Story Spoilers What do you think about the new characters/returning characters?

[beasttrash]

Please be aware that this thread will contain story spoilers for the game.

What do you all think about the characters in ZA?

For new characters, did you enjoy them? Do you have any favorites? Were there ones that were just kind of mid?

As for returning characters, were you surprised to see them back? Did they still hold up? Did you maybe change your tune on them from XY... or other games (eyes emoji)? And are you expecting to see some characters who might have not been in the base game return for the DLC?

For me, I am so enamored with most of the new cast! In particular: I love Lebanne!! a henpecked Dragon maid forced to hide her delinquent side, she's so funny and charming to me. Did you all see that Jacinthe forced her to take out her piercings? fhjkdhgfkjd.

As for returning characters, Mable is probably my favorite. She's relatable to me in the way we've also had jobs where we would much rather be doing anything else. (Although I've never been forced into a job due to a plea deal lol. Court ordered mandatory Pokémon Professorship has got to be a title of all time.)

 

[Audrelite]

Jacinthe is such a diva, I love her! Corbeau is great too! Otherwise, I found Team MZ to be a tad bit grating. This cast feels so small to me, especially as far as new characters goes—I just didn't vibe with anybody new.

 

[beasttrash]

Jacinthe is such a diva, I love her! Corbeau is great too! Otherwise, I found Team MZ to be a tad bit grating. This cast feels so small to me, especially as far as new characters goes—I just didn't vibe with anybody new.

UGHH YEAH. Jacinthe is like, pulling out all the stops as a trickster fae. Not to mention the fact that her ace is Clefable (The Cleffa line is one my all time faves) that really endeared me to her lol.

Corbeau is a wonderful wonderful short king of all time. He's such a dork lol. I think its really neat that the Rust Syndicate and the SBC are about opposing type differences, it makes the characterization of their top brass really interesting to me ngl.

Honestly I kind of liked team MZ but understandably I get how they could be grating, especially the whole subplot with Rust Syndicate. But I also feel a bit guilty when they are so self-aware and worried that they are holding you back. like auggh no guys you're doing ok I swear. :c

Admittedly, I'm also pretty ok with the smaller cast this time around. It really lets (most) of the cast really shine, especially as a lot of the games are about beating the gym leader and moving on. You don't just move on from these characters after you beat them, you battle them over and over again like real rivals. I really dig that!! But yeah, on the other hand if you don't really vibe with certain characters, the cast being small can feel a bit meh in the end. I felt this way about PLA ngl.

 

[Electrocast]

the cast didn't feel small to me at all lmao, if anything it felt a little big for a story of its length. not a complaint by any means though

i have kalos amnesia and honestly didn't remember most of the returning characters as returning/recognise their new designs. when everyone at jacinthe's tournament like immediately recognised L it felt like the game was repeatedly calling me out for not recognising who that was lmao so when i say AZ is my favourite of those it kind of feels like a 'by default' answer, but i genuinely loved him here

of the new characters, i really like the dynamics that the duos of corbeau & philippe and jacinthe & lebanne have going on, they interest me a lot

 

[terashards]

ooh no mentions of grisham yet. i loved the whole z-a cast more or less but naveen and grisham were my favorites of the new characters, which is funny because my favorite characters in any pokemon game are almost always the women but i digress. i personally thought the z-a cast was appropriately sized for its story if not a little big tbh, so i'm agreeing with electrocast on that one (though this isn't a complaint)

naveen was just my personal favorite of team M-Z by a landslide and i got attached to him because of how much you get to interact with him. i love his character design and i resonated with his story of wanting to chase his passions and not being supported by his family, so he literally winded up living somewhere else after his stuff was thrown away (honestly very queer-coded). i was initially worried that him being a huge fan of canari would get old fast but z-a's writing is often surprisingly funny and i never felt bothered by the gag, in fact i found it very entertaining. and that in contrast with his typically no-nonsense and kind of cynical personality really makes him great. i liked seeing him slowly warm up to my character over the course of the game.

lately i've been really into characters that deal with morally gray forgiveness themes. like, how does one move forward after doing something terrible, or how does one forgive themself/be forgiven by others if they've realized they were doing something terrible or were on the wrong track. grisham was raised by team flare and has flawed ideas of what team flare is or what it represents, despite team flare being the Genocidal Eugenicist Organization. i was really compelled by him defending lysandre and throwing all of the blame onto AZ for making the ultimate weapon in the first place. like, his heart is in the right place but he cannot make good on his good nature because he is so lost in his past and the ideals that were spoonfed to him since he was a child in team flare. at the very least he can recognize what lysandre did/attempted to do is bad but then he cannot make the reach far enough to recognize that lysandre is responsible and accountable for his actions. if he did, that would force him to realize that his whole life and the way he was raised was a lie and he's been complicit in terrible things and has been defending terrible things this whole time, even if he thought he was in the right and genuinely wanted to be good. by the end of the game he has to grapple with all that and choose to move forward and keep doing good anyway, but for his own ideals. i am sure that off-screen he will be unpacking a lot of personal complications with the way he was programmed to be. i haven't had the opportunity to yet because i've been so busy (and sick) but i really want to sit down and replay/rewatch the grisham parts of this game and really pull him apart because he fascinates me. (griselle to an extent as well but grisham was the clear focus and winner for me)

as for returning characters, i adore emma and i adored her in this game too but i was honestly disappointed just a smidge because i thought she would have more to do and more impact on the plot. as it stands she was kind of just a tutorial NPC and justification for the side missions system. i wanted her to be more involved with the ending of the game! there's also so many stones left unturned because like. grisham's character directly tackles the topic of children being wrongfully manipulated by team flare and the impact that has on their adult lives. well, emma fits right under that umbrella, having an extremely complex relationship with Xerosic as a teenager. and she's the one who points you in the right direction about grisham, too. as an emma enjoyer i really wish they had unpacked that just a little more. i feel like the original XY postgame quest with emma handled her story with an appropriate level of nuance and complexity but they kind of dropped the ball with following up on that and elaborating on those themes more even when they were willing to elaborate on those themes with grisham and AZ/lysandre. oh and side note i love mable now even though i didn't care about her at all before and i ship her and emma together. i saw some art on twitter that opened my third eye to this rarepair and i'm obsessed with them lol.

lastly for returning characters i'll just talk about AZ a little. i know our spoiler embargo was lifted but i'm going to put this bit in a spoiler tag anyway just because it greatly revolves around the ending of this game

Spoiler: very end of the game spoilers

TLDR; i sobbed my eyes out over the ending of this game with AZ dying. i had predicted that he would die, i noticed the signs with him coughing more and more till the end of the game and i mean even from the start he was referring to hotel Z as his final resting place and stuff so the writing was on the wall. but like, even so, i wasn't sure if gamefreak had the balls to actually write in a major character death like that, of a character we've been with the whole game and who was in the previous game too. so i was still surprised when the credits ended and his grave scrolled across the screen. it digs into that theme of morally gray forgiveness again for me and seeing him be able to be at peace after so long despite everything he had done and have flowers be put on his grave by the young people who gave joy and excitement to his life in his final weeks/months really moved me. perhaps i'm too young to be thinking about this but i hope that when i die i can go out in a similar way with being able to recognize and process my regrets and also be at peace and remembered by people who loved and cared about me. the letters he left, too... i mean i was crying for just so long.

i'm really glad that gamefreak had the guts to write this in becaues i think it's one of the best stories that this franchise has ever told and i also think it's a really important and emotionally resonant one. i'll be thinking about it for a really long time. i don't think there was any other way to write the ending of AZ's story than to give him a satisfying and peaceful death so i'm just. really glad they did it.

ig the only character i actively kind of disliked was canari herself? which is funny given my praise for naveen. it's not a serious dislike, and i think i'd actually enjoy her well enough in a vacuum, but despite all her differences (she is clearly different in personality and she has her whole relationship with her grandfather and implied-to-be-dead parents) she still ended up feeling a little bit like discount iono to me. i don't think being a streamer necessitates having electric as a favorite type and i think i would have liked canari a lot more if she had a different favorite type and partner pokemon so that she didn't feel so iono adjacent. also a lot of people in my circles are REALLY into shipping her and gwynn and i guess i'm maybe put off a little from her too because i feel like that's a ship i should enjoy, i mean my favorite pokemon ship of all time is technically a streamer and a fan of hers from the anime (though the way i ship them and am invested in them is not really about the streamer/fan dynamic like at all), and i absolutely see the reasons why people ship them but i just feel nothing about it. in terms of yuri i am way more into lebanne x jacinthe for ships with some canon backing and mable x emma somehow ended up being my favorite ship from this game by far so uh...?? i don't even know. whatever man LOL

everyone else i haven't talked about i probably liked just fine! shoutout to jacinthe for having like the best battle theme in the game

 

[skynerel]

The new characters are memorable and have a lot of personality. Team MZ has a nice friend group character dynamic, I love the dialogue lines for many of the NPC’s, specially the beef between the Rust syndicate and the SBC. Jacinthe is probably my favorite character and I would place Corbeu in second place. I think it’s an amazing cast of characters overall.

As for returning characters, I liked that AZ played a bigger role in this game. Otherwise I was kinda disappointed that Clemont was nowhere to be found, specially since Lumiose Tower used to be his gym. At least Diantha got a mention in a few occasions, but it would’ve been nice if she had made a physical appearance.