon of ruthlessness, then blend until consistent and let set until firm. That's Cipher in a nutshell.
While Cipher has a low-key goal compared to their successors - merely take over the world - what truly cements them at the top of the list is the extent to which they'd execute their goals whilst remaining sane and savvy about it all. The big thing that differentiates them from the rest is the "Shadow Pokemon" they developed - Pokemon psychologically tortured and infused with evil power for use as weapons against their enemies and competitors to ensure an iron-fisted rule from the shadows of Orre's criminal underworld. They, along with their cohorts in Team Snagem, also developed the "Snag Machine" - a device that disables Pokemon League-mandated failsafes within any Poke Ball that interfaces with it, allowing it to "catch" another trainer's Pokemon as though they were wild. Further, the Peons all wore monochromatic suits that obscured all means of identification to thwart law enforcement (whatever little there is in the region) and were trained in all manner of infiltration and ambush to silence threats to the group - this included concealment outside the horizon ring, holographic devices to disguise as other people, team tactics, intruder detection training, and training in handling many types of Pokemon to avoid pigeonholing. Between the raw efficiency of the Peons, the political and scientific mastery of the Admins, and the loyalty of the many criminal elements of the Orre region, it appeared that Cipher was untouchable to the everyday trainer.
Which is why it took nothing less than a total badass like Wes to bring them down... the first time.
By the way, absolutely none of the above paragraph is hyperbole - Cipher really does all of that and more. Let's break it down, shall we?
The Peons are at the forefront of Cipher's assault and defense operations, and serve as the equivalent of the Grunts of the other villain teams. But where Team Rocket set the standards that the other teams followed, the Cipher Peons took a malicious glee in breaking every single aspect of them. Grunts behave like a tripwire maze; Peons detect by sight and sound. Grunts have limited type and species pools; Peons don't, and may include Shadow Pokemon into the mix. All Grunts come in solo or event packs and are in plain sight to the player and the trainer in most cases; attacks by pairs of Peons are not unheard of, and neither are disguised Peons or Ceiling Peons, the latter of which not even Team Flare has dared to replicate. The end result is that the player trainer had to come prepared for attack by anything at any time - what works against one Peon will not work as well against another, and one cannot expect to avoid trouble for long no matter how clear the road presents itself.
Likewise, the "Pokemon can seriously harm and/or kill people" angle is not ignored, either; throughout both Colosseum and XD you will encounter various people brought low by direct violence invoked by Cipher for the sake of neutralizing obstacles to their objectives. Dakim is of special note in that he, a musclebound Admin (and thus a trainer), actually punches another person out for failure to comply with his demands. Likewise, XD proves Cipher is not above homicide; the S.S. Libra goes missing with no word to the fate of its crew, but the various Pokemon onboard are confirmed seized and Shadowed, suggesting the human crew was fatally lost at sea - and this is years before Ghetsis was even a concept. Further, Cipher proves that federal and corporate interests in Orre are not immune to their influence, as the Grand Masters of both generations of Cipher are people of great influence within regional affairs. They even beat out Team Flare for a confirmed final defeat with Evice and Nascour losing their escape chopper and forced into life imprisonment as a result. On top of that, Ardos swears that he will rebuild Cipher after the organization is brought low a second time - comparatively, Team Rocket calls it quits, Old Team Plasma has repented completely, and New Team Plasma has outright disbanded, with Ghetsis succumbing to dementia after his second outright loss. Given Cipher's track record prior to then, it's not a stretch to say that fans are waiting to fulfill his oath.
Speaking of Ghetsis, it's time we took care of his faux savviness once and for all, and reflecting upon Cipher's exploits should put everything on the table. People praise Ghetsis for being savvy enough to recognize the "fantasy gun control" at work and exploiting it, but after wiping him, I recognized deep down that should Ghetsis have succeeded, it would only be a matter of time before Cipher swept down, killed him, and took Unova as their own. That the Ghetsis fans never recognized this as a possibility should say enough as it is, but there's more to blow that up in his face. Keep in mind Cipher provided resources to Team Snagem in the Snag Machine's development before Wes went rogue, so if they didn't provide Ghetsis with the code for his "PC Storage Infiltration System", they could easily reverse-engineer it and use it themselves. Ghetsis was waiting for N to become undisputed champion before seizing the Pokemon from the storage system; Cipher wouldn't wait that long. Cipher also treats its administration with some degree of respect, and uses their input, especially from the R&D division, to further their goals; Ghetsis continuously ignored Colress' claims to friendship between Pokemon and trainer aiding in the Pokemon's development and growth despite explicitly hiring Colress to govern Team Plasma in his stead, and Colress, upon realizing his theories were correct after losing to the player trainer, ultimately signed off as a result. When Ghetsis finally went off the deep end for good at the end of the Kyurem arc in Black and White 2, even Zinzolin, who amongst the Seven Sages was the most loyal to Ghetsis, submitted his on-the-spot resignation, recognizing that his leader was too far gone. People praise Ghetsis for attempting to kill the player trainer, despite Wakin of Team Snagem explicitly commanding his Gloom to douse Michael in Sleep Powder for the purpose of stealing his Snag Machine and both Gorigan and Ardos suggesting the outright destruction of key Cipher facilities solely to kill Michael only for Greevil to talk them both down. Since Ardos is going to ensure that Cipher III is going to be under his governance, he wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger (Metroid-esque escape sequence, anyone?). Further, Ghetsis failed to recognize the player trainer's influence on N throughout Black and White, and this blind spot was the means to which his plans self-destructed right under his nose. After reading the above, can you truly believe Cipher would make such an oversight?
Long story short, I can say without arrogance that Ghetsis is to Ardos what Hazama is to Relius; one villain thinks he knows what he's doing, the other actually does. I can handle some cruelty in my video game villains, but if it's done in an intelligent and efficient manner, I'm all the more willing to embrace them, and this is why Cipher takes the number one spot by a country mile.
I'm Arin Frankhouse, aka Cerotech Omega, aka the Fifth Eye Gamer (if that name hasn't been taken already), and I look forward to your input on this list. Fire away!