pokemon gladiators

finished pokemon colosseum a week or so ago. i was looking forward to seeing pokemon in 3D, so even though i’d only completed pokemon yellow i skipped over the other handheld games which of course isn’t really the most ideal progression. as it was, the vast majority of the pokemon in this game were ones i’d never seen before, which was a disadvantage, especially since i also hadn’t encountered steel or dark types.

nevertheless the game wasn’t that hard. the funny thing about RPG’s in general is that if there’s a “hard” enemy you can pretty much always just take more time to level up your characters before fighting it again. in pokemon yellow i felt like i didn’t have to spend much time doing this which makes me think the game did a better job of pacing the game than pokemon colosseum. but perhaps in pokemon colosseum they assumed people would be trading in pokemon they’d already spent a lot of time with from the ruby/sapphire/emerald games. in contrast i can remember spending loads of time levelling up my team in the orig. final fantasy which makes me remember that game as being “hard”, although time spent doing grunt work doesn’t quite seem like the right way to judge the difficulty of a game.

anyway, i appreciated the differences the game added to distinguish it from the handheld games. i thought the idea of “shadow pokemon” you had to snag from other pokemon trainers who were “bad guys” instead of catching wild pokemon was novel, but having to purify each of them and reset every time you missed one (if you wanted a complete collection) quickly grew tedious. i remember in pokemon yellow there were only a few battles where you only had one chance to catch a particular species of pokemon, but having a game that consists of only these types of battles, while understandably an effort to make this game more unique and more of a challenge, just ended up slowing things down and causing frustration, particularly since it’s so easy for the enemy pokemon to knock itself out w/ its shadow moves. as it was i didn’t bother beating the last (bonus) stadium and purifying the rest of the pokemon to get ho-oh, but of course i prob. will someday.

seeing the pokemon battles in 3D was fun though. although (if i remember correctly) the ign review said that watching the animations take up the majority of the time of the game, they’re still quite entertaining. the “faints” are particularly amusing, with zangoose getting my vote for the most theatrical faint, and granbull getting an honorable mention.

i also enjoyed the game’s attempt to offer a bit darker experience, with its anti-hero and its mostly desert setting. the storyline was pretty weak, but i don’t think most people are playing the pokemon games for the story anyway. and i know some people dislike the double battle setup, but i liked it for being something different, although it might have been nice to have a bit of both.

once again to commemorate my win, here are the 6 pokemon i ended up using (images thanks to the indispensible serebii.net).

plusle ending up being pretty weak. the MVP turned out to be octillery who naturally learns bubble beam, ice beam, and hyper beam, and who i had learn psychic and sludge bomb. it was kind of a pain to have to train her up from remoraid, but it turned out to be well worth it.

anyway, not the greatest game and as i said, def. slower and more frustrating than the handheld games are, but still worth playing through for any pokemon fanatic. i don’t plan on getting the sequel, pokemon XD: gale of darkness, any time soon, but i’ll def. play through it eventually.

and heeeeeere’s the link to the guide from ign. i actually finished another game a couple of days ago, so i’ll be posting about that this week as well. w00t.

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