I believe its 27 steps

I do love how his conditions improved so much that he went to Alola in Sun and moon, participating in the battle tree (or whatever it was called)

I just realised how weird it is that Norman helps Wally get a Pokémon when moving to another town but we are canonically moving from Johto to Hoenn in RSE and we don't get shit except as an accident

I see him as more of a Protégé than a rival and when he finally catches up to you towards the end.

The crazy thing about Wally is, he's almost universally seen as a good rival in the community, but if he was introduced in a modern gen everyone would agree he was bad

Imagine if each Victory Road rematch his team’s level increased by one

Wally's was a rival I actually cared about and wanted to see improve

This is a really thorough video! Thank you for the detailed analysis; I played through the original Gen 3 games as a kid and ORAS in my senior year of high school. I wasn’t aware of Wally’s Match Call dialogue in Emerald; I only discovered the instance where he’s out of service near the end of the game. I think it’s cool that you can still interact with him during the main story and that he doesn’t just disappear for 90% of the game like he does in the original RS! 21:51 This is inaccurate, though. Wally only challenges you at the beginning of Victory Road in Emerald. In RS, he challenges you at the very end, just like in ORAS. Emerald only changed it because it was kind of obligated to switch things up in as many ways as it could to throw off people who already played RS.

in RSE t's possible for the Ralts wally encounters to be a shiny. it's also possible, with the right stats, damage rolls and crits for Norman's zigzagoon to KO the Ralts. because of this it's technically possible for him to fail a shiny ralts on his first encounter. One day I'm going to figure out how to RNG manipulate the game into making this happen because the little weiner deserves it for jumping me at the end of victory road when I was a child giving me trust issues.

Well, especially in a video game, it's more than fine if a major character doesn't really add to the main plot. Even in television shows, it's not that uncommon for an episode to have a "B-Plot" that little to no bearing on the main plot. The way I see it, even Red and Blue had this with your rival, he's not really involved with the subplot dealing with Team Rocket, the rivalry and the Rocket subplot kinda twist together at Sliph Co but then separate again immediately after. With RSE/ORAS, Wally's rivalry with you is very much a "B-Plot" that also works pretty well since I'm under the impression that much like the rest of Hoenn and the larger world, Wally is fully clued into what the evil teams were up to. And in the real world, you can have serious, life altering world events happen at the same time as smaller mundane things. I think having unrelated plotlines featuring major characters is a positive thing since it makes them seem more life-like and more understandable. Obviously there's a limit and you have to factor in focus and not have whole B-Plots that even change the game itself, but I think having a major character be a non-factor in what is considered the main conflict is fine.

Thank you for still posting, i care so much about your success and I dont want you to give up on KZfaq

Dude as cliche as it is to say you really deserve more subs. This video is very well put together and your argument is well thought out and evenhanded to the strengths and weaknesses of both Emerald and ORAS. Very well done!

Wally is a very special character to me, because I felt a connection like no other when I first faced him at Victory Road (long essay incoming, I'll leave a TL;DR, I didn't expect to write for this long, oops) My most treasured Pokemon memory is when I was around 10 years old finishing Omega Ruby, my second Pokemon game ever after X. I was a very shy kid, so when I first saw Wally I instantly related to him, and liked seeing him when he popped up. However, like almost everyone playing Hoenn, I forgot about him for most of the game, he didn't show up enough and I had my own story to make, especially because I took a lot of detours and took my sweet time progressing But then, I got to the end of Victory Road, thinking about finally getting to fight the League... but then he showed up... The passionate way of speaking, him challenging me to a full fight just before the League, the sheer fact of him being even further than I was, his upright stance instead of the nervous one he had at Mauville, the serious look he gave his first Pokemon before throwing his Pokeball, the scenery, the flying roses, and of course, the music, such a display of confidence, epicness, but most of all, growth. The cherry on top was Gallade, the tiny weak Ralts I didn't think much about is now a bladed psychic fighter, with the power of Mega Evolution, a power that I believed only I had (I didn't think much of Maxie's Mega Camerupt), showing his Mega Evolution animation, covering himself with his bright white cape before proudly showing himself, with Gallade's cry enhanced with the Mega effect (Gallade's cry is one of my favorites ever)... I was shocked, and Wally's words of hope after losing only reinforced that idea that Wally is now way more than a tiny kid I helped, he is my equal, but what really got me was that, looking inside, I felt he was my superior, as I was still this shy kid that could barely stand up for himself, while he is here travelling around the world, getting stronger, getting more courageus, and promising me that this won't stop him. He gave me a Dawn Stone as a gift of gratitude, and I instantly knew what I had to do. And so I continued, beat the game and all of that, maybe even the Delta Episode, I don't know what came first, but at one point I felt compelled to do one thing: I went to the same route Wally got his partner, and I caught my own Ralts, I trained it, I evolved it with the very stone Wally gave me, fulfilling my unspoken promise, and raised that new Gallade into Lvl. 100 Wally stayed in my mind as someone I wanted to be, representing what I was and what I could become, and Gallade, coming from the shy and weak Ralts that barely shows his eyes, turning into the noble warrior capable of protecting others, Gallade (in fact, something that I believe is a coincidence, but still means a lot to me, is that Gallade's ability was Steadfast, becoming faster after every flinch, as a way to show that every fall will only make him stronger, and then in Mega, he gets Inner Focus, as a way of finally stating that nothing will make him flinch ever again) Gallade has been my favorite Pokemon ever since, and Wally has been one of my favorite characters ever solely based on what his story made me feel back in the day, and I still feel the same way TL;DR: I liked Wally as I was a shy kid when I played ORAS, but when I fought him at the end, I found myself inferior to him, as he grew so much while I stayed the same. This compelled me to catch and train a Ralts to Lvl. 100, evolving it into Gallade with Wally's Dawn Stone, and Gallade has been my favorite Pokemn ever since As I said, sorry for the long essay, but stuff like this really comes from the heart for me, and I personally wouldn't have it any other way. This video was amazing, I pretty much agree with all of it, and now that I'm here, I'll leave my take on Wally, which is: Wally is a good to great character, but a subpar to bad rival, and that's because of what you said, he isn't our rival, WE are HIS rival, and his story is good but disconnected from what a rival must mean to the player

great video, you pointed out a lot of stuff i hadn't noticed even though i played those games more than enough lol i disagree with the sentiment that seeing wally more would make him work better in the story or a better rival tho. pokemon always shows characters whose journeys aren't the tradicional trainer journey. misty and brock in the anime, may/brandon, the kalos gang, that's always a thing. wally's journey isn't of a steady progression, that's ours (and probably why we win in the end). his is a story of meteoric ascension. a mid-level encounter with him would go against his theme. he's supposed to be ahead of us, hyperfocused on his goals. that's why we're involved with the world and he's not. i love him for that.

That Victory Road battle in ORAS is pretty cool, but I always get caught up in weird symbolism with it. The flowers there look like red spider lilies to me, flowers associated with death in Japan. Unless I'm missing a crucial facette about the flower language of that breed, this feels like it confuses whatever arc he's supposed to have. Did he conquer his illness and it's supposed to be a triumphant tune and battle? Did he pull through inspite of his illness but is still doomed? Heck if I know. The set piece is cool, but I can't think about it more than that without getting a headache. Other than that, I think he's still undercooked in ORAS. They fleshed out the presentation for his climax and beefed up the dialogue, but I think a big problem is that we interact with Pokemon characters mainly through battles. Blue ambushing you and always having quite rare pokemon to drive home your pokedex rivalry. Silver having multiple fights that could be considered difficulty spikes but also are unique because he doesn't heal his pokemon like many other major trainers. Hop actually abandoning his starter Wooloo for a bit in pursuit of finally getting powerful. All of these rely on battles for characterization. Wally's arc barely has to do with pokemon, so his team can't tell you much about his arc and even if it *could*, there are no battles to symbolize his gradual growth. You only spur him on twice (once by helping him catching a pokemon, once by lighting a fire in him by beating him) and then the next time you actually battle him, he's a badass. The contrast is harsh. It might seem reductive to just throw out all the additional dialogue and scenes, but the reality is that he is barely present for the main way you interact with character arcs in these games. Had Wally occupied at least some of the Brendan/May fights, that would have helped him tremendously in my opinion. May/Brendan aren't even on the badge journey. They occasionally talk about getting a badge, but mostly are out there to collect pokedex data - and even just leave for home midway through, but they feel more present than Wally because of their battles despite this unfocused and cut short journey of theirs.

I think Wally is a good character, but whether he's a good or bad rival depends on how you define that character role in the story. Like maybe Game freak needs to come up with "first partner" term for rivals cause he'd for sure fall under that. I think the take that HE considers YOU a rival, but the feeling isn't exactly mutual is a good one, and I think the distance between the two of you during the game really makes the relationship feel even more one-sided compared to Blue or Hau. Idk. Wally breaks the rule of "show don't tell" in the sense that we barely *see* his growth until the very end. Even though we're able to call him or hear about him on the radio, those were obscure features that the average player wasn't incentivized to explore in depth and was therefore likely to miss out on. But at the same time, Wally's disappearance and irrelevance to the Aqua/Magma plot is what makes him him, and especially in the originals this is done to highlight his independence - while you were out saving the world, he was studying the blade. I really think that the added cutscenes in ORAS with him in Petalburg and outside of Victory Road help bridge the gap between his original appearances and help the player remember him. While I would have liked an intermediate battle after the 5th gym I have a lot of respect for the decision to NOT include one since I feel like it also would have undermined the buildup to the final battle somewhat.

That title scares me, Wally is my favorite pokemon character of all time.

Wally is great enough as he is, I love him in a vacuum and personally feel like he's serviceable enough for what he does in ORAS. However... He's the blueprint Kieran was made from. I cannot overstate how much I adore the "special rival" role they both fill, they stand out _so_ much against all the Blues or Haus pokemon has. (Also, both of them half make me want to lose, or at least give them a hug after winning against my own will.) I still have to form my own proper _Thoughts™_ on Kieran from DLC part 2 and would die for a video on him too!

In the original Ruby & Sapphire, Wally is at the very end of Victory Road. Emerald put him at the beginning for some reason, though he does come from the interior.

I think Wally would benefit from having a battle with you after you get Norman's badge. That way he'd have a battle after Badge 2, Badge 5, and Badge 8. It'd be pretty evenly spaced and make him less prone to disappear from your mind.

IMO, Wally could have replaced may/brendon in some story scenes but honestly I choose to believe he wasn’t in the main story because it wasn’t his, it was ours. He showed up some but he had his own story we didn’t get to see.

Second favorite rival, loved the setting in his second Oras fight

I think some other games circumvent the problem of not seeing Wally’s development because we play as someone else by having multiple POVs. We’ve never seen POV changes in Pokémon games afaik, but that’d help in cases when GF creates parallel storylines that don’t get involved in the main quest Edit: oops typed this before I got to the end where dual protagonists are mentioned mb

I counted 30 steps. Also, Wally in ORAS is at the end of VR because it's the same in RS but not in Emerald. In Emerald he's at the entrance because he didn't had the necessary HMs to get across VR. Which is sad. The Adventures manga version of Wally is the best. Too bad Emerald took over as the Dex Holder *sigh*

I adore Wally and was really inspired by him as a kid back in the RSE days but yeah he's way too underutilised. More battles in ORAS postgame not locked behind the Battle Whatever (I always forget the name XD) would've been really appreciated, and seeing Wally attempt the E4 or something would've been fun. As for connecting him with the main plot... Honestly I think leaving him out of the main story was valid in ORAS (less so in the original RSE) but they REALLY should have included him more in the Delta Episode. Like imagine if Wally sided with/was helping Zianna when she's running around doing her sketchy stuff? It would've been really eyebrow raising and made the player go 'Wait, WHAT is going on? Why is Wally helping her???' especially if they took advantage of Wally being a character the player trusts/has friendly feelings towards and made Zianna even more sketch than she already was~ But yeah. Wally's less a rival and more a friend. Kinda wish he got to be a little more of both but still one of my fav 'rivals' in the series

I kicked wallys gardevoir with with blaze kick. I call it diable jambe and my blaziken is called sanji

Pokemon certainly did a lot better with Wally in ORAS though having multiple characters progress being constantly tracked might be a bit much. I don't think Pokemon wanted to keep as close track of your rivals as they did in Black/White

Wally could have been written better. His ancestor, Beni (from Legends Arceus), was written much better.

the reason wally is at the end and not at the begining of victory road is because on Ruby and Sapphire he is the last encounter, an ambush like the typical rival (Green/Blue or Silver) do now... I think it's fine to have him on his own journey, buttt it's kinda jarring he being blissfully unaware of the near end of the world treats that were groudon and/or kyogre him not being present on any of the magma/aqua encounters is what makes sense (to me) as to why he had time to catch up and surpass the player (collecting the badges)

Hope you had a good day

I always assumed Wally had TB

The rival in Black and White 2 was interesting in that he had an actual character arc related to the plot and themes of the game. I think the rival is a character that should be used to forward the plot, convey the themes of the game, or both. The "jerk rivals" have character arcs.

i'm a writer and we have a concept of "kill your darlings" - sometimes the parts of the story you're very fond of don't actually serve it, and they need to change or go. i suspect wally was some writer's darling, and they forgot to make him weave through the story in a way that made his presence feel significant enough to make that victory road battle worth it, and couldn't bring themself to get rid of him

I love Wally, and honestly didn't realize we saw so little of him throughout our journey because he is such a fleshed out character. This is how a friendly rival should be written- the way the future gens made the rivals- I just feel like they have no substance.

Am I the only one who dislikes his new battle music?

I mean wally is a bad rival he's way to weak and a pushover but he at least tries and is a better rival unlike some of the other rivals we've been getting like nemona or hop