It's a bit melancholic for me to sit here airing my laundry list of everything I didn't like about this game, because it's been a part of me for a huge chunk of my life. I've played and replayed it countless times and every time I've enjoyed it thoroughly. But time marches on, our perspectives change, and now I think it's time to put this one to rest.
For the full experience, play this while reading the review, then let it run to the end. Then play it through once more.
In almost every aspect, Pokemon XD feels like a sanitised version of Colosseum. Edges are sanded down and smoothened out, but done so with no real regard for the quality of the end result, and Colosseum draws a lot of its appeal from those edges. That's not to say XD is a bad game, and it definitely deals with some of the more frustrating parts of its prequel, but the finished product isn't necessarily a better one; moreso just different.
Take, for one, the battle encounters. When I ask you to think of any encounter from Colosseum, what's the first one that comes to mind? Is it Dakim and his Protect/Earthquake spam? Evice Skill Swapping into his Slaking? Or maybe Miror. B, the first main boss of the game with a team of four Ludicolo? The regular trainers don't tend to have all that much going on (though sometimes they do!), but they put a lot of care into the main bosses and it shows. Now, what do you think of when you do the same for XD? Well, I saw a Mt. Battle trainer use Toxic on their other Pokemon earlier to boost Facade and honestly that was more interesting than anything the bosses did. If that thought experiment didn't work, we can make a more direct comparison between Dakim (Colosseum) and Gorigan (XD), since their teams revolve around the same gimmick. And we don't even need to dive deep to see the difference - Gorigan's Earthquake-spamming team doesn't even have any Ground types!! And his is the most interesting team! The other bosses explore a single neat idea, but never fully commit to anything; their teams are otherwise unfocused and lacking in identity, unlike their Colosseum counterparts.
But while XD leaves encounter design at the wayside, it focuses far more on your own teambuilding. The roster in XD is far richer, giving you access to a much stronger set of Pokemon with a much more diverse and interesting spread from each region. Poke Coupons can be earned without grinding Mt. Battle ad nauseum (though granted the alternative isn't great either), meaning those TMs are accessible with a bit less of a headache - and speaking of TMs, you can buy Protect reasonably early! Though these positives don't even come without a dark side, particularly the breadth of Pokemon - there's a great number of Pokemon to catch, but in a game where you're expected to catch every Pokemon put in front of you, it really starts to feel like bloat. Walking through Citadark going through wave after wave of trainers with multiple shadows, I can't help but think to myself - why am I bothering to catch them? And you obviously can choose not to - you can even get them again later in this game - but when one of the goals of the game is ostensibly to catch and purify all the Shadow Pokemon, it does a great job of making you not want to catch them.
It feels bad going in as hard as I did on this game; like I said, it's not even bad - it's even fun at times! - and it does have a fair few strong aspects, though most are shared with Colosseum. Double battles are still deeply enriching to an otherwise flavourless combat system, and the act of having to catch Shadow Pokemon mid-battle adds further decision-making in battle and even when putting a team together. But 30 hours in and staring down the final stretch of the game, thinking about how my Colosseum playthrough had a satisfying end in half the time - I just can't stop thinking about how much I want it to end.
For the full experience, play this while reading the review, then let it run to the end. Then play it through once more.
In almost every aspect, Pokemon XD feels like a sanitised version of Colosseum. Edges are sanded down and smoothened out, but done so with no real regard for the quality of the end result, and Colosseum draws a lot of its appeal from those edges. That's not to say XD is a bad game, and it definitely deals with some of the more frustrating parts of its prequel, but the finished product isn't necessarily a better one; moreso just different.
Take, for one, the battle encounters. When I ask you to think of any encounter from Colosseum, what's the first one that comes to mind? Is it Dakim and his Protect/Earthquake spam? Evice Skill Swapping into his Slaking? Or maybe Miror. B, the first main boss of the game with a team of four Ludicolo? The regular trainers don't tend to have all that much going on (though sometimes they do!), but they put a lot of care into the main bosses and it shows. Now, what do you think of when you do the same for XD? Well, I saw a Mt. Battle trainer use Toxic on their other Pokemon earlier to boost Facade and honestly that was more interesting than anything the bosses did. If that thought experiment didn't work, we can make a more direct comparison between Dakim (Colosseum) and Gorigan (XD), since their teams revolve around the same gimmick. And we don't even need to dive deep to see the difference - Gorigan's Earthquake-spamming team doesn't even have any Ground types!! And his is the most interesting team! The other bosses explore a single neat idea, but never fully commit to anything; their teams are otherwise unfocused and lacking in identity, unlike their Colosseum counterparts.
But while XD leaves encounter design at the wayside, it focuses far more on your own teambuilding. The roster in XD is far richer, giving you access to a much stronger set of Pokemon with a much more diverse and interesting spread from each region. Poke Coupons can be earned without grinding Mt. Battle ad nauseum (though granted the alternative isn't great either), meaning those TMs are accessible with a bit less of a headache - and speaking of TMs, you can buy Protect reasonably early! Though these positives don't even come without a dark side, particularly the breadth of Pokemon - there's a great number of Pokemon to catch, but in a game where you're expected to catch every Pokemon put in front of you, it really starts to feel like bloat. Walking through Citadark going through wave after wave of trainers with multiple shadows, I can't help but think to myself - why am I bothering to catch them? And you obviously can choose not to - you can even get them again later in this game - but when one of the goals of the game is ostensibly to catch and purify all the Shadow Pokemon, it does a great job of making you not want to catch them.
It feels bad going in as hard as I did on this game; like I said, it's not even bad - it's even fun at times! - and it does have a fair few strong aspects, though most are shared with Colosseum. Double battles are still deeply enriching to an otherwise flavourless combat system, and the act of having to catch Shadow Pokemon mid-battle adds further decision-making in battle and even when putting a team together. But 30 hours in and staring down the final stretch of the game, thinking about how my Colosseum playthrough had a satisfying end in half the time - I just can't stop thinking about how much I want it to end.