Pokémon Colosseum Review

Alright, so here's the thing with Pokemon. It's a very samey series. And what I mean by that is ever since the series began, not much as changed. Game Freak has never really done anything to spice the series up. Now a lot of people will argue that Nintendo milks a lot of their series. Mario and Pokemon are prime examples. The last time we saw innovation in a Mario game was in Super Mario Galaxy which came out ages ago. And literally every Pokemon game is the exact same save for a few changes to the metagame like the addition of Dark and Steel type in Generation 2 and the Fairy type in Generation 6. But no one really cares about that stuff. The vast majority of people, myself included, wanna see something new and exciting, we want to see a breath of fresh air in Pokemon. But what a lot of people don't know is that a Pokemon RPG that came out over a decade ago exists, and it completely breaks the mold of every game that preceded it. That game is Pokemon Colosseum for the Gamecube.

I'm gonna say straight up that I adore this game. While it may not be perfect, the fact that it strayed away from the usual Pokemon formula is what makes it so great and so unique. It was made by Genius Sonority, who later went on to make other Pokemon spinoffs like the sequel to this game, XD: Gale of Darkness, Pokemon Trozei, and... Learn with Pokemon: Typing Adventure... what? Anyway, the point it that Game Freak did NOT make this game, which might explain the drastic change in how the game plays compared to the games in the main series. Perhaps the biggest and most interesting thing about this game that makes it stand out from the rest of the series is the fact that you don't play as a 10 year old kid who's just starting his Pokemon adventure, and his goal is to take down all 8 Gym Leaders and subsequently the Elite Four. You play as Wes, a former member of the criminal organization Team Snagem, who steal Pokemon from other trainers. The game begins when Wes destroys Snagem's hideout and steals their Snag Machine, which gives its user the ability to steal people's Pokemon. What's GENIUS (ha) about this is that because your character isn't a generic child who has the same dreams and aspirations like literally every other Pokemon protagonist, it allows him to develop his own personality through gameplay. We don't know a lot about Wes; why he joined Team Snagem, why he decided to destroy their base and betray them, and what exactly he was going to do with the Snag Machine he stole from their base. It adds an aura of mystery to the game which I can really appreciate.

Another awesome thing about this game is that every battle is a double battle, meaning that there's a lot more strategy involved in combat as opposed to combat the main series where most battles consist of you spamming the A button over and over. However, a negative consequence of this is that battles drag on for much longer than they would in single battles. The super long attack animations contribute to dragging the battles on and they get kinda boring as time goes on. I can understand that this isn't everyone's cup of tea, and it'll probably annoy a lot of people playing the game for the first time. It's a pretty large flaw that the game has.

Another interesting and unique mechanic in this game is Shadow Pokemon. Shadow Pokemon are Pokemon whose hearts have been closed which makes them evil for some reason. Yeah, that's never really explained... Anyway, these Pokemon were created by Team Cipher, and distributed to people across the never-before-seen Orre region. The main goal that you as the player have is to steal back these Pokemon from trainers using the Snag Machine, and then later open their hearts to turn them back into normal Pokemon. Shadow Pokemon start out with a single attack called Shadow Rush, which is a typeless physical attack. They learn more moves as their hearts begin to open more, as indicated by the heart gauge where their experience bar would be if they were a normal Pokemon. Once this gauge depletes completely, you are able to purify the Pokemon, which allows you to trade it to your Gameboy Advance games once you beat the main story, and replaces Shadow Rush with a different move. This is an AWESOME mechanic that's so creative and different. A pretty big flaw with this, though, is Hyper Mode. Basically, a Pokemon will go into Hyper Mode in the middle of battle, and when they do, whatever attack they were supposed to use that turn is not used, and their turn is essentially wasted. On top of that, a Pokemon in Hyper Mode is only allowed to use Shadow Rush and cannot take any items like potions. The only potential good part of this mechanic is that their critical hit ratio on Shadow Rush skyrockets, which can be useful considering it's a pretty powerful attack, but it doesn't make up for the fact that if you want to get the Pokemon out of Hyper Mode, you have to use the "call" command, which uses up another turn and slightly lowers the Pokemon's heart gauge. So that means that Pokemon will go two turns without doing anything, and in that time the Pokemon could potentially get knocked out, making your efforts to get it out of Hyper Mode meaningless. This is EXTREMELY frustrating for obvious reasons. There are one of two ways this mechanic could have been improved: by NOT being implemented in the game in the first place, or make it so the Pokemon can still use the attack it was going to use on the turn it goes into Hyper Mode. It just seems like a really arbitrary mechanic that seems kind of lazily shoehorned in.

Something I like about Shadow Pokemon is that there's a very limited amount of them, meaning you can only have so many different combinations of teams. This may seem like a negative to some people, but I really like it. My reasoning for this is that because you have such a limited selection of Pokemon to choose from, you might have to use Pokemon you normally wouldn't use in a main series game. For example, My final team was Espeon, Granbull, Hitmontop, Misdreavus, Entei, and Tyrannitar. Under normal circumstances, I probably would never use Granbull, Hitmontop, or Misdreavus; but I came to really appreciate them. They obviously aren't the BEST Pokemon around, but I'm a very casual Pokemon player, and I mostly pick the ones that I think are the coolest. And because I got to use different, more "out there" Pokemon, it opened up my mind to using a lot more Pokemon that I wouldn't have considered otherwise. I guess this really only applies to super mega nerds like me. However, having a limited selection also has another cool side effect: it forces you to adapt to rapidly changing situations. To elaborate, by the time you're able to purify Shadow Pokemon, you should have a good amount of them if you've been catching them all. From there, it's up to you how you want to construct your sort of rag-tag team. This adds another layer of challenge to the game. It's by far the hardest Pokemon game I've ever played.

There are some downsides to this though. For starters, Shadow Pokemon don't level up before they're purified. This is especially frustrating early in the game before you can purify them. All the experience they would have earned as Shadow Pokemon is added once they're purified however. But in the early parts of the game, you have to deal with having only two normal Pokemon to use. Shadow Pokemon aren't exactly easy to use either; because they only have Shadow Rush for a very long time, they're very limited in what they can do until they start to learn more moves. Not only that, but this also eliminates half the strategy that comes from double battles, because if you choose to have one normal Pokemon and one Shadow Pokemon out at a time, literally all you can do with the Shadow Pokemon is spam Shadow Rush over and over. It's extremely boring to use Shadow Pokemon at all. This makes 100% completion of the game way more of an uphill battle than it needs to be. Sure, there are other methods of purifying Shadow Pokemon, like walking around or... rubbing... lotion on them? Uhh... okay, then, game. But the fact that purifying Shadow Pokemon at all is a massive chore is a flaw in and of itself. The only motivation you as a player have to purify Shadow Pokemon is that you'll basically be screwed if you don't. The game should be fun enough to motivate the player to do this, but the truth is that it's not.

Something else that a lot of people will dislike about the game is the lack of an open world like in main series Pokemon games. Colosseum is one of the most, if not THE most linear Pokemon game to date. Instead of traveling through routes and visiting various towns and caves like in the main series games, you're instead presented with a world map with select locales to visit. To make matters worse, none of these areas are as vast and open as you would expect them to be. They're all very small and cramped. There's basically no exploration at all. And a lot of the time you'll encounter large hallways with one trainer after another. The worst culprit of this is the Pyrite building, which has not one, not two, but a whopping SIX trainers in a row with nothing in between, PLUS two mini-bosses at the end. In short, you're gonna be doing a lot of battling. Think of this game as if it were Pokemon Stadium or something, just with running around and story elements.

Something I will praise about this game is its kick-ass soundtrack. It's definitely my favorite out of any Pokemon game. You've been hearing music from the game in the background this entire time, so hopefully you'll get an understanding of why it's excellent. It ranges from having slow, groovy jazz-like songs to fast, energetic rock songs. It's a pretty diverse soundtrack, and it deviates from the norm when it comes to Pokemon music. My personal favorite songs from the game are Cipher Peon Battle, Pyrite Town, Semifinal Battle, Normal Battle, and let's not forget the legendary Miror B's Retro Groove. They're all great songs on their own.

Quite possibly the worst thing about Pokemon Colosseum is its post-game. Remember how I mentioned that 100% completion is an uphill battle? Well I wasn't kidding. The entire post-game consists of going on a wild goose chase searching for the last few remaining Shadow Pokemon. A cool part of this at least is that you get to visit the Team Snagem hideout, which only becomes available after you complete the main story. It is actually pretty interesting to explore it. But some of the last few Shadow Pokemon are so freaking annoying to track down and catch that it's infuriating. For starters, in order to get one of the Johto starter Pokemon, you have to backtrack all the way through the Shadow Pokemon lab, where every trainer you fought the first time around will battle you once again with a stronger team than they previously had. The Johto starter is held by the VERY LAST trainer in the entire area. But that pales in comparison to obtaining the Shadow fucking Shuckle. You wanna know how you get that thing? There's a hidden Colosseum in The Under called the Deep Colosseum that you can only access in the post-game. It's the hardest one in the entire game. You have to complete this Colosseum FOUR TIMES to get up to the trainer that has the Shuckle. So that means in total, if you don't fail to catch Shuckle, you have to complete the Deep Colosseum FIVE FUCKING TIMES. WHY. THEN once you have every Shadow Pokemon (there's 48 by the way), you have to purify every single one of them, which can take an absurd amount of time to do. THEN once you've done that, your reward for suffering through all of that lies at the top of Mount Battle, a 100 trainer challenge. You heard me correctly, you have to fight your way through ONE HUNDRED TRAINERS to get your completion reward. The worst part is that the first 80 or so trainers are mindlessly easy and you can just spam the A button without even thinking about it and you'll still win. And the final trainer, at least in the Single Battle version of Mount Battle, has a Kyogre that has a stupidly, and I mean a STUPIDLY high speed stat. Couple that with the fact that its ability makes it rain, powering up water type attacks, and that it has Hydro Pump, you will have to be EXTREMELY lucky to not get all of your Pokemon swept immediately. That doesn't even account for the other two Pokemon he'll use before it, which are definitely a challenge on their own. You won't even know which Pokemon besides the Kyogre he'll use, so you have to get really lucky with the party you pick out for this battle. Your reward for all this pain and suffering is a Ho-Oh that's level 70, so at least there's that. Now, don't get me wrong, this would have totally been worth it for people back in the day, because this game was one of few ways to get Pokemon from the Johto region, but the existence of HeartGold and SoulSilver makes the entire post-game a completly obsolete. I honestly just did it because I felt like it, but if you value your sanity and your time, you will NOT EVER want to do the post-game, and I mean NEVER.

So in conclusion, for real this time, despite how frustrating this game can be, and how stupidly awful the post-game is, Pokemon Colosseum is a pretty good game if you can look past its flaws. Yeah, it's hard, it's annoying at times, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy playing it. I have no clue WHY I enjoyed playing it, I just did. This review probably made you not want to touch this game with a ten foot pole, but like I said in the first part, I appreciate it for how unique it is compared to the games in the main series. In a series defined by its inability to experiment, Pokemon Colosseum is a breath of fresh air. I really do recommend it to dedicated Pokemon fans. It's strange, it's different, but it's enjoyable overall.