How exactly is Mephiles unfitting for the Sonic series?

[ShadowSJG]

58 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

Eh, to be fair, he did have some measure of minor quirkiness when you really think about it. And his existence as the mind of Solaris and the brighter half of Iblis also kinda gives him some backstory and motivation.

It's not that much, sure, but it's something.

I think the primary issue with the Deadly Six was that they are given very little establishment.

Sure, we know they are creatures known as Zeti, they can live for centuries or perhaps longer, they can use magnetic waves to manipulate electronics, and that the Cacophonic Conch allows it's wielder to inhibit these powers to control them to some extent, but that's about it. They kinda come out of nowhere, are given no exposition as to what being a member of the Deadly Six or even just a Zeti entails, and their connection to the Lost Hex is completely overlooked.

Then there's the grander problem that they just don't really fit in pleasingly. They look nothing like any character we've seen before and their resemblance to Bowser's species makes them seem derivative in a somewhat humbling way. On top of that, their showing as a villainous force unto themself hasn't gone over very well at all. tend to be either really easy or somewhat puzzling when actually fought, they act as the main bosses throughout the game instead of Eggman or his Super Badniks, hijack Eggman's resources thanks to Sonic's hasty intervention a quarter of the way into the game,  and their two plans after that are essentially to Roboticize/Cyberize Sonic and use the Extractor to suck the life out of Sonic's world just to get back at Eggman and make themselves stronger in the process.

And finally, as individual characters, they are mostly one-note archetypes with relatively little if any extra characterization beyond that. Add in that half of them could be seen as annoying or even offensive due to their respective quirk and there is definite room for dislike.

 

Personally, I definitely see what they were going for now more than ever, like a third of them, and have since grown to appreciate Zavok in particular.

 

I kinda agree, I sorta like Zavok and do appreciate Zazz somewhat.

[DabigRG]

1 hour ago, Dr. Mechano said:

Shadow Queen, I'll give you, but in her defense she still had minions with personality, which is more than I can say for Mephiles. Beldam, Marilyn, and (prior to her reformation) Vivian served the Shadow Queen directly rather than Grodus. Doopliss was one of her direct henchmen too, and he was hilarious. So I still think that the Shadow Queen is aided by having extensions of her will still have personality. In that sense she's kind of like Smithy; Not terribly engaging herself, but supported by likable underlings.

 

It's worth noting the Shadow Queen also had a backstory revolving around her rule and the effects she had on the world to give her presence.

[Dr. Mechano]

13 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

Where exactly does Grodus, the Shroobs, and Antasma fall on that rating scale, if you don't mind me asking?

Also, I'm a little conflicted about whether we should be using Mario RPG characters as comparisons, particularly to someone like Mephiles, but I suppose there's a point you're making there.

Grodus's humor comes from his interactions with his underlings. He tries to present himself and the X-Nauts as a super-serious evil force... but is constantly frustrated with the incompetent Lord Crump and the overly casual nature of his own grunts. Grodus is a classic "comically serious" character; He's not funny because he's zany and wacky, he's funny because he tries so hard to be serious and focused despite being surrounded by idiots.

The Shroobs are weird, in that most of them don't really have dialogue - and even the few who do don't say much of substance. From Elder Princess Shroob down to her minions, all of them are pretty much just "generic evil aliens" without much else. They're basically Mario's Black Arms, and I feel like they're among the weaker Mario villains because of this. That's why I wasn't exactly singing their praises earlier. Even Mario drops the ball occasionally.

Antasma is fine. We see him struggle and deal with adversity and inconvenience throughout the game, and this prevents him from feeling like a boring overpowered villain. I won't spoil it just in case someone doesn't know what hapens, but I think it's fair to say that a certain other villain stole the show in that game anyway.

Also, the Mario platformers usually don't use other villains besides Bowser. To date, we've had Donkey Kong, Tatanga, and Wario. I guess we can count Mario himself as a platformer villain in Donkey Kong Jr. as well. The RPGs are kind of a necessary well to draw from, and are the closest parallels to "modern Sonic games" in terms of tone and story scope.

[DabigRG]

8 minutes ago, ShadowSJG said:

I kinda agree, I sorta like Zavok and do appreciate Zazz somewhat.

Zazz and Zor are the two I was personally referring to, in part because they just sell the overall idea behind the Deadly Six's inclusion the best. Plus, they're both just fun characters in general.

Zomom and Master Zik definitely have their moments as well, but they're not exactly the most standout of the Six.

Zavok started out pretty low on my list for whatever reason, but his somewhat unorthodox design, stage music/themes, unique stature compared to the other recurring villains, and the fact that he's technically one with the [second?] most backstory has made him grow on me.

Zeena, on the other hand, is one of my least favorite Sonic characters.

[Dr. Mechano]

I want to emphasize that I don't hate the Deadly Six conceptually.

I just feel like they were poorly executed and were usually way less funny than the writers were going for.

[ShadowSJG]

11 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

Zazz and Zor are the two I was personally referring to, in part because they just sell the overall idea behind the Deadly Six's inclusion the best. Plus, they're both just fun characters in general.

Zomom and Master Zik definitely have their moments as well, but they're not exactly the most standout of the Six.

Zavok started out pretty low on my list for whatever reason, but his somewhat unorthodox design, stage music/themes, unique stature compared to the other recurring villains, and the fact that he's technically one with the [second?] most backstory has made him grow on me.

Zeena, on the other hand, is one of my least favorite Sonic characters.

I hate Zomom the most as he's just the most glaring stereotype

[DabigRG]

2 minutes ago, ShadowSJG said:

I hate Zomom the most as he's just the most glaring stereotype

Yeah, I can see that. 85% of his dialogue revolves around eating and food, after all.

[Salamander]

55 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

Actually, I'm pretty sure he only resembles Shadow because he used him(or rather, his ...shadow) as a basis to construct a physical form out of. I get the feeling his true form, even he even really has one, is either just the black smoke-ooze he was initially or those giant monsters he creates in his final battle.

Sure, that's the in-universe rationalisation, but he didn't have to be designed that way.  His crystalline form could have been something personal and non-Shadowy; instead, the face of what's arguably the main villain of Sonic '06 is... monochrome Shadow, crystal Shadow, or fog.

33 minutes ago, Dr. Mechano said:

The Shroobs are weird, in that most of them don't really have dialogue - and even the few who do don't say much of substance. From Elder Princess Shroob down to her minions, all of them are pretty much just "generic evil aliens" without much else. They're basically Mario's Black Arms, and I feel like they're among the weaker Mario villains because of this. That's why I wasn't exactly singing their praises earlier. Even Mario drops the ball occasionally.

Partners In Time is definitely a bit oddball as the closest thing I think we're ever likely to see to a "dark" Mario game, with destroyed villages and whatnot, but while the Shroobs obviously don't have a great deal of relatability then I think that was probably a deliberate decision to make them more alien and unknowable; they even have untranslatable alien dialogue.  What personality there is comes from the number of design variations and overall cartooniness rather than individual characterisation; they don't have the substance and individuality that would make them ever worth bringing back, because they were "what if aliens invaded the Mushroom Kingdom?" and nothing more, but I think they probably lived up to their designers' objectives.  I'd certainly say they're a step above the Black Arms in that the Black Arms are generic reptilian aliens which could have come from absolutely anything (and Sonic certainly wouldn't be your first guess), whereas the Shroobs are very recognisably Mario foes.

[RedFox99]

25 minutes ago, FFWF said:

Partners In Time is definitely a bit oddball as the closest thing I think we're ever likely to see to a "dark" Mario game, with destroyed villages and whatnot, but while the Shroobs obviously don't have a great deal of relatability then I think that was probably a deliberate decision to make them more alien and unknowable; they even have untranslatable alien dialogue.  What personality there is comes from the number of design variations and overall cartooniness rather than individual characterisation; they don't have the substance and individuality that would make them ever worth bringing back, because they were "what if aliens invaded the Mushroom Kingdom?" and nothing more, but I think they probably lived up to their designers' objectives.  I'd certainly say they're a step above the Black Arms in that the Black Arms are generic reptilian aliens which could have come from absolutely anything (and Sonic certainly wouldn't be your first guess), whereas the Shroobs are very recognisably Mario foes.

I remember in his top 10 darkest Mario Moments, Joshscorcher talked about how the Shroobs just seek to destroy. He did a good job at making them come off as the mindless monsters they are.

[Blacklightning]

You know, it would be so easy to point out Mephiles's writing flaws, because let's face it there's a lot of them. But in regards to this topic it comes off as kind of irrelevant - there are loads of characters written almost as badly as Mephiles is, but nobody questions their relevance or coherence to the series because of it. So casting aside bad writing for a moment, what makes up Mephiles thematically?

Let's look at the personality first. He's a very particular "chessmaster" kind of schemer, wherein his whole plan depends on being able to manipulate all the pawns in play into positions and situations that align to benefit him or his plan. There is nothing wrong with this. In fact, we've already seen successful examples of this at various points throughout the series, - most notably off the top of my head, Gerald Robotnik and to a lesser extent Metal Overlord. The reason this didn't work for Mephiles is because those exact situations the plot required of him were contrived and flat out fucking stupid, and essentially required the remainder of the cast to be equally stupid rather than merely oblivious to the bigger picture for it to work.

There's also the fact that the plan in question was much more complicated than it needed to be (no joke, he could have killed Elise right at the beginning of the game and it would have changed almost nothing), but you know what? There's plenty you can do with a villain that Rube Goldbergs things to an unnecessary degree, and I dare say under better circumstances it could actually have been a pretty endearing trait - but like a lot of things 06 wise, their first mistake was taking it way too seriously, so in a big way this just boils down to a writing issue again. Is there something that can be done with a villain that both manipulates people whether they know it or not, and adds way too many steps to his plan in the process? Probably. I guess we'll just never know how a good example of that will play out, at least in the scope of this franchise.

Ability wise? He's... okay. In my eyes the mark of a good character ability set is being able to pick one general theme and base most if not all of what they can do around that. Sonic is fast, and can channel that speed into attacks. Knux is a boxer, and usually has crazy arm strength as a result of that. Shadow is basically a walking shonen stereotype who can Za Wurldo on top of that. Where Mephiles falls short in this regard is that he has two "general themes" - darkness, and freeform time travel - that have absolutely zero connection or relevance to one another, and sometimes aren't even all that consistent within their own isolated spheres either. The power of darkness gives Mephiles the ability to... make clones of himself? Little creatures that cling onto people and explode? Fire balls of energy and beams of light? Where's the consistency in all this? Holy shit, just pick a theme and stick with it, don't just fling everything at one character and hope the flimsy pretext that they're all dark or cool colours somehow links them all together.

Design wise is where Mephiles completely falls apart, and even with devil's advocate I can't find a way to justify. I feel like there's something you could potentially do with a character that can creepily mirror anyone he meets, complete with crystalline variations, but it still wouldn't change the fact that every variation of him is ultimately derivative and unoriginal with only the crystal motif to his name (which is, as above, another part of his character that doesn't really match his overall theme to be frank). The worst part is, to give him a form to call his own would essentially destroy the character - there would be nothing left to identify him as Mephiles as we know him, so he might as well be Infinite by any other name, loosely defined powers and all. They made a character based around a Thermian argument that he had to specifically resemble someone or else appear as a formless black puddle, and they're stuck with that now. Turns out shitty writing can reflect on the franchise long after the game in question, who fucking knew?

 

Alright, so tl;dr: there are elements of Mephiles that can easily work with better writing, and there are elements of Mephiles that can kinda work but you'd have to retool them for consistency. The biggest problems are his tone and his design. The irony isn't lost on me that Mephiles is extremely derivative of another character who himself is already extremely derivative of Sonic himself, and all the doom and gloom that surrounds him makes it kind of difficult to work his writing flaws into character flaws people can appreciate him for. I still believe there's room for him in the franchise despite the way he was introduced, but like a lot of things 06, I also acknowledge that the work it would take to bring him up to everyone else's level would probably outweigh the actual benefit to him being there as anything bar a Runners-esque cameo.

[ShadowSJG]

2 minutes ago, Blacklightning said:

You know, it would be so easy to point out Mephiles's writing flaws, because let's face it there's a lot of them. But in regards to this topic it comes off as kind of irrelevant - there are loads of characters written almost as badly as Mephiles is, but nobody questions their relevance or coherence to the series because of it. So casting aside bad writing for a moment, what makes up Mephiles thematically?

Let's look at the personality first. He's a very particular "chessmaster" kind of schemer, wherein his whole plan depends on being able to manipulate all the pawns in play into positions and situations that align to benefit him or his plan. There is nothing wrong with this. In fact, we've already seen successful examples of this at various points throughout the series, - most notably off the top of my head, Gerald Robotnik and to a lesser extent Metal Overlord. The reason this didn't work for Mephiles is because those exact situations the plot required of him were contrived and flat out fucking stupid, and essentially required the remainder of the cast to be equally stupid rather than merely oblivious to the bigger picture for it to work.

There's also the fact that the plan in question was much more complicated than it needed to be (no joke, he could have killed Elise right at the beginning of the game and it would have changed almost nothing), but you know what? There's plenty you can do with a villain that Rube Goldbergs things to an unnecessary degree, and I dare say under better circumstances it could actually have been a pretty endearing trait - but like a lot of things 06 wise, their first mistake was taking it way too seriously, so in a big way this just boils down to a writing issue again. Is there something that can be done with a villain that both manipulates people whether they know it or not, and adds way too many steps to his plan in the process? Probably. I guess we'll just never know how a good example of that will play out, at least in the scope of this franchise.

Ability wise? He's... okay. In my eyes the mark of a good character ability set is being able to pick one general theme and base most if not all of what they can do around that. Sonic is fast, and can channel that speed into attacks. Knux is a boxer, and usually has crazy arm strength as a result of that. Shadow is basically a walking shonen stereotype who can Za Wurldo on top of that. Where Mephiles falls short in this regard is that he has two "general themes" - darkness, and freeform time travel - that have absolutely zero connection or relevance to one another, and sometimes aren't even all that consistent within their own isolated spheres either. The power of darkness gives Mephiles the ability to... make clones of himself? Little creatures that cling onto people and explode? Fire balls of energy and beams of light? Where's the consistency in all this? Holy shit, just pick a theme and stick with it, don't just fling everything at one character and hope the flimsy pretext that they're all dark or cool colours somehow links them all together.

Design wise is where Mephiles completely falls apart, and even with devil's advocate I can't find a way to justify. I feel like there's something you could potentially do with a character that can creepily mirror anyone he meets, complete with crystalline variations, but it still wouldn't change the fact that every variation of him is ultimately derivative and unoriginal with only the crystal motif to his name (which is, as above, another part of his character that doesn't really match his overall theme to be frank). The worst part is, to give him a form to call his own would essentially destroy the character - there would be nothing left to identify him as Mephiles as we know him, so he might as well be Infinite by any other name, loosely defined powers and all. They made a character based around a Thermian argument that he had to specifically resemble someone or else appear as a formless black puddle, and they're stuck with that now. Turns out shitty writing can reflect on the franchise long after the game in question, who fucking knew?

 

Alright, so tl;dr: there are elements of Mephiles that can easily work with better writing, and there are elements of Mephiles that can kinda work but you'd have to retool them for consistency. The biggest problems are his tone and his design. The irony isn't lost on me that Mephiles is extremely derivative of another character who himself is already extremely derivative of Sonic himself, and all the doom and gloom that surrounds him makes it kind of difficult to work his writing flaws into character flaws people can appreciate him for. I still believe there's room for him in the franchise despite the way he was introduced, but like a lot of things 06, I also acknowledge that the work it would take to bring him up to everyone else's level would probably outweigh the actual benefit to him being there as anything bar a Runners-esque cameo.

I read through all of this, but sorry for asking, how is Mephiles's tone unfitting?

[Blacklightning]

2 minutes ago, ShadowSJG said:

I read through all of this, but sorry for asking, how is Mephiles's tone unfitting?

I'm sure somebody else will give an argument along the line of sunshine and rainbows (though not nearly that hyperbolic) and they probably won't be wrong either, but my reasoning specifically is that it plays exceptionally poorly off Mephiles's flaws because suspense of disbelief comes further into play than normal.

Eggman himself has plenty of flaws. He's a massive narcissist, has a fragile ego and a propensity for rubbing in what victories he does achieve that sometimes borders on Bond villain tier. He's a celebrated character for those flaws specifically because we're generally not expected to take him completely seriously all the time, even if they don't necessarily go all the way towards the other end of the spectrum and play it for laughs instead. Mephiles is a psychopath and a manipulator that employs overly complex solutions to simple problems, and because we are expected to take him seriously, the lattermost point makes him look like an idiot instead that appeals to practically nobody.

tl;dr - trying too hard.

[dbzfan7]

Hopefully after Sonic Forces we never see another sign of the Drizzling Shits again.

[ShadowSJG]

Is he worse or better than Infinite?

[Dee Dude]

10 hours ago, ShadowSJG said:

Is he worse or better than Infinite?

Worse.

At least Infinite is cool in some aspects such as having a creative design, interesting concept, good voice and theme song and a backstory that was while badly executed had overall potential. 

Mephiles is plain garbage.

[MetalSkulkBane]

Personally I really like Mephiles. He's creepy, melodramatic, has some of really fun lines (bit about egg and a seed)) and has amazing evil laughter.

Blacklightning has some good points, but... well I those things just don't bother me that much (I know, cop out).

In comparison Infinite has better design (more original and Sonic in style) and more defined powers, but kinda lame personality.

[Darth InVaders]

The problem with Mephiles has been stated many times in this thread: he is a one dimensional character who was poorly made and poorly written - there is no entertainment value to him because his motivation is lame (destruction for the sake of destruction), his powers are difficult to understand (time travel and some weird stuff with gaseous shadows and lasers and a bunch of other unrelated things), he has very few quirks (no humor, he comes off a bit cowardly and slimy like a snake but this is not played up enough), and as stated so many times his plan is needlessly complicated, hell the star, Sonic, never even sees him until the end (and technically still does not get to see him). Also his design is uninspired... at the very least he could have been a shapeshifter who takes several characters forms during the story.

A similar problem is with Black Doom - one dimensional, poorly made, poorly written. His motivation is almost as lame as Mephiles (feed his "children" - but he could have found much easier ways to do this without the evilz), he has few quirks (again no humor despite the overuse of dark and gritty having lots of potential, almost came off as wanting to be a fake religious cult leader but that was not played up enough), the importance of their blackness is cringeworthy since it borders on racist, and his Black Arms army gets beaten back by GUN in several points (GUN, which gets its ass kicked by Eggman, should have been more like fodder to build them up). And my god his design is absolute crap - the detachable eye thing is good (if it was correctly incorporated into his design to make sense), but he looks like a floating turd. 

The Deadly Six were mostly problematic because Sonic Team attempted to correct the above problems, but fell back into them. By trying to make them quirky and humorous, the 6 were written as one dimensional characters that used insulting stereotypes to stand out and attempt (and fail) to draw humor from (the fat one and the chick being the worst), and their motivation was again lame (kill the planet below for the evilz).

A good villain should have a plausible and relatable motivation for their actions, be plausibly written, plus have some quirks that make them stand out as entertaining: Chaos, Gerald & Shadow had horrible tragedies that took advantage of their character flaws to pull them into becoming bigots against humans, they had well defined powers and quirks in their character (even if those quirks were not humorous - for Chaos the lack of humor was not as bad because other characters around it provided humor).

[Swing]

This is not only an issue with Mephiles. So many characters in Sonic do not fit in the lore franchise (if it had one from begin with). If you ever first saw a picture of characters like Merlina, Lyric, Chip, the Deadly Six, Elise or Black Doom, you will think that they are characters from a Zelda game, a Dreamworks movie, a Pixar movie, villains from a new Cartoon Network show, a Final Fantasy spin-off game and a Halo-Knock off. But you will never think that their all are from a Sonic game. Mephiles is just another character they create to see what sticks, because this series has no idea what it wants to be. 

[DabigRG]

2 hours ago, Swing said:

This is not only an issue with Mephiles. So many characters in Sonic do not fit in the lore franchise (if it had one from begin with).

Lore seems like the wrong word to use there, but I believe I concur with what you mean.

2 hours ago, Swing said:

 Lyric,

a Dreamworks movie

Oh my goodness, he does kinda look like one, doesn't he?

Though to be fair, I honestly struggle to imagine how you'd make a [whatever  he is] snake Mobian look like it fits in. Snakes, by definition, are unusual animals that don't fit most of the standard formats.

2 hours ago, Swing said:

, Chip,

a Pixar movie, 

To be fair, Chip at least looks closer to a Sonic character than most of the other characters, particularly since Chao are also a thing.

And from what I've heard, the Pixar movie look has generally been well-recieved.

2 hours ago, Swing said:

Elise,

villain from a new Cratoon Network show,

the Deadly Six

a Final Fantasy spin-off game 

I can see it now: Lightning vs. the Zeti. It'll beat Final Fantasy VII's record in no time!

2 hours ago, Swing said:

 Black Doom,

a Halo-Knock off.

Or at least that one game that was advertised a few years ago.

[Almar]

The Sonic series has an issue with its handlers refusing to hold the series to a standard of tone, aesthetic, plotting. The one-off villains and other one-offs like Chip are just another.

I can name what makes currently Mario Mario. I can name what currently makes Zelda Zelda. I can't do that for Sonic.

[Salamander]

6 hours ago, Swing said:

This is not only an issue with Mephiles. So many characters in Sonic do not fit in the lore franchise (if it had one from begin with). If you ever first saw a picture of characters like Merlina, Lyric, Chip, Elise, the Deadly Six or Black Doom, you will think that they are characters from a Zelda game, a Dreamworks movie, a Pixar movie, villain from a new Cratoon Network show, a Final Fantasy spin-off game and a Halo-Knock off. But you will never think that their all are from a Sonic game. Mephiles is just another character they create to see what sticks, because this series has no idea what it wants to be. 

In fairness, for Merlina and the other storybook characters, this is kind of the point.  You can argue about how good a point it is, whether it was an idea they should have pursued at all, but the Storybook series exists explicitly to put Sonic characters in completely different worlds.  Chip, on the other hand, I think does look relatively fitting for Sonic; perhaps even too much, honestly.

There's no real argument about the rest.

[Multikaris]

8 hours ago, Almar said:

The Sonic series has an issue with its handlers refusing to hold the series to a standard of tone, aesthetic, plotting. The one-off villains and other one-offs like Chip are just another.

I can name what makes currently Mario Mario. I can name what currently makes Zelda Zelda. I can't do that for Sonic.

Mario and Zelda aren’t even the most consistent franchises I can think of (other than jokes like Madden)

 

Those would be Street Fighter and DooM. Sure, Street Fighter has had art shifts, but these were more or less a lateral progression from SF1 up to Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, before changing direction for SFA-CVS, which once again progressed laterally. Unlike Zelda which has shifted frequently, SF generally progresses. And DooM’s one inconsistent game pair was an oddball that wasn’t repeated. Mario has had one type of 2D game and two types of 3D game, and pre-MM Zelda are less reliant on crazy puzzles. Neither Doom nor SF have really tone-shifted, unlike Zelda. Sure, they are all more consistent than Sonic (or certain other franchises like Guilty Gear, Mortal Kombat, Might And Magic...)

[DonWaffleleven]

Didn't you know? Mephiles doesn't fit because this is a franchise with "a blue hedgehog, a 2 tailed fox fighting an egg shaped man. It could never fit in a million years!"

OFF-TANGENT RANT ALERT.

Seriously, I hate the "blue hedgehog" excuse to dismiss something a particular fan doesn't like. "Humans, Dark plots and biolizards? In my game where a blue hedgehog fights an evildoer called Eggman? Burn the heretics!"

You know it works both ways. "Why does a crystal entity who can travel through time not belong in a game with a blue hedgehog, knuckled echidna and a floating island in the sky that powers the dragon balls?" It's a fantasy world where stuff can just happen. Why do we suddenly care about consistency when we don't like what's being added?

[Multikaris]

1 hour ago, DonWaffleleven said:

Didn't you know? Mephiles doesn't fit because this is a franchise with "a blue hedgehog, a 2 tailed fox fighting an egg shaped man. It could never fit in a million years!"

OFF-TANGENT RANT ALERT.

Seriously, I hate the "blue hedgehog" excuse to dismiss something a particular fan doesn't like. "Humans, Dark plots and biolizards? In my game where a blue hedgehog fights an evildoer called Eggman? Burn the heretics!"

You know it works both ways. "Why does a crystal entity who can travel through time not belong in a game with a blue hedgehog, knuckled echidna and a floating island in the sky that powers the dragon balls?" It's a fantasy world where stuff can just happen. Why do we suddenly care about consistency when we don't like what's being added?

Another thing: Mephiles And Infinite Both actually visually fit in to the same world as Sonic and Eggman. Even more sympathetic and comical enemies, ala Chaos and the HBH, pull this design choice off. As a result, Mephiles and Infinite the best of all the pure evil villains in the series.

 

And also, what if Mario indeed had a pure evil villain with no sympathetic qualities, no comedic qualities, and no comedic sidekicks, ala Mephiles, Infinite, etc?

[DabigRG]

2 hours ago, Miragnarok said:

Another thing: Mephiles And Infinite Both actually visually fit in to the same world as Sonic and Eggman. Even more sympathetic and comical enemies, ala Chaos and the HBH, pull this design choice off. As a result, Mephiles and Infinite the best of all the pure evil villains in the series.

 

And also, what if Mario indeed had a pure evil villain with no sympathetic qualities, no comedic qualities, and no comedic sidekicks, ala Mephiles, Infinite, etc?

You'd have the Dark Star and the Megabug(that random Dragon-Bird-Headband thing from the Rabbids crossover).

Edited January 7, 2018 by DabigRG