I disagree.1) I think "takes command" is too strong of a term by far. I don't consider the Giratina fight to be part of his team, which leaves him with a 68 Spiritomb, Roserade, Togekiss, Arcanine, Lucario, and Garchomp. Compare this to Red, with an 80-88 Pikachu, Venusaur, Charizard, Blastoise, Lapras, and Snorlax. Not only is Red's team higher level, but it's a better composition relative to what you can bring. I basically swept Volo with a Gliscor with Swords Dance and Ice Fang; he had nothing with super effective damage against me at all and I had Super Effective damage against everything of his except Spiritomb, who is both somewhat frail and very slow.
2) Even if you consider Giratina part of the fight, it shares the same weaknesses (Ice, Ghost, Dark) as the team before it, and it's still only level 70. From a team composition standpoint, that means you just need more of the same. You could never get away with that vs Red.
3) Red is undisputably the most powerful trainer of the area and time, significantly more powerful (and with a better team composition) than Lance, the Champion. Volo has some powerful Pokemon, but his team is weaker than that of the "Ingo - but tougher" fight, to say nothing of the "Ingo - but using Alphas" fight. It's not at all clear that he's the toughest trainer around.
4) The above are debatable, If you consider Giratina part of the fight, as we've never previously fought against a Pokemon Trainer Using a Legendary. However, the biggest part where you're in error in my opinion is when you had the line "including player characters". You were sent back in time, so you're his peer, and canonically you were brought back Because you're stronger than him, and you beat him. He's got A legendary under his belt, at most, while the Player character collects like a dozen. The same is true of any other game - while you can argue Ingo isn't his peer, and Kamado is significantly behind his power level, and so forth, it doesn't change that at most he's got a few levels and one legendary over whomever you place at #2. The player character in any game has the opportunity to catch enough legendaries to basically field a whole team of them, all at level 90+, while their peers have nothing like that. The gap between the player character and their team and potential and the NPCs is Always Much greater than the gap between Volo and the other NPCs, by a significant margin.
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