Team Star Is Finally Bringing Style Back To Pokemon's Villains

thegamer.com:

Pokemon's villains have always been difficult to pin down. Team Rocket is an iconic part of the series, so much so that I've argued they should have a game of their own, but they haven't been involved in a mainline game (Let's Go aside) for over a decade. The idea of Team Rocket has remained, with each new generation producing a glorified clone of what came before. There's always an evil but not too evil organisation, usually as efficient as they are bumbling, supported by grunts, fronted by a couple of named characters, and all led by a single leader - in Rocket's case, they're fronted by Jessie and James and led by Giovanni. What games have never quite gotten right is the sense of panache that those three characters brought. Scarlet & Violet is here to right that wrong.

In some cases, it's not for a lack of trying. Team Magma and Team Aqua have a penchant for the melodramatic, but they're too serious and dour in their ambitions and a little overdone. It's a decent attempt, but things have been derailed in recent years. Team Skull, the villains of the Alola region, are just a bunch of silly goofballs. They're like kids outside the corner shop playing music too loud and kicking a football off the wall. They're a bit of a nuisance, but not bad people. Team Yell, their Galarian successors, are even less villainous, to the point where they're not villains at all. They're a strange mix of football supporters and heavy metal fans who travel around the region telling rivals that they stink. Less Ultras than they are ultra annoying.

Related: Revisiting Kanto: The Complete Journey

Team Flare are the outliers, an attempt to turn the tide, but they felt too dull (and weren’t helped by how forgettable X&Y was) to make much of an