So I’m back on the Pokerman train. I’m going through all the old titles I missed and I’m currently playing through Black 2 properly, but just finished up Ultra Moon. I was pleasantly surprised by Team Skull. Ever since Team Rocket in the OG games, every single team since then has been the same “evil organization bent on taking over the world” or worse “group of misguided individuals who are actually good folks inside” like the later games. Scarlet and Violet was the absolute worst with this, I genuinely despised Team Star and believe they deserved to be bullied. Fuck em. Also I hate how your rivals are likable now, don’t do that. I want to hate them. Make them assholes and let me rename them. The ‘team’ in the Black/White series are pretty typical of most Pokemon games in the “hurrdurr we wanna take over the world!” aspect, but at least your rival is a jerkoff that you can name. In my game I named him Goober and whenever he shows up acting like a Goober I genuinely enjoy it. Back to Ultra Moon though, your rival is actually more like recent games in that they’re “likable” and rooting for ya and shit. I don’t like that. What I DO like though is Team Skull. I genuinely believe they’re one of the best evil teams in the series. They have no redeemable qualities… they’re just a bunch of punks. They don’t really have any grand scheme and whenever you encounter them in battle their background music is goofy as hell and the dialogue leans hard into the cringe hip hop stereotypes. I love it. I actually would get excited every time I saw one pop up in the game. I don’t care about the ultra beasts. I don’t care about the kahunas or island trial nonsense. Just give me more goofy interactions with team skull.
Coincidentally we had a preview of Generation 10 recently, and I dunno if many folks have noticed… but it looks an awful lot like Alola.
This part especially reminds me of a pier/dock sorta town in Ultra Moon. I think Seafolk Village? Couldn’t find a good example, but there’s similar straw huts in the game. Basically they both have a very tropical “traditional hawaii” base in visual design.
If they actually do return to this region, I just have one major request: PLEASE bring back Team Skull. I love their goofy asses.
That said… while I respected they tried something different in the Moon/Sun games with trials and stuff… I wasn’t a huge fan of it. Just go back to normal gyms. Theme them if you want to Alola, but I just wasn’t a fan of the trials that ended on fights with a roided up pokerman that’d call for help constantly. Interesting concept, wasn’t something I enjoyed in a traditional pokemon game. If it wasn’t for Team Skull I’m not sure I’d have even finished the game…
-K
