Let’s get this out of the way immediately: Pokemon Colosseum is a game for veterans and die-hard fans of the franchise. If you do not enjoy Pokemon battling, and are into Pokemon for the interaction elsewhere such as catching wild Pokemon, participating in contests/side-events, or feeding them treats, then this is not the game for you. Furthermore, this game is quite difficult, even for experienced battlers, and will very much test your knowledge of Gen 3 Pokemon mechanics and doubles battles. With that said, there is both a lot to be loved regarding this theoretical departure from typical “10-year-old raises up a team of legends and conquers the gym and league” style of Pokemon games regarding its challenge, and a lot to be desired regarding its execution.
The first noticeable difference between Pokemon Colosseum and the mainline series is the ability (and in fact, need) to catch Pokemon exclusively in trainer battles. Here’s how it’s justified in-universe; you’re a rogue Team Snagem member who swiped Snagem’s old Snag Machine (that gave them the ability to snatch other trainers’ Pokemon), and it’s up to you to retrieve Shadow Pokemon whose hearts have been locked up by nefarious experimentation and thwart this villainous organization that’s spread its tendrils across the barren wastelands of Orre and save this forsaken region once and for all. This need to “save” the Shadow Pokemon and add them to your team is further compounded by two other factors. Firstly, Orre is, as previously mentioned, generally desolate and has no fertile environments to support wild Pokemon. Secondly, your starting team of Espeon and Umbreon is not the greatest; Espeon is powerful but lacking in defense and coverage, and Umbreon is bad unless you want to spend an eternity stalling in battle and spending all your earnings on health regeneration items.
In theory, this makes Colosseum’s lean towards battling quite exciting; you now have to factor in weakening opponents’ Shadow Pokemon to properly catch them, alongside usual victory strategies. In practice, however, this is kind of a pain. Part of this is due to the second noticeable difference between Colosseum and the main series; all fights are double battles, and you have to account for the other non-Shadow Pokemon on the opponent’s side. As a result, there is a very good chance that the combat ready Pokemon with strong STAB attacks and defensive moves are often not the same as those ideal for catching, with weaker moves to whittle down HP and status moves like Sleep Powder that are great for increasing catch rate but become a little impractical to constantly spam in a double battle due to outright attacks saving time and mitigating damage. Additionally, Shadow Pokemon love to spam the one guaranteed move they will have: Shadow Rush, a typeless attack that will always deal significant recoil to the user. This tendency goes against any intentions of catching Shadow Pokemon, and you’ll often find Shadow Pokemon ending their own lives from recoil before you get enough turns to snag them with your own balls. Also, since this is still a trainer battle, there’s a good chance that if you knock the Shadow Pokemon out, you won’t be able to get a rematch to try to catch the Pokemon again until quite a ways later. So, be prepared to spend plenty of money on Poke Balls and a lot of time save scumming to catch the harder and more coveted Shadow Pokemon, such as the Legendary Beasts.
You’re not out of the woods yet though, because here’s where Pokemon’s weaknesses start to come into play. I’ve always said that Pokemon has two major weaknesses: excess RNG, and excess grinding. Both of these issues are unfortunately exacerbated because of the need to purify Shadow Pokemon.
Shadow Pokemon have their hearts locked, because of the aforementioned experimentation, and in theory are supposed to be “stronger” according to the big bad. In reality, they suck, because their moveset isn’t fully unlocked (in fact, your Shadow Pokemon start with only Shadow Rush and will unlock more moves as their gauge drains) nor can they level up until properly purified. As a result, you must send them out into battle and spend time with them to lower their gauge, sort of similar to how Pokemon happiness is built up in the main series. Here’s the kicker: every now and then, Shadow Pokemon will enter “Hyper Mode,” where they will suddenly skip one turn and then become aggressive and disobedient. There’s supposed to be a risk vs reward here; the reward is that any attack successfully launched by Hyper Mode Shadow Pokemon will automatically score critical hits (double damage). However, the risk often wins here, and if so, your Pokemon will waste time attempting to attack your protagonist or just go back into its ball and force you to call out another Pokemon. As a result, you have to waste even more time using Call on your Shadow Pokemon’s turn to snap them out of it and lower the gauge. So, sending them out into battle can very quickly lower that Shadow Gauge to speed up purification, but it’s generally a bad idea to do this in mainline story mode battles where there are real stakes and opponents can quickly end you.
This is where grinding kicks in. As is, grinding is considered necessary in Pokemon Colosseum, because moving onto the next area usually comes along with sharp level increases of 3-5 levels; unless you’re just using the same two or three Pokemon, the natural EXP gain from story battles will not be enough. You’ve got three methods to choose from. Method one is to find previously fought trainers in dungeons and rematch them. It may or may not be appealing depending on how far you are from the nearest heal station/PC, and you’ll end up wasting time leaving and entering areas to refresh trainers anyways. Method two is to enter individual colosseums and fight four consecutive trainers arena style; you’ll also win a TM for your first four wins per colosseum and a nice cash prize. Unfortunately, Shadow Pokemon are banned here. Method three (and my preferred method) is to farm Mount Battle’s lower areas (more or less a stream of ten consecutive fights for Battle Coupons, used to redeem TMs and held items) for low-stakes fights and easy, albeit somewhat mindless XP. You won’t unlock this until about halfway through the game, but it’s definitely the most efficient and least risky method to work with. Regardless, be prepared to spend a lot of time grinding for everything: save scumming for catching Shadow mons, cash grinding for Poke Balls/TMs/potions, EXP grinding to scale up, and Shadow Gauge grinding to purify mons.
I think that actually sums up the main weakness of Colosseum; in theory, it adds a ton of wrinkles to shake up the formula and introduce difficulty, but in practice, this just adds tons of padding to the game. I’ve already mentioned the necessary evil of excess grinding as a form of padding as well as the RNG further wasting turns in battle, but there are even more time-wasters elsewhere. Battle animations are a huge culprit; there are introductory cutscenes to introduce the opponent and the setting, spawning animations whenever Pokemon come out (for both your own and the opponents’), attack and being attacked animations for every move, damage animations from status/weather, and a nearly ten-second long Shadow Pokemon identifier cutscene if one comes out. Oh, and if a multi target move like Surf or Earthquake is used, every individual Pokemon that is hit has its own dedicated stumbling animation. This problem is further compounded by Colosseum’s supposed strength, its lean towards Pokemon Battles. There are trainers everywhere, often within several feet of one another. Some of them will even automatically spot you in their line of sight and rematch after you’ve left and returned to the area. You’re also going to be taking plenty of damage or at the very least, using a ton of PP that has to be restored with healing machines and PCs, so be prepared to backtrack plenty. To put this all into perspective, the introductory dungeon in Pyrite Town can take several hours. As it stands, I would not be exaggerating if I said that half of the time in-game is spent watching battle animations, and it is a shame that the mostly empty and circuitous corridors of the in-game dungeons lend very little to environmental interactions outside of battling more trainers.
Despite how much I’ve criticized Colosseum due to the copious amounts of time wasted in-game… I actually enjoyed most of my time spent. Colosseum’s difficulty is its saving grace; opposing trainers are ruthless in exploiting Gen 3’s battle mechanics to knock you down a few pegs and hold you accountable. In part, the exclusive double battles set up Colosseum for success; you have to fully utilize set-up and defensive options (such as weather moves like Rain Dance and damage mitigation like Reflect), target switching based off of type advantages/disadvantages, item usage (which becomes much more committal in a Double Battle; you can’t take back the item and you have to determine which Pokemon loses its turn from item usage), and careful in-battle swapping of Pokemon versus sacrificing them when there are no in-between turns allowed to just switch your Pokemon on the fly. You’ll constantly need to adapt and exploit these mechanics yourself, because these opponents tend to bring their A-game for proper doubles strats; for example, one boss will spam Earthquake while using Protect on the other to relentlessly hit both of your Pokemon, another might abuse rain to activate Swift Swim (for doubled speed) and doubling the damage of Water-type attacks, and so on so forth.
I’ll also bring back to attention the limited Pokemon pool of Colosseum; there are at most 52 usable Pokemon in-game, and that is a good thing. As mentioned prior, you’ll absolutely need an expanded team because Espeon lacks options to deal with Pokemon that are strong against Psychics, and Umbreon is extremely mid. That said, most of the selection in-game isn’t too great either, but it’s certainly exotic; I believe this is due to Nintendo developing Colosseum (and its successor, XD) as opportunities to catch non Hoenn and Kanto Pokemon (from Ruby/Sapphire Emerald and LeafGreen/FireRed respectively) and transfer them to the main games when purified. As such, while the actual pool early game isn’t ideal, (in fact, I would label some such as Slugma and Furret as “garbo-mons”), there’s actually a lot of utility to each Pokemon when the options are so limited. “Weaker” Pokemon such as Skiploom provide status attack options (i.e. Sleep Powder) to make catching easier, or can provide defensive type utility (such as Misdreavus, the only catchable Ghost-Type) in blocking common attacks. There’s also a part of me that finds it extremely funny and satisfying to take down high-level and evolved Pokemon with Dunsparce’s hax-ridden Serene Grace or Gen 3 Qwilfish’s subpar base 55 Special Attack stat. These early game struggles make the end-game push that much more gratifying, from finally evolving your previously underwhelming early game mons to catching some valuable “viable” mons such as Skarmory, while gaining the necessary cash to further augment them with stat boosting drinks and TMs for better attacks. For all my complaints, Colosseum at least gives you the exact tools you need to success to excel in battling, and nothing more because they don’t need to. You know what they say; limitation can often lead to innovation, and struggle can often lead to satisfaction.
While Pokemon Colosseum still suffers from all of the shortcomings of your usual Pokemon game, it was somehow still a great fit for me, finally feeling challenged in a non rom-hack setting with battles aplenty. I won’t deny that my inner edgelord enjoyed this either, thanks to the underlying plotline of a spiky-haired 17 year old former criminal turned silent protagonist on his motor hovercraft destroying scores of trained and technical gritty criminals yelling “yOuR rEsIsTaNcE iS fUtIlE!!!!111!,” as cheesy as the whole affair felt while bodying Chaser Kai for the 22nd time with my Stantler. It’s certainly not for everyone, but if you’re feeling a bit let down from cruising through the mainline Pokemon games and are prepared to invest many hours putting your knowledge of Gen 3 mechanics to the test, then definitely give Colosseum a shot.
The first noticeable difference between Pokemon Colosseum and the mainline series is the ability (and in fact, need) to catch Pokemon exclusively in trainer battles. Here’s how it’s justified in-universe; you’re a rogue Team Snagem member who swiped Snagem’s old Snag Machine (that gave them the ability to snatch other trainers’ Pokemon), and it’s up to you to retrieve Shadow Pokemon whose hearts have been locked up by nefarious experimentation and thwart this villainous organization that’s spread its tendrils across the barren wastelands of Orre and save this forsaken region once and for all. This need to “save” the Shadow Pokemon and add them to your team is further compounded by two other factors. Firstly, Orre is, as previously mentioned, generally desolate and has no fertile environments to support wild Pokemon. Secondly, your starting team of Espeon and Umbreon is not the greatest; Espeon is powerful but lacking in defense and coverage, and Umbreon is bad unless you want to spend an eternity stalling in battle and spending all your earnings on health regeneration items.
In theory, this makes Colosseum’s lean towards battling quite exciting; you now have to factor in weakening opponents’ Shadow Pokemon to properly catch them, alongside usual victory strategies. In practice, however, this is kind of a pain. Part of this is due to the second noticeable difference between Colosseum and the main series; all fights are double battles, and you have to account for the other non-Shadow Pokemon on the opponent’s side. As a result, there is a very good chance that the combat ready Pokemon with strong STAB attacks and defensive moves are often not the same as those ideal for catching, with weaker moves to whittle down HP and status moves like Sleep Powder that are great for increasing catch rate but become a little impractical to constantly spam in a double battle due to outright attacks saving time and mitigating damage. Additionally, Shadow Pokemon love to spam the one guaranteed move they will have: Shadow Rush, a typeless attack that will always deal significant recoil to the user. This tendency goes against any intentions of catching Shadow Pokemon, and you’ll often find Shadow Pokemon ending their own lives from recoil before you get enough turns to snag them with your own balls. Also, since this is still a trainer battle, there’s a good chance that if you knock the Shadow Pokemon out, you won’t be able to get a rematch to try to catch the Pokemon again until quite a ways later. So, be prepared to spend plenty of money on Poke Balls and a lot of time save scumming to catch the harder and more coveted Shadow Pokemon, such as the Legendary Beasts.
You’re not out of the woods yet though, because here’s where Pokemon’s weaknesses start to come into play. I’ve always said that Pokemon has two major weaknesses: excess RNG, and excess grinding. Both of these issues are unfortunately exacerbated because of the need to purify Shadow Pokemon.
Shadow Pokemon have their hearts locked, because of the aforementioned experimentation, and in theory are supposed to be “stronger” according to the big bad. In reality, they suck, because their moveset isn’t fully unlocked (in fact, your Shadow Pokemon start with only Shadow Rush and will unlock more moves as their gauge drains) nor can they level up until properly purified. As a result, you must send them out into battle and spend time with them to lower their gauge, sort of similar to how Pokemon happiness is built up in the main series. Here’s the kicker: every now and then, Shadow Pokemon will enter “Hyper Mode,” where they will suddenly skip one turn and then become aggressive and disobedient. There’s supposed to be a risk vs reward here; the reward is that any attack successfully launched by Hyper Mode Shadow Pokemon will automatically score critical hits (double damage). However, the risk often wins here, and if so, your Pokemon will waste time attempting to attack your protagonist or just go back into its ball and force you to call out another Pokemon. As a result, you have to waste even more time using Call on your Shadow Pokemon’s turn to snap them out of it and lower the gauge. So, sending them out into battle can very quickly lower that Shadow Gauge to speed up purification, but it’s generally a bad idea to do this in mainline story mode battles where there are real stakes and opponents can quickly end you.
This is where grinding kicks in. As is, grinding is considered necessary in Pokemon Colosseum, because moving onto the next area usually comes along with sharp level increases of 3-5 levels; unless you’re just using the same two or three Pokemon, the natural EXP gain from story battles will not be enough. You’ve got three methods to choose from. Method one is to find previously fought trainers in dungeons and rematch them. It may or may not be appealing depending on how far you are from the nearest heal station/PC, and you’ll end up wasting time leaving and entering areas to refresh trainers anyways. Method two is to enter individual colosseums and fight four consecutive trainers arena style; you’ll also win a TM for your first four wins per colosseum and a nice cash prize. Unfortunately, Shadow Pokemon are banned here. Method three (and my preferred method) is to farm Mount Battle’s lower areas (more or less a stream of ten consecutive fights for Battle Coupons, used to redeem TMs and held items) for low-stakes fights and easy, albeit somewhat mindless XP. You won’t unlock this until about halfway through the game, but it’s definitely the most efficient and least risky method to work with. Regardless, be prepared to spend a lot of time grinding for everything: save scumming for catching Shadow mons, cash grinding for Poke Balls/TMs/potions, EXP grinding to scale up, and Shadow Gauge grinding to purify mons.
I think that actually sums up the main weakness of Colosseum; in theory, it adds a ton of wrinkles to shake up the formula and introduce difficulty, but in practice, this just adds tons of padding to the game. I’ve already mentioned the necessary evil of excess grinding as a form of padding as well as the RNG further wasting turns in battle, but there are even more time-wasters elsewhere. Battle animations are a huge culprit; there are introductory cutscenes to introduce the opponent and the setting, spawning animations whenever Pokemon come out (for both your own and the opponents’), attack and being attacked animations for every move, damage animations from status/weather, and a nearly ten-second long Shadow Pokemon identifier cutscene if one comes out. Oh, and if a multi target move like Surf or Earthquake is used, every individual Pokemon that is hit has its own dedicated stumbling animation. This problem is further compounded by Colosseum’s supposed strength, its lean towards Pokemon Battles. There are trainers everywhere, often within several feet of one another. Some of them will even automatically spot you in their line of sight and rematch after you’ve left and returned to the area. You’re also going to be taking plenty of damage or at the very least, using a ton of PP that has to be restored with healing machines and PCs, so be prepared to backtrack plenty. To put this all into perspective, the introductory dungeon in Pyrite Town can take several hours. As it stands, I would not be exaggerating if I said that half of the time in-game is spent watching battle animations, and it is a shame that the mostly empty and circuitous corridors of the in-game dungeons lend very little to environmental interactions outside of battling more trainers.
Despite how much I’ve criticized Colosseum due to the copious amounts of time wasted in-game… I actually enjoyed most of my time spent. Colosseum’s difficulty is its saving grace; opposing trainers are ruthless in exploiting Gen 3’s battle mechanics to knock you down a few pegs and hold you accountable. In part, the exclusive double battles set up Colosseum for success; you have to fully utilize set-up and defensive options (such as weather moves like Rain Dance and damage mitigation like Reflect), target switching based off of type advantages/disadvantages, item usage (which becomes much more committal in a Double Battle; you can’t take back the item and you have to determine which Pokemon loses its turn from item usage), and careful in-battle swapping of Pokemon versus sacrificing them when there are no in-between turns allowed to just switch your Pokemon on the fly. You’ll constantly need to adapt and exploit these mechanics yourself, because these opponents tend to bring their A-game for proper doubles strats; for example, one boss will spam Earthquake while using Protect on the other to relentlessly hit both of your Pokemon, another might abuse rain to activate Swift Swim (for doubled speed) and doubling the damage of Water-type attacks, and so on so forth.
I’ll also bring back to attention the limited Pokemon pool of Colosseum; there are at most 52 usable Pokemon in-game, and that is a good thing. As mentioned prior, you’ll absolutely need an expanded team because Espeon lacks options to deal with Pokemon that are strong against Psychics, and Umbreon is extremely mid. That said, most of the selection in-game isn’t too great either, but it’s certainly exotic; I believe this is due to Nintendo developing Colosseum (and its successor, XD) as opportunities to catch non Hoenn and Kanto Pokemon (from Ruby/Sapphire Emerald and LeafGreen/FireRed respectively) and transfer them to the main games when purified. As such, while the actual pool early game isn’t ideal, (in fact, I would label some such as Slugma and Furret as “garbo-mons”), there’s actually a lot of utility to each Pokemon when the options are so limited. “Weaker” Pokemon such as Skiploom provide status attack options (i.e. Sleep Powder) to make catching easier, or can provide defensive type utility (such as Misdreavus, the only catchable Ghost-Type) in blocking common attacks. There’s also a part of me that finds it extremely funny and satisfying to take down high-level and evolved Pokemon with Dunsparce’s hax-ridden Serene Grace or Gen 3 Qwilfish’s subpar base 55 Special Attack stat. These early game struggles make the end-game push that much more gratifying, from finally evolving your previously underwhelming early game mons to catching some valuable “viable” mons such as Skarmory, while gaining the necessary cash to further augment them with stat boosting drinks and TMs for better attacks. For all my complaints, Colosseum at least gives you the exact tools you need to success to excel in battling, and nothing more because they don’t need to. You know what they say; limitation can often lead to innovation, and struggle can often lead to satisfaction.
While Pokemon Colosseum still suffers from all of the shortcomings of your usual Pokemon game, it was somehow still a great fit for me, finally feeling challenged in a non rom-hack setting with battles aplenty. I won’t deny that my inner edgelord enjoyed this either, thanks to the underlying plotline of a spiky-haired 17 year old former criminal turned silent protagonist on his motor hovercraft destroying scores of trained and technical gritty criminals yelling “yOuR rEsIsTaNcE iS fUtIlE!!!!111!,” as cheesy as the whole affair felt while bodying Chaser Kai for the 22nd time with my Stantler. It’s certainly not for everyone, but if you’re feeling a bit let down from cruising through the mainline Pokemon games and are prepared to invest many hours putting your knowledge of Gen 3 mechanics to the test, then definitely give Colosseum a shot.
13 Comments
I rented this a long-ass time ago, and I fell off on it so badly. I keep meaning to give it another try on dolphin, because I love the dumb edgey plotline of being a former bad guy, but everything I hear about it makes it feel like the most slothful experience.
I remember loving this and its sequel growing up. Wish we could get more like them. Need to go back and beat this one someday.
"Espeon lacks options to deal with Pokemon that are strong against Psychics, and Umbreon is extremely mid."
Just like the mainline games, Espeon > Umbreon. The laws of the Poke universe must be kept in balance.
Nah but fr, this review more or less highlights why I prefer XD over Colosseum. I very much get preferring mood over mechanical tweaks/upgrades in sequels - it's why I slightly prefer BW1 over BW2 - but Colosseum being as it is, as you said, leaves a lot to be desired.
Also you ever think about how some Mons here have Run Away as an ability they could get, despite it doing absolutely nothing within the context of this game's battle system and environments?
Just like the mainline games, Espeon > Umbreon. The laws of the Poke universe must be kept in balance.
Nah but fr, this review more or less highlights why I prefer XD over Colosseum. I very much get preferring mood over mechanical tweaks/upgrades in sequels - it's why I slightly prefer BW1 over BW2 - but Colosseum being as it is, as you said, leaves a lot to be desired.
Also you ever think about how some Mons here have Run Away as an ability they could get, despite it doing absolutely nothing within the context of this game's battle system and environments?
@FallenGrace: I can totally see why this would be your favorite Pokemon game, having to really think out moves and synergy for the in-game story battles was an excellent surprise compared to most of the mainline games. While I can't see myself 100%ing this unfortunately (as I don't feel like grinding out the Shadow gauges to catch and purify all Shadow mons), it was definitely super fun while it lasted and I really enjoyed my post-game team of Flygon and Heracross to dominate the colosseums.
@Vee: If you're looking for a tough and official Pokemon challenge with the over the top edgy vibes, then yeah, this is definitely the one. But if you're looking for a less grindy/padded experience, then I think XD (or the fan romhack, Pokemon XG ) should be your go to instead. Unfortunately you don't get a "cool" and silent protagonist like Wes and have to play as yet another 10 year old kid, but from what I've seen and heard, the scaling and balancing mechanisms provide for a much more streamlined and fair difficulty curve without the need to grind as heavily.
@TheQuietGamer: I definitely wish we got more Pokemon games in this vein, it was a real letdown to me that Pokemon Battle Revolution was just a glorified battle simulator and didn't carry the spirit of Colosseum or XD.
@BlazingWaters: I was wondering when someone would comment about me ragging on Umbreon lol. As fun as it is annoying other players with Umbreon Wish + Toxic stall in Pokemon Showdown, that strategy just does not translate well to single player Gen 3 Pokemon, so Espeon remains supreme. And yeah, I'm very much looking forward to playing XD considering that it appears Genius Sonority learned a lot of lessons regarding what felt fair and what felt boring for a battle oriented experience... probably gonna take a little break from any Pokemon games, but it'll happen sooner or later.
And no, I did not consider that some of the in-game Pokemon have Run Away as an ability despite it being completely useless in the context of 100% trainer battles, lmao
@Vee: If you're looking for a tough and official Pokemon challenge with the over the top edgy vibes, then yeah, this is definitely the one. But if you're looking for a less grindy/padded experience, then I think XD (or the fan romhack, Pokemon XG ) should be your go to instead. Unfortunately you don't get a "cool" and silent protagonist like Wes and have to play as yet another 10 year old kid, but from what I've seen and heard, the scaling and balancing mechanisms provide for a much more streamlined and fair difficulty curve without the need to grind as heavily.
@TheQuietGamer: I definitely wish we got more Pokemon games in this vein, it was a real letdown to me that Pokemon Battle Revolution was just a glorified battle simulator and didn't carry the spirit of Colosseum or XD.
@BlazingWaters: I was wondering when someone would comment about me ragging on Umbreon lol. As fun as it is annoying other players with Umbreon Wish + Toxic stall in Pokemon Showdown, that strategy just does not translate well to single player Gen 3 Pokemon, so Espeon remains supreme. And yeah, I'm very much looking forward to playing XD considering that it appears Genius Sonority learned a lot of lessons regarding what felt fair and what felt boring for a battle oriented experience... probably gonna take a little break from any Pokemon games, but it'll happen sooner or later.
And no, I did not consider that some of the in-game Pokemon have Run Away as an ability despite it being completely useless in the context of 100% trainer battles, lmao
I played a bunch of DX as a kid but never owned this, but your stellar review plus KingK's recent video on it have piqued my interest! Definitely gonna give this a try
I'll use Furret as an example since it's an early Shadow Mon, as well as give a more thorough explanation for anyone not familiar: Within the context of Gen 3, its two abilities can either be Keen Eye, which prevents loss of accuracy thereby making it a huge boon due to status moves or even regular attacks being able to inflict it being more prominent here, or Run Away, which as it sounds allows you to run away from field encounters. Colosseum does not have field encounters, that becomes a thing in XD (and even then in specific spots), so Run Away in this first outing is effectively worthless. It adds to the save-scum grind if you particularly care and/or need certain Mons since you want to prioritize obtaining the other ability that'll at least do something.
the fact that they follow up wes with the worst pokemon protagonist of all time but in a better game is the worst thing this duo of games has done
“... you’ll often find Shadow Pokemon ending their own lives from recoil before you get enough turns to snag them with your own balls. ...” I believe this is a kind of poetry on the developers' part. 😂
Yeah, I was too young to appreciate any of the technicallities of the game when I played it. I remember being annoyed by the process of catching shadow pokemon, but I only wanted the ones I thought were cool, and I thought the Umbreon/Espeon starting combo was pretty darn cool to start so I think I only caught a handful. Mainly Gen 2 'mons that I wanted to get into Sapphire. The way you describe it now, I'm surprised meathead, "only big attack moves" little me actually finished the game.
I thought the protagonist was way cool though, and he got to travel around with a girl (or so I remember) making him extra cool to elementary school me. Which is why, to this day, I do not care how much of an improvement XD was as a game, this one will always be above it in my heart. Wish they'd try something this edgy again, lmao.
Yeah, I was too young to appreciate any of the technicallities of the game when I played it. I remember being annoyed by the process of catching shadow pokemon, but I only wanted the ones I thought were cool, and I thought the Umbreon/Espeon starting combo was pretty darn cool to start so I think I only caught a handful. Mainly Gen 2 'mons that I wanted to get into Sapphire. The way you describe it now, I'm surprised meathead, "only big attack moves" little me actually finished the game.
I thought the protagonist was way cool though, and he got to travel around with a girl (or so I remember) making him extra cool to elementary school me. Which is why, to this day, I do not care how much of an improvement XD was as a game, this one will always be above it in my heart. Wish they'd try something this edgy again, lmao.
I thought this game was just an updated version of Pokemon Stadium that was compatible with the GBA games for years. It's weird that the only console pokemon game with a, like, campaign was this one and XD Gale of Poopydookyfart, just putting some of these games on a console instead of a handheld would probably make them feel more distinct (spoiler alert: as somebody who did not play pokemon as a wee lad, these games all look the same to me)
@fallengrace oh yeah its great, i gotta get back to Xd but i wasnt enjoying it as much
@smaench: Thanks, really glad you enjoyed the review! KingK's recent video definitely provided motivation to write this up as well, and I find myself agreeing with a lot of his points. If XD is anywhere as polished as he makes it out to be, I think I'm really going to enjoy it.
@junie: There's a part of me that wishes Gamefreak would bring back Wes in some way if Colosseum/XD ever get another expansion or sequel. Just isn't the same with Michael unfortunately...
@cdmcgwire: You may be onto something here...
Yeah, the way I described the main story, a lot of the bosses were definitely quite formidable and at times overpowering. I was a little underleveled in some circumstances since I didn't excessively grind for hours, but I was still able to squeak by fortunately with decent doubles strats and Espeon's ridiculous Special Attack stat. And agreed regarding your last point, need more edge in my Pokemon games.
@HB: I can definitely see where you're coming from, they just didn't make Pokemon console games on the N64/GC/Wii like these two ever again. I really feel like they were onto something, and I do think it's a little strange that Pokemon didn't get a main series console release until the Switch...
@junie: There's a part of me that wishes Gamefreak would bring back Wes in some way if Colosseum/XD ever get another expansion or sequel. Just isn't the same with Michael unfortunately...
@cdmcgwire: You may be onto something here...
Yeah, the way I described the main story, a lot of the bosses were definitely quite formidable and at times overpowering. I was a little underleveled in some circumstances since I didn't excessively grind for hours, but I was still able to squeak by fortunately with decent doubles strats and Espeon's ridiculous Special Attack stat. And agreed regarding your last point, need more edge in my Pokemon games.
@HB: I can definitely see where you're coming from, they just didn't make Pokemon console games on the N64/GC/Wii like these two ever again. I really feel like they were onto something, and I do think it's a little strange that Pokemon didn't get a main series console release until the Switch...
the closest thing to wes we've gotten in the past 20 years is steven having a deoxys suit alt in pokemon masters that's vaguely similar to the type of fashion wes wears if you squint enough. sad world.
FallenGrace
1 year ago