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

[staticmoth]

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.

 

[staticmoth]

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.

 

[c la fet]

I like the returning characters because I already did in the original games, but I don't like how some of them were treated.

I have mixed feeling about Emma. On the one hand she gets a decent amount of screentime in the beginning of the game and in the Diancie/Zeraora missions and she has multiple megas but she didn't get a battle theme, her friends disappeared (they only get a mention), she never uses her expansion suit and she doesn't do a lot of detective stuff.

Lysandre was well handled. But he doesn't interact with the other characters (he only has 1 offscreen interaction with AZ) and he barely says anything about the old characters (he only says "these children" once, even though they were important and they're the reason he ended up like that in the first place, he doesn't mention his former teammates, and we don't know how he got the Zygarde box). I know he's amnesiac but his lines in the Lysandre Labs part of the game suggest that he's starting to remember his past life, so it feels like there is something missing.
Don't like how Honchkrow and Mienshao disappeared from his team.

Mable and AZ take the backseat during the majority of the game and we don't get to battle them. I expected more from them. AZ's death was unnecessary. Some people say it was "the only way to give him a happy ending" but man it is not. There was no need to give him an ending. He could just continue working in his hotel and lend Floette to the player, like Cogita did with Enamorus in PLA.

Korrina was well handled. It might sound silly but when we got to battle her and her Mega Lucario for the first time and I heard her old battle theme, I was moved. Still, it sucks that you have to pay 30 extra bucks to meet her. Also, is it me or was that one scene where she asks you who is stronger between you and your rival awkward?

The fact there are only 5 returning characters out of +40 feels lazy. BW2 was also a sequel and it brought back almost everyone, even characters who weren't in the base BW game.

 

[Dragonbunsu]

Probably easier for me to list the characters I didn't like (mostly Urbaine/Taunie, but that's a long topic) because I generally enjoyed the chemistry between the cast in this game. My favorite is mainly Gwynn (because I relate to her for several reasons), Phillipe (for being generally cool vibes), Naveen/Lida (for their dynamic making MZ feeling like a found family), and Tarragon/Canari (I am a sucker for good family dynamics). I am not really into leaving long paragraphs bc I am just the type to few words as I need (on top of being lousy with articulation) but long story short: I like 95% of them. Very good.

 

[Hidden Mew]

I really enjoyed the vast majority of the Z-A cast, but Corbeau is my favorite. I really thought that we were going to be forced into doing gang work for the Rust Syndicate when we first meet him, but then we just do the same kind of work we do with Team MZ. Slowly getting to see that he puts on this tough guy act when he actually does care about the city and Pokemon made him really interesting. I especially loved his interactions with the player character. He's also a bit of an interesting contrast to Lysandre. Corbeau is still a loan shark, so he's more willing to get his hands dirty to some degree in order to do good, while Lysandre went off the rails by seeing humanity's ugliness like that. I love that he got more of a role in the Mega Dimension DLC. Hearing him say that he had to keep his tough guy reputation after he effectively helped to save Lumoise City twice was both hilarious and endearing.

Grisham would probably be my second favorite. I really liked his storyline about dealing with the impact of growing up within Team Flare. Putting the blame all on AZ for what Lysandre did was only technically accurate, but ignored that Lysandre still had his own free will and made the same poor choice to use the Ultimate Weapon. He didn't want to accept what Team Flare really was at the end of the day and still wanted to force the people of Lumoise to see them as the good people he believed the organization really was in spite of the whole attempted genocide. I liked his ending where he decides to keep moving forward and instead of forcing people to change their minds by winning the tournament. It's a pretty nice moment during the game's climax.

Team MZ was pretty likable. They aren't the most outstanding friend group, but they aren't the worst. I feel like they're a better take of the friendly rival group from XY and I do mean that as a compliment despite how I think they're some of the least popular rivals out there. They have solid designs, have fleshed out personalities and are pretty expressive. They feel like a group of friends and that's exactly what they're supposed to be. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about Urbain compared to other main rivals. The rivalry does feel like it barely existed prior to the tail end of the game. His whole search for a family member was so annoyingly vague and the ending with Jett felt kind of strange when she barely existed in this game. Still, I would say as a whole the group was likable and functional for their roles in the story.

I think that the only new character that I disliked was Canari. I just found her stuck up personality so offputting. All of the praise she was getting in-universe also felt a bit much to me. Granted, I'm not well versed into popular streamers or stans for streamers, but all of the hype only to see her with such a huge ego and throwing a fit after she loses really annoyed me. Jacinthe slowly wore me down once she said that she wanted to name Lumoise after herself, Characters having huge egos like that can be a turnoff for me, but I did find her constant attempts to force the player character into her tournament despite the more serious situation at hand hilarious. She also has a cool design and Mega Clefable, so that put her ahead of Canari in my book. I'm indifferent towards the popular pairing between Jacinthe and Lebanne, but I do really like Lebanne's design. It reminds me of the humanoid dragon maid monsters from Yu-Gi-Oh!

In terms of the returning characters, I agree that Emma could have used more screentime. I liked that she was in a happier place than she was in X/Y and she was comfortable in her position as a Detective, but it would have been cool to have her be more involved with the storyline or get more focus. Part of the issue was that the two most important people to her storyline only get cameos or callbacks. Not that they couldn't do more with Emma without Looker or Xerosic, but having at least one of them come back could have helped. I am still baffled that they didn't have Clemont or especially Professor Syacmore in the game. There is a sign that says that the Lumoise Gym was closed during the city's redevelopment, but it still feels weird to not have Clemont mentioned more directly because he lives in Lumoise. They do explain why Mable is the acting Pokemon Professor and I think that does make sense. It's just strange to not have Professor Sycamore here at all when he lives in Lumoise and he's probably one of the more popular Professors in the series. I don't mind not featuring Calem/Serena or their rivals. While it would have been nice to get a better picture of how all of Kalos had changed during the five years between games, I don't think either Calem/Serena or the X/Y rivals were that popular, so not including them didn't feel like a huge surprise.

Korrina was pretty cool to see in the DLC, especially when not being featured in the main storyline was really strange given the importance of Mega Evolution. Her new outfit is weird, but it was cool to see her being a more seasoned veteran and taking her role as Mega Evolution Successor seriously. I could picture this same Korrina in the anime after taking more time to train her team and get a new Mega Evolution for Lucario. Ansha was a nice addition to Team MZ and does give us a bit of insight into Diantha despite not being featured in the game herself.

As far as the returning characters went, both Lysandre and AZ really took me by surprise. The moment we saw L, I knew it was Lysandre. I was also so happy that the twist wasn't spoiled for me since that has happened in previous games. One of the most common theories back in the day was that Lysandre either died or was made immortal like AZ, so the latter being the case made sense. Although, I thought initially that Zygarde revived him for some reason. I think something about his dialogue when you first meet him gave me that impression. They went with a really interesting direction with Lysandre. He had no memories of his past life, but everyone recognized him and knew him. He was helping Zygarde and slowly was regaining his memories, at least by the time you get to Lysandre Labs. By having effectively a new life and watching Zygarde, I think he was better able to recognize that he didn't want to be the person he used to be than if he still had his memories from the start. Lysandre always felt like one of the weaker evil team leaders. He didn't become more interesting until the climax of X/Y and by that point, I'd say it was too late. Here, making him more mysterious helped him to be more engaging. I especially loved his ending. He recongized that he was out of balance before and now he'll spend his long life trying to find that balance. It's a pretty solid redemption, especially when his ending is really the start towards his path of redemption.

As for AZ:

Spoiler

Ending the main storyline with his gravestone was a pretty hard emotional scene. While I wasn't spoiled on it, I had heard some rumblings about the story being a tradgey, so that did make me wonder if they were going in that direction. It still caught me by surprise fortunately, but there were hints in retrospect. AZ's coughing definitely reminded me of how coughs in anime tend to mean characters are sick or dying. He did refer to Hotel Z as his final resting place, but I just wrote that off, thinking he just meant to stay at the hotel for the rest of his immortal life. Honestly, the fact that I actually cared about AZ is proof of the game's solid characterization for its cast. While I remember finding his reunion with Floette emotional, I still largely felt indifferent towards AZ in X/Y. Here, he felt like the kind grandfather figure of Team MZ. While he wasn't able to be more active in the storyline due to his health, he still had a solid presence and your homebase was his own Hotel Z, so it did feel like there was a connection between Team MZ and AZ.

It was surprising in a way that they were willing to kill him off simply because I don't think they've done that with too many other established characters. I do think it makes sense for his ending. He had lived a long life full of regret and sorrow. Having him die after knowing that the last of his mistakes were dealt with allowed him to be at peace. Plus, if they wanted to give the player character Eternal Flower Floette, which they obviously did once they revealed its Mega Evolution, if not sooner, I think AZ leaving it to Urbain and then eventually giving it to the player character was the only belivable in-universe explanation for it. Floette does spend some time with Team MZ, but it was just kind of there, not really buiilding an especially strong bond with any of them. After being separated for three thousand years and being together for only five years, I don't think AZ would just led the player character Floette unless he was dead. I don't know how they'll explain getting Eternal Flower Floette whenever it's made available in future games, but I don't think letting the player character borrow it for awhile would have worked here with AZ being a prominet supporting character. The fact that AZ and Floette were only reunited for five years adds some tragedy to his passing, especially when Floette is seemingly immortal and now forever separated from its original trainer.

As tragic as both AZ's funeral and the letters he left behind were, the scene in the DLC is what really made me cry. It made me feel more sad for Urbain since coming back from saving Lumoise only to find that AZ was already gone must have been really rough. Even though Floette was with him, it does feel like that was likely the ghost of AZ since one of the side missions already showed the spirit of one of the NCP's husband. It was a short scene and gave Urbain some closure, but it kind of made me appreciate AZ's character more. It was touching to see him being at peace and was a nice moment before the climax of the DLC.

There are a lot of great characters in Legends Z-A and I think the cast is one of the game's many strong points.