I like Pokemon XD. I don’t think I like it as much as I should, though. While there are a lot of significant improvements upon Colosseum across the board, I think there are some noticeable weaknesses that should have been addressed. It also doesn’t feel as distinct of an experience despite feeling more polished and well-rounded in most regards. At this point, I’ve played about 45+ hours or so and ultimately, I feel like I’ve met the same burnout that I experienced a year and a half ago. As such, consider this write-up a sort of companion piece to my earlier review for Colosseum. I’ve explained most of the core concepts for this spin-off series there, so I’ll be using this space to cover the major similarities and differences between the two games.

Pokemon XD takes place five years after the events of Colosseum. The desert region of Orre is slowly recovering from the prior scourge of Team Cipher, though recent suspicious rumblings have put the region on edge after the kidnapping of the SS Libra and sighted appearances of more Shadow Pokemon. Wes, the ex-Snagem 17-year old spiky haired protagonist from Colosseum with a badass hover motorbike, is nowhere to be found. Instead, you play as a kid named Michael who has a scooter. It’s a bit of a shame that the edginess is toned down in XD, but perhaps that speaks to how peace has really dulled the wariness of Orre; you’re the region’s last hope to restore balance to this troubled land and succeed against the vestiges of Cipher who have “fallen back upon their criminal ways.”

In general, catching Shadow Pokemon has been significantly streamlined. Shadow Rush, the one move that opposing Shadow Pokemon loved to spam in Colosseum, no longer deals recoil damage, so they won’t be ending their lives in despair once you whittle down their HP. In addition, it’s now possible to catch Shadow Pokemon at any point in the battle, whereas previously in Colosseum you had to eliminate all other non-Shadow Pokemon in the fight before you could throw a Poke Ball. To account for this, Shadow Pokemon are now much tougher to fight; they’re capable of using other Shadow attacks such as Shadow Sky (which creates a damaging weather effect that hits all non-Shadow Pokemon) and Shadow Hold (which prevents you from switching out your current Pokemon) to catch you off-guard. In addition, multiple Shadow Pokemon are capable of showing up in a single fight, which is both a good and bad thing for reasons that will become clear soon.

It’s also possible to catch wild Pokemon in XD, though I have mixed feelings on its execution here. According to the game’s lore, wild Pokemon have begun to reemerge in Orre thanks to the relative peace of the past five years and general humanitarian efforts. To catch them, you can leave PokeSnacks at any of the three PokeStops and wait for your Spot Monitor to notify you that a Wild Pokemon has shown up, making your way to the PokeStop before they eat all the snacks and run away. Alas, I find this rather intrusive; the Spot Monitor notifications are completely random over real-time and will often alert you while you’re in the middle of a dungeon exploring or while you’re on Mt Battle grinding. In a game with no instant fast travel while in the middle of locations, it is extremely obnoxious to put down what you’re doing at that very moment and walk out of the area to bag the Pokemon before it flees. You’ll likely have to do this over and over, because you can only catch one Pokemon per notification and some of the rarer catches such as Trapinch only show up 15% of the time. Still, I’ve willingly put up with this in the early game given that some of the best Pokemon (such as Zubat -> Crobat) have to be obtained this way, and it’s possible to trade with Duking of Pyrite Town for some particularly rare finds such as Larvitar and Meditite.

Grinding has also been substantially reduced in XD in comparison to Colosseum. For one, it is far easier to purify Shadow Pokemon because you can stick multiple Shadow mons in the Purify Chamber (setting up type-trumping loops with non-Shadow Pokemon) and have their gauges automatically diminish over time while you do something else. Even if you choose to manually lower the gauge in battle, fighting with Shadow Pokemon is far easier given the expanded Shadow Move toolkit and that Hyper Mode has been replaced with Reverse Mode, which doesn’t randomly take your turn away or cause any effects of disobedience. Finally, there isn’t as pressing of a need to level grind in XD for most of the game, since the level scaling between areas is far more reasonable (instead of the 3-5 level gaps of Colosseum), nor is there as pressing of a need to cash/BP grind since Genius Sonority has added more Pokemon Centers/heal machines nearby to refresh your team and there’s an alternate method to earn BP aside from grinding on Mt Battle.

This is where we get to the side content of Pokemon XD, which I would say is the game’s strongest suit. For example, Battle Bingo at Realgam Tower, the alternate method of earning BP, is a particularly interesting minigame. In this mode, you have to clear lines of four in a bingo card by flipping adjacent tiles using Entry Points (EP) of caught Pokemon. You start with one set Pokemon, and can clear tiles by defeating opposing Pokemon on that tile or catching them with Master Balls. Since each Pokemon has access to just one move, it becomes an exercise of picking fights with favorable type advantages/matchups, though dual type Pokemon and Pokemon capable of using non-STAB attacks can complicate the strategizing further. The downside to this mode is that you might get occasionally fucked over by the RNG from crits/status/missed attacks even with the type advantage, and there isn’t much appeal to replaying cards since the cards become randomized after the first clear, making Battle Bingo feel more like a crapshoot. Still, it’s a welcome change of pace from the standard double battles of the main game and is certainly a lot more fun than going through Mount Battle constantly.

The other notable sidemode in Pokemon XD is the Battle Sim. The Battle Sims at the Pokemon HQ Lab are great at teaching the player the basics of Pokemon battling and doubles (such as utilizing moves which target multiple Pokemon and teaching tactics that abuse status conditions), but it’s the Battle CD sims at Realgam Tower that really take the cake. By collecting Battle CDs all over Orre, Michael can engage in what is essentially the puzzle mode of Pokemon XD in set scenarios. For example, one Battle CD teaches how to avoid telegraphed set-up attacks such as SolarBeam and Sky Attack by timing Dig and Dive. Another one teaches you the effects of Snatch and Encore to exploit opposing Pokemon using set-up moves before they sweep you with their own attacks. Admittingly, some of these Battle CDs involve a significant degree of luck (looking at you, Metronome CD), but I really appreciate how these simulations force the player to think outside of the box and teach players about the nuances of Pokemon battling that they likely wouldn’t be familiar with even from competitive modes.

I’ve mostly been complimentary of XD up to this point. I’m very pleased with the improved pacing (outside of the PokeSpot notifications), the environments have more features to explore outside of otherwise empty trainer-ridden corridors (though I admit box puzzles aren’t a significant step up) and I definitely enjoy the additional minigames that really test my knowledge of the mechanics with exotic fights. Unfortunately, as much as I’ve praised everything outside of the battling, that points to the biggest issue in itself; I don’t actually remember much of the main game’s many battles.

faea highlights this issue by pointing out the differences between Colosseum’s Dakim and XD’s Gorigan, though I’d like to expand upon this further. Firstly, most boss fights in XD now revolve around utilizing tons of Shadow Pokemon rather than distinctly difficult doubles mechanics (i.e. setting up weather sweepers, spamming Earthquake with one mon while protecting with the other, etc). While Shadow Pokemon are still tougher to fight in XD than in Colosseum, they’re still not as interesting to fight as unique doubles tactics given that much of the admin fights centralize around me weakening and catching the Shadow Pokemon instead. Secondly though, this also comes with the caveat that I would need an incentive to catch all these different Pokemon as pointed out by faea, and this is where Pokemon XD’s expanded roster backfires.

You see, many of Colosseum’s fights are made significantly harder because your original roster is composed of just Espeon and Umbreon, two Pokemon with relatively poor type coverage. Additionally, Colosseum’s early catches are mostly “shitmons” such as Furret and Dunsparce with middling stats, forcing you to really understand and abuse their limited toolkits (i.e. Skiploom’s Sleep Powder to status enemies and Cotton Spore to slow down foes) to succeed against all odds. Take this with a grain of salt because I’m one of those individuals that enjoys sweeping randoms on Showdown with Delibird, but there’s a real satisfaction to maximizing every potential use of overlooked Pokemon and bodying opponents with Qwilfish and Stantler. Granted, you’re not likely to defeat final teams with Flygon and Starmie using such Pokemon, but it at least provided an incentive to catch stronger Shadow Pokemon such as Piloswine and Heracross so that your team could scale accordingly to the tougher boss fights.

This is not the case with XD, which can overwhelm you with choice from its much larger and generally stronger roster (i.e. Shroomish/Breloom, Baltoy/Claydol, Houndour/Houndoom, etc). I’ve already alluded that most of the best Pokemon can be obtained relatively early in the game from PokeStops. Additionally, having Eevee as a starter as opposed to Umbreon and Espeon immediately gives you a lot more leeway to adapt your team when there’s a trainer in Gateon Port that will give you any evolution item you want for it within the first hour of the game. The result is that XD is a game that doesn’t really force the player to experiment as much, given the lack of difficult and unique doubles boss fights during the main story and the expansive and immediate selection of strong Pokemon in the first half of the game. The only real incentive I had to catch more Shadow Pokemon once my team was fully developed was that the back-up strat was even more tedious. Missing any Shadow Pokemon means that you have to wait for Miror B to randomly show up at a PokeSpot (same exact mechanic as the Spot Radar), and then interrupt whatever you’re doing to hunt him down and catch up to two missing Shadow Pokemon at a time until you have to repeat the process anew. As such, I’m forced to conclude a lot of the game's fights bleed into one another for me. Sadly, XD feels like a game more fixated upon catching rather than battling.

I wouldn’t say that XD is a bad Pokemon game, far from it in fact. Genius Sonority had the tough task of balancing Colosseum’s demanding battles with the casual Pokemon experience of catching em all while targeting player complaints of bloat from the original. In that sense, I’d say they mostly succeeded given XD’s larger and more colorful roster, and I can certainly appreciate that rarer Hoenn Pokemon such as Surskit and Delcatty are far easier to obtain in XD as a concession. It’s a much more accessible and expansive spin-off for most of the fanbase, but unfortunately, I felt that the aspect I enjoyed the most from Colosseum was somewhat lacking for most of XD’s runtime. By the time I got to the tougher Orre Colosseum and Mt Battle doubles fights that reminded me of what the series was capable of (using Teeter Dance to confuse everyone but the enemy’s own Pokemon with Own Tempo, for instance), I was once again confronted with that same massive level gap typical of Colosseum that would have forced me to spend more hours grinding up my team to even stand a chance at matching that firepower. How poetic that even after layers of polish and streamlining, it looks like Pokemon can’t escape its greatest weaknesses at the end of the day.