This game feels so disappointing considering Genius Sonority's previous track record of making great 3D Pokémon games.

Don't get me wrong: the game is absolutely beautiful. Not only do the environments and Pokémon look great, but so do the animations. I love, for instance, that physical attacks actually involve the Pokémon going up to their opponent and attacking them! It makes the game feel so much more immersive.

Also, fun fact: this is actually the first Pokémon game to offer trainer customization, not X and Y. And the different outfits look cool, too. I especially like the costumes modeled after different Pokémon like Electivire. I loved earning different customization options as I progressed through the game.

But... the game is also deeply flawed. The most obvious weakness for me is the lack of a story mode. What's especially disappointing is that, from the looks of it, Pokétopia looks like such a cool place to explore, but you never get the chance to do so in the game. Whereas the two previous 3D Pokémon games involved you venturing across a Pokémon region never-before-seen in the handheld games, this one simply involves nonstop battles in different Colosseums. The gameplay gets very repetitive and stale quickly.

Additionally, unlike the two previous 3D games, Pokémon Battle Revolution does not work as a standalone game. Instead, it practically expects you to own a copy of one of the Gen IV DS Games. Technically, you can use a rental team to progress through the game, but you will be at a massive disadvantage. This is something that isn't explicitly stated or advertised upon the game's release but should have, as I know several people who bought this as their first Pokémon game, and immediately became disappointed and returned their game to GameStop.

Once again, it's a pretty game that had a lot of potential, but instead falls flat due to the lack of various game modes. I truly hope we eventually get another 3D Pokémon game from Genius Sonority though, as they've proven in the past that they could deliver great 3D Pokémon games.

Warning: The following is an angry rant written on my last day of vacation about how I, in my everlasting stupidity, spent a day "speedrunning" Pokemon Battle Revolution. I am fully aware of the consequences of my actions and have only myself to blame.

I've made a lot of jokes talking about how Pokemon is not a game of outplaying, but "outskilling" via calculated misses, well timed min maxes, and praying to RNGesus. Let's just say that I've paid my dues playing with shitmons in Random Battles on Pokemon Showdown, where quite literally anything can happen to anyone at any time. But never before did I think an actual Pokemon game would make me rage even more than Showdown.

Let's start at the beginning, shall we? I read Vee's review for Pokemon Stadium earlier last week, and had this sadistic feeling slowly build up inside me. I remember being somewhat disappointed by Pokemon Battle Revolution, but hey, I was just a kid with a lot of free time back then. I'd like to think that I've gotten a lot better at appreciating the finer details and that my inherent (hopefully improved) skill would carry me through! So, I decided to speedrun it today because why the hell not.

Firstly, here's the biggest difference between Pokemon Battle Revolution and Stadium; you only get pre-selected teams of midmons (mid evolution Pokemon) to work with, and you can only pick one team out of two at the very beginning. Want to get more teams? Then you're gonna have to beat the individual colosseums with your teams of midmons to unlock the "opportunity" to unlock more teams of midmons, which in itself requires you to win 6 straight battles with that sample team of midmons to unlock that Rental Pass. So if you want all 6 sample teams of midmons, not only do you have to complete the necessary Colosseums to even unlock the opportunity, you must then win 6 straight battles of midmons for each Rental Pass without losing any battles inbetween a run to collect the Rental Pass. And because these are midmons and have generally subpar moves and stats, this will take an eternity and a half. So I recommend you just skip this altogether and you should either have some decent enough Pokemon transferred from Diamond/Pearl/Platinum (and only specifically one game at a time locked to an account or you have to use some convoluted workaround via Wii Remote storage to bypass this!), or you just hack your Wii/play on emulator and download a save file with all the Pokemon already transferred in so you can think of it as the next step from Pokemon Stadium, albeit with actually good Pokemon and actually good sets. You'll have a miserable time attempting to use Rental Passes when they start pulling out decent enough Pokemon in the later Colosseums as is.

But even after getting over this major barrier, there are significant design issues. Mainly, all of the Colosseums are too close in terms of concept to one another. Remember when they had actual innovative ways to vary their battle approaches/wrinkles in the Pokemon Emerald Battle Frontier, with different facilities such as a dungeon crawler in the dark, a rental Pokemon system where beating opponents allowed you to take their Pokemon, and so much more? That's not a thing at all in PBR. Almost every Colosseum here devolves into some form of just battling opponents with standard teams until you beat the big boss at the end with no notable wrinkles whatsoever. In fact, the Crystal Colosseum (bracket of 16) and the Sunny Park Colosseum in its first run (standard knockout vs seven trainers in a row) more or less play out the exact same, and the two Colosseums are right next to each other. Sure, you could argue that some of the Colosseums attempt to differentiate by having one be singles and a lot of the rest be doubles, and that the round robin format of the Magma Colosseum is technically different in that it is more forgiving than standard knockout of Main Street Colosseum, but they might as well be in practice the same. But that's actually not even the biggest problem because they generally really fuck up when they try to be different.

Remember when I said I was shocked that a Pokemon game made me more angry at luck in Pokemon than Showdown? PBR brings three examples to mind, and they're all Colosseum wrinkles:

- Waterfall Colosseum turns the format into a series of 5 1v1s, and you won't know how your opponent is choosing to line up their team. So if you happen to "pick incorrectly" and line up your team to have unfavorable matchups against your opponent, sucks for you, back to the start you go! Isn't it fun to lose before the actual battle when selecting your mons? Outskilled!

- Neon Colosseum has you picking your team from a pool of your original team + the opponent's team... using a roulette. That's right, it's up to the heart of the cards what you pick up for your team, and since many of your opponents will absolutely use shitmons (i.e. Metapod) and throw those into the pool, it's actually optimal to use Battle/Rental Passes of midmons or shitmons yourself so you don't accidentally screw yourself over by giving PIKACHU Fan Ian your Salamence when you've only got a Beedrill and a Plusle to fight back with. So if you want to play it safe, this may take an excruciatingly long time. Fuck you Ian.

- Moonlight Colosseum is the actual absolute worst, and I say that knowing that Neon Colosseum exists. There's one wrinkle to this otherwise standard 2v2 knockout tournament... every other match or so, Fog will appear in the battle, and the only thing Fog does is make all attacks miss more often. Don't have access to weaker moves that skip the accuracy check or Defog? Well, you better get used to having turns where nothing hits and no one gets damaged because Fog is a thing! Nothing like having your Starmie miss 5 Hydro Pumps in a row thanks to Fog... guess Swimming Club Member Bryce outskilled me real good this time...

The closest actual variation that I liked in a Colosseum would have to be Sunset Colosseum, where you and your opponent pick from the same pool of 12 Pokemon and duke it out. Admittingly, the same issue of the pool consisting of midmons so the move set is questionable and the battles still take an eternity and a half, but it's at least a good step forward in that respect.

Let me just point out a few other strange or questionable design choices before I wrap this up...

- The game doesn't know when it wants to use motion blur and when it doesn't want to use motion blur. Sometimes the motion blur will be off while your Pokemon is posing and getting ready, so you can admire the background in all its beauty. But then a few seconds later, your Pokemon will be in its attack animation, and then uh oh, they suddenly turned on the motion blur around your Pokemon so everything looks like that Mr Krabs blur meme where everything's going south! Make up your goddamn mind Genius Sonority, should I look at your well textured backgrounds or not?

- There's not a lot of personalization choices to be found for customizing your character, and most of the choices require you to beat the Colosseums to unlock them for purchase, much less gain the currency necessary to purchase them. They don't even have different hairstyle forms for purchase for the set trainer model, just palette swaps there...

- The commentator for Pokemon Battle Revolution reminds me a lot of Vish & Chillin's commentary in SSBM. "Both sides better think their opening move carefully because I think they both really want to win right now." "One side has taken a lot of damage but you know, you can never count out a comeback!" "Oh no, Vulpix just hit itself while confused and knocked itself out! That's some unexpected self destructing behavior!" It's not bad per se, and was strangely comforting at times considering how much bad Melee commentary I've had to sit through. Pretty interesting parallels to be made I suppose.

- Want to 100% the game? The Courtyard Colosseum's post game challenge requires you to win 100 battles in a row, with only one opportunity after winning 50 battles to switch your team. And you don't get automatically healed after every fight... you have to spin a roulette to determine how your Pokemon will be healed after winning a fight. Just keep that in mind if you have 100% completion syndrome like me. There are better things to aspire to achieve in life, that's all I'm suggesting.

All in all, I have now been thoroughly reminded why Pokemon Battle Revolution was one of the biggest letdowns as the so-called successor to the Pokemon Stadium series: you can't rent the entire Pokedex to build custom teams and in fact have to grind to gain a slightly larger pool of midmons to build mediocre teams out of, the customization is sorely lacking and unimaginative, the wrinkles pale in comparison to last gen's Battle Frontier and are forgettable at best and an absolute RNG clownfest at worst, and there aren't even any silly party minigames to indulge yourself in with friends should you get sick of actual Pokemon battling! At least the Pokemon animations themselves are excellent and it provides a good visualization for competitive Pokemon battling with friends (or strangers back when they had Wi-Fi battles). But I can promise you that there are no hidden gems to be gleaned in this aggressively mediocre mire and you might have more luck trying your hand with Pokemon Colosseum or XD. God knows I'll probably talk myself into finishing those later this year, I'm on a hotstreak of being disappointed by childhood Pokemon games and it doesn't look like it's letting me up any time soon.

May not be much of a good game or have any substance but was my first introduction to the series so I have to give it some praise on that alone



also wtf the animations here are more detailed than sword and shield

I remember some family members gifting me this one, in a moment in time where I knew pokemon thanks to the animated series, card games and for watching some friends playing Diamond and Pearl 'on their Ds during school.
This is to say that... this is not only the first game wher eI saw the Pokemon in whole 3D, but it may just be the first pokemon game I ever owned by myself.

That said, I have a LOT of nostalgie for this title.
And so I remember all the good things this title has to offer.
The atmosphere and the cool stages are memorable, the usic is INCREDIBLE, and the pokemon in 3D felt alive and full of stunning animations. Back when I got a copy of Platinum, the idea of finding new pokemon were thrilling mostly because I was not able to wait to see trasferm them here and see them in full 3D.

It was honestly a blast to try.
That said though.... on it's own this title doesn't stand very well unfortunately. Unlike other console pokemon spinoffs of the time like Gale of Darkness or Colosseum, Pokemon battle revolution doesn't feature a whole new adventure to follow, but rather a set of challenges on different arenas, that will eventually lead to a final battel with bosses that.... are just there honestly.... the lack of even a simple story really hurts this.

Not to mention that, regardless if you port pokemon from the DS titles or not, the experience can feel really unbalanced.
Play without porting mons and you will be forced to use some locked trainers and teams, that doesn't offer a lot in terms of customization, and can result tedious to use especially in the later challenges.
But since the game is designed to be beaten even with these limitations, this means porting pokemon from your DS will result in breaking the difficuty entirely, as your team can 100% clear all of the challenges the base caimpaign has to offer.
You are able ot access more difficult stages and tourneys later on, but the different battle modes rarely stand out on their own (except for the some of them like the Sunset Colosseum) and the whole experience can be hurt by it.

Not to mention that the game also has rare but brutal freezes, that can straight up reset you run by icing the game completely.

I love Battler Revolution, it's a big part of my childhood and I spent nights playing it and enjoying it. But it doesn't do a lot other than being a cool battle rimulator.
Cool animations though. The pokemon look cool even when they die.