Worst villainous teams

[RC821]

What is the worst villainous teams ever

 

[prog rocker]

A tie between Team Aqua and Magma. I always felt their motivations to be pretty stupid and borderline nonsensical.

Team Flare is a close second (third?) place, due to being completely vain in an unfunny way, having a horrible fashion sense and weak admins. The reason I don't consider them worse than Magma/Aqua is because I feel that they could do something with Lysandre in a future X/Y remake since I have always considered him a wasted villain.

 

[RK9]

Team Flare. The clothing, paying money to let their members join. Their only redeeming factor is Lysandre, who is a pretty interesting guy.

 

[PinkIceFox]

I'd say Team Aqua. I can't see the 'canon' bad team for the Hoenn games being anything but Team Aqua because it feels like Archie who's more of a doing type than a thinking type would be the only one to realistically underestimate the power of the legendary pokemon. The idea of Maxi being the one to help you stop his plans just fits so much better to me narrative wise. The same goes for the grunts. They all seem like pretty organized and logical folks over there in Team Magma so I can see someone being like 'sir this is a bad idea, looking at this data if Groudon were to be out of control we could lose more water than what the planet needs to survive'. And Maxi would be like "Dang you're right. We should look into this more." and after a while figure out that a legendary can't be so easily controlled and admit this was a terrible idea. And then they find out what Team Aqua's up to and move to help the player stop it.

Plus I find both of the admins to be obnoxious, awful characters. Tabitha dialog laughter looks grating as hell and I am so glad I picked Alpha Sapphire so I would never have to deal with it in the story, and he looks like the suck up to the boss type on top of being arrogant about whatever skills or intelligence he has. And Courtney comes across as some weird soulless doll thing and trying to read through her dialog always gives me the feeling I'm looking at some neckbeard's submissive emotionless girl fetish dialog. Skeeves me right the heck out. There's literally nothing I can say I like about her. I could probably find something about Tabitha if I thought on it for a while.

(Also I don't really think it's fair to put Team Skull in here with the other teams. The Aether Foundation was the true villain team of SM/USUM. Team Skull was just a bunch of young adults acting out against a world they feel chewed them up and spit them out. They never did anything beyond what a bunch of troubled youths in a world full of magical monsters would do when they feel like the world's always trying to push them down.)

 

[Rocket Zigzagoon]

Teams overall: A tie.
Team Skull while being goofy, as of USUM, doesn't quite be vile enough to be a villainous team, but Team Flare's weirder. Team Skull are more anti-heroic teams in USUM tho.

Aether Foundation was the true villain team in regular SM, but also changed into anti-heroic teams in USUM, due to rewritten storyline. So in USUM, neither Team Skull nor Aether Foundation are villainous, just anti-heroic teams in different ways. (Unless you count Team Rainbow Rocket.)

Leader-wise: Ghetsis of Team Plasma. Everyone in Team Plasma (except Shadow Triads) got screwed by his abusive management (force labor-style) that drive everyone away. Not to mention many players hate him too, both in story and battle perspectives.

 

[RK9]

Ghetsis? Hate?

I only see love for Ghetsis due to how much of a glorious team leader and villain he is.

 

[CynthiaLover]

Team Fail... I mean Flare, by far. They have the worst fashion sense (even I have better fashion sense than them, and I rarely go above causal), the weakest motive (make the world "beautiful" by purging everyone else from existence?), the lamest scientists and admins (which even one of their scientists admitted), and, by far, the dumbest grunts. Their theme song is just at tacky as their outfits. Plus you rarely saw an actual Fire-type on their teams despite the "Flare" part of their name, baring Houndour/Houndoom. To cap it all off, most of them were probably killed by AZ's weapon backfiring, giving them a rather ironic end. They make Team Rocket look smart and Team Aqua look fashionable by comparison, and those two teams were pretty bad on their own. At least Gen VI was kinder to Team Aqua/Magma than it was to Team Flare (plus it gave us a honey in the form of a newly designed Courtney). While the anime was far more generous to them than the games, if we're going by the games, then Team Flare is pretty much the bottom of the barrel in terms of being an actual evil team.

 

[MizuTaipu]

Team Flare. I agree with the above reasons why they're the worst. They had a lot of potential. It's a shame that GameFreak underdeveloped them compared to Galactic, Plasma, and Skull.

Team Rocket is a close second. I never felt any stakes from their plans while playing R/B/Y and FR/LG. They just showed up randomly in Mt. Moon without any sort of buildup or introduction. I'd say they're even more nebulous in conception than Flare, but I really love Musashi, Kojirou, and Nyasu from the anime so they're not last on my list.

 

[ZDaemon09]

Team Flare: Sporadic and literally all over the place in X and Y. Even Lysandre's big genocide plan was kind of put there and the Legendary was also shoehorned in.

Following behind them: R/S's Team Aqua and Magma.... idiots that nearly destroyed the world for their dumb actions and it took until Emerald and later the remakes for them to actually be different from each other.

 

[colours]

Team Flare, if only because my biggest disappointment that they have an incredibly goofy getup and attitude for people who supposedly align themselves with the goal of a mass genocide.

 

[Esserise]

I mean, I think they're all kinda rubbish aside from RBY/FRLG Team Rocket (because they're believable) and Team Plasma (mainly because I think it's neat to see the series deconstruct itself, though some of the jokes are funny and I like Ghetsis, N, Colress, and Zinzolin as individual characters). I guess Team Skull are alright too since the game mostly just uses them as a funny distraction. But all of the others are nothing but varying flavors of shallow cartoon supervillains. All I can do at this point is embrace the ridiculousness of them, and in that case, I can't honestly say that any of them are any better or worse than the others. Team Galactic are the least to my personal taste, but it'd be kind of hypocritical for me to act as though Team Magma or Team Flare are somehow above them.

They should have ditched the "Team" format after Gen 2 at the latest and started trying to come up with more original plots.

 

[Dorothy]

People always give Team Aqua and Magma shit, but I feel like the real problem is that their ideals were poorly articulated in their own games. I also think they were a little ahead of their time thematically; a villainous organization centered around climate could today be used as interesting, if primitive, commentary on climate change.

Surprised Aether isn't on the list, since they are technically a villainous team. Especially in USUM they're laughably pointless as antagonists.

 

[Gengarzilla]

Team Rocket are my pick and I don't care how unpopular this might be. I agree with MizuTaipu, the stakes that drew me towards stopping the likes of Magma, Aqua, Galactic, and Flare were completely absent and I just couldn't get myself at all invested in their activities (taking over Kanto's largest company isn't quite on the same scope as ending all life as we know it, let's get that down). Giovanni himself is just dull as heck too, I feel he gets lots of unneccessary love for being the very first antagonist because he only comes across as this "all bark and no bite" bloke for me. Cyrus and Ghetsis are two genuinely intimidating individuals whereas Giovanni... definitely doesn't have that same vibe.

And the less I say about Rainbow Rocket, the better...

 

[Camille]

Team Rocket, they are too overrated, and their goals never felt actually threatening in any game.

 

[Dorothy]

And the less I say about Rainbow Rocket, the better...

lol, Rainbow Rocket was just absurd, you had Ghetsis come out of the teleporter and give one of his great hammy speeches about how he's going to take over the world, then he takes Lillie hostage, and then you go on to face the actual "villain" of the story who you beat and then is like "yeah well I didn't want to win anyway" and just fucks off without any more struggle.

 

[Almonds]

I like Team Skull, but I voted them because they were more or less town delinquents who were hired by Lusamine and not much of a "villain".

 

[ocelotlrama jaguar]

Not the worst, but I've always found Team Flare to be just forgettable. Team Rocket appears so many times and there is something iconic about them, Teams Aqua and Magma were the first to deviate from the Team Rocket villians and it was interesting to see two rival factions fight for what they thought was best for the world, Team Galactic was great because of what their goals were, Team Plasma was great because of the whole backstory with N and their leader was a pure monster, and Team Skull is just goofy yet charming. Team Flare has none of that going for it and while I find Lysandre interesting, he was not enough to save Team Flare from being boring. If there was no team and it was just Lysandre, I think X and Y would have been more awesome. Nah. We got Team Flare. I cannot even tell you who the admins were without Googling it. They're that forgettable.

 

[prog rocker]

I cannot even tell you who the admins were without Googling it. They're that forgettable.

Doesn't help that the grunts have better Pokémon than them.

 

[CynthiaLover]

I cannot even tell you who the admins were without Googling it. They're that forgettable.

That's probably because the actual admins are nameless grunts themselves. The scientists are who you're referring to, as they're the only named goons outside of the big bad boss himself. But they are very forgettable regardless, and even one of their own said they're lame in-game. So, yeah, just FYI, the scientists are the main bosses, the admins are just as nameless as the grunts. But, either way, you pretty much summed up Team Fail... I mean Flare in a nutshell.

 

[Lightning Flame Blast]

Team Flare, certainly. It always bugged me how odd they behave.

Their outfits are overcomplicated and even sillier than Team Skull’s, every single grunt is a goofy jokester more worried about looking cool and fashionable than their jobs, which is really weird when their goal is global genocide. In fact, none of them ever seem to acknowledge that as far as I remember.

The scientists-Xerosic aside- are, as someone up there pointed out, ridiculously forgettable and simple to beat. After replaying the game three of four times, I couldn’t tell you which is which.

Also, it’s never really explained how they would pull off the “kill everyone but Team Flare” part. Sure, maybe they’d all be gathered inside a bunker, but then I’m pretty sure there would be still plenty of people underground protected from the ultimate weapon and several pokemon as durable as an underground base or resistant to energy that would survive. Would Team Flare just... go on a witch hunt after them?

Lysandre was a pretty interesting character, but he can’t hold it all on his shoulders.