Current Events > Pokemon Colosseum and XD are good games

(+) Yeah! (+)

not even just "good for pokemon" like they're actually legit good

We need more of them

TheHoldSteady posted...

not even just "good for pokemon" like they're actually legit good

We need more of them

I never played XD but I tried to give Colosseum a second chance recently and it sucks. It manufactures difficulty by making money/items scarce, and putting healing points few and far in between, and it purposely gates good Pokemon behind the "Shadow" mechanic which the only way to get past it is to grind battles over and over again, which is hard to do in the first place because there are either none, or very few, wild battle spots to begin with.

I heavily disagree with the recent revisionist history of people trying to pretend these games were "good" and somehow better than the Switch games.

Gale of Darkness is my favorite Pokemon game, and one of my favorite games of all time. Not just because it features my favorite Pokemon, but I love the storyline and just thinking of the idea of a missing cruise ship is emotional.

I love the soundtracks of both games, IIRC Agate Village music was better in Colosseum, but Miror B music was better in XD.

Dudebusters posted...

It manufactures difficulty by making money/items scarce, and putting healing points few and far in between

What is the difference in your mind between manufactured difficulty and just straight-up difficulty?

The games are not even hard, like barely harder than the main games. .

Dudebusters posted...

It manufactures difficulty by making money/items scarce,

no it doesn't

items are easily purchased just like in any other pokemon game

and you can grind for money against any trainers in the towns, or any of the tournaments

Colosseum had the added bonus glitch of cloning any ball was it? You could easily catch any Pokemon because of that glitch thanks to double battles.

marthsheretoo posted...

What is the difference in your mind between manufactured difficulty and just straight-out difficulty?

Straight out difficulty would be just including difficult battles in general in a natural way that accounts for actual character/level growth. For example, Platinum is a great example, because the "final boss," Cynthia is just plain legitimately difficult, even if you over-level.

That's different than what Colosseum does. Colosseum doesn't actually have any kind of growth, it just throws battles at you, and instead of having any kind of logic to them, it creates difficulty by just going... Okay, we know you have a limited source of Pokemon, so we don't have to be creative, we can just make heal/save points far away, so you have to use terrible Pokemon against your will for long lengths of time, since we don't allow you to evolve them or anything.

TheHoldSteady posted...

and you can grind for money against any trainers in the towns, or any of the tournaments

Only certain trainers are actually available to rebattle. This is easily forgotten, since there are so few towns/trainers to begin with, granted. You're basically stuck grinding against that "We're the Five X trainers!" circle in that one town over and over again. And they never change their party.

Granted, I'm speaking about Colosseum, specifically. Maybe XD fixed this problem.

XD is good. Colosseum'a shadow mechanic is just way too slow and grindy for me.

Mt. Battle was a crazy feat and then with Ho-Oh at the end in a gen where it was otherwise impossible to get, man

Compsognathus posted...

Colosseum'a shadow mechanic is just way too slow and grindy for me.

This is what I'm trying to say yes. I do want to give XD a try sometime. Colosseum just turned me off.

TheHoldSteady posted...

Mt. Battle was a crazy feat and then with Ho-Oh at the end in a gen where it was otherwise impossible to get, man

Didn't Mt. Battle basically require you to trade Pokemon in to Colosseum though. I feel like that's part of the problem.

Colosseum was an absolutely terrible standalone game.

Dudebusters posted...

Only certain trainers are actually available to rebattle. This is easily forgotten, since there are so few towns/trainers to begin with, granted. You're basically stuck grinding against that "We're the Five X trainers!" circle in that one town over and over again. And they never change their party.

Granted, I'm speaking about Colosseum, specifically. Maybe XD fixed this problem.

not true

the colosseums with the tournament style gameplay all give money for winning and can be done infinitely

the fort where miror b lives never clears and the trainers can be rematched

the entirety of pyrite town is filled with trainers

the under has trainers

agate town has trainers

just off the top of my head

TheHoldSteady posted...

not true

the colosseums with the tournament style gameplay all give money for winning and can be done infinitely

the fort where miror b lives never clears and the trainers can be rematched

the entirety of pyrite town is filled with trainers

the under has trainers

agate town has trainers

just off the top of my head

Literally like 90% of what you said are basically dungeons and or boss-esque "tournaments". And one of them is the "trainer circle" I mentioned where the Pokemon never grow, you can just rebattle them over and over again by entering a building and exiting.

If you can't see the problem with limiting character growth to these methods, I don't know what to tell you. There's a reason Colosseum was very poorly received at the time.

Dudebusters posted...

one of them is the "trainer circle

the whole pathway up to the pyrite Colosseum is battle able not just the circle

No Lies Detected

Dudebusters posted...

boss-esque "tournaments"

the Colosseum aspect is in the name of the game i mean if you completely ignore a core mechanic and then are like where's my money that's on u

TheHoldSteady posted...

the whole pathway up to the pyrite Colosseum is battle able not just the circle

I feel like you're intentionally being difficult at this point

When I have to battle like twenty trainers just for my Croconaw to be able to use Bite, which it already knows, that's a problem. That's not fun, that's just repetition.

Colosseum was not good. Nobody thought it was good when it came out, so I'm not sure where this push to suggest it's good came from, now.

Let me put it this way.

Imagine them adding the Shadow mechanic from Colosseum to modern Pokemon. It would universally be met with scorn. So forgive my questions when people suddenly try to say Colosseum was seen as a good game now. I lived that shit, I know it wasn't seen as good. People hated it, people were upset that we got half-assed limited crap instead of a true Pokemon game on Gamecube.

Maybe XD actually improved, I don't know. But Colosseum had a reputation for being bad, and it earned that reputation.

Community initially saw gen 5 as 'bad' too, so not the best track record for the fanbase.

Colosseum offered a nice challenge and a different way to play. Double Battles were new and exciting and this was the first game that seriously made you fight them. Ruby and Sapphire only have a few token double battles, Tate and Liza being the only required one.

Is it grindy? Yes. Doesn't mean it wasn't good.

XD significantly improved the Shadow Pokemon system though.

Umbreon posted...

Is it grindy? Yes. Doesn't mean it wasn't good.

Colosseum was vehemently not good, though.

You couldn't evolve Pokemon. You couldn't trade Pokemon in until after you beat the story. You were stuck using the Pokemon it gave you, and you were stuck with the very poor Shadow system. So not only were you stuck with the Shadow system, you had like... 30 Pokemon, to choose from? I know it was more than that, but every Pokemon was gated behind story progress, so a lot of them came much later.

It was just bad all around.

That said it's promising to hear XD was an improvement. I want to give it a try.

It's called challenge. A strange concept for a Pokemon game I know. To address your points.

You could evolve Pokemon once they were purified.

You also couldn't trade in FRLG(To other games) until you cleared the post-game, and people don't dunk on the game because of that.

And while the Shadow system does have its flaws in Colosseum, it's not so bad as to make the game unplayable. I honestly get the feeling that some people were just upset they couldn't easily overlevel a Pokemon and press A until credits.

Limited Pokemon? Yeah, how many people used mons they normally wouldn't because of tthat?

Also yeah, absolutely try out XD. It addresses the main complaints of Colosseum. More interesting Shadow Pokemon mechanics (Multiple moves outside of Shadow Rush), type effectiveness interaction makes Shadows more threatening and makes not purifying a viable strategy.

Speaking of purification, it's way less annoying in XD too.

It just seems like this dude has a grudge against Colosseum for some reason. A lot of your complaints about purifying Pokemon are just plain incorrect. Hard to take any of your complaints seriously though when you start off with implying that they're difficult games. They are literally children's games. I beat them just fine as a kid, and even got Ho-Oh in Colosseum and figured out the purification chamber in XD to purify my shadow Lugia

Just last year solo'd (duo'd?) Colosseum with the starting Umbreon and Espeon, and solo'd XD with the starting Eevee (not evolved) just so I could transfer everything else untouched up to my Pokemon Home account. It was fine. I even solo'd (duo'd?) Mt. Battle with them to get Ho-Oh, and did the side quest at the end of XD to get the fabled Lucky Egg just for fun

They are great games. The only caveat I will add is that it sucks they don't let you skip animations, so I played them with speed up activated on my Steam Deck. Maybe that would fix some of your problems with the games

I never said they were difficult. I said they had manufactured difficulty, which is different than actual difficulty.

They weren't difficult, just annoying and grindy.

Umbreon posted...

Limited Pokemon? Yeah, how many people used mons they normally wouldn't because of that?

I mean isn't the biggest complaint against Pokemon now that you can't use the entire Dex? Colosseum took that and went "Oh yeah? Well, how about 1/10th of that?"

I just think it's weird that people cry foul about Sword/Shield, Scarlet/Violet, and so on, because they can't use the entire Dex, but suddenly Colosseum is seen as a good game, when it was perhaps the most limited, slow, grindy Pokemon game ever released?

Colosseum was actually somewhat hard because the Pokemon you had to use were so terrible.

You have Espeon and your starter (realistically probably Quilava) and then not really anything until Ampharos. There's some solid enough variety to put together a usable team, but it's drip fed.

While not perfect, they were great side games. They at least changed up the already then tired formula of the mainline games, and Wes, despite being kind of a generic edgelord design, was still a unique protagonist that the series should have more of. I feel like that easily could have remained a staple side series.

Yeah, don't get me wrong, my complaint wasn't the actual difficulty.

My complaint was that the game was so incredibly limited, and having grown up when Colosseum was a big deal because it was a console Pokemon game, I remember everybody being so disappointed by how incredibly limited it was. That's why I'm now very confused that it's apparently suddenly now seen as a good game, since the major complaint people have about Pokemon today appears to be how limited the games are, and..Well, it doesn't get any more limited than Colosseum, period.

Anyway, it was impressive how these games were slapped together by a ragtag group of ex-Square employees, many of whom never even played a Pokemon game prior to this. I wish they stuck around Genius Sonority and kept making spinoff Pokemon RPGs

I believe Masuda was recently asked about Colosseum and XD getting ported or sequels or some sort of attention recently, and he basically laughed and said "no". Unfortunate, but I believe he had a similar reaction to Pokemon Snap in the past, and that ended up getting onto the Switch Online N64 app and a new game on the Switch. Maybe since Nintendo has mostly exhausted Wii U ports, they'll want Colosseum and XD ported sometime down the line to fill in the release calendar for the Switch 2

Dudebusters posted...

I mean isn't the biggest complaint against Pokemon now that you can't use the entire Dex? Colosseum took that and went "Oh yeah? Well, how about 1/10th of that?"

I just think it's weird that people cry foul about Sword/Shield, Scarlet/Violet, and so on, because they can't use the entire Dex, but suddenly Colosseum is seen as a good game, when it was perhaps the most limited, slow, grindy Pokemon game ever released?

Colosseum was basically there to get you Pokemon unavailable in Ruby and Sapphire.

Sword and Shield just straight up said certain Pokemon no longer exists.

I can trade over Donphan over to Colosseum if I wanted to, but Sword and Shield tells me to go fuck myself.

That is the difference.

Umbreon posted...

I can trade over Donphan over to Colosseum if I wanted to, but Sword and Shield tells me to go fuck myself.

That is the difference.

Gonephan

Umbreon posted...

Colosseum was basically there to get you Pokemon unavailable in Ruby and Sapphire.

Sword and Shield just straight up said certain Pokemon no longer exists.

I can trade over Donphan over to Colosseum if I wanted to, but Sword and Shield tells me to go f*** myself.

That is the difference.

But in practice, is it really that much of a difference, if Colosseum practically doesn't even let you use Donphan at all, since you can't trade it over for the main story? You can use it in such an incredibly limited fashion that you might as well not use it at all. To me, that doesn't feel like much of a difference. I guess mileage varies though.

Like, here's my problem.

If I transfer Donphan to Colosseum, I can't use it in the story. I can't level it up. I can't do anything with it at all but use it in Mt. Battle or whatever. And then, I'm limited to exactly how I transferred it over, I can't change it or anything. If I want to change it, I have to go back to whatever game I transferred it from and basically transfer over a new one.

It felt like I might as well not be able to use it at all.

Dudebusters posted...

But in practice, is it really that much of a difference, if Colosseum practically doesn't even let you use Donphan at all, since you can't trade it over for the main story? You can use it in such an incredibly limited fashion that you might as well not use it at all. To me, that doesn't feel like much of a difference. I guess mileage varies though.

The difference is the expectations. Nobody expects to be able to use everything in a side game. Everyone expected to keep using all the Pokemon in a mainline game, and there was never a valid reason given as to why they stopped.

I always felt like the gamecube pokemon games were really slowpaced. everything being a double-battle + everything having long drawn out animations means just a little gauntlet of 2-3 trainers feels like an endless slog

shadow pokemon are sort of lame too.

but otherwise I really like the variety of them from the main games. the limited team selection is a genius way to make you use weird pokemon

I get the disappointment of not being able to use it in story. I absolutely do.

But the mon still fucking exists in the game files. Dexit was so controversial because so many Pokemon can't even be used post-game.

Not to mention the implications of having to pay for Pokemon Bank (NSO), Pokemon in said bank being permanently deleted if your account is inactive for too long, so if you for whatever reason suddenly are unable to renew and the next game that comes out doesn't let your mon in...

They were always good to me D:

I loved them early on, and still love them now

I loved those games back in the day. Played through em plenty of times.

Got the Ho-oh from Mt Battle back then, and it's now sitting in my Switch. Along with a few Shadow Pokemon. In fact, the last time I played Ranked in SV, I used a Shadow Suicune. Thankfully Ranked blocks out nicknames, so my opponents didn't get to see the ridiculous name my 14 year old self gave it. They only see Suicune the Triumphant.

Its name is DAMP BARK.

Only real ones have a legit Psycho Boost Lugia and Heal Bell Dragonite from XD sitting in their Home collection

Relevant.

https://youtu.be/tvRNnIxDv-E?si=fSgIvKeS2gShC-SP

https://youtu.be/8TIAouFE3-I?si=_o9WN3LUE4Cc55yn

That guy does pretty good covers, but the guitar is too soft for my liking. These are some rockin themes and deserve to have the amp turned up. Can't beat the originals

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WuhqoZvyntA

Also, I know everyone chose this as their PDA ringtone:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Br5UhV8k3fc