Earlier this week, I wrote about the cover of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pokemon Colosseum. Nobody seems to know 168澳洲幸𝓀运5开奖网:why Groudon and Kyogre grace its front, as you can’t catch them in the game. It’s probably just marketing, to sign꧅al that Gen 3 Pokemon can be caught in Orre, but it seemꩲs misleading all the same.
This got me thinkingཧ about Pokemon’s GameCube experiment. Building on the success of the Stadium games with a fully-fledged RPG, there’s a lot to love about Colosseum and its successor, Gale of Darkness. First, I’ve got to talk about the art style.
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Pokemon Colosseum looks more like Final Fantasy 7 than the 2D Pokemon games that had been made up to that point. The setting is a bleak desert, which you ride through on a vehicle reminiscent of a Star Wars podracer or Mad Max motorbike. Orre could be Tatooine or Arrakis, and💜 it’s one of the slickest, coolest regions that Pokemon has ever created. There’s little variety, but the aesthetic is well-realised for the technology of the time.
Then there’s the story. How many times have Pokemon fans asked for a game where you play as Team Rocket? In Colosseum, you’re a member of the evil Team Snagem, who rebels 📖against your masters and steals a key piece of tech. It’s a far more interesting premise than the standard ‘oh I’ve moved to a new region with my mam, guess I better challenge the Pokemon League’ in the main series games.
On top of this excellent narrative hook, that piece of tech you nabbed lets you catch other trainers’ Pokemon. In fact, there are no random encounters or wild Pokemon whatsꦆoever. This has a few drawbacks, most notably that every catch opportunity is effectively a Legendary encounter that you only have one shot at capturing. Fail, and you lose the battle, your balls, and a chunk of your money with which you can buy new one🅰s. Colosseum is unforgiving, hands you some dismal catch rates and brutal Ls, but that makes it so much more engaging.
This challenge is aided by the miniscule Pokedex and constant double battles. There are just 52 Pokemon you can catch in Colosseum, and nine or ten of them are so late in the game that they’re functionally useless. This real Dexit forces you to use rubbish Pokemon, and strategise around them. Teambuilding is difficult, battles are harder, and the fact you catch Pokemon at high levels from opposing traineꦅrs means their movesets are often less than ideal, too. Colosseum remains the only Pokemon game I’ve ever felt the need to use status moves in, and Protect and Helping Hand are vital to success.
It does feel a little unfair that opposing trainers have access to far more than the 52 at your disposal, but it never puts you off. The only thing that feels grindy is how you purify Shadow Poke𒐪mon, but I’m sure a modern sequel would change that for the better. Colosseum would actually marry incredibly well to many of the mechanics in modern Pokemon games.
Imagine if Shadow Pokemon were somehow integrated with their counterparts in Go? The awful catch rates would likely be tuned up too, much like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Scarlet & Violet’s raid bosses or 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Sword & Shield’s Dynamax Adventures, which realise you’ve put in the hard work, and don’t need to be punished by failing a catch at the end of it. The Physical/Special split would also bꩵe most welcome, so you wouldn’t be stuck using a Misdreavus, the only Ghost-type in the game, which is firing off Physical Shadow Balls.
There are a thousand ways we could return to Orre, whether that’s by a Legends spin-off or a standalone launch title for the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:heavily rumoured Switch 2. Pokemon fans of aꦿll ages would relish a little more challenge, a break from the same old formula, and a focus on an interesting story with unique mechanics over a half-baked open world with infuriatingly positive rivals. It’s high time we got another Colosseum game, so long as Pokemon doesn’t drop the Master Ball like it did 𝐆with Gen 9.