Pokemon Colosseum is really interesting, it puts a spin on the mechanics of the mainline series while still managing to feel like a pokemon game. The double battles are a nice change of pace, and the heavier focus on characters and more difficult battles over exploration and collection is a good fit for a console entry in my opinion. However, the game is absolutely bogged down by how slow it can be. There's too much dialogue, and the animations for some moves, especially the multihit ones (looking at you surf) are egregiously long. Other than that, good game.

The biggest positive is that Pokemon Colosseum forces you to use Pokemon you wouldn't consider otherwise and this can lead to some interesting strategies and generally forces you to learn how to game Pokemon's systems (i.e. get good). The strange grimy atmosphere the game establishes is a great change from your typical Pokemon game. On the other hand, aside from following the story from point a to point b, there isn't a whole lot to do. It makes Pokemon Colosseum feel like a proof of concept for the subsequent Pokemon XD.

It's too Slow!!! That was the general feeling I had while playing through this game. Battle after battle after battle, there are way too many mandatory fights in this game and when they all take forever cause the 3d battle animations are so slow this game starts to become a slog. Now this isn't to say I didn't enjoy plenty of the fights, they certainly made me use aspects of the pokemon battle system I never engaged with before and that's a plus in my books.

Aside from this aspect of the gameplay, I generally felt like the setting wasn't all too engaging, much less so compared to the mainline games. I did enjoy the locations, but it was all very surface level, not much world building to delve into. The general plot was even more nonsensical then mainline, this was truly an "evil org wants to take over the world and we must stop them" moment.

Music was a major plus in this game, minus The Under theme (ears bleeding). I enjoyed every battle theme and almost every location theme. The only critique I'd have is one of the battle themes seems like it got used way too much?? Maybe having 1 more b.theme could have really added some variety to the music.

The game was good, I enjoyed my time. May replay in the future, we'll see (this is actually my 2nd attempt playing, so it had enough for me too come back to). Something about old jrpgs (does this count as a jrpg?) that I can infinitely replay no matter how iffy I feel about em (looking at you SMT1). 6.5/10 this out of 5 rating system is too limiting.