In the upcoming Stella Glow, protagonist Alto has the daunting task of defeating Hilda, the Witch of Destruction. However, both Alto and Hilda aren’t fighting alone. Alto has the honorable Regnant Knights’ 9th Regiment watching his back, while Hilda’s wave of destruction is aided by the dastardly Harbingers.
This got me thinking about the best good guy/bad guy teams I’ve encountered in video games, so I asked various Atlus U.S.A. staffers about their favorite protagonist and antagonist teams in games. I’ll go first since John said he’d fire me if I don’t:
Will C., PR Associate
Favorite Protagonist Team: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Task Force 141
I enjoy deep RPGs with complex characters and difficult choices as much as the next person, but sometimes you just need to suit up with your bros and shoot some Russian ultra-nationalists. My choice is the most badass multinational Special Forces unit ever put together in a video game, Task Force 141 from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. You couldn’t ask for better squad mates than the likes of Captain John Price, Captain John “Soap” MacTavish, and Lieutenant Simon “Ghost” Riley to watch your six while battling on rooftops in Brazilian favelas, assaulting the safe house of a terrorist mastermind, and throwing a knife into the eye of a corrupt American general. There’s just something so epic about fighting alongside Task Force 141 through the insane Michael Bay-ish storyline and action of Modern Warfare 2, with the music of Hans Zimmer blaring in the background.
Favorite Antagonist Team: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, The Cobra Unit
This was a very difficult decision for me to make since there have been so many unforgettable antagonist teams that I have annihilated over the years. However, the one team that stands out to me would have to be The Boss and her Cobra Unit from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Each member of the unit had such distinct and entertaining personalities, and I remember how exciting it was to figure out their weaknesses to defeat them.
I do want to get something off my chest though. I admit, I never took out The End honorably. I always set my PS2’s internal clock one week in advance so that he would die of old age. I don’t deserve the title of Big Boss.
Chris H., Editor
Favorite Protagonist Team: Mass Effect 2, suicide mission team and Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, Nathan Drake and his crew
It’s probably a toss-up between Mass Effect 2’s suicide squad and the crew from Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. The former because you can’t go wrong with forcing a Dirty Dozen–style assemblage of scumbags to be “heroes,” the latter because for all its faults and flaws, Uncharted 3 is one of the few games in which the hero’s friends spend the length of the adventure lecturing him on how an Indiana Jones lifestyle is unsustainable and dangerously stupid. I guess what I’m trying to say is: I like my teams as ethically compromised as possible.
Favorite Antagonist Team: Final Fantasy Tactics, Delita Heiral and his conspirators
That same preference applies to villains, too. Believe it or not, mustache-twirling maniacs just don’t do it for me anymore. But the flawed, misguided, or broken tragic figures you find moving the chess pieces in Final Fantasy Tactics? Yes, please. There’s a reason Delita Heiral routinely makes the cut on Whodda Best? Final Fantasy character lists.
Shungo I., Localization Specialist
Favorite Protagonist Team: Persona 4, the Investigation Team
Guess this might be a really typical answer from someone who works at ATLUS, but I really did enjoy these characters in Persona 4. Each of them had some kind of story you could find out through their Social Links to make really deep and interesting characters. Plus, these characters just worked together so well. Their conversations and misadventures often made me laugh and made me really feel for these characters.
Favorite antagonist team: Metal Gear Rising, Winds of Destruction
I’ve always liked the Metal Gear antagonist teams, however quirky they get. I was debating between them and the Cobra Unit, but I’d have to say I remember the fights with the Winds of Destruction more. The fight designs for these guys were great, and I had so much fun fighting each of them. All of them had very memorable personalities as well as very spectacular demises. And to top it all off, they all had amazing theme music.
Allie D., QA Tester
Favorite Protagonist Team: Persona 4, Investigation Team
Oh man, there are a LOT of lovable protagonists… I’m not good at picking favorites. But okay, when it comes to a “team”, it’s hard not to think of the Investigation Team from Persona 4. Surprise! I work at ATLUS! But it’s my genuine feeling too, you know? With the amount of time we’ve spent with them, both during the original P4/P4G and their subsequent appearances in PQ, P4D, etc., they almost feel like real friends. I think that’s what I like most in my games — a sense of humanity in the characters. That’s what makes ’em a memorable team to me.
Favorite Antagonist Team: Pokémon Blue/Red, Team Rocket
Aww yeah… TEAM ROCKET! There may not be such “meaningful bonding” here, but these Pokemon bad guys reserved a spot in my heart early on. Poor grunts apparently spent their lives devoted to a gym leader’s mafia, only to get steamrolled by a child… Somehow, I couldn’t help but love ’em. You know, back in the original Red/Blue, there was one Rocket Grunt who asked you to join the team after they were defeated. I always really wished that I could.
Lauren W., QA Tester
Favorite Protagonist Team: Valkyria Chronicles III, The Nameless
Although this game never made it stateside, both my favorite groups of protagonist and antagonist groups hail from the same game, Valkyria Chronicles III. The Nameless are a ragtag group of “criminals” that have committed crimes, mostly minor in nature. Examples of such crimes are weapon embezzlement, trespassing, avoiding conscription, and even falling in love with an enemy solider and aiding his escape. Regardless of their background, they band together to complete the missions that are too dirty or too dangerous for the main army to perform and become the unsung heroes of The Second Europan War.
Favorite Antagonist Team: Valkyria Chronicles III, The Calamity Raven
In the Valkyria Chronicles series, the Darcsen race is harshly discriminated against throughout the Europa content. The Calamity Raven is a squad that the Nameless fights throughout Valkyria Chronicles III and it consists entirely of Darcsen soldiers. Even though they fight for the Empire, the opposing country, they fight to create an independent nation for the Darcsen people where they can be free from racial discrimination. I find it hard to fight against people when their end goal is not total destruction, and especially hard when they truly believe in their cause.
Ayami H., Graphic Designer
Favorite Protagonist Team: Destiny, Guardian and her ghost
My favorite protagonist team would be my Destiny guardian and her ghost. Even with his recent voice change, taking FOREVER to open up doors, and never really helping during battles, he makes up for it by being there when she needs him. Reviving her, finding secret pathways, hacking computers, and explaining things over and over again when she forgets what to do. He stays with her even when her teammates get booted and she can rely on him to pop up with a push of a button. Without the ghost, my guardian would never be able to get through a single stage, and without the guardian, the ghost would never be able to accomplish its goal of taking over the world… I mean, saving the world from darkness.
Favorite Antagonist Team: Pokémon Blue/Red, Team Rocket
When asked about the best antagonist team, I immediately think of Team Rocket from the original Pokémon Red/Blue. No matter how many times each henchman gets defeated by the main character, they don’t give up and are always determined to win for their boss Giovanni. Nothing says teamwork more than matching outfits!
John H., PR Manager
Favorite Protagonist Team: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, The Ebon Hawk Crew
I narrowed this decision down to two groups of people on a space ship, but man, making that final decision was tough. Barely eking out the victory (and largely because of one of the best evil-but-good characters in the history of video games) is none other than the crew of the Ebon Hawk – the “protagonists” from Knights of the Old Republic. I mean, being able to put the Mandalorian mercenary Canderous Ordo and assassin droid HK-47 in the same group as you run around light-sabering and force-lightning-ing things to death while they chuckle about it was pretty much the best. It should probably go without saying that my first play through went the path of the Dark Side. COMMENTARY – if the crew of the Normandy were more liberal about their use of blaster fire as a means of persuasion, they might be in this spot instead.
Favorite Antagonist Team: The Secret of Monkey Island, Lechuck and his ghost pirate crew
Well, you can clearly see by my choice of protagonists that I like my good guys to be bad, which naturally means that I like my bad guys funny. So for my favorite group of antagonists, I’m going to give it to the ghost pirate LeChuck, his ghost pirate crew, and his seemingly un-ending stream of henchmen that pop up to stop pirate-wanna-be incompétent, Guybrush Threepwood. I mean, you can’t really go wrong with the ghost/zombie pirate formula, especially when it’s designed by the likes of Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer back in the heyday of LucasArts’ adventure gaming dominance.
We’ll have more ATLUS staff favorite roundups in the future, but let us know what your favorite video game protagonist and antagonist teams are in the comments!
Well, I don’t really play ‘favorites’ with titles, in any way shape or form, so I can’t say that I have favorite Protagonist or Antagonist teams. However, a team that doesn’t mesh well with their setting, game system, and the story being told can definitely make a game much less enjoyable than it could be, especially a bad Protagonist team as you’re stuck with them no matter what. I would definitely have to say though that the games with the teams I tend to enjoy playing the most are usually ones where on the Protagonist side you have a core team that is a part of the main story, with secondary allies that occasionally nibble at it but let you just go and have fun with other things when you feel like it, and on the Antagonist side ones where you have Primary antagonists, who you’re always fighting against, and Secondary antagonists, who once you’ve knocked some sense into them might even become allies (and sometimes playable characters) . One of the best examples of this is the .hack series, although G.U. isn’t quite as strong in this on the Antagonist side. More the later entries in the original series than the first entry, but it still gets included because of how it can set things up for the later titles. To me it helps the games to have a more realistic feel and improves the character development in the story. Of course, that’s also the main reason why I don’t have any true favorites (Until you start talking re-makes and ports of titles, there I’ll definitely pick a favorite version of the title, and I’m very mixed between the GBA and PC ports of Final Fantasy V (the PC one is available through Steam). I definitely like the improved graphics and don’t mind the adjusted game balance of the PC port, but I distinctly preferred the player character sprites from the GBA port and I don’t like how the character portraits in the PC port aren’t fully colored, but this is one of the rare times when I don’t have a favorite version.), although I will pick the Persona 4 Investigation Team over the Persona 3 S.E.E.S. team (but they have a couple of games together, which is why I’ll pick a favorite team) as they just work together better as a team.
I do have to agree with decusq7 that most Antagonist teams really aren’t that great. The biggest part of the problem is that most of the time the individual members are co-operating with each other until they get a chance to betray the others in an effort to become the ‘Top Dog’ and don’t have any true team cohesion. There have certainly be exceptions, with the various Pokemon Antagonist Teams being rather memorable in that role, but many of the exceptions are more like the Magic Emperor and the Vile Tribe from Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete (Or Lunar: Silver Star Harmony, if you can stomach the voice acting, they improved everything else and added a prologue that does wonders for the story, and then replaced all of the voice acting, which is some of the best in anything with English dubs you’ll ever find with the absolute worst voice acting I’ve ever had the misfortune of being subjected to. One of the worst port jobs in the history of video games in my opinion, but I tend to only play a port if it has something new to add to the game or I just don’t have the older version.), a group of people with fairly good intentions, and goals, but are using a definitely not good means of achieving them.
My favorite Protagonist Team would have to be Tales of Legendia for the PS2. Senel and his team were a mixed bag of different past lives, odd behavior and amazing back and forth conversations. Each of them started off alone and only willing to co-operate with one another out of necessity, honor or something to gain. By the middle of the game however we see that they’ve developed into an amazing group of friends who will not hesitate to help one another no matter what happens between them. Not to mention one of the funniest moments in RPG gaming happened when Norma tries to cheer up the group with Grune with a comedy show only to accidentally reveal Grune forgot her unmentionables for that particular adventure. Hilarious!
My favorite antagonist team is a hard one but i have to say it’s a tie and let me explain. Most villains these days end up betraying their teams and never seem to be very reliable. So i decided the best antagonistic teams are those who are more like a family. Villain Families are rare to come by and ones that love each other are even rarer. The reason is because villains tend to be loners or work with others out of gaining something and never for anything real. However villain families maybe out for Monetary gain most of the time but their still using the money for the family. So a villain family is like an honorable thieves guild. They always stay true to one another if not argue at times but their still there for each other no matter what happens. So here are my choices.
The Marjoly Family of Marl Kingdom Series
&
The Bonne Family of the Mega Man Legends series
The Marjoly Family is composed of The Witch Marjoly and her family henchwomen Crowdia, Myao, Gao and the rag tag cat servants. Whether or not they are related by blood has never been fully explained but the fact that they refer to themselves as a family shows that even though they are evil they still care about each other. They insult each other openly, criticize the actions of another but they stick by each other through thick and thin no matter what Do-Gooder they are up against. Or in some cases what Marjoly has accidentally unleashed upon them. Even when it comes to Marjoly’s love life these ladies and their cat servants will go to the ends of the earth for her to be happy even if it means they’ll be happy as a bonus.
The Bonne Family is composed of the Family head and big brother Teisel Bonne, little sister and prime engineer Tron Bonne and mechanized baby brother Bon Bonne. Not to mention the iconic Servbots that serve the family and make sure to put the needs of the family before their own. Through countless games we’ve seen that Tron is dedicated to the well being of her family and it’s prosperity. She’ll go to any lengths to make sure her brothers are safe no matter how many servebots get injured. Teisel is the leader and sometimes makes bad decisions with the family money but his heart is in the right place. They might have helped put away a few villains and helped Mega Man a few times in his adventures but the real family is all about looting farms, stealing money from banks and snatching ancient treasure from other treasure hunters. This is an Antagonistic family that I can play as and root for at the same time.
Wow, you really went with a hard to pin-down pair of Antagonist teams. Although I recognized the name Marjoly I actually had to look up Marl Kingdom (I do have Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, though I haven’t played it much) as sadly I’m not that familiar with Nippon Ichi Software strategy titles that are before La Pucelle Tactics (although I have most releases of them starting with La Pucelle Tactics and newer, the only two I don’t have are Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness (I didn’t see the point when Disgaea DS was available before I could afford it and had all of its content) and Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure on the DS (yes, I went out of my way to get the original PS-X version after I learned about the game, and had it a couple of years before the announcement of the port)). I guess now I need to look into the other.
The Bonnes are definitely a very lovable group of rogues. I can’t really bring myself to call them true villains, because when the shit hits the fan and the world is on the line they’ll have your back to help save it. Mostly so that they can keep robbing and looting it later, but even from the beginning they detested actually hurting anyone who wasn’t taking shots at them. Personally, I think that with the right sponsor they could be converted to being not-bad guys (during the brief bit that Capcom was openly working on making Mega Man Legends III it did seem like at least Tron was going to be dragged into being a not-bad guy, which would definitely drag Tiesel over, and Bon just tends to follow wherever his older siblings go which would drag him over). I doubt they could ever be good guys (well, unless Roll and Mega aren’t an item, and Mega starts dating Tron (if you need this explained play Mega Man Legends II, I have a feeling it’s going to appear on the Playstation Network as a PSOne Classic in the next couple of months, simply because the other two in that sub-setting have done so (and is probably being the build-up to announcing that they didn’t drop Mega Man Legends III after all, they just decided that they didn’t like trying to do it as a ‘community developed’ game, and considering the results I’ve seen of such games I can’t blame them at all)), but they just don’t make ‘good’ villains. I guess that could make them a ‘favorite’ group of antagonists, but honestly I just don’t pick favorites like that.
Final Fantasy 8 is also a game with team people in it, dawg.
Final Fantasy VIII had some pretty awesome team people, but it also had Selphie and she was the literal worst.
Except for her having the single most overpowered Limit Break in Final Fantasy history. Yeah, it can take a lot of effort to get her better spells on those slots, but if you get the right one you can one round any boss in the game with her as it’s a guaranteed win. Of course, she also has one that is a guaranteed Game Over, no matter what you are fighting.