Make sure to watch the other videos in the Gen 3 Trilogy for the full story! PART 1: Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire - th-cam.com/video/Ze8uhmeFt7A/w-d-xo.html PART 2: Pokemon Fire Red and Leaf Green - th-cam.com/video/GcLKCGGG340/w-d-xo.html PRELUDE TO PART 3: Pokemon's ORIGINAL National Dex Controversy - th-cam.com/video/p9Y_ACiMmek/w-d-xo.html
Think about the game this way, it's meant to be a callback to wild west movies where a rough and tumble U.S. marshal is sent out west to take care of political corruption and criminal dealings of small local governments, the games narrative makes a lot more sense when you think about it that way, I promise.
There's only 1 way to play this game: *utilitarian.* Use a pokemon until you get a better one, and then toss it in the box even though it's not purified. Keep 2 or 3 non-Shadow pokemon around, and the rest are just revolving door placeholders to be replaced with the Johto legends. And even then, this game is a LOT of grinding and a LOT of wasting your time. And this strat makes the post-game _even worse._
Things I have fond memories from Colosseum: 1)The fact that the bosses had actual strategies for their teams. 2)The plot twist that Evice was the actual evil leader instead of Nascour. 3) Mirror B. 4) The fact that your companion had the same name as me (well one letter away) 5)The wild west/ Dessert setting.
What I did like about Colosseum was the fact the trainers were an actual challenge, they were all replayable and at a decent level to train against. Especially how easy it is to memorize where who is where. For Gen 3, where R/S/E had pathetically weak trainers and nowhere to train post-game, it helped. You also got a lot more experience on average than you did in Gen 3 Pokemon games. Double battles also made training back then a lot easier, when moves like Surf didnt affect you. You could easily sweep with your training pokemon in the fight.
@@GeteMachine I remember learning many Pokemon strategies there, Like Earthqueake+protect, Rain+ leech seed + ludicolo, something that was nowhere in the GBA games that I remember.
Miror B. is surely the most emorable character in both GC-titles. I admit I even brought a Lotad into the game to get a Ludicolo with his name have the 100 battle badge...
The way I typically play. Three or 4 purified Pokémon, 2 or 3 shadow Pokémon. Rotating in new purified team mates when you find someone you like or are excited to use. You have to choose wisely. Allowing for a fun blend of team building vs the challenge of the game. Double battles are imo so much more fun than regular battles where I end up more or less spaming my most powerful move, always overlevveld in the story. You have to consider more, and while it’s true each shadow Pokémon starts with 1 attack the joy of unlocking new moves and the reward of that allowing you to strategise in a new ways is rewarding to me. I can’t disagree more with the idea of the game lacking identity. It has its own identity so unlike from anything Pokémon has tried and is a huge breath of fresh air from the mainline. “You decide” for this game is great, the greyness of the character motives matches the moral greyness of the whole game. I like filling in the blanks with my interpretation that’s what makes the experience mine Don’t get me wrong I don’t think it’s perfect, definetly has some of these flaws but it’s one of my favourites and I think the gameplay is fun every time I play it I fall in love again. The main place I agree with you is how long it takes the shadow Pokémon to purify which, if you’re trying to do that with every shadow Pokémon sucks. I would also hate playing it was way, So I don’t typically play that way and never have been naturally inclined to do so. Certainly not when I was a kid and still not now. I have done it once and yeah it was a grind but boy howdy did it make the Ho-oH feel like a reward. But that’s like 5% of my experience of playing this game. The healing beingat the entrance of dungeon like areas means you have to go in prepared and play wisely around the level difference. Makes feinting on those dungeon bosses a real possibility and choosing between catching or KO img a shadow Pokémon and not feinting yourself creates stakes in all the big battles. I can also understand you feeling the game wasn’t marketed to you and that is gutting and obviously shouldn’t have been the case. for what is there in the game though I can’t agree with many of the conclusions in the video. This is one of the most soulful games I’ve ever played and I do wish for more games like this with more added in from the mainline.
I was thinking of how to word my own feelings on this game and then come to find out BKT apparently did it all perfectly for me haha well said! I'm a little bit younger than Tama (by 2ish years I think?) , but also a girl and the idea that this game wasn't marketed to me honestly never even occurred to me, despite all the shit I got for being a girl who played Pokémon at that age. In fact I was obsessed with the female sidekick and her powers.
This was an excellent watch! Speaking as one of the few people who actually did own this game on release and enjoyed my time with it, I love this kind of good faith analysis to make make me rethink the mechanics from an adult perspective. I'll always look back fondly on Colosseum. It's a game that I used to bond with my family over as we muscled through the boss fights and I'll never get tired of its awesome soundtrack. Looking back though, it's crazy that I put up with that purification grind and it wasn't til now that I remembered how much of a slog that really was. Not many TH-camrs can keep my attention for over an hour by voicing a differing opinion.
Every person who actually played this game to experience it genuinely (and not just trying to make a YT video out of it) enjoyed the fuck out of it and loves it to this day despite its imperfections
@@NobleVagabond2552 I don't think she's voicing her opinion as a TH-camr, but as a completionist. You make it sound like she's just making a video for hate views.
during this era especially for jrpgs total length was a major selling point and so many companies felt forced to bloat their games to certain degree because most of the consumers at that time were kids who couldn't afford many new games a year. I usually bought only 1 or 2 new games every year so at that time it was really important to me.
DQ7 is the epitome of this. The original version of the game would easily put you over the 100 hour mark before finishing it, twice that if you wanted to 100% it.
The argument against game rentals definitely fed into that. Every game had to be a 50+ hour slog to make sure people would pay to own a copy rather than rent one multiple times
@@Mingodough yeah I mean if you like long games that's cool but I haven't met anyone that's best even half of their games in 15 years so getting your money's worth strikes me as a mute point
@@quiveringavicularia1513 nah I hate long games lol, I mostly play arcade games. But even if people don’t beat their games, most people do still look at length as a determining factor. How long to beat exists because people want to know how long it is, there isn’t a website for how dense it is to contrast that website
You showed incredible restraint with a thesis of "This game was designed to waste your time" and never going for the VERY low-hanging fruit that the battle animations are the longest in the series. They're comically long. You can feel yourself physically aging every time a Pokemon plays both its "take damage" and "faint" animations with each and every KO
These shots of the GameCube and the TV look SO good, and there’s some pretty fun editing moments here. On a technical/craft level this is your best video.
I've been playing through Colosseum recently (Not done yet, but I plan on completing it and transferring all the Pokémon) and these problems are definitely there. Purification takes a long time, Pyrite Cave is a chore to navigate through, and I never even beat the game as a kid because of the final boss rush. But even through my modern perspective, I still love the game and I have a lot of fun playing it.
I like that you start at lvl 25 so you skip early-game tacklespamming. Battle animations and camera angles still look better than the modern games. It went hard when i was 4 years old, and I still like it despite its issues. I'm not thrilled to go through the lategame again though.
Imo you still can choose which Pokemon you can travel with on your journey, but you have to make sure to rebattle the trainers at Pyrite town consistently instead of training at Mt. Battle like a lot of people do. The money you will accumulate will give you perfume that you can use to purify each shadow Pokemon, and I found this method of purification and leveling up much, much faster than the other method of constantly swapping out each Pokemon to purify them. I think I only spent 2 hours max grinding out these battles to purify all of the shadow Pokemon by doing this whereas spending that time with battles would maybe let me purify only one or two legendary cats? You don't have to compromise who you want on your team with this workaround, it made the experience so much more tolerable when I discovered it, and I found using shadow Pokemon in battle with this method actually made the process slower because of them constantly going into hyper mode.
I disagree but I also believe Colosseum could certainly be improved. Also the attack animation add a lot more character to the Pokémon that a lot of the games just don't have.
EDIT: My comment was poorly worded, my bad. I loved the game but could only think of one flaw with my experience, which was the grinding. I haven’t chosen to watch the whole video yet but I know Tama has other gripes with the game, including the main story, that I didn’t notice in my experience. I just know that playing the game 100% is important to reviewing the entire experience, and this game’s 100% completion is mmmmiserable. It would put one more additional bad mark on the game’s overall score AND just be a miserable experience for Tama in general, and if a game’s postgame was actually fun, this wouldn’t be a problem. ORIGINAL COMMENT: Okay, if you’ve been trying to 100% the game over and over and over, of course you’re gonna hate it, and I don’t say that in a mean way. I love it but it’s probably got the most painful XP grinding experience in the series. Completing it to 100% is pain, man. My sister ended up doing all the grinding for me (bless her) and we worked our way all the way up that mountain for her to unlock that Ho-Oh.
Haven't had a chance to watch the video yet, but here's my take: It should NOT be less fun to 100% the game than it is to just complete it normally. There is no reason it has to be tedious, and it only is because it was designed that way; that is a legitimate flaw worth criticizing it for. You shouldn't need to have someone else to do part of the work just so you can enjoy the game more, but I do have to admit that sounds like it was a great bonding experience.
Except that all the sentiment towards the game already existed and pretty much all of the points made are solid; playing it over and over for the video wasn't the reason Tama doesn't like the game, it just added to it.
@@AdeptCharon True and valid. That’s why I mean no meanness. Regardless of whether 100%ing a game is a choice, it should never be a chore, and that’s the one flaw I was AWARE of, that’s not even concerning the other valid ones listed.
Tama realized she didn't enjoy the game when she replayed it for the first time after several years of not having played it a year or so ago, she didn't start of liking it and then ended up disliking it after playing it several times, she played it several times in order for the review to be as thorough as possible. She has played and replayed several of the main-series Pokémon games a bunch of times, investing thousands of hours into them and still loving and finding enjoyment in them
I was NOT expecting a lore dump of possible development history shenanigans, but this is why I was excited for this video: I knew you were going to take a huge deep dive into this game, development included. This is probably going to be one of my favorite videos of yours yet!
@@infinityheart_tm9270 it provides evidence for the argument that the game was made to be longer on purpose for playtime and explains the lacking content
Honestly, I had the exact opposite experience with this game. I loved Coliseum, between the more challenging battles, limited pool, and great atmosphere. Yeah, the grindy dungeons are a pain at times and 100% the game is rough, especially if all you want out of it is Jhoto Pokémon in gen 3, but I really enjoyed the main game and didn’t find the 100% completion anywhere near as bad as any mainline game. I found the edgier nature cute, as it still felt distinctly Pokémon and has the same logic bending seen through the main series. I found myself enjoying it more than Gen 1 or 2 (I got Yellow and Crystal at around the same time, Emerald was my first, Diamond my second) at the very least, though funnily enough, Mystery Dungeon Blue is probably my favorite pre-gen 4 game. Heck, some of the problems mentioned here, like needing data mining to learn about mechanics or lack of role playing or character story is a problem I have with the main series and why I prefer the modern Pokémon games to the older ones. IVs, nature mechanics, hidden power, and a ton more were locked behind data mining, so the Shadow Pokémon stuff didn’t bother me.
I loved the steampunk/post-apocalyptic look of colosseum, I also loved the fact the battles are challenging, and there is thought put into NPC's team synergy.
Exactly! Very few mention of the visual thematics of the two games! The setting and world are beautiful and Wes is by far the best designed main character of any game tbh. Everyone complains about the roster being bad which I personally appreciate the very unused Pokémon shining in a game like this. With low power moves too, very very nice. Love these games. Definitely a few things can be changed up, but this is using 2023 perspectives on a 2004 game, of course we look at something different. You can tell the time and effort put towards the games compared to gen7-9 tbh.
@@i-work-at-enron right? Despite the fact that the main character could easily be gay. Nothing he does implies that he doesn’t. Gay guys don’t ride moterbikes and fight crime??
I was about 12 when I borrowed this game of a friend. It does hit a bit differently when you're new to edgy content, and just the pretty 3d fight effects. What probably helped is that I never bothered with much more then the main story, so I had my team of 6. For whatever I wanted to purify later on I usually would spam expensive scent massages on, probably the fastest method regardless of nature. Played XD a lot more, but I was stuck without owning a GBA in those years, so yeah.. I actually was very fond of training in Mt.Battle in XD and training pretty enjoyable enemies while still getting EXP and autohealed. Pretty much the most objective strength of the games is together with the default double battle rule it pushes the battle system a little harder then the standard GBA game storylines do. Enemy pokemon variety is also nice. XD also tried to make shadow pokemon stand out a bit with blanket super-effectiviness and overpowered status moves, but they are still a lot less efficient then a balanced,evolved regular team with good STAB movesets. I stopped replaying the game once I got older and had access to more specialized RPGs and the ds era Pokemon games. I did replay part Collosseum once, but if the novelty's worn of it's a lot harder to get through. Just having questionable team options feels awful and XD is a lot better offering you stuff early that's good to keep the entire game when so inclined. I was increasingly aware XD had some pretty sharp limitations compared to the main series games, although in-depth in some aspects, the spinoff energy is strong. It just feels less structured. The game's sense of humor and tone is also pretty weird. Just look at both the final bosses Evice and Greevil being weirdly cartoony and bouncy while having tall and stern direct underlings. Most of the names of everybody are just weird and word salad-ish. I haven't seen a game since which has the Orre game's specific recipe of weird. Also the randomness of the pokemon stat system is a terrible fit with the limited pokemon access and shadow system, which would work better if what you got was non-random. The game is pretty memorable and decent.. if you are a impressonable kid of the right age and the right time, mostly buying because the game looks cool/3d/little concept of getting the budding RPG itch elsewhere, instead of deeper factors. I suppose for many just the design and music are memorable, and the tangled mess of pokemon access passed when the next gen hit, if it was ever a factor to them at all.
My biggest gripe with these games is that you need to play them casually to not get bored in the grinding and purification. Which is ironic since this is the only way the hardcore "catch 'em all" people will get some of these Mons.
I do at least think it’d be cool to have had the anime cover Orre. Also I think if we got a remake, I think a overhaul in some parts could be warranted. It’d be cool if a revist to Orre gave it a new side like giving it its own Grand Underground that had routes to travel to the locales without need to use a bike. Have it be recently discovered with people coming Orre to study what’s in this new massive underground region.
Tama, I’ve been watching you ever since JWittz featured you in the banned Pokémon games collab (holy crap almost 10 years???) and after watching the video, I want to say thank you for the content over the years even if it hasn’t been consistent since life happens after all. I hope you and Chaz are having a great married life together! As for the video overall after watching it completely, I admit I have a strong nostalgia for Colosseum/XD. I believe I was around 6 when I played this Colosseum and it was just a super cool concept that emphasized my love for Pokémon while playing through tons of hours in Ruby. Colosseum hasn’t aged gracefully over the years and while I don’t think it’s a terrible game to this day, your points are detailed and really gave me a great perspective on the criticism towards the game. And as someone who loves 4th gen, I really enjoy watching and listening to your critiques and see another Pokémon fan’s perspective. Please keep up the good work and I hope you have a great day! ❤️
as a Colosseum and XD enjoyer, this was a super interesting watch. It was fascinating to hear all the background and context of the game design choices, which I otherwise probably never would have known about. I think I didn't really notice most of the issues with Shadow Pokemon etc because I never actually tried to purify them all, I probably got bored and gave up lol so I only remember the story/bits I liked ^^;; but you made a lot of good points that had me like "yeah actually, that DID kinda suck" lol. I still have a lot of affection for these games and would still love to see a remaster or even a sequel/reboot someday (though that will likely never happen), but I really enjoyed this critique and it definitely gave me a lot to think about! One very important thing you left out though: the Colosseum soundtrack absolutely slaps. I remember going back to certain areas just to listen to the music lol
One they I personally found is that colosseum was more akin to a typical rpg as there is a set list of members, and that the game is more enjoyable if not played as a typical Pokémon game and don’t connect to the GBA games (which sound a bit backwards)
@@Tama-Hero Suikoden has 108 recruitable characters and most of them are playable. There are also several moments throughout the series that demand you utilize more than just your favorite six.
I wonder if I felt any of this when I was a kid playing Colosseum for the first time. I was hyped for it when I saw the ads and previews. I thought “ooh, you can ride on a motorbike across the desert” and it filled my young mind with imagination. I even went on to create something on RPG Maker with that kind of aesthetic (but in it, I made the main character a prisoner who was trying to escape from his prison by abducting a giant robot so I think I won in the main character motivation department). Anyway, I remember playing Colosseum and was kinda just “whelmed”. I got as far as that early game long dungeon you mention in your video before feeling apathy towards the game. At least, I think it was apathy. I don’t really know. It could’ve been that I felt the design flaws but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I ended up skipping Gale of Darkness because I didn’t finish Colosseum. This was kind of the start of my apathy towards Pokémon until Black & White momentarily reinvigorated my interest in it (and then Sun & Moon nearly made me skip Sword & Shield, which I did end up liking). For a long time, I wanted to retry Colosseum. Give it another chance. Maybe I was too young! Maybe I missed some vital clue! Maybe I was impatient! I couldn’t remember why I stopped playing it. Watching this video was a bit like going through memory lane. I still think I’ll revisit it eventually to see for myself just why I stopped playing it but on the flip side, there’s so much to do and I still have aspirations to either create my own game or somehow get my own game created and I’ve been way too distracted by video games old and new. Truly, the internet has been wonderful for getting information quickly but it has been horrendous for distracting me by introducing me to new things constantly. Anyway, this was a great video! It was certainly a trip down memory lane for some of those early bits of the game.
This video has me so confused. I have my own issues with Pokemon Colosseum, and it does have problems. But I think the idea of what the game incentivizes in this video is one, very narrow view of it. I've played through the game a couple times now, in the same manner I do any other Pokemon game. I pick a team I want to use, I catch that team, and I use that team. Sure, there's an overarching goal in Colosseum of purifying all of the shadow pokemon. There's also an overarching goal in the original pokemon games of "Gotta Catch em all" - that's not what I enjoy about the game, so I don't do that. If I did it once, I probably wouldn't catch every single pokemon on every replay of Red and Blue. So to say the game really focuses on that and that it plays through the same every time because there's one way to play and you need to use shadow rush is just ignoring a huge aspect of the game where there is freedom. Colosseum does have it's issues, and many of them. But to base so much of this on a personal choice to try and purify every shadow pokemon as soon as possible and not make an actual team that you enjoy using is just crazy to me. It's an additional task the game gives you, and yeah, it kind of sucks if you're trying to have a complete Pokedex, but you can also always grind it out after beating the game - as you would with any game's Pokedex completion.
I will say this as a diehard fan of both Colosseum and XD: these videos have really opened my eyes to a lot of the shady business practices and intentional missteps that Nintendo and GameFreak were committing even all the way back to when I was a kid: especially in terms of the rental debate, which I think is just SO petty that they would do all of that shit. Despite Colosseum being my favorite Pokemon game next to the Gen 5 games, I fully accept that it isn't perfect, it wasn't designed perfectly, there are things about it that even I don't like and that you touched on in this video and previous ones. I think your claims are 100% valid. I do believe that a good portion of your hatred for these games comes from the 100% mentality that you had while going through this: national dex for the other Gen 3 games included. Which is fine: I get it. It's immensely frustrating to put so much time and effort into a game you love, or truly want to love, and then having a giant slab of nothing shoved into your face. Super Mario Sunshine (conveniently also on Gamecube) is probably the biggest example of this. But I truly believe that, when not looking at these games from a completionist's point of view, these games are very, very good. I honestly do not like Sunshine, but even I'll admit that I had a lot of fun going through the worlds, spraying stuff, etc etc. Setting aside all the nostalgic bias I have for Colosseum and XD, what I like about it is that they at least tried to do something different. No, they did not hit every mark, I acknowledge that, but what this game (And XD by extension) do well, they do very, VERY well. The OST is iconic, the battle animations both sound and look great, there's memorable characters like Miror B. and Wes that people to this day still want to make a return in some shape or form, etc. The way that you played it (and likely the way the devs intended) where you continuously swapped out Shadows to purify all of them during the main game, I personally think that was the number 1 worst way to play this game. No blame on you for it, I can see your points as to how the devs seemed to have this in mind, which makes sense given they'd never made a Pokemon game before, but it was the wrong way to go about this. Planning ahead of time, knowing what Pokemon you want and sticking with them is definitely the way to go with playing this game, as it's always been with the other Pokemon games. It's fun to build Weather Teams in this game, it's fun to have a standard team, it's fun to use all three Legendary Beasts, it's just fun. I believe there's more flexibility here than you give it credit for despite the limited roster. You've probably heard this point many a time in Patreon chats and Discord chats, but the reason that I and others love this game (and XD), and why the games have the following that they do, is because they tried something different and have elements within them that we want to see in future games. The concept of stealing other people's Pokemon for the greater good is a great concept for teetering the line of good and evil. The battle animations look like they were given a damn about as opposed to nowadays where, for example, a pokemon does a one inch hop and they slap a PNG of a foot on the opponent to give the impression of them being kicked. Starting off as an adult--an adult CRIMINAL no less--is really cool and definitely beats being another 8 year old that somehow beats a crime organization by themselves with like 0 help at all (and I swear, if I get called a 'kid' in a derogatory fashion one more time in a Pokemon game I'm going to have a hernia. Get better writers, GameFreak.) Having Pokemon that are already raised in levels and have competent movesets is also great because it means you won't have to spend half an hour grinding, which was one of your biggest complaints about this game in particular... ...And above all else, these games are a legitimate challenge. You don't have rivals kissing the ground you walk on, rolling out the red carpet with clumps of Sacred Ash, Full Restores and Max Elixirs for you to snort up, you don't have incompetent gym leaders that only specialize in one type and are brought down by mashing A, and for the most part you don't walk into boss battles with obscenely overleveled Pokemon. If you fight all the trainers along the way and manage your team well, you'll be at a competent battle level to fight the Admins and other bosses, and you have to actually THINK about what you need to do to bring them down as opposed to mashing A. Is it better to 2 on 1 one Pokemon to keep it from attacking? Is it better to attack both Pokemon individually? Should I stop Miror B from setting up Rain Dance? Should I go after the Pokemon that Dakim uses that's going to fire off an Earthquake? Things like that add a lot of strategy, variance, and challenge that the newer games just straight up do not have. I mean sure you have the battle tower in BDSP, but when their answer for 'make a harder game' is to shove unfair bullshit into the postgame and call it a day, I don't really think that counts. The fact that Masuda just says "No, we'll never do another Colosseum game again, fuck off, hahaha", is just so soulless. What an absolute dick. Because why bother being innovative and actually giving a damn when you can release a game with trees from OOT and water that barely registers as a texture with the most braindead boss fights imaginable and animations that could be done better by first timers in Middle School and still make insane amounts of bank AND maintain your status as the Number 1 brand in the world? TL;DR: I fully accept these games aren't perfect, but I still love them, and they still hold elements within them that should have been carried over to the newer generations YEARS ago.
These games have great ideas but imo really fail in practice, mainly Colosseum. I do think they should do a third game with all the modernizations the series has had and all the new experience they have now
I would like to mention that XD did a lot more for changing the formula. Introduced a lot more shadow moves, including both physical and special attacks, added wild pokemon, and offered more of an overall goal and a bit more world building, The level design was a little better. Honestly, I think people like Coliseum because they remember XD's interpretation of Orre. They kinda vastly improved by the sequel.
I swear, a lot of sites and guides claim Gen 3 didn't have the special/physical split, but they never count Gale of Darkness. Even as a kid I noticed certain attacks on certain Pokémon hit for wildly different amounts based on if it was physical or special. Gale of Darkness really made me appreciate the variety of moves and strategies you can use to fight double battles, even with only one main attacking monster. I always wanted the main games to add an option to play the entire games with double battles against trainers. Which is why I absolutely love Battle Revolution; double battles. Gale of Darkness is there to show how you do the Shadow Pokémon thing right, and to show you how you build good teams for double battles.
It's like Bioshock 1 vs 2; the first game had the major impact, while the second improves a long of the gameplay issues of the first, but otherwise ends up being in the first game's shadow (no pun intended). Mechanically XD is just a much better game that eases players into Orre more smoothly and gives much better and varied options. It just sucks that the devs obviously felt effected by, and had to differentiate from, Colosseum so that the hero is a basic child again, and the story is generally presented in a lighter and softer way.
The thing I love the most about your reviews, is that you never review the game only by it's contents, but you also take into consideration development context, the market context at the time, sometimes even societal/political things. This makes the reviews so much more juicy.
I'm disinclined to believe Nintendo was sneaking around behind GameFreak's back, if only because as the primary game for acquiring most Johto Pokémon, Colosseum feels intentionally designed to complement Ruby/Saphire from the ground up. Likewise, there is also the fact that Colosseum was allowed to have a direct sequel. While I can fully believe GameFreak wanted nothing to do with these games, I see little to suggest that they were in anyway opposed to Nintendo developing them as spin-offs. As for the pacing issue of things like only being able to save at the PC, that's really more so a standard convention of most console RPGs at the time. Compare that games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest also often had location specific save systems. The primary reason Pokémon and other handheld RPGs typically allowed saving anywhere is because the systems they were on had limitations such as batter life, or because they were mobile devices it was expected sessions would be played in short bursts, both situations where the player may not have the available time to travel back and forth between checkpoints to save. Colosseum might be far from a perfect game, but I just can't take as cynical a view of its systems and mechanics. Yes, it is the product of people who had never made a Pokémon game and so didn't entirely understand what makes the franchise work, but at the same time it's also a game made by an entirely fresh team who lacked the internal biases of GameFreak and so were far more interested in experimenting with the franchise.
Nothing is spookier for Halloween than an unpopular opinion on the internet. In all seriousness, I definitely feel like there are a lot of notable issues with Colosseum, caused by a combination of being developed by a team with no experience with Pokemon and a clear development crunch. But I still think the concept is really fun, rescuing pokemon from dirty criminals and rehabilitating them is a great idea for a story. You say in this video that Wes' motivation isn't really explained, but I definitely think it's likely he knew something was up with Team Snagem and defected to investigate further. Though you are right that stuff like that really is left to interpretation on the player's end, I actually like that fact. I like that he is a more hard-core and serious protagonist without being nearly as over the top as characters like Cloud or Shadow in Shadow the Hedgehog. Beyond the flashy explosions in the intro, what is actually edgy at all about Wes? He's running around Orre rescuing abused animals and getting all cuddly with them to make them friendlier. I think it's the rushed development that leads to the narrative blanks that aren't quite properly explored. But to me, the blanks did less to frustrate me and more to capture my imagination. This game got me thinking more about how the world of pokemon works than any other game, I think. It got me imaging things from a more adult perspective. And, quite frankly, as a kid, none of that mattered to me. I just saw 3D models of Ruby and Sapphire pokemon and got excited. I think I like this game a lot more as an adult than as a Kid because when I was a kid I remember just being frustrated that I had to beat the whole game just to see my pokemon in 3D like in Stadium.
As a child, it always annoyed me how so many beautifully crafted worlds in Pokemon only existed for me to just get badges from so many different characters who all exist to fulfil the exact same role just for me to become champ again and again. I just grew tired of the routine. As someone who's only really interested in battles and seeing how expressive the Pokemon and their attacks could look on a console game (especially compared to where we are now with Scarlet/Violet), this game and Gale of Darkness was a nice departure from the usual for me. I can definitely see where you're coming from though.
Tama, you are the first poketuber that actually defended the second gen and provided great context for the third gen background, if people rant by your opinion for this game they are missing the chance to debating with great arguments! Thanks for sharing this, I love Colosseum and really appreciate listening another point of view.
I used that exploit in Aagate Village every playthrough, I could never walk around for a million times like that. Though I still get your point on how doing that the normal way over and over would make you hate the game lol
@@Poever Walking towards the background in that still registers as movement even tho you don't actually go anywhere, so you can just put a rubber band on your controller and leave it running while you go do something else to purify your pokemon passively
@@Poever she mentions it in the video, walking into certain spots in Agate Village and unplugging your controller while walking a certain makes the character get stuck, so it counts steps while you can put the game down
I adore Colosseum and XD to this day, but I have to disagree about the careful what you wish for. Because when people ask for a modern console game to be like Colosseum/XD, I don't think they want a duplicate of the games, i think they just want pokemon to shake up the formula that wasn't just gimmick mechanics. One such shake up was the story, Wes as a character (besides the rad design) had a semi-established backstory that you the player could fill in a lot more than the standard pokemon "Oh you're just a new kid... off ya go on your adventure!". Instead you were apart of the villain team, you were the bad guy. For me personally, I had always thought that Wes was the best snagger on the team but didn't care for the hierarchy of the big bad team, he was originally there for his own goals. When his goals didn't align with Snaggem anymore, he jumped ship. But it was Rui who gave him a goal beyond his own wants/desires. Ruby/Saphire started mixing it up when it made your dad a gym leader, it gave the player character a bit more of a backstory to kinda push why we as players would want to go through the league instead of say doing only contests or making Pokeblocks/berry gardening. (Gen 4 kinda repeats it with Barry, but that's more that character's motivation.) Black and white (and their sequels) shook up the story more with the introduction of not just N/Plasma and the theme of not everything is black/white (kinda like colosseum's story), but Cherin and Bianca as childhood friends who showed the different paths people in the pokemon world can take. (Bianca wanting to grow stronger and be a professor while Cherin became a gym leader himself) By giving hints at a backstory, it makes it a little easier to care about the main character and the story going forward because you can find SOMETHING to latch onto for roleplaying purposes. Another shake up was the lack of a "proper" Pokémon League and gym leaders. Another was having a preset team from the get go at a higher level. No tackle spamming, no route one bird or dog. You had two fully evolved pokemon who clearly had a history with the trainer and a thematic show of his own grey nature. (Espeon only evolves in the daylight (aka a good side) and Umbreon only evolves in the moonlight (aka the dark side)) The fact the next console game was battle revolution, an extremely watered down stadium clone, people started to shift and want more of Colosseum/XD's unique/stand out features. But all in all, I think the closest we've gotten to another colosseum/XD game was Legends of Arceus. It had a defined story with a rough backstory for the character, it gave a reason as to why we were going around helping and battling, plus the shake up of game mechanics gave me the exact same feeling I had the first time I played Colosseum/XD and quickly worked it's way to being my fave modern pokemon game. Luckily with Scarlet and Violet shaking up the story structure again and being an enjoyable game to lose yourself in (not including the tech issues), I think pokemon has a good future in console-focused games. (Granted it's hard to say that definitively since the switch is both stationary and portable...) btw: if you read all this... thanks lol.
The game defintely has its flaws, but it's also the one Pokemon game I feel more inclined to go back to more than any other. It being slow was probably one of my biggest issues with it, especially since that sort of causes a snowball affect with other issues like some of the back tracking. But at the end of the day, I hold this game in higher regard than most other pokemon games because pretty much every pokemon game is a slog that's easy to get lost in, in my experience. I appreciate Colosseum for its originality more. Oh also, the double battles. That alone makes me appreciate this game more than any other pokemon game. 1v1 turn-based battles can be so boring and the only thing GF has ever done to make them even the slightest bit more interesting was add in agile and strong style moves and a turn order system similar to FF10's Aeon Battles, but that seems like its already not returning in Scarlet and Violet. But having constant double battles in a more challenging and strategic pokemon game is really one of my favorite things about this game.
I really love this video, just for the sole fact of how it offers a different, more developed view of a game that is often overhyped with barebones assessment. But I'd be lying if I didn't say that beyond just disagreeing with the review... there was a lot in this video that got me kinda ruffled lol, and I don't think the very cynical somewhat conspiracy theory surrounding Colo's development really helped. The change in the game's tone corresponding with changing attitudes in gaming at the time is very interesting, but it's very hard for me to believe it had to do with trying to make a killer app and not just... making a game with a different attitude to differentiate it from the main game. Nintendo's overall development attitudes during the Sixth Gen and the advertising for Colosseum compared to RSE and FRLG just doesn't to me paint the idea of a game made backhand to capture a fleeting audience for the gamecube. The only time I can think of with Nintendo pushing a hit game for a more mature audience was Twilight Princess, which only came about following Wind Waker's less than impressive sales and reception. Trying to undercut Pkmn RSE to me just doesn't match with the state of the games and their sales at the time. As for shadow Pokemon, I'm so happy that you pointed out just how much they essentially ruin much of the game, considering how Pokemon fans seem oddly obsessed with the idea of Shadow Pokemon returning. To me, Shadow Pokemon suck because the entire point of the gameplay mechanics surrounding them is to make them suck and push you to purify them. They are not designed to be used, only to be discarded. And the fact that you have to rely on an exploit to make purifying them in anyway palatable is a major flaw in the basic structure of the game. It's from here though that I also just really disagree about the battle system. Colosseum is the only time in a single player Pokemon campaign that I felt double battles really had any sense of challenge and satisfaction, and to me that stems from the Pokemon selection. Colosseum is the best spot for a lot of Johto mons because the limited roster allows a lot of their special traits to see actual use. Johto mons who seemed useless to me prior had all sorts of non attacking moves that added depth to play and made for effective strategies. The team building is far from perfect, in fact inherently flawed though, because much of your team will still rely on your two starters and Suicune. But much of my time will Colo was thinking so much about which types, which move hits who, turn priority, who to focus on. And I'm suprised at the thought of grinding and using Shadow pokemon of all places at the final boss because of how much the suck. This is DEFINITELY where the purification exploit carried me though, as stronger Pokemon didn't take as long to free, but I never felt the need to grind beyond just battling every trainer on the overworld I could. Putting opponents to sleep and buffing/debuffing in Pokemon games in general has always been more effective than level differences. The story section I felt was a very good example of how over reliant the story of this game, and to a lesser extent the story of other Pokemon games, are on wish fulfillment and overt audience investment that only really works with a more childlike state of mind. And I think with that in mind it makes sense why it seems the goal of the game is to collect every Pokemon... but that generally never has been in any Pokemon game. The core problem with Gen 3 I feel IS that they treat dex collection as something only obsessed fans with the money and time will complete, and thus it should generally be tossed to the side. While the trading shut out is definitely a product of game rental markets, I don't think the game is purposely designed with the intent of collecting every Shadow Pokemon, only as a effort those already into the game would complete. And I feel that further extends to issues with the game's design as a whole. Natures in general have always been a shitty, annoying mechanic to force repetitive catching, and it's no different here. Casual players will never notice or care about natures, which isn't a problem when the buffs are so unnoticeable main game, but is when it arbitrarily lends even more to how shitty Shadow Pokemon are. I can't at all say I agree with this video, which is exactly why I love it. It pushed me to evaluate Colosseum WAY more than than blanket statements about "they should make ANOTHER one" could. It helped me realize what I still love about it, what I didn't know, what I didn't realize I hated, and most of all, these recent reviews have made me realize my biases going into playing certain games as a whole. This video has definitely put Colo a few pegs down in my books, but I still really like the game for things it does right that other games don't, and I'm personally very adamant that another Colo type game could be really good done right. ...and I think the first way it could be good is by removing Shadow Pokemon all together! I really can't stress how terrible a mechanic they are.
Don't you think that Pokémon XD improved the problem of the shadow Pokémon? They are much more dangerous in that game. Especially when you fight against the final boss.
By extension, I guess the "mature audience" push led to Thousand Year Door as well. Still carrying the Paper Mario mechanics, even streamlining some from 64, but being much more than a gently modified system.
Umbreon only really good for the last two bosses and espeon just becomes a screen bot by the end. I didnt use a suicune either, but I think having one of the dogs is vital for no grind. I think this game does have a fair amount of room for team building. Really I think what emerges from the games mechanic is fine, yeah it could be better but its not a fatal flaw. I think Tama just has a completionist bug and made a video about how crappy the experience is. I think it would do you better to realize the motivated reasoning for what it is. Had all the time to spend grinding but not ask someone good at the game for help.
I really think you should play pokemon XD and maybe you'll understand why so many people want shadow pokemon back in the game. The shadow pokemon have a much more diverse and interesting move pools with fascinating moves, the world is the same but larger more fleshed out, more spaces and dungeons, and double the amount of catchable pokemon.
I'm gonna be honest, this review sounds like you're just obsessed with optimization and run through a game as 'efficiently" as possible. I think you broke the fun of this game for yourself to be honest. Though the alienation you mentioned toward the beginning is valid to me. I had that experience with the recent Pokemom Arceus. You mentioned here that you felt put off and alienated by the edgy hetero male character which honestly reminded me of how alienating Arceus's obsessively gendered language toward the player character was. I wish more game developers would address this more thoughtfully.
28:05 Honestly, this is so important 'cause I remember the first time I really realized how much it can impact your experience was during an Iron Man run I had of Tear Ring Saga. I had a character who I hadn't used since she joined so she was vastly underleveled and weak, but she just kept surviving any lethal blow by dodging them, to the point she had enough experience to use the spare Promotion item I had lying around. Then, she was the last hope I had against a strong boss because everyone else had used their turn and I got a really bad set of RNG rolls where everyone missed. She came through again despite having a trash hit rate. When she died by a fluke (I didn't realize that she was even deployed on the map 'cause I meant to not bring her), I was actually sad 'cause that was one of the most fun rides I've had with a character in a game. That's when I realized how you roleplay in the game is so important, 'cause it can really make things so much more fun.
I've played Pokemon Colosseum back in the day, when I couldn't afford a good PC and fresh games so I ended up playing emulated gen 3-6 console games. And to be fair, I think that all the nostalgic opinions about it come from the fact that it was just good enough for the time, we didn't know any better.
I've been seeing a lot of your stuff on Twitter about making this video and tried to avoid replying to any of it and just wait for the actual video to come out to see what this was all about. I have to say, I'm very glad I waited to say anything, because as a massive fan of the Orre region, you've definitely made me realize a lot of things about Colosseum and I'm entirely convinced on why some people would actively dislike the game. (Also this is definitely going to be long, because this video actually made me think about things I just have accepted from when I was a kid) I definitely just happened to avoid a lot of the issues brought up here by first (as you mentioned) doing a ton of the heavy lifting on story by being a Pokémon player and just filling in the blanks, second completely loving double battles on its own over single battles (even with basically no variance on team building), and finally not caring at all about needing to purify every shadow Pokémon. With all of these things lining up for my first playthrough as a kid, I definitely got lucky, and have basically let the game coast on pure nostalgia since. I HAVE recognized for a long time that a lot of the general game is slow and dungeons are back and forth, so it's not exactly a game I would replay more than once every 10-20 years, and especially deviates from what I enjoy about RPGs (mainly the Pokémon kind) these days. (Also very clearly helps that I was the exact kind of kid who could get hyped up about, what I built Wes up to be, a Seto Kaiba like character I was already a fan of.) I'm still very thankful to this game for originally showing me that there can be Pokémon games which aren't "beat 8 Gyms and the Elite Four" again OR just an entirely different kind of spin-off. Basically every Gen past the first 2, I've enjoyed a lot more of everything around the Gyms, and always wanted more, and eventually I got the game I'd been waiting almost 20 years for with Legends Arceus. I'm also glad I can still look back on the a lot of the aesthetic, superficial stuff from the Orre region and enjoy it. The fact that the Pokémon looked good while I was fighting in big, full arenas against some aesthetically cool boss characters with banger music playing is what's stuck with me and probably will keep sticking with me after this. Overall, great video, and it's been fun seeing your sort of new era on TH-cam. Still going to be one of my favorite Pokémon games, but much more from a "I enjoyed this not-so-RPG adventure as a kid and never tried to recreate it" going forward.
i could have written those first two paragraphs myself, hahaha. i've always known this game was tedious, but i seem to have an abnormally high tolerance for it, a lot of my favourite games are slow & un-necessarily grindy.
You're vastly underestimating how much slower this game would be if it used single battles. Imagine being asked whether to switch after every kill and doing half the damage each turn.
I thought this video was actually really good, and it opened my eyes to a lot of the game's problems (though, truth be told, I had never finished Colosseum because the final area was too difficult for me when I was 9-10, and I feel it appropriate to point out that XD was my first ever Pokémon game). It's a good thing I did wait until the end to comment, because one of the things I wanted to ask about was the potential for an XD video. Fortunately, you did cover it in part, so that settles that matter. However, I'd love to get your opinion on XD's story and the changes made to the Shadow Pokémon mechanics outside of purification. As well, it'd be nice to get some thoughts on the direction of XD's story and world building (Tama does mention that the game foregoes the grittier atmosphere and slightly more mature themeing, at least). Things like how the game was originally going to have Wes return as the main antagonist before chickening out, it would've been nice. That being said, I do have two gripes with the video I would like to talk about: 1.) The intro explaining the potential conception of the game. In your videos on RSE, DPP and FRLG, I've found the conception portions for those videos incredibly informative and interesting, but here, while there's definitely some neat information in there, its all bundled together to present a theory of why the game was made, that being a cynical attempt to use an IP they recently acquired to help boost the sales of the GameCube, so that it didn't fall into a similar fate the N64 did. It's an interesting theory, but it gets used in the summary near the end for the problems with the game as a whole, and, given its just speculation (with some evidence to back it up), I think it's a somewhat unfair poisoning of the well. Makes it out like the game in its entirety was a soulless cashgrab, with Nintendo going out of their way to intentionally crap on GameFreak's vision. I can't help but feel it's the one point where your subjective opinion of the game shows. Pardon the poor illustration on my end, but the mindset seems to come off as, "Colosseum already feels like a game that exists to abuse it's dying fan base, making it a requirement to own in order to complete the Pokédex. Therefore, perhaps the entire game is just a cynical cash grab from its very creation." Perhaps so; you've presented some decent arguments for that to be the case, but there's just not enough information to draw a conclusion, and it's only an issue because the video essay calls back to this point as if to say, "The problems with this game are the result of Nintendo's greedy decisions." 2.) The very ending's line of, "be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it" rubs me the wrong way. When people compare Sword and Shield to Colosseum, XD and Battle Revolution, it's purely for the presentation of the battles, with their more expressive animations and sense of scale (as in, the Pokémon sizes are more true to scale because the arenas are spaced out enough to allow for larger Pokémon, and because the games forego that traditional "from the back" camera angle the mainline series tries to stick with). To present it as otherwise, I think, misrepresents the people who make those comparisons to begin with. That, however, is just two points of contention with an otherwise well done video with strong points. If you've read this comment this far in, I'd like to thank you for reading, apologize for the trouble, and offer a theory I have in regards to the development of Colosseum. Tama points out that the supposed development for the game was 12 months, but given its presentation, I doubt that myself. Rather, I have a feeling the game was originally intended to be a GSC spinoff on the N64, given things like the really rough looking character models, the really awful lighting engine, the broken shadows (seen with Pokémon who use transparent textures on their models, most notably with Jumpluff's hands), and the horrible subdivision effect given to the Stadium Pokémon models to smooth them out. Most of these issues are visual problems XD would later fix. It feels less like the Gen 2 Pokémon were included for the sake of completing Ruby and Sapphire's Pokédex, and more like Genius Sonority had to port Gen 3's battle engine and Pokémon over to a Gen 2 title, which happened to work out with what Gen 3 was doing with its Pokédex (there are Gen 3 Pokémon in the main campaign, but they're somewhat rare and tacked on; XD would later go on to fix this). It wouldn't be the first time a game had to be carried over from the N64 to the GameCube, either, with Star Fox Adventures being the prime example. However, that's all just speculation on my end, too, and I don't have much evidence for this. And finally, the cream of the crop? Colosseum had more issues than what was presented in the video, but they're minor. In addition to the crappy subdivided Stadium models, you also have everything related to shiny Pokémon; there's an infamous glitch where odds are rolled twice; once for the Shadoe variant and again for the purified variant. As well, many shiny forms here are lazy texture edits, where the hue was shifted a bit with not much thought (great examples with this are Voltorb and Psyduck, who, because of the method of editing, have their white eyes tinted to the desired color). God bless, good job, and sorry for the trouble.
You mention the lack of being able to grind wild pokemon as a problem, and I think that's the problem that Mt. Battle is there to solve. Everyone hates Mt. Battle (for good reason) but I didn't mind just spending some time doing some grinding, purifying some Pokemon and doing some leveling at the same time. Sure, if your priority is to finish the game ASAP because you hate every second of it, you're not going to have a good time. It seems a little contradictory to at the same time complain about a lack of one type of grinding and the over-abundance of another. I understand your problem is that trainer battles take longer, but that also allows for more opportunities to call out of hyper mode in one battle, so it balances out for me.
It’s one of the best to me. The main game is indeed fun. I’ve played through twice and love it. The one thing I did hate was that we couldn’t save anywhere. And also that they got lazy with shiny sprites. I got annoyed watching videos and seeing shinies that were way different than their actual look or just got blue filters. And I will agree that purifying takes a lot longer than in XD. I didn’t miss Rui in XD but they should’ve had Wes back. An early plan actually had him as a potential villain which would’ve felt weird to me. Interestingly I didn’t realize Coloaseum came first and played XD first. I never had a GC either and did it all on Wii and now modded Wii U. I will admit though to save editing my second playthrough…added extra Pokémon, scents and time flutes so that one would probably seem easier to me. It also stinks that most players got locked out of the bonus e reader stuff. I know they likely thought the cards wouldn’t sell enough to make a profit given e reader sales but it still stinks that they put,the functions in the game and then screwed everyone outside Japan out of using the features. They probably should’ve just said no to the e reader from the start anyway. I wonder if it would be possible today to make working English cards…
I was one of those relatively few people to buy the game (on release, no less) and I'm just finding out about a ton of mechanics I just bruteforced through.
Excellent write up, this was engaging the whole way through and really well elaborated on. Thanks as always for the content! Always glad we can think critically about a series we love.
Great video! You did so much work on this. I really want to like the game because it’s a story-based 3D rpg Pokémon game, but they really dropped the ball on the shadow Pokémon mechanic and ruined the experience. I tried playing it again as an adult and didn’t hate it, but all the back-tracking to save broke me. And you know exactly where too, because you guessed casual players would play til about Mirror B and then give up, and you were completely right.
Genuinely enjoyed your breakdowns for FireFred and LeafGrean, and tackling the 3rd Gen bullshit that I fell for. I was single digits in age for Gen I, skipped Gen II, and got back into Pokemon via Gen III emulation. I remember slowly acquiring all the Gen III games... I bought Colosseum just to acquire the Johto-mons that the FR/LG post game teased and that I could not get. You have nailed the same completionist issue I felt back in 2005 or so. I was so proud to finally EV train a Yanma to tackle Lance in FR/LG after failing to even get pokemon I had never even heard of. I genuinely appreciate the level of detail and insight you have put into this retrospective. Your research is admirable and your perspective is increasingly relevant now that the mystery events are not viable, and even weren't at the time. I drove 45 minutes to a Toys R Us for Gen 3 Events only to find they didn't do it, and I'd need to go another 45 to try again. I came to enjoy Colosseum for its challenge. It's the only game where Ledian is actually viable. I did a playthrough having it run Dual Walls and Giga Drain.... got me through Mt Battle with otherwise garbage mons. Granted, I like a challenge, so that's my replay value with older Pokemon games. Colosseum provides a highly limited challenge. That said, I don't disagree with anything you put forward. Please continue to give the games your level of analysis and thought. No one else seems to do it. Keep up the good work, you're an admirable gaming historian!
There's a concept you're forgetting when talking about length of purification for different Natures: realism. The purpose is to make each Pokemon feel like a unique living being, and of course the time it's going to take will vary for each Pokemon. Maybe, the game wasn't meant to be optimized to such a degree, and you're supposed to just enjoy it for what it is.
I was of the same mind while watching the video. I do think that the complaints are valid, but mechanically, and especially regarding the purification of Pokemon, I found myself thinking "ok but do I really care about optimizing the hell out of it?"
Why were you trying to purify every pokemon as you went? Do you use every pokemon you see in the main series games? Absolutely not. Team building is very much a thing in colosseum. The only issue with it is that it requires pre-existing knowledge of the pokemon you have at your disposal as there is quite a large barrier to entry (the purification mechanic). Colosseum is by no means perfect but your video comes across as quite nitpicky and like you're trying to find reasons to dislike the game. The history lesson at the beginning was interesting so I'll give you credit for that. I just completely disagree with your opinions on the game but no hard feelings either. EDIT: I say all of this as someone who just finished this game for the first time last week and I'd like to specify that I didn't even touch mt battle (outside of the dakim fight) until postgame
Considering how much I hate how formulaic Pokemon has become, Colosseum and XD are some of my favorites to return to even with their issues. I could not disagree more with this video. But still, you worked hard on this & opinions are opinions, so great job on the video nonetheless.
Hm, I still think that you're just being cynical against these games, because you felt that you *had* to play them in order to complete your gen 3 National Dex. Going in with a negative attitude, you're more likely to find issues with a passable game. It may not be the best game in the world, but it's certainly one of the better Pokemon games out there. The only real issues are the lack of animation skipping, and the post-game purification sessions (which would be lessened with skipping battle animations) If you plan your team correctly, you won't have to grind to beat this game, and you won't have to backtrack as much. The same as almost any Pokemon game you play for the first time, if you don't know which Pokemon are good or bad, put experience into the wrong ones, then you will get stuck and have to grind to move forward. But again, just like any other Pokemon game, if you plan your team correctly from the beginning, then you won't ever have to waste time grinding. What makes this game better than most mainline games is everything that you ignored or glazed over in this "review"; the music, the animations and graphics (though they don't hold up well, they are still better than GF's latest attempts in many ways), the characters, the double battle strats, and of course, the challenge of having a limited set of Pokemon in an environment with high level Pokemon.
you made so many valid points and I understand how flawed this game is, yet I absolutely adore it. I think a large part of that is nostalgia since I played both colosseum and XD as a child, and I still periodically go back to them now, but my gosh do i love this game no matter all the "flaws" lol.
I loved playing Pokemon Colosseum as a kid, but it's pretty cool to kinda see things without rose tinted glasses, since I couldn't quite figure out why I didn't enjoy it as much as an adult. So it's nice to find a good solid, unclouded analysis to kinda help me out.
Despite colosseum being one of my favorite pokemon games, partially because of the darker and grittier aspect and former villain protagonist, all of the points you made are perfectly valid. If anyone else had made a video with this premise, I may not have watched it. I'm glad I gave this a chance. Thank you.
I was curious what your problem with the game was since it's one of if not the most creative pokemon game. 20 minutes into the video and the only 'flaw' brought up so far is that you don't like the darker themes of the game. This video did not need to be so long.
I played Colosseum a lot growing up, and though it had its flaws, I loved it for it's excellenr graphics, darker story, and, at the time, taking a chance on something different for a Pokemon game. Gale of Darkness was even better. It cleaned up a lot of the annoying things about Colosseum, such as purifying shadow Pokemon.
Great work as usual oozing of effort and commitment. Regarding your last statement about a new era of pokemon, I'd say that started softly in gen 5 and came full circle by gen 8.This is coming from someone that had to miss out on Colosseum and always regretted it (I still do even after this video). I would still rather get an opportunity to play this game that came from an era where pokemon was still in limbo rather than play a modern pokemon game that is most guaranteed rushed. As far as I'm concerned the most insulting pokemon games are BD and SP and I think they won't be topped for quite a while.
I totally get your criticisms, but I still praise it for having way more personality than any Pokemon game released in the last 5 years. As well as for having a protagonist that is actually allowed to look cool instead of this weird unspoken requirement that they all have to look 7 years old after XY.
Really? I'm surprised because that's a lot closer to how I'd describe the Switch Pokemons. (Except maybe Arceus, but besides fun gameplay I didn't think it did much with its initially-interesting premise.) I thought Colosseum had a memorable setting, premise, and general weirdness that they still never repeated elsewhere.@@thomasffrench3639
@@glurpious73 maybe, I’m just sick of nothing arguments like “charm” or “personality” to defend criticism. I haven’t played this game, but it seems like a bland take on the edgy hero trope.
@@glurpious73 yeah I get so annoyed when I hate a movie, then someone says “at least the movie is charming”. No, it’s not charming, it is terrible to sit through.
This video was excellent! I think my favorite part of your videos is usually the history, as you just don't get that from typical retrospectives or reviews. But this time it was the analysis of the shadow mechanic. You really tore it apart and explained pretty well why it didn't work. The entire game is battle hallways with frustrating mechanics with no team variety. So many people talk about how slow DPPt are, and then praise this game. Hello? At least the rng manips are cool, if tedious.
I bought this game when it came out always loved it! I 100%d it and the sequel XD multiple times, which I feel is a lot better. It was different and that’s part of the reason why I liked it, but still Colosseum hasn’t aged that well. your points make a lot of sense even if I don’t fully agree. Great video
Another great review thats genuinely well informed and researched. I have a lot of nostalgia for this game because I happened to be 13 and only had a gamecube. I went back a few years ago and I didn't hate it but I also just bashed through the story and called it a day.
Good lord, sorry you went through such a miserable experience to make this, but it's a truly amazing video. I never did vibe with Colosseum back in the day and am really glad I lost patience pretty early on. Ended up trading my copy and keeping the bonus disc.
I think nostalgia makes me think fondly of this game _in spite_ of itself, rather than because of it. I had never considered most of these points before, and the only main sour taste I can remember was when I played through it more recently I needed to run Hidden Power on 2/3 of my team just to have any semblance of coverage. But that's really a gen 3 depth problem not limited to just Colosseum. I was probably never going to revisit it even before watching this video, but you've convinced me not to feel guilty about leaving it in the past. (except the music 👀)
I definitely got attached to XDGoD (that acronym omg 😂) so I actually found Colosseum a bit weird when I finally got it. I liked the Underground because it was an area that wasn’t in XD, but other than that, everything felt like a downgrade.
I played it when it came out. It was such a unique and very surreal location to explore, and because of that it's basically burned into my mind forever. My complaint is that they didn't just go ahead and make full-fledged pokemon games also on home console. It was fine as a spinoff, but there should have been more of what they eventually did on the Switch. Instead we got Pokemon Channel, Pokemon Box, and those terrible Rumble/Ranch/Park Wii games.
This was made by a company that still hasn't grasped 3D graphics, or rather the rest of the game felt like an afterthought. They weren't alone neither. I think about games like Mega Man X7, EArthworm Jim 3, Medabots, and they just show they still needed more time to catch up
This game has a special connection to my heart because it was exactly when I understood the love for competitive training, the soundtrack is just the kind of soul,guitar, electronic theme I love. Also it was the CLOSEST we've had of having a join Team Rocket story. It helped as well that Gen 3 is my favorite and the one I spent the most time, I still have Colosseum's Ho-Oh on my Emerald (the one you were awarded after beating 100 trainers).
For me personally this game will always have a special place in my heart as it was one of the first Pokémon games my older brother played with me. He has since passed away. The memories of those days playing it with him may make me a bit Biased but I still play it every now and then and genuinely enjoy the game. I think if the game was reimagined and not just remastered than it would do much better. Though this could be said for many games at the end of the day.
excellent video as always! your sense of game design never fails to impress me, with key words like "experience" and "message" being used in the right way in their context. I'd love to see your thoughts on heartgold and soulsilver one day, going back to it i felt the game dragged too much with new story beats on team rocket.
Wow, your insight was both precise and meticulous to such a high degree! And you were able to articulate a lot of feelings I had about this game that I never could nail down. Also thank you for the comparison to the current and near future of the franchise. I hope we really do go off the rails just for the sake of greed….
I don't think I've ever disagreed with you more. And the way you talk about these games really disgusts me, ngl. Maybe YOU dumped every mon as soon as they were purified to make room for the next one, but that's not how I played. And maybe it is a drag to have to purify every one to get Ho-Oh, but there are always complicated paths to some legendary, whether it's beating the League and traversing the Unknown Dungeon, or traveling through time or reading Braille. And you don't HAVE to battle with them to purify them. I can't be the only person who enjoyed walking around with them and feeling like I'm getting to know them and doing them some real good. Then again, I wasn't freeing them as a means to an end, I was just freeing them for them. Orre is a gorgeous region and I had tons of fun adventuring through it, no matter how much backtracking I did. I never got tired of enjoying the scenery. That's about all I have to say on that. I also think the Pokémon are gorgeous here. Yes the story is bare-bones, but I've come to expect that from Pokémon since I was a teenager glued to my Game Boy Color. There may be some games that have actual story, like Black/White, or sad attempts at story, like SWSH, but it's really never what Pokémon is great for. The real story is the one I make with myself and my Pokémon as we face what comes to us every day. And that doesn't change for me even if I'm given pre-existing characters and a linear story. In fact, I'd argue that's WHY Wes doesn't have anything going on in the character department, to help people do just that. Though... I've always felt, in terms of story anyway, that Rui is the real main character. She's the one who can see the Shadow mons, she's the one who knows what to do most of the time, and she's the one who has real aspirations you can feel. You're supposed to be driven/inspired by her, and by the desire to help the Shadow Pokémon heal and return to their true selves. Like... There's good story there, you're just looking everywhere else. Your points about mechanics and corporate BS are totally valid. But nothing mechanically about the game ever hindered me in enjoying it. And I really don't care how the game came to be so much as that it DID come to be, and I'm glad that it did. Big businesses can be sucky and evil. This has always been true. But somewhere out of that mess came a game that I think is absolutely fantastic, and that you haven't given a fair chance from the get-go. Maybe if you distance yourself from it and try it again in a few years you might enjoy it. But then again, you don't like the Sinnoh games, so maybe I'm wrong about this too. The sad thing is that now so many people who never even played these gorgeous games are going to be influenced to hate it without ever giving it a try for themselves. Almost as sad as the thought we'll probably never get a remaster or port.
I played XD first as a kid and have replayed it and loved it. However i thought i was crazy for playing Colosseum 2 years ago and absolutely hating it for all the reasons in the video. Even without trying to 100% it that game was an absolute chore to get through
This video was a trip for me! Colosseum came out at just the right time for me because I finally had the purchasing power I needed to satisfy my completionist instincts. I thought I liked Colosseum at the time. My patience and passion for completion tends to power through slogs. I had forgotten how bad it was though, probably because I never replayed Colosseum or XD (The only Pokémon games I haven't replayed) and never really thought about why. Colosseum was also the first Pokémon game where I began falling asleep while playing it. It's like you've given a voice to some of the complicated feelings I've never admitted having about the game. I have whole new insights about the game thanks to your perspective.
Another nod to Masuda's hate of Colosseum and XD: During the 25th anniversary video, when it was going through the history of the franchise, the only games not mentioned were Colosseum, XD, and Battle Revolution. This seemed like a huge slap in the face of fans, especially since it was during the controversy of SnS's "high quality animations", with them being contrasted against Colosseum's and XD's animations.
Don't worry I respect your opinion. But it's not gonna stop me for loving a game that you can't stand. And Believe me I'm way aware of me wishing for it. Plus I was blood thirsty for that Remake. Sorry. But I love the soundtrack and the battle animations from Colosseum and XD.
Can't deny, you made a powerful case that I was previously blind to on account of being blinded by the glamour of getting a console Pokemon adventure and recently coming into the disposable income required to enjoy it. While it still gives me the good chemicals (and because I had no problem exploiting the walking mechanic)... you're right that mechanically, Colosseum isn't terribly good.
I liked and disliked the colosseum animations as a kid but now that im an adult i appreciate them so much more. Espicially seeing pokemon violent animation where they just jump for a split second into the air like a robot and are emotionless. I rather have drama queen energy when they die and use up 2 more seconds of my time then just seeing a soulless cute husk just take damage and blink its eyes reacting to the damage.
I remember really enjoying colosseum when it came out. I remember liking it even more when I played it a few years later in the summer before starting college. It was like one last burst of childhood before my "adult life" started lol. I went back to play it during the pandemic, tho, and I really didn't like it as much. I do appreciate the tone, and some of the ideas, but structurally there was a lot of tedium.
I do like like this game, but I absolutely get it. This is kinda how I feel with Legends and now Scarlet/Violet. Open world is the new trend and I’ve always felt alienated by that. One thing I did like was the limited roster. I wouldn’t have actually used Pokemon like Mantine and Noctowl if not for this.
@@ChicagoMel23 That's fine. Different things appeal to different people. I just always liked the structure of the older games, where they could tell an interesting story and each area you went to was more difficult than the last. An open world pretty much has to kill all of that. I also get tired of the same troupes over and over. Ambient piano music, climbing radio towers, taking out bandit camps and of course... _crafting_
@@ChicagoMel23 I love open world games but the other person is right, different things appeal to different people. And even though I love open world games, sometimes they can make some people overwhelmed because the large amount of options and space leaves them struggling to make choices in their progress of the game. Some poor open world games also sometimes make the mistake of making their world feel empty and lifeless, if that makes sense. Granted this can work in the game's favor sometimes depending on its setting and story (e.g. a survival game taking place in an apocalypse) but it doesn't work all of the time.
@@thelastwindwaker7948 I think a more McGuffin story can work for an open world, and frankly with Pokemon games being mostly light on its story, could fit well on it, but should be done well to not be seen as either just making it unbalanced and/or empty.
I'm in the same boat as you. Every game series seems to have decided it needs to take a crack at being open world, including my two favourites in Pokemon and Zelda. And I didn't like EITHER of their attempts! Sure, it's cool that in BotW you can just throw yourself at Ganon the second you're out of the tutorial area, but that comes with the sacrifice of the cool stories that Zelda told in the past, and considering I actually really enjoy the stories Zelda tells, I don't think it's worth it. Legends was just... Not for me. Some parts I like, sure, but I much prefer linear progression overall. Not to say that everybody needs to feel the same as me, but I think it'll be a damn shame if we lose the good parts of linear stories in games in favour of creating sandboxes to run around in.
Make sure to watch the other videos in the Gen 3 Trilogy for the full story!
PART 1: Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire - th-cam.com/video/Ze8uhmeFt7A/w-d-xo.html
PART 2: Pokemon Fire Red and Leaf Green - th-cam.com/video/GcLKCGGG340/w-d-xo.html
PRELUDE TO PART 3: Pokemon's ORIGINAL National Dex Controversy - th-cam.com/video/p9Y_ACiMmek/w-d-xo.html
Still better than sword and shield.
Think about the game this way, it's meant to be a callback to wild west movies where a rough and tumble U.S. marshal is sent out west to take care of political corruption and criminal dealings of small local governments, the games narrative makes a lot more sense when you think about it that way, I promise.
Ohh poor you
@@MisterHeroman … nah
There's only 1 way to play this game: *utilitarian.*
Use a pokemon until you get a better one, and then toss it in the box even though it's not purified. Keep 2 or 3 non-Shadow pokemon around, and the rest are just revolving door placeholders to be replaced with the Johto legends. And even then, this game is a LOT of grinding and a LOT of wasting your time. And this strat makes the post-game _even worse._
Things I have fond memories from Colosseum:
1)The fact that the bosses had actual strategies for their teams.
2)The plot twist that Evice was the actual evil leader instead of Nascour.
3) Mirror B.
4) The fact that your companion had the same name as me (well one letter away)
5)The wild west/ Dessert setting.
What I did like about Colosseum was the fact the trainers were an actual challenge, they were all replayable and at a decent level to train against. Especially how easy it is to memorize where who is where. For Gen 3, where R/S/E had pathetically weak trainers and nowhere to train post-game, it helped. You also got a lot more experience on average than you did in Gen 3 Pokemon games. Double battles also made training back then a lot easier, when moves like Surf didnt affect you. You could easily sweep with your training pokemon in the fight.
@@GeteMachine I remember learning many Pokemon strategies there, Like Earthqueake+protect, Rain+ leech seed + ludicolo, something that was nowhere in the GBA games that I remember.
I agree with that. I also love double battles!
Miror B. is surely the most emorable character in both GC-titles.
I admit I even brought a Lotad into the game to get a Ludicolo with his name have the 100 battle badge...
based on the US, you can even see parts of Monument Valley in the background of some cutscenes
I put an ungodly amount of hours into this game as a kid when it came out. Loved it
The way I typically play. Three or 4 purified Pokémon, 2 or 3 shadow Pokémon. Rotating in new purified team mates when you find someone you like or are excited to use. You have to choose wisely. Allowing for a fun blend of team building vs the challenge of the game. Double battles are imo so much more fun than regular battles where I end up more or less spaming my most powerful move, always overlevveld in the story. You have to consider more, and while it’s true each shadow Pokémon starts with 1 attack the joy of unlocking new moves and the reward of that allowing you to strategise in a new ways is rewarding to me. I can’t disagree more with the idea of the game lacking identity. It has its own identity so unlike from anything Pokémon has tried and is a huge breath of fresh air from the mainline. “You decide” for this game is great, the greyness of the character motives matches the moral greyness of the whole game. I like filling in the blanks with my interpretation that’s what makes the experience mine
Don’t get me wrong I don’t think it’s perfect, definetly has some of these flaws but it’s one of my favourites and I think the gameplay is fun every time I play it I fall in love again. The main place I agree with you is how long it takes the shadow Pokémon to purify which, if you’re trying to do that with every shadow Pokémon sucks. I would also hate playing it was way, So I don’t typically play that way and never have been naturally inclined to do so. Certainly not when I was a kid and still not now. I have done it once and yeah it was a grind but boy howdy did it make the Ho-oH feel like a reward. But that’s like 5% of my experience of playing this game. The healing beingat the entrance of dungeon like areas means you have to go in prepared and play wisely around the level difference. Makes feinting on those dungeon bosses a real possibility and choosing between catching or KO img a shadow Pokémon and not feinting yourself creates stakes in all the big battles. I can also understand you feeling the game wasn’t marketed to you and that is gutting and obviously shouldn’t have been the case. for what is there in the game though I can’t agree with many of the conclusions in the video. This is one of the most soulful games I’ve ever played and I do wish for more games like this with more added in from the mainline.
The Orre War has begun
I was thinking of how to word my own feelings on this game and then come to find out BKT apparently did it all perfectly for me haha well said! I'm a little bit younger than Tama (by 2ish years I think?) , but also a girl and the idea that this game wasn't marketed to me honestly never even occurred to me, despite all the shit I got for being a girl who played Pokémon at that age. In fact I was obsessed with the female sidekick and her powers.
This was an excellent watch! Speaking as one of the few people who actually did own this game on release and enjoyed my time with it, I love this kind of good faith analysis to make make me rethink the mechanics from an adult perspective. I'll always look back fondly on Colosseum. It's a game that I used to bond with my family over as we muscled through the boss fights and I'll never get tired of its awesome soundtrack. Looking back though, it's crazy that I put up with that purification grind and it wasn't til now that I remembered how much of a slog that really was.
Not many TH-camrs can keep my attention for over an hour by voicing a differing opinion.
We had more time as kids lol
Every person who actually played this game to experience it genuinely (and not just trying to make a YT video out of it) enjoyed the fuck out of it and loves it to this day despite its imperfections
@@NobleVagabond2552 I don't think she's voicing her opinion as a TH-camr, but as a completionist. You make it sound like she's just making a video for hate views.
@@NobleVagabond2552what does that make me then. I think the game is awful, XD is miles better.
during this era especially for jrpgs total length was a major selling point and so many companies felt forced to bloat their games to certain degree because most of the consumers at that time were kids who couldn't afford many new games a year. I usually bought only 1 or 2 new games every year so at that time it was really important to me.
DQ7 is the epitome of this. The original version of the game would easily put you over the 100 hour mark before finishing it, twice that if you wanted to 100% it.
The argument against game rentals definitely fed into that. Every game had to be a 50+ hour slog to make sure people would pay to own a copy rather than rent one multiple times
Ehh, people still use length as justification to buy a game today
@@Mingodough yeah I mean if you like long games that's cool but I haven't met anyone that's best even half of their games in 15 years so getting your money's worth strikes me as a mute point
@@quiveringavicularia1513 nah I hate long games lol, I mostly play arcade games. But even if people don’t beat their games, most people do still look at length as a determining factor. How long to beat exists because people want to know how long it is, there isn’t a website for how dense it is to contrast that website
You showed incredible restraint with a thesis of "This game was designed to waste your time" and never going for the VERY low-hanging fruit that the battle animations are the longest in the series. They're comically long. You can feel yourself physically aging every time a Pokemon plays both its "take damage" and "faint" animations with each and every KO
There's also several frames of idle animation at the end of everything Vibrava does for some reason that it shows you the entirety of every time.
Maybe it's because I came off of stadium on N64 the animations never bothered me.
While the Pokemon animations were dynamic, a lot of them were just a bit wonky. Like Kangaskhan.
Technically, she did mention how you couldn't skip them
@@julianrobertson1869 they were bad in Stadium too
These shots of the GameCube and the TV look SO good, and there’s some pretty fun editing moments here. On a technical/craft level this is your best video.
I've been playing through Colosseum recently (Not done yet, but I plan on completing it and transferring all the Pokémon) and these problems are definitely there. Purification takes a long time, Pyrite Cave is a chore to navigate through, and I never even beat the game as a kid because of the final boss rush. But even through my modern perspective, I still love the game and I have a lot of fun playing it.
I like that you start at lvl 25 so you skip early-game tacklespamming. Battle animations and camera angles still look better than the modern games. It went hard when i was 4 years old, and I still like it despite its issues. I'm not thrilled to go through the lategame again though.
Instead of early-game tacklespamming, you have whole-game shadowrushspamming
@@MeNowDealWIthIt kinda bullshit. i actually never used shadow pokemon because of the recoil. In XD yes the Attacks are WAY better
@@MeNowDealWIthIt fair enough, although shadow rush is a lot more interesting with recoil, with higher damage and not the only move the pokemon has
@@MeNowDealWIthIt shadowrushspamming with a cast of mons whom 95% come from kanto’s dumping grounds or as most call it Johto
@@ultimapower6950 nah you didn't have to do johto like that it's already struggling with getting the regional dex rights for lapras and lickitung 😭
Imo you still can choose which Pokemon you can travel with on your journey, but you have to make sure to rebattle the trainers at Pyrite town consistently instead of training at Mt. Battle like a lot of people do. The money you will accumulate will give you perfume that you can use to purify each shadow Pokemon, and I found this method of purification and leveling up much, much faster than the other method of constantly swapping out each Pokemon to purify them. I think I only spent 2 hours max grinding out these battles to purify all of the shadow Pokemon by doing this whereas spending that time with battles would maybe let me purify only one or two legendary cats? You don't have to compromise who you want on your team with this workaround, it made the experience so much more tolerable when I discovered it, and I found using shadow Pokemon in battle with this method actually made the process slower because of them constantly going into hyper mode.
I disagree but I also believe Colosseum could certainly be improved. Also the attack animation add a lot more character to the Pokémon that a lot of the games just don't have.
I never got to play it but as a kid I really wanted it lol
EDIT: My comment was poorly worded, my bad. I loved the game but could only think of one flaw with my experience, which was the grinding. I haven’t chosen to watch the whole video yet but I know Tama has other gripes with the game, including the main story, that I didn’t notice in my experience. I just know that playing the game 100% is important to reviewing the entire experience, and this game’s 100% completion is mmmmiserable. It would put one more additional bad mark on the game’s overall score AND just be a miserable experience for Tama in general, and if a game’s postgame was actually fun, this wouldn’t be a problem.
ORIGINAL COMMENT: Okay, if you’ve been trying to 100% the game over and over and over, of course you’re gonna hate it, and I don’t say that in a mean way. I love it but it’s probably got the most painful XP grinding experience in the series. Completing it to 100% is pain, man. My sister ended up doing all the grinding for me (bless her) and we worked our way all the way up that mountain for her to unlock that Ho-Oh.
Haven't had a chance to watch the video yet, but here's my take:
It should NOT be less fun to 100% the game than it is to just complete it normally. There is no reason it has to be tedious, and it only is because it was designed that way; that is a legitimate flaw worth criticizing it for. You shouldn't need to have someone else to do part of the work just so you can enjoy the game more, but I do have to admit that sounds like it was a great bonding experience.
Except that all the sentiment towards the game already existed and pretty much all of the points made are solid; playing it over and over for the video wasn't the reason Tama doesn't like the game, it just added to it.
@@AdeptCharon True and valid. That’s why I mean no meanness. Regardless of whether 100%ing a game is a choice, it should never be a chore, and that’s the one flaw I was AWARE of, that’s not even concerning the other valid ones listed.
Tama realized she didn't enjoy the game when she replayed it for the first time after several years of not having played it a year or so ago, she didn't start of liking it and then ended up disliking it after playing it several times, she played it several times in order for the review to be as thorough as possible. She has played and replayed several of the main-series Pokémon games a bunch of times, investing thousands of hours into them and still loving and finding enjoyment in them
I finished KH2 100% and I loved every minute of it.
I was NOT expecting a lore dump of possible development history shenanigans, but this is why I was excited for this video: I knew you were going to take a huge deep dive into this game, development included.
This is probably going to be one of my favorite videos of yours yet!
It’s a big yap session that contributes nothing of value to the video and assessment.
@@infinityheart_tm9270 it provides evidence for the argument that the game was made to be longer on purpose for playtime and explains the lacking content
The glazing is insane !
@@swagbutouchiha855 Tell me about it.
Honestly, I had the exact opposite experience with this game. I loved Coliseum, between the more challenging battles, limited pool, and great atmosphere. Yeah, the grindy dungeons are a pain at times and 100% the game is rough, especially if all you want out of it is Jhoto Pokémon in gen 3, but I really enjoyed the main game and didn’t find the 100% completion anywhere near as bad as any mainline game. I found the edgier nature cute, as it still felt distinctly Pokémon and has the same logic bending seen through the main series. I found myself enjoying it more than Gen 1 or 2 (I got Yellow and Crystal at around the same time, Emerald was my first, Diamond my second) at the very least, though funnily enough, Mystery Dungeon Blue is probably my favorite pre-gen 4 game. Heck, some of the problems mentioned here, like needing data mining to learn about mechanics or lack of role playing or character story is a problem I have with the main series and why I prefer the modern Pokémon games to the older ones. IVs, nature mechanics, hidden power, and a ton more were locked behind data mining, so the Shadow Pokémon stuff didn’t bother me.
I loved the steampunk/post-apocalyptic look of colosseum, I also loved the fact the battles are challenging, and there is thought put into NPC's team synergy.
Exactly! Very few mention of the visual thematics of the two games! The setting and world are beautiful and Wes is by far the best designed main character of any game tbh. Everyone complains about the roster being bad which I personally appreciate the very unused Pokémon shining in a game like this. With low power moves too, very very nice. Love these games. Definitely a few things can be changed up, but this is using 2023 perspectives on a 2004 game, of course we look at something different. You can tell the time and effort put towards the games compared to gen7-9 tbh.
@@ma.2099 Don't bother wasting your pristine logic on someone who can't get past the fact that the main character is "hetero".
@@i-work-at-enron right? Despite the fact that the main character could easily be gay. Nothing he does implies that he doesn’t. Gay guys don’t ride moterbikes and fight crime??
I was about 12 when I borrowed this game of a friend. It does hit a bit differently when you're new to edgy content, and just the pretty 3d fight effects. What probably helped is that I never bothered with much more then the main story, so I had my team of 6. For whatever I wanted to purify later on I usually would spam expensive scent massages on, probably the fastest method regardless of nature.
Played XD a lot more, but I was stuck without owning a GBA in those years, so yeah.. I actually was very fond of training in Mt.Battle in XD and training pretty enjoyable enemies while still getting EXP and autohealed. Pretty much the most objective strength of the games is together with the default double battle rule it pushes the battle system a little harder then the standard GBA game storylines do. Enemy pokemon variety is also nice. XD also tried to make shadow pokemon stand out a bit with blanket super-effectiviness and overpowered status moves, but they are still a lot less efficient then a balanced,evolved regular team with good STAB movesets. I stopped replaying the game once I got older and had access to more specialized RPGs and the ds era Pokemon games. I did replay part Collosseum once, but if the novelty's worn of it's a lot harder to get through. Just having questionable team options feels awful and XD is a lot better offering you stuff early that's good to keep the entire game when so inclined.
I was increasingly aware XD had some pretty sharp limitations compared to the main series games, although in-depth in some aspects, the spinoff energy is strong. It just feels less structured. The game's sense of humor and tone is also pretty weird. Just look at both the final bosses Evice and Greevil being weirdly cartoony and bouncy while having tall and stern direct underlings. Most of the names of everybody are just weird and word salad-ish. I haven't seen a game since which has the Orre game's specific recipe of weird. Also the randomness of the pokemon stat system is a terrible fit with the limited pokemon access and shadow system, which would work better if what you got was non-random.
The game is pretty memorable and decent.. if you are a impressonable kid of the right age and the right time, mostly buying because the game looks cool/3d/little concept of getting the budding RPG itch elsewhere, instead of deeper factors. I suppose for many just the design and music are memorable, and the tangled mess of pokemon access passed when the next gen hit, if it was ever a factor to them at all.
My biggest gripe with these games is that you need to play them casually to not get bored in the grinding and purification. Which is ironic since this is the only way the hardcore "catch 'em all" people will get some of these Mons.
I do at least think it’d be cool to have had the anime cover Orre.
Also I think if we got a remake, I think a overhaul in some parts could be warranted.
It’d be cool if a revist to Orre gave it a new side like giving it its own Grand Underground that had routes to travel to the locales without need to use a bike. Have it be recently discovered with people coming Orre to study what’s in this new massive underground region.
Tama, I’ve been watching you ever since JWittz featured you in the banned Pokémon games collab (holy crap almost 10 years???) and after watching the video, I want to say thank you for the content over the years even if it hasn’t been consistent since life happens after all. I hope you and Chaz are having a great married life together!
As for the video overall after watching it completely, I admit I have a strong nostalgia for Colosseum/XD. I believe I was around 6 when I played this Colosseum and it was just a super cool concept that emphasized my love for Pokémon while playing through tons of hours in Ruby. Colosseum hasn’t aged gracefully over the years and while I don’t think it’s a terrible game to this day, your points are detailed and really gave me a great perspective on the criticism towards the game. And as someone who loves 4th gen, I really enjoy watching and listening to your critiques and see another Pokémon fan’s perspective. Please keep up the good work and I hope you have a great day! ❤️
as a Colosseum and XD enjoyer, this was a super interesting watch. It was fascinating to hear all the background and context of the game design choices, which I otherwise probably never would have known about. I think I didn't really notice most of the issues with Shadow Pokemon etc because I never actually tried to purify them all, I probably got bored and gave up lol so I only remember the story/bits I liked ^^;; but you made a lot of good points that had me like "yeah actually, that DID kinda suck" lol. I still have a lot of affection for these games and would still love to see a remaster or even a sequel/reboot someday (though that will likely never happen), but I really enjoyed this critique and it definitely gave me a lot to think about!
One very important thing you left out though: the Colosseum soundtrack absolutely slaps. I remember going back to certain areas just to listen to the music lol
One they I personally found is that colosseum was more akin to a typical rpg as there is a set list of members, and that the game is more enjoyable if not played as a typical Pokémon game and don’t connect to the GBA games (which sound a bit backwards)
I don't personally agree with this because I've never played a traditional rpg that expects you to rotate through 48 different party members
@@Tama-Hero Suikoden has 108 recruitable characters and most of them are playable. There are also several moments throughout the series that demand you utilize more than just your favorite six.
@@Tama-Hero would it be wrong to mention fire emblem because of its difference in genre.
@@KingOfHart34 Chrono Cross as well
@@Tama-Hero Not that it's not a problem but that IS only a problem if you decide you want to 100% the game. Which granted most people don't
I wonder if I felt any of this when I was a kid playing Colosseum for the first time. I was hyped for it when I saw the ads and previews. I thought “ooh, you can ride on a motorbike across the desert” and it filled my young mind with imagination. I even went on to create something on RPG Maker with that kind of aesthetic (but in it, I made the main character a prisoner who was trying to escape from his prison by abducting a giant robot so I think I won in the main character motivation department). Anyway, I remember playing Colosseum and was kinda just “whelmed”. I got as far as that early game long dungeon you mention in your video before feeling apathy towards the game. At least, I think it was apathy. I don’t really know. It could’ve been that I felt the design flaws but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I ended up skipping Gale of Darkness because I didn’t finish Colosseum. This was kind of the start of my apathy towards Pokémon until Black & White momentarily reinvigorated my interest in it (and then Sun & Moon nearly made me skip Sword & Shield, which I did end up liking).
For a long time, I wanted to retry Colosseum. Give it another chance. Maybe I was too young! Maybe I missed some vital clue! Maybe I was impatient! I couldn’t remember why I stopped playing it. Watching this video was a bit like going through memory lane. I still think I’ll revisit it eventually to see for myself just why I stopped playing it but on the flip side, there’s so much to do and I still have aspirations to either create my own game or somehow get my own game created and I’ve been way too distracted by video games old and new. Truly, the internet has been wonderful for getting information quickly but it has been horrendous for distracting me by introducing me to new things constantly.
Anyway, this was a great video! It was certainly a trip down memory lane for some of those early bits of the game.
This video has me so confused.
I have my own issues with Pokemon Colosseum, and it does have problems. But I think the idea of what the game incentivizes in this video is one, very narrow view of it. I've played through the game a couple times now, in the same manner I do any other Pokemon game. I pick a team I want to use, I catch that team, and I use that team.
Sure, there's an overarching goal in Colosseum of purifying all of the shadow pokemon. There's also an overarching goal in the original pokemon games of "Gotta Catch em all" - that's not what I enjoy about the game, so I don't do that. If I did it once, I probably wouldn't catch every single pokemon on every replay of Red and Blue. So to say the game really focuses on that and that it plays through the same every time because there's one way to play and you need to use shadow rush is just ignoring a huge aspect of the game where there is freedom.
Colosseum does have it's issues, and many of them. But to base so much of this on a personal choice to try and purify every shadow pokemon as soon as possible and not make an actual team that you enjoy using is just crazy to me. It's an additional task the game gives you, and yeah, it kind of sucks if you're trying to have a complete Pokedex, but you can also always grind it out after beating the game - as you would with any game's Pokedex completion.
I will say this as a diehard fan of both Colosseum and XD: these videos have really opened my eyes to a lot of the shady business practices and intentional missteps that Nintendo and GameFreak were committing even all the way back to when I was a kid: especially in terms of the rental debate, which I think is just SO petty that they would do all of that shit. Despite Colosseum being my favorite Pokemon game next to the Gen 5 games, I fully accept that it isn't perfect, it wasn't designed perfectly, there are things about it that even I don't like and that you touched on in this video and previous ones. I think your claims are 100% valid.
I do believe that a good portion of your hatred for these games comes from the 100% mentality that you had while going through this: national dex for the other Gen 3 games included. Which is fine: I get it. It's immensely frustrating to put so much time and effort into a game you love, or truly want to love, and then having a giant slab of nothing shoved into your face. Super Mario Sunshine (conveniently also on Gamecube) is probably the biggest example of this. But I truly believe that, when not looking at these games from a completionist's point of view, these games are very, very good. I honestly do not like Sunshine, but even I'll admit that I had a lot of fun going through the worlds, spraying stuff, etc etc.
Setting aside all the nostalgic bias I have for Colosseum and XD, what I like about it is that they at least tried to do something different. No, they did not hit every mark, I acknowledge that, but what this game (And XD by extension) do well, they do very, VERY well. The OST is iconic, the battle animations both sound and look great, there's memorable characters like Miror B. and Wes that people to this day still want to make a return in some shape or form, etc.
The way that you played it (and likely the way the devs intended) where you continuously swapped out Shadows to purify all of them during the main game, I personally think that was the number 1 worst way to play this game. No blame on you for it, I can see your points as to how the devs seemed to have this in mind, which makes sense given they'd never made a Pokemon game before, but it was the wrong way to go about this. Planning ahead of time, knowing what Pokemon you want and sticking with them is definitely the way to go with playing this game, as it's always been with the other Pokemon games. It's fun to build Weather Teams in this game, it's fun to have a standard team, it's fun to use all three Legendary Beasts, it's just fun. I believe there's more flexibility here than you give it credit for despite the limited roster.
You've probably heard this point many a time in Patreon chats and Discord chats, but the reason that I and others love this game (and XD), and why the games have the following that they do, is because they tried something different and have elements within them that we want to see in future games. The concept of stealing other people's Pokemon for the greater good is a great concept for teetering the line of good and evil. The battle animations look like they were given a damn about as opposed to nowadays where, for example, a pokemon does a one inch hop and they slap a PNG of a foot on the opponent to give the impression of them being kicked. Starting off as an adult--an adult CRIMINAL no less--is really cool and definitely beats being another 8 year old that somehow beats a crime organization by themselves with like 0 help at all (and I swear, if I get called a 'kid' in a derogatory fashion one more time in a Pokemon game I'm going to have a hernia. Get better writers, GameFreak.) Having Pokemon that are already raised in levels and have competent movesets is also great because it means you won't have to spend half an hour grinding, which was one of your biggest complaints about this game in particular...
...And above all else, these games are a legitimate challenge. You don't have rivals kissing the ground you walk on, rolling out the red carpet with clumps of Sacred Ash, Full Restores and Max Elixirs for you to snort up, you don't have incompetent gym leaders that only specialize in one type and are brought down by mashing A, and for the most part you don't walk into boss battles with obscenely overleveled Pokemon. If you fight all the trainers along the way and manage your team well, you'll be at a competent battle level to fight the Admins and other bosses, and you have to actually THINK about what you need to do to bring them down as opposed to mashing A. Is it better to 2 on 1 one Pokemon to keep it from attacking? Is it better to attack both Pokemon individually? Should I stop Miror B from setting up Rain Dance? Should I go after the Pokemon that Dakim uses that's going to fire off an Earthquake? Things like that add a lot of strategy, variance, and challenge that the newer games just straight up do not have. I mean sure you have the battle tower in BDSP, but when their answer for 'make a harder game' is to shove unfair bullshit into the postgame and call it a day, I don't really think that counts.
The fact that Masuda just says "No, we'll never do another Colosseum game again, fuck off, hahaha", is just so soulless. What an absolute dick. Because why bother being innovative and actually giving a damn when you can release a game with trees from OOT and water that barely registers as a texture with the most braindead boss fights imaginable and animations that could be done better by first timers in Middle School and still make insane amounts of bank AND maintain your status as the Number 1 brand in the world?
TL;DR: I fully accept these games aren't perfect, but I still love them, and they still hold elements within them that should have been carried over to the newer generations YEARS ago.
I wish your comment had more likes because I resonate so much with it! I could not have said it better myself.
Agreed
These games have great ideas but imo really fail in practice, mainly Colosseum. I do think they should do a third game with all the modernizations the series has had and all the new experience they have now
I would like to mention that XD did a lot more for changing the formula. Introduced a lot more shadow moves, including both physical and special attacks, added wild pokemon, and offered more of an overall goal and a bit more world building, The level design was a little better. Honestly, I think people like Coliseum because they remember XD's interpretation of Orre. They kinda vastly improved by the sequel.
I swear, a lot of sites and guides claim Gen 3 didn't have the special/physical split, but they never count Gale of Darkness. Even as a kid I noticed certain attacks on certain Pokémon hit for wildly different amounts based on if it was physical or special. Gale of Darkness really made me appreciate the variety of moves and strategies you can use to fight double battles, even with only one main attacking monster. I always wanted the main games to add an option to play the entire games with double battles against trainers. Which is why I absolutely love Battle Revolution; double battles.
Gale of Darkness is there to show how you do the Shadow Pokémon thing right, and to show you how you build good teams for double battles.
It's like Bioshock 1 vs 2; the first game had the major impact, while the second improves a long of the gameplay issues of the first, but otherwise ends up being in the first game's shadow (no pun intended). Mechanically XD is just a much better game that eases players into Orre more smoothly and gives much better and varied options. It just sucks that the devs obviously felt effected by, and had to differentiate from, Colosseum so that the hero is a basic child again, and the story is generally presented in a lighter and softer way.
EH, I found that XD was a pretty big letdown compared to Collo. On the upside, it was a lot easier to get Lugia than it was Ho-oh in the original.
The thing I love the most about your reviews, is that you never review the game only by it's contents, but you also take into consideration development context, the market context at the time, sometimes even societal/political things. This makes the reviews so much more juicy.
I'm disinclined to believe Nintendo was sneaking around behind GameFreak's back, if only because as the primary game for acquiring most Johto Pokémon, Colosseum feels intentionally designed to complement Ruby/Saphire from the ground up. Likewise, there is also the fact that Colosseum was allowed to have a direct sequel. While I can fully believe GameFreak wanted nothing to do with these games, I see little to suggest that they were in anyway opposed to Nintendo developing them as spin-offs.
As for the pacing issue of things like only being able to save at the PC, that's really more so a standard convention of most console RPGs at the time. Compare that games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest also often had location specific save systems. The primary reason Pokémon and other handheld RPGs typically allowed saving anywhere is because the systems they were on had limitations such as batter life, or because they were mobile devices it was expected sessions would be played in short bursts, both situations where the player may not have the available time to travel back and forth between checkpoints to save.
Colosseum might be far from a perfect game, but I just can't take as cynical a view of its systems and mechanics. Yes, it is the product of people who had never made a Pokémon game and so didn't entirely understand what makes the franchise work, but at the same time it's also a game made by an entirely fresh team who lacked the internal biases of GameFreak and so were far more interested in experimenting with the franchise.
Nothing is spookier for Halloween than an unpopular opinion on the internet.
In all seriousness, I definitely feel like there are a lot of notable issues with Colosseum, caused by a combination of being developed by a team with no experience with Pokemon and a clear development crunch.
But I still think the concept is really fun, rescuing pokemon from dirty criminals and rehabilitating them is a great idea for a story. You say in this video that Wes' motivation isn't really explained, but I definitely think it's likely he knew something was up with Team Snagem and defected to investigate further. Though you are right that stuff like that really is left to interpretation on the player's end, I actually like that fact. I like that he is a more hard-core and serious protagonist without being nearly as over the top as characters like Cloud or Shadow in Shadow the Hedgehog. Beyond the flashy explosions in the intro, what is actually edgy at all about Wes? He's running around Orre rescuing abused animals and getting all cuddly with them to make them friendlier.
I think it's the rushed development that leads to the narrative blanks that aren't quite properly explored. But to me, the blanks did less to frustrate me and more to capture my imagination. This game got me thinking more about how the world of pokemon works than any other game, I think. It got me imaging things from a more adult perspective.
And, quite frankly, as a kid, none of that mattered to me. I just saw 3D models of Ruby and Sapphire pokemon and got excited. I think I like this game a lot more as an adult than as a Kid because when I was a kid I remember just being frustrated that I had to beat the whole game just to see my pokemon in 3D like in Stadium.
True 1 year later lol
As a child, it always annoyed me how so many beautifully crafted worlds in Pokemon only existed for me to just get badges from so many different characters who all exist to fulfil the exact same role just for me to become champ again and again. I just grew tired of the routine. As someone who's only really interested in battles and seeing how expressive the Pokemon and their attacks could look on a console game (especially compared to where we are now with Scarlet/Violet), this game and Gale of Darkness was a nice departure from the usual for me.
I can definitely see where you're coming from though.
Tama, you are the first poketuber that actually defended the second gen and provided great context for the third gen background, if people rant by your opinion for this game they are missing the chance to debating with great arguments! Thanks for sharing this, I love Colosseum and really appreciate listening another point of view.
People bash on second gen Pokemon games!?
@@SuperiorX99 yes because they have a ton of really obvious issues.
I used that exploit in Aagate Village every playthrough, I could never walk around for a million times like that. Though I still get your point on how doing that the normal way over and over would make you hate the game lol
What exploit? I used Action Replay to hack in multiple of the flutes
@@Poever Walking towards the background in that still registers as movement even tho you don't actually go anywhere, so you can just put a rubber band on your controller and leave it running while you go do something else to purify your pokemon passively
@@Poever she mentions it in the video, walking into certain spots in Agate Village and unplugging your controller while walking a certain makes the character get stuck, so it counts steps while you can put the game down
I adore Colosseum and XD to this day, but I have to disagree about the careful what you wish for. Because when people ask for a modern console game to be like Colosseum/XD, I don't think they want a duplicate of the games, i think they just want pokemon to shake up the formula that wasn't just gimmick mechanics.
One such shake up was the story, Wes as a character (besides the rad design) had a semi-established backstory that you the player could fill in a lot more than the standard pokemon "Oh you're just a new kid... off ya go on your adventure!". Instead you were apart of the villain team, you were the bad guy.
For me personally, I had always thought that Wes was the best snagger on the team but didn't care for the hierarchy of the big bad team, he was originally there for his own goals. When his goals didn't align with Snaggem anymore, he jumped ship. But it was Rui who gave him a goal beyond his own wants/desires.
Ruby/Saphire started mixing it up when it made your dad a gym leader, it gave the player character a bit more of a backstory to kinda push why we as players would want to go through the league instead of say doing only contests or making Pokeblocks/berry gardening. (Gen 4 kinda repeats it with Barry, but that's more that character's motivation.)
Black and white (and their sequels) shook up the story more with the introduction of not just N/Plasma and the theme of not everything is black/white (kinda like colosseum's story), but Cherin and Bianca as childhood friends who showed the different paths people in the pokemon world can take. (Bianca wanting to grow stronger and be a professor while Cherin became a gym leader himself)
By giving hints at a backstory, it makes it a little easier to care about the main character and the story going forward because you can find SOMETHING to latch onto for roleplaying purposes.
Another shake up was the lack of a "proper" Pokémon League and gym leaders.
Another was having a preset team from the get go at a higher level. No tackle spamming, no route one bird or dog. You had two fully evolved pokemon who clearly had a history with the trainer and a thematic show of his own grey nature. (Espeon only evolves in the daylight (aka a good side) and Umbreon only evolves in the moonlight (aka the dark side))
The fact the next console game was battle revolution, an extremely watered down stadium clone, people started to shift and want more of Colosseum/XD's unique/stand out features.
But all in all, I think the closest we've gotten to another colosseum/XD game was Legends of Arceus. It had a defined story with a rough backstory for the character, it gave a reason as to why we were going around helping and battling, plus the shake up of game mechanics gave me the exact same feeling I had the first time I played Colosseum/XD and quickly worked it's way to being my fave modern pokemon game.
Luckily with Scarlet and Violet shaking up the story structure again and being an enjoyable game to lose yourself in (not including the tech issues), I think pokemon has a good future in console-focused games. (Granted it's hard to say that definitively since the switch is both stationary and portable...)
btw: if you read all this... thanks lol.
I read the title and I’m already mad
The game defintely has its flaws, but it's also the one Pokemon game I feel more inclined to go back to more than any other. It being slow was probably one of my biggest issues with it, especially since that sort of causes a snowball affect with other issues like some of the back tracking.
But at the end of the day, I hold this game in higher regard than most other pokemon games because pretty much every pokemon game is a slog that's easy to get lost in, in my experience. I appreciate Colosseum for its originality more.
Oh also, the double battles. That alone makes me appreciate this game more than any other pokemon game. 1v1 turn-based battles can be so boring and the only thing GF has ever done to make them even the slightest bit more interesting was add in agile and strong style moves and a turn order system similar to FF10's Aeon Battles, but that seems like its already not returning in Scarlet and Violet.
But having constant double battles in a more challenging and strategic pokemon game is really one of my favorite things about this game.
Ah, yes. The Legendary Ferrets. Furret, shiny Furret, and shadow Furret.
1:10 "people like Mirror B" sorry we don't "like" Mirror B we Love him, his dance/music and Ludicolos.
I really love this video, just for the sole fact of how it offers a different, more developed view of a game that is often overhyped with barebones assessment.
But I'd be lying if I didn't say that beyond just disagreeing with the review... there was a lot in this video that got me kinda ruffled lol, and I don't think the very cynical somewhat conspiracy theory surrounding Colo's development really helped.
The change in the game's tone corresponding with changing attitudes in gaming at the time is very interesting, but it's very hard for me to believe it had to do with trying to make a killer app and not just... making a game with a different attitude to differentiate it from the main game. Nintendo's overall development attitudes during the Sixth Gen and the advertising for Colosseum compared to RSE and FRLG just doesn't to me paint the idea of a game made backhand to capture a fleeting audience for the gamecube. The only time I can think of with Nintendo pushing a hit game for a more mature audience was Twilight Princess, which only came about following Wind Waker's less than impressive sales and reception. Trying to undercut Pkmn RSE to me just doesn't match with the state of the games and their sales at the time.
As for shadow Pokemon, I'm so happy that you pointed out just how much they essentially ruin much of the game, considering how Pokemon fans seem oddly obsessed with the idea of Shadow Pokemon returning.
To me, Shadow Pokemon suck because the entire point of the gameplay mechanics surrounding them is to make them suck and push you to purify them. They are not designed to be used, only to be discarded. And the fact that you have to rely on an exploit to make purifying them in anyway palatable is a major flaw in the basic structure of the game.
It's from here though that I also just really disagree about the battle system. Colosseum is the only time in a single player Pokemon campaign that I felt double battles really had any sense of challenge and satisfaction, and to me that stems from the Pokemon selection.
Colosseum is the best spot for a lot of Johto mons because the limited roster allows a lot of their special traits to see actual use. Johto mons who seemed useless to me prior had all sorts of non attacking moves that added depth to play and made for effective strategies.
The team building is far from perfect, in fact inherently flawed though, because much of your team will still rely on your two starters and Suicune. But much of my time will Colo was thinking so much about which types, which move hits who, turn priority, who to focus on.
And I'm suprised at the thought of grinding and using Shadow pokemon of all places at the final boss because of how much the suck. This is DEFINITELY where the purification exploit carried me though, as stronger Pokemon didn't take as long to free, but I never felt the need to grind beyond just battling every trainer on the overworld I could.
Putting opponents to sleep and buffing/debuffing in Pokemon games in general has always been more effective than level differences.
The story section I felt was a very good example of how over reliant the story of this game, and to a lesser extent the story of other Pokemon games, are on wish fulfillment and overt audience investment that only really works with a more childlike state of mind.
And I think with that in mind it makes sense why it seems the goal of the game is to collect every Pokemon... but that generally never has been in any Pokemon game.
The core problem with Gen 3 I feel IS that they treat dex collection as something only obsessed fans with the money and time will complete, and thus it should generally be tossed to the side. While the trading shut out is definitely a product of game rental markets, I don't think the game is purposely designed with the intent of collecting every Shadow Pokemon, only as a effort those already into the game would complete.
And I feel that further extends to issues with the game's design as a whole. Natures in general have always been a shitty, annoying mechanic to force repetitive catching, and it's no different here. Casual players will never notice or care about natures, which isn't a problem when the buffs are so unnoticeable main game, but is when it arbitrarily lends even more to how shitty Shadow Pokemon are.
I can't at all say I agree with this video, which is exactly why I love it. It pushed me to evaluate Colosseum WAY more than than blanket statements about "they should make ANOTHER one" could. It helped me realize what I still love about it, what I didn't know, what I didn't realize I hated, and most of all, these recent reviews have made me realize my biases going into playing certain games as a whole.
This video has definitely put Colo a few pegs down in my books, but I still really like the game for things it does right that other games don't, and I'm personally very adamant that another Colo type game could be really good done right.
...and I think the first way it could be good is by removing Shadow Pokemon all together! I really can't stress how terrible a mechanic they are.
Don't you think that Pokémon XD improved the problem of the shadow Pokémon? They are much more dangerous in that game. Especially when you fight against the final boss.
By extension, I guess the "mature audience" push led to Thousand Year Door as well. Still carrying the Paper Mario mechanics, even streamlining some from 64, but being much more than a gently modified system.
Umbreon only really good for the last two bosses and espeon just becomes a screen bot by the end. I didnt use a suicune either, but I think having one of the dogs is vital for no grind. I think this game does have a fair amount of room for team building.
Really I think what emerges from the games mechanic is fine, yeah it could be better but its not a fatal flaw. I think Tama just has a completionist bug and made a video about how crappy the experience is.
I think it would do you better to realize the motivated reasoning for what it is. Had all the time to spend grinding but not ask someone good at the game for help.
I really think you should play pokemon XD and maybe you'll understand why so many people want shadow pokemon back in the game. The shadow pokemon have a much more diverse and interesting move pools with fascinating moves, the world is the same but larger more fleshed out, more spaces and dungeons, and double the amount of catchable pokemon.
@@LittlestPetShopPup I def wanna jump back into XD someday. But between no time and a bad first impression, may take me a while lol
I'm gonna be honest, this review sounds like you're just obsessed with optimization and run through a game as 'efficiently" as possible. I think you broke the fun of this game for yourself to be honest.
Though the alienation you mentioned toward the beginning is valid to me. I had that experience with the recent Pokemom Arceus. You mentioned here that you felt put off and alienated by the edgy hetero male character which honestly reminded me of how alienating Arceus's obsessively gendered language toward the player character was. I wish more game developers would address this more thoughtfully.
28:05 Honestly, this is so important 'cause I remember the first time I really realized how much it can impact your experience was during an Iron Man run I had of Tear Ring Saga.
I had a character who I hadn't used since she joined so she was vastly underleveled and weak, but she just kept surviving any lethal blow by dodging them, to the point she had enough experience to use the spare Promotion item I had lying around. Then, she was the last hope I had against a strong boss because everyone else had used their turn and I got a really bad set of RNG rolls where everyone missed. She came through again despite having a trash hit rate.
When she died by a fluke (I didn't realize that she was even deployed on the map 'cause I meant to not bring her), I was actually sad 'cause that was one of the most fun rides I've had with a character in a game.
That's when I realized how you roleplay in the game is so important, 'cause it can really make things so much more fun.
It's funny because I think Colosseum is a pretty tedious experience, while I consider XD one of the best pokemon games ever officially made
I've played Pokemon Colosseum back in the day, when I couldn't afford a good PC and fresh games so I ended up playing emulated gen 3-6 console games.
And to be fair, I think that all the nostalgic opinions about it come from the fact that it was just good enough for the time, we didn't know any better.
I've been seeing a lot of your stuff on Twitter about making this video and tried to avoid replying to any of it and just wait for the actual video to come out to see what this was all about. I have to say, I'm very glad I waited to say anything, because as a massive fan of the Orre region, you've definitely made me realize a lot of things about Colosseum and I'm entirely convinced on why some people would actively dislike the game. (Also this is definitely going to be long, because this video actually made me think about things I just have accepted from when I was a kid)
I definitely just happened to avoid a lot of the issues brought up here by first (as you mentioned) doing a ton of the heavy lifting on story by being a Pokémon player and just filling in the blanks, second completely loving double battles on its own over single battles (even with basically no variance on team building), and finally not caring at all about needing to purify every shadow Pokémon. With all of these things lining up for my first playthrough as a kid, I definitely got lucky, and have basically let the game coast on pure nostalgia since. I HAVE recognized for a long time that a lot of the general game is slow and dungeons are back and forth, so it's not exactly a game I would replay more than once every 10-20 years, and especially deviates from what I enjoy about RPGs (mainly the Pokémon kind) these days. (Also very clearly helps that I was the exact kind of kid who could get hyped up about, what I built Wes up to be, a Seto Kaiba like character I was already a fan of.)
I'm still very thankful to this game for originally showing me that there can be Pokémon games which aren't "beat 8 Gyms and the Elite Four" again OR just an entirely different kind of spin-off. Basically every Gen past the first 2, I've enjoyed a lot more of everything around the Gyms, and always wanted more, and eventually I got the game I'd been waiting almost 20 years for with Legends Arceus. I'm also glad I can still look back on the a lot of the aesthetic, superficial stuff from the Orre region and enjoy it. The fact that the Pokémon looked good while I was fighting in big, full arenas against some aesthetically cool boss characters with banger music playing is what's stuck with me and probably will keep sticking with me after this.
Overall, great video, and it's been fun seeing your sort of new era on TH-cam. Still going to be one of my favorite Pokémon games, but much more from a "I enjoyed this not-so-RPG adventure as a kid and never tried to recreate it" going forward.
i could have written those first two paragraphs myself, hahaha. i've always known this game was tedious, but i seem to have an abnormally high tolerance for it, a lot of my favourite games are slow & un-necessarily grindy.
You're vastly underestimating how much slower this game would be if it used single battles.
Imagine being asked whether to switch after every kill and doing half the damage each turn.
I somehow forgot this game does the chad move of having the game be on Battle Style Set the whole time.
I thought this video was actually really good, and it opened my eyes to a lot of the game's problems (though, truth be told, I had never finished Colosseum because the final area was too difficult for me when I was 9-10, and I feel it appropriate to point out that XD was my first ever Pokémon game).
It's a good thing I did wait until the end to comment, because one of the things I wanted to ask about was the potential for an XD video. Fortunately, you did cover it in part, so that settles that matter. However, I'd love to get your opinion on XD's story and the changes made to the Shadow Pokémon mechanics outside of purification. As well, it'd be nice to get some thoughts on the direction of XD's story and world building (Tama does mention that the game foregoes the grittier atmosphere and slightly more mature themeing, at least). Things like how the game was originally going to have Wes return as the main antagonist before chickening out, it would've been nice.
That being said, I do have two gripes with the video I would like to talk about:
1.) The intro explaining the potential conception of the game. In your videos on RSE, DPP and FRLG, I've found the conception portions for those videos incredibly informative and interesting, but here, while there's definitely some neat information in there, its all bundled together to present a theory of why the game was made, that being a cynical attempt to use an IP they recently acquired to help boost the sales of the GameCube, so that it didn't fall into a similar fate the N64 did. It's an interesting theory, but it gets used in the summary near the end for the problems with the game as a whole, and, given its just speculation (with some evidence to back it up), I think it's a somewhat unfair poisoning of the well. Makes it out like the game in its entirety was a soulless cashgrab, with Nintendo going out of their way to intentionally crap on GameFreak's vision.
I can't help but feel it's the one point where your subjective opinion of the game shows. Pardon the poor illustration on my end, but the mindset seems to come off as, "Colosseum already feels like a game that exists to abuse it's dying fan base, making it a requirement to own in order to complete the Pokédex. Therefore, perhaps the entire game is just a cynical cash grab from its very creation." Perhaps so; you've presented some decent arguments for that to be the case, but there's just not enough information to draw a conclusion, and it's only an issue because the video essay calls back to this point as if to say, "The problems with this game are the result of Nintendo's greedy decisions."
2.) The very ending's line of, "be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it" rubs me the wrong way. When people compare Sword and Shield to Colosseum, XD and Battle Revolution, it's purely for the presentation of the battles, with their more expressive animations and sense of scale (as in, the Pokémon sizes are more true to scale because the arenas are spaced out enough to allow for larger Pokémon, and because the games forego that traditional "from the back" camera angle the mainline series tries to stick with). To present it as otherwise, I think, misrepresents the people who make those comparisons to begin with.
That, however, is just two points of contention with an otherwise well done video with strong points. If you've read this comment this far in, I'd like to thank you for reading, apologize for the trouble, and offer a theory I have in regards to the development of Colosseum.
Tama points out that the supposed development for the game was 12 months, but given its presentation, I doubt that myself. Rather, I have a feeling the game was originally intended to be a GSC spinoff on the N64, given things like the really rough looking character models, the really awful lighting engine, the broken shadows (seen with Pokémon who use transparent textures on their models, most notably with Jumpluff's hands), and the horrible subdivision effect given to the Stadium Pokémon models to smooth them out. Most of these issues are visual problems XD would later fix.
It feels less like the Gen 2 Pokémon were included for the sake of completing Ruby and Sapphire's Pokédex, and more like Genius Sonority had to port Gen 3's battle engine and Pokémon over to a Gen 2 title, which happened to work out with what Gen 3 was doing with its Pokédex (there are Gen 3 Pokémon in the main campaign, but they're somewhat rare and tacked on; XD would later go on to fix this). It wouldn't be the first time a game had to be carried over from the N64 to the GameCube, either, with Star Fox Adventures being the prime example.
However, that's all just speculation on my end, too, and I don't have much evidence for this.
And finally, the cream of the crop? Colosseum had more issues than what was presented in the video, but they're minor. In addition to the crappy subdivided Stadium models, you also have everything related to shiny Pokémon; there's an infamous glitch where odds are rolled twice; once for the Shadoe variant and again for the purified variant. As well, many shiny forms here are lazy texture edits, where the hue was shifted a bit with not much thought (great examples with this are Voltorb and Psyduck, who, because of the method of editing, have their white eyes tinted to the desired color).
God bless, good job, and sorry for the trouble.
1:02:22 The mechanical benefit to purifying Pokémon is that you can level them up. I thought that would be obvious.
I bet you still don't hate this game as much as Game Freak does
@@Ragnellrok This hurt
You mention the lack of being able to grind wild pokemon as a problem, and I think that's the problem that Mt. Battle is there to solve.
Everyone hates Mt. Battle (for good reason) but I didn't mind just spending some time doing some grinding, purifying some Pokemon and doing some leveling at the same time. Sure, if your priority is to finish the game ASAP because you hate every second of it, you're not going to have a good time.
It seems a little contradictory to at the same time complain about a lack of one type of grinding and the over-abundance of another. I understand your problem is that trainer battles take longer, but that also allows for more opportunities to call out of hyper mode in one battle, so it balances out for me.
It’s one of the best to me. The main game is indeed fun. I’ve played through twice and love it. The one thing I did hate was that we couldn’t save anywhere. And also that they got lazy with shiny sprites. I got annoyed watching videos and seeing shinies that were way different than their actual look or just got blue filters. And I will agree that purifying takes a lot longer than in XD. I didn’t miss Rui in XD but they should’ve had Wes back. An early plan actually had him as a potential villain which would’ve felt weird to me. Interestingly I didn’t realize Coloaseum came first and played XD first. I never had a GC either and did it all on Wii and now modded Wii U.
I will admit though to save editing my second playthrough…added extra Pokémon, scents and time flutes so that one would probably seem easier to me.
It also stinks that most players got locked out of the bonus e reader stuff. I know they likely thought the cards wouldn’t sell enough to make a profit given e reader sales but it still stinks that they put,the functions in the game and then screwed everyone outside Japan out of using the features. They probably should’ve just said no to the e reader from the start anyway. I wonder if it would be possible today to make working English cards…
I was one of those relatively few people to buy the game (on release, no less) and I'm just finding out about a ton of mechanics I just bruteforced through.
Excellent write up, this was engaging the whole way through and really well elaborated on. Thanks as always for the content! Always glad we can think critically about a series we love.
Great video! You did so much work on this. I really want to like the game because it’s a story-based 3D rpg Pokémon game, but they really dropped the ball on the shadow Pokémon mechanic and ruined the experience.
I tried playing it again as an adult and didn’t hate it, but all the back-tracking to save broke me. And you know exactly where too, because you guessed casual players would play til about Mirror B and then give up, and you were completely right.
Genuinely enjoyed your breakdowns for FireFred and LeafGrean, and tackling the 3rd Gen bullshit that I fell for. I was single digits in age for Gen I, skipped Gen II, and got back into Pokemon via Gen III emulation. I remember slowly acquiring all the Gen III games... I bought Colosseum just to acquire the Johto-mons that the FR/LG post game teased and that I could not get. You have nailed the same completionist issue I felt back in 2005 or so. I was so proud to finally EV train a Yanma to tackle Lance in FR/LG after failing to even get pokemon I had never even heard of.
I genuinely appreciate the level of detail and insight you have put into this retrospective. Your research is admirable and your perspective is increasingly relevant now that the mystery events are not viable, and even weren't at the time. I drove 45 minutes to a Toys R Us for Gen 3 Events only to find they didn't do it, and I'd need to go another 45 to try again.
I came to enjoy Colosseum for its challenge. It's the only game where Ledian is actually viable. I did a playthrough having it run Dual Walls and Giga Drain.... got me through Mt Battle with otherwise garbage mons. Granted, I like a challenge, so that's my replay value with older Pokemon games. Colosseum provides a highly limited challenge.
That said, I don't disagree with anything you put forward. Please continue to give the games your level of analysis and thought. No one else seems to do it.
Keep up the good work, you're an admirable gaming historian!
Im 30 now. I played every pokemon game on release. Colesseum and xd were both top tier experiences for me. I got ho oh and lugia from them.
There's a concept you're forgetting when talking about length of purification for different Natures: realism. The purpose is to make each Pokemon feel like a unique living being, and of course the time it's going to take will vary for each Pokemon.
Maybe, the game wasn't meant to be optimized to such a degree, and you're supposed to just enjoy it for what it is.
I was of the same mind while watching the video. I do think that the complaints are valid, but mechanically, and especially regarding the purification of Pokemon, I found myself thinking "ok but do I really care about optimizing the hell out of it?"
It seems we always have opposite tastes when it comes to Pokemon - colosseum and gen 4 are my favourite Pokémon games of all time 😭
I hate these games lol but you have to admit how ridiculous Gen 4 is with its terrible pacing
Why were you trying to purify every pokemon as you went? Do you use every pokemon you see in the main series games? Absolutely not. Team building is very much a thing in colosseum. The only issue with it is that it requires pre-existing knowledge of the pokemon you have at your disposal as there is quite a large barrier to entry (the purification mechanic). Colosseum is by no means perfect but your video comes across as quite nitpicky and like you're trying to find reasons to dislike the game. The history lesson at the beginning was interesting so I'll give you credit for that. I just completely disagree with your opinions on the game but no hard feelings either.
EDIT: I say all of this as someone who just finished this game for the first time last week and I'd like to specify that I didn't even touch mt battle (outside of the dakim fight) until postgame
Considering how much I hate how formulaic Pokemon has become, Colosseum and XD are some of my favorites to return to even with their issues. I could not disagree more with this video.
But still, you worked hard on this & opinions are opinions, so great job on the video nonetheless.
Hm, I still think that you're just being cynical against these games, because you felt that you *had* to play them in order to complete your gen 3 National Dex. Going in with a negative attitude, you're more likely to find issues with a passable game. It may not be the best game in the world, but it's certainly one of the better Pokemon games out there. The only real issues are the lack of animation skipping, and the post-game purification sessions (which would be lessened with skipping battle animations)
If you plan your team correctly, you won't have to grind to beat this game, and you won't have to backtrack as much. The same as almost any Pokemon game you play for the first time, if you don't know which Pokemon are good or bad, put experience into the wrong ones, then you will get stuck and have to grind to move forward. But again, just like any other Pokemon game, if you plan your team correctly from the beginning, then you won't ever have to waste time grinding.
What makes this game better than most mainline games is everything that you ignored or glazed over in this "review"; the music, the animations and graphics (though they don't hold up well, they are still better than GF's latest attempts in many ways), the characters, the double battle strats, and of course, the challenge of having a limited set of Pokemon in an environment with high level Pokemon.
But you did have to play this game if you wanted to complete the pokedex for gen 3?
you made so many valid points and I understand how flawed this game is, yet I absolutely adore it. I think a large part of that is nostalgia since I played both colosseum and XD as a child, and I still periodically go back to them now, but my gosh do i love this game no matter all the "flaws" lol.
the only moral of Colosseum's story is that living in Arizona fucking sucks
I loved playing Pokemon Colosseum as a kid, but it's pretty cool to kinda see things without rose tinted glasses, since I couldn't quite figure out why I didn't enjoy it as much as an adult. So it's nice to find a good solid, unclouded analysis to kinda help me out.
Despite colosseum being one of my favorite pokemon games, partially because of the darker and grittier aspect and former villain protagonist, all of the points you made are perfectly valid. If anyone else had made a video with this premise, I may not have watched it. I'm glad I gave this a chance. Thank you.
I was curious what your problem with the game was since it's one of if not the most creative pokemon game. 20 minutes into the video and the only 'flaw' brought up so far is that you don't like the darker themes of the game.
This video did not need to be so long.
I played Colosseum a lot growing up, and though it had its flaws, I loved it for it's excellenr graphics, darker story, and, at the time, taking a chance on something different for a Pokemon game.
Gale of Darkness was even better. It cleaned up a lot of the annoying things about Colosseum, such as purifying shadow Pokemon.
00:02 " It OK, your on the internet, everyone is mad all the time" hahah Wonderful Tama :) keep up the great work
Great work as usual oozing of effort and commitment. Regarding your last statement about a new era of pokemon, I'd say that started softly in gen 5 and came full circle by gen 8.This is coming from someone that had to miss out on Colosseum and always regretted it (I still do even after this video). I would still rather get an opportunity to play this game that came from an era where pokemon was still in limbo rather than play a modern pokemon game that is most guaranteed rushed. As far as I'm concerned the most insulting pokemon games are BD and SP and I think they won't be topped for quite a while.
Scarlet and Violet aren’t rushed
@@ChicagoMel23 If you really think that there's nothing I can say to change your mind.
Even seeing the conversation about it in the discord could not prepare me for that first chapter title.
Is it a reference to something?
@@NitroIndigo yeah Spider-man memes.
I totally get your criticisms, but I still praise it for having way more personality than any Pokemon game released in the last 5 years. As well as for having a protagonist that is actually allowed to look cool instead of this weird unspoken requirement that they all have to look 7 years old after XY.
I mean it doesn’t have personality tho. It has as much personality as a micro-transaction
Really? I'm surprised because that's a lot closer to how I'd describe the Switch Pokemons. (Except maybe Arceus, but besides fun gameplay I didn't think it did much with its initially-interesting premise.) I thought Colosseum had a memorable setting, premise, and general weirdness that they still never repeated elsewhere.@@thomasffrench3639
@@glurpious73 maybe, I’m just sick of nothing arguments like “charm” or “personality” to defend criticism. I haven’t played this game, but it seems like a bland take on the edgy hero trope.
@@glurpious73 yeah I get so annoyed when I hate a movie, then someone says “at least the movie is charming”. No, it’s not charming, it is terrible to sit through.
@@thomasffrench3639
Appreciate the hotdog water take king.
I respect your opinion,
but I respectfully disagree with it too.
I played this game as a kid and love it to this day.
This video was excellent! I think my favorite part of your videos is usually the history, as you just don't get that from typical retrospectives or reviews. But this time it was the analysis of the shadow mechanic. You really tore it apart and explained pretty well why it didn't work. The entire game is battle hallways with frustrating mechanics with no team variety. So many people talk about how slow DPPt are, and then praise this game. Hello?
At least the rng manips are cool, if tedious.
CRANBERRIES.
I bought this game when it came out always loved it! I 100%d it and the sequel XD multiple times, which I feel is a lot better. It was different and that’s part of the reason why I liked it, but still Colosseum hasn’t aged that well. your points make a lot of sense even if I don’t fully agree. Great video
Another great review thats genuinely well informed and researched.
I have a lot of nostalgia for this game because I happened to be 13 and only had a gamecube. I went back a few years ago and I didn't hate it but I also just bashed through the story and called it a day.
Good lord, sorry you went through such a miserable experience to make this, but it's a truly amazing video.
I never did vibe with Colosseum back in the day and am really glad I lost patience pretty early on. Ended up trading my copy and keeping the bonus disc.
I think nostalgia makes me think fondly of this game _in spite_ of itself, rather than because of it. I had never considered most of these points before, and the only main sour taste I can remember was when I played through it more recently I needed to run Hidden Power on 2/3 of my team just to have any semblance of coverage. But that's really a gen 3 depth problem not limited to just Colosseum.
I was probably never going to revisit it even before watching this video, but you've convinced me not to feel guilty about leaving it in the past.
(except the music 👀)
I always thought this game was tedious and unfun. Thanks for the kick ass video.
I spent a decent chunk of my childhood not knowing how to spell 'coliseum' because of this game
I definitely got attached to XDGoD (that acronym omg 😂) so I actually found Colosseum a bit weird when I finally got it. I liked the Underground because it was an area that wasn’t in XD, but other than that, everything felt like a downgrade.
I love how much love an energy you put into all your videos. Always well thought an interesting! Thank you 🎃❤
I played it when it came out. It was such a unique and very surreal location to explore, and because of that it's basically burned into my mind forever. My complaint is that they didn't just go ahead and make full-fledged pokemon games also on home console. It was fine as a spinoff, but there should have been more of what they eventually did on the Switch. Instead we got Pokemon Channel, Pokemon Box, and those terrible Rumble/Ranch/Park Wii games.
This was made by a company that still hasn't grasped 3D graphics, or rather the rest of the game felt like an afterthought. They weren't alone neither. I think about games like Mega Man X7, EArthworm Jim 3, Medabots, and they just show they still needed more time to catch up
I love Colosseum and XD Gale of Darkness so much
This game has a special connection to my heart because it was exactly when I understood the love for competitive training, the soundtrack is just the kind of soul,guitar, electronic theme I love. Also it was the CLOSEST we've had of having a join Team Rocket story. It helped as well that Gen 3 is my favorite and the one I spent the most time, I still have Colosseum's Ho-Oh on my Emerald (the one you were awarded after beating 100 trainers).
It's not a crime to steal pokemon. Snag'em did nothing wrong.
this video has just been posted 5 minutes ago and you replied 23 hours ago 🤣 she must buy subs and bots to comment ffs
@@MrDilkington15 You don't know how youtube works my dude
@@Vidit1xonexandxonly Apparently i dont know how the concept of time works either i thought we could only go forward in time not back😂
Shadow Pokemon *
@@MrDilkington15 she probably releases the video early for Patreon or something
For me personally this game will always have a special place in my heart as it was one of the first Pokémon games my older brother played with me. He has since passed away. The memories of those days playing it with him may make me a bit Biased but I still play it every now and then and genuinely enjoy the game. I think if the game was reimagined and not just remastered than it would do much better. Though this could be said for many games at the end of the day.
I'm sorry for your loss.
1000000/10 video for the Raimi Spider-Man references alone.
Barely at part 2 but damn, this was worth the wait.
excellent video as always! your sense of game design never fails to impress me, with key words like "experience" and "message" being used in the right way in their context.
I'd love to see your thoughts on heartgold and soulsilver one day, going back to it i felt the game dragged too much with new story beats on team rocket.
I don't know why are you forcing to replaying the game that you don't like couple of times more just to prove to yourself that you don't like it.
Wow, your insight was both precise and meticulous to such a high degree! And you were able to articulate a lot of feelings I had about this game that I never could nail down. Also thank you for the comparison to the current and near future of the franchise. I hope we really do go off the rails just for the sake of greed….
pokemon colosseum is a game that is fondly remembered much more than it is actively played and enjoyed lol
I don't think I've ever disagreed with you more. And the way you talk about these games really disgusts me, ngl.
Maybe YOU dumped every mon as soon as they were purified to make room for the next one, but that's not how I played. And maybe it is a drag to have to purify every one to get Ho-Oh, but there are always complicated paths to some legendary, whether it's beating the League and traversing the Unknown Dungeon, or traveling through time or reading Braille. And you don't HAVE to battle with them to purify them. I can't be the only person who enjoyed walking around with them and feeling like I'm getting to know them and doing them some real good. Then again, I wasn't freeing them as a means to an end, I was just freeing them for them.
Orre is a gorgeous region and I had tons of fun adventuring through it, no matter how much backtracking I did. I never got tired of enjoying the scenery. That's about all I have to say on that. I also think the Pokémon are gorgeous here.
Yes the story is bare-bones, but I've come to expect that from Pokémon since I was a teenager glued to my Game Boy Color. There may be some games that have actual story, like Black/White, or sad attempts at story, like SWSH, but it's really never what Pokémon is great for. The real story is the one I make with myself and my Pokémon as we face what comes to us every day. And that doesn't change for me even if I'm given pre-existing characters and a linear story. In fact, I'd argue that's WHY Wes doesn't have anything going on in the character department, to help people do just that. Though... I've always felt, in terms of story anyway, that Rui is the real main character. She's the one who can see the Shadow mons, she's the one who knows what to do most of the time, and she's the one who has real aspirations you can feel. You're supposed to be driven/inspired by her, and by the desire to help the Shadow Pokémon heal and return to their true selves. Like... There's good story there, you're just looking everywhere else.
Your points about mechanics and corporate BS are totally valid. But nothing mechanically about the game ever hindered me in enjoying it. And I really don't care how the game came to be so much as that it DID come to be, and I'm glad that it did. Big businesses can be sucky and evil. This has always been true. But somewhere out of that mess came a game that I think is absolutely fantastic, and that you haven't given a fair chance from the get-go. Maybe if you distance yourself from it and try it again in a few years you might enjoy it. But then again, you don't like the Sinnoh games, so maybe I'm wrong about this too. The sad thing is that now so many people who never even played these gorgeous games are going to be influenced to hate it without ever giving it a try for themselves. Almost as sad as the thought we'll probably never get a remaster or port.
Also they lack the mental capacity to understand Double Battles.
I played XD first as a kid and have replayed it and loved it. However i thought i was crazy for playing Colosseum 2 years ago and absolutely hating it for all the reasons in the video. Even without trying to 100% it that game was an absolute chore to get through
i appreciate how these videos always have a history lesson wrapped up with yr thoughts
This video was a trip for me! Colosseum came out at just the right time for me because I finally had the purchasing power I needed to satisfy my completionist instincts. I thought I liked Colosseum at the time. My patience and passion for completion tends to power through slogs. I had forgotten how bad it was though, probably because I never replayed Colosseum or XD (The only Pokémon games I haven't replayed) and never really thought about why. Colosseum was also the first Pokémon game where I began falling asleep while playing it. It's like you've given a voice to some of the complicated feelings I've never admitted having about the game. I have whole new insights about the game thanks to your perspective.
Another nod to Masuda's hate of Colosseum and XD: During the 25th anniversary video, when it was going through the history of the franchise, the only games not mentioned were Colosseum, XD, and Battle Revolution. This seemed like a huge slap in the face of fans, especially since it was during the controversy of SnS's "high quality animations", with them being contrasted against Colosseum's and XD's animations.
Don't worry I respect your opinion. But it's not gonna stop me for loving a game that you can't stand. And Believe me I'm way aware of me wishing for it. Plus I was blood thirsty for that Remake. Sorry. But I love the soundtrack and the battle animations from Colosseum and XD.
Can't deny, you made a powerful case that I was previously blind to on account of being blinded by the glamour of getting a console Pokemon adventure and recently coming into the disposable income required to enjoy it.
While it still gives me the good chemicals (and because I had no problem exploiting the walking mechanic)... you're right that mechanically, Colosseum isn't terribly good.
I liked and disliked the colosseum animations as a kid but now that im an adult i appreciate them so much more. Espicially seeing pokemon violent animation where they just jump for a split second into the air like a robot and are emotionless. I rather have drama queen energy when they die and use up 2 more seconds of my time then just seeing a soulless cute husk just take damage and blink its eyes reacting to the damage.
I remember really enjoying colosseum when it came out. I remember liking it even more when I played it a few years later in the summer before starting college. It was like one last burst of childhood before my "adult life" started lol.
I went back to play it during the pandemic, tho, and I really didn't like it as much. I do appreciate the tone, and some of the ideas, but structurally there was a lot of tedium.
I do like like this game, but I absolutely get it. This is kinda how I feel with Legends and now Scarlet/Violet. Open world is the new trend and I’ve always felt alienated by that.
One thing I did like was the limited roster. I wouldn’t have actually used Pokemon like Mantine and Noctowl if not for this.
Why? Open world is better because it has so many more options
@@ChicagoMel23 That's fine. Different things appeal to different people. I just always liked the structure of the older games, where they could tell an interesting story and each area you went to was more difficult than the last. An open world pretty much has to kill all of that. I also get tired of the same troupes over and over. Ambient piano music, climbing radio towers, taking out bandit camps and of course... _crafting_
@@ChicagoMel23 I love open world games but the other person is right, different things appeal to different people. And even though I love open world games, sometimes they can make some people overwhelmed because the large amount of options and space leaves them struggling to make choices in their progress of the game. Some poor open world games also sometimes make the mistake of making their world feel empty and lifeless, if that makes sense. Granted this can work in the game's favor sometimes depending on its setting and story (e.g. a survival game taking place in an apocalypse) but it doesn't work all of the time.
@@thelastwindwaker7948 I think a more McGuffin story can work for an open world, and frankly with Pokemon games being mostly light on its story, could fit well on it, but should be done well to not be seen as either just making it unbalanced and/or empty.
I'm in the same boat as you. Every game series seems to have decided it needs to take a crack at being open world, including my two favourites in Pokemon and Zelda. And I didn't like EITHER of their attempts! Sure, it's cool that in BotW you can just throw yourself at Ganon the second you're out of the tutorial area, but that comes with the sacrifice of the cool stories that Zelda told in the past, and considering I actually really enjoy the stories Zelda tells, I don't think it's worth it. Legends was just... Not for me. Some parts I like, sure, but I much prefer linear progression overall. Not to say that everybody needs to feel the same as me, but I think it'll be a damn shame if we lose the good parts of linear stories in games in favour of creating sandboxes to run around in.