Gameplay: Simple
Music: Solid Remixes
Replayable? No
Streamed? No

Extra Notes? Great improvements from the first one, AMAZING minigames, but all in all weaker than 1. Still very fun to play.

I considered lifting my review for the original Pokemon Stadium word-for-word and just adding "2" to the name anytime I mentioned it. It's really just more of the same thing, and you can just go read that review if you want to know why I think that's just not very good.

This does at least get an extra half star for adding 100 new Pokemon from Gold and Silver, the one generation of Pokemon games that I'm still able to look back at with any continued sense of fondness. There's a lot of great designs from the first two generations, and the novelty of seeing them brought to life in 3D was a big deal back in the day. That said, I missed this one entirely when it came out so I don't have quite as much nostalgia for Stadium 2 in particular, but despite that I do find it to be overall more enjoyable than the first, if only by a small margin.

Again, I played this game without the Game Boy adapter, as being able to track down and buy one along with a working copy of a Gen 1 or 2 Pokemon game and a Game Boy would require me to take out a loan I couldn't possibly pay back, and I'm not about to wear a barrel and suspenders to play this game the "right" way. Getting shafted with rental Pokemon still sucks. They tell you to heal them before you return them, but I'm not going to do that. They have a healing machine in the back, whys it gotta be my responsibility?

This was amazing to me when I was 13 and I still find the general set-up and mini-games fun enough for what it is.

Replaying it on NSO with no option for using my own Pokémon on the gym towers, the game is severely severely lacking in quality when limited to rental Pokémon for battle. If the rentals had customizable move sets it could be great but it is rare for a rental to have more than two useful moves and it honestly feels like the game AI goes out of its way to be falselg difficult with the opponent CONSTANTLY switching for weakness and resistance, but to mention feeling full on rigged at times in regards to when attacks miss or cause status effects.

La segunda parte del famoso y reconocido juego de batallas Pokémon llega a la 64 después de las ediciones Gold/Silver de la portátil de Nintendo en esa época, y llega con el único fin de traer a las 3 dimensiones a los nuevos monstruos de bolsillo y enfrentarlos entre sí. Básicamente Pokémon Stadium 2 es una especie de expansión, en donde ahora es posible elegir a los nuevos 100 Pokémon y realizar con ellos exactamente lo mismo que realizamos en la primera entrega. Los castillos de los líderes de gimnasio vuelven y las copas a las que ya estábamos acostumbrados también vuelven a aparecer. Los minijuegos Pokémon son los únicos que cambian, siendo ésta la única característica que se diferencia del primer Stadium (y alguna que otra más). Aún con todo y ofreciendo un nivel de innovación prácticamente nulo, Pokémon Stadium 2 es un buen juego que se recomienda ampliamente sin tener en cuenta a su predecesor.

Released less than a year after the original, Pokemon Stadium 2 is a bigger game with more challenges and more interesting minigames. It should have been everything that a 3D Pokemon battle simulator could have been, but it ultimately failed. And unlike most games, the point of failure is obvious, because there is some fun to be had with PS2.

While battling with no story attached can get tedious after a while, it has the potential to be a fun game to bring out every so often. The minigames, especially, are diverse and addictive, and can often overshadow the main game. There's a miniature version of Mario Party, which lacks the board or charm, but can still be a fun way to experience the minigames in a new context. Much of the rest of the game focuses on battling, whether that's in level- specific tournaments, multiplayer contests, or recreating gym battles. A lot of these modes are quite similar to each other, but for a 3D battle simulator, there is a decent amount of content here. While PS2 has some good things going for it, though, it is completely prevented from being a good game because of one core flaw; rental Pokemon.

The absolute biggest issue with this game is its reliance on the N64 Game Boy Transfer Pak. This should have been a game where you can customize movesets, tweak strategies, and craft your perfect team. Instead, you either must transfer Pokemon from a Game Boy game, or use rentals. The rental Pokemon are useless, and their movesets are extremely poor. This is all by design, of course, because the game wants to encourage you to use your own. This means that to get the maximum potential out of this game, in addition to this game and the N64, you need a transfer pak, a Game Boy, and a separate Pokemon game. There's simply no justification for this. Giving players the option to transfer Pokemon from their own games is fine, but to rely on it is nothing short of corporate greed. And it's a shame, because there's some nice attention to detail in PS2 that could have made it the definitive battling experience. Each Pokemon has their own animations, something that not even the modern day games have been able to accomplish, and there's even a feature for playing 2nd gen Pokemon titles in a sped-up mode with the transfer pak. This is more akin to what the transfer pak should have been; an accessory, but not a necessity.

Because of the rental Pokemon, the battle simulator in this game is effectively obsolete. There are countless better options for battle simulation, and the only reason to play this game is for nostalgia or for the minigames. And while there's enjoyment to be found in those few minigames, it doesn't do nearly enough to justify the poor decisions made by the developer. Oh well; at least this game has Streaming Stampede.

Pokemon Stadium with more mons, more moves, and more content. I played this as Pokemon Stadium GS, so I had the challenge of reading Japanese in addition to beating the game. While most trainer text went by too fast for me to make out more than a few words, I at least got the mon names and moves.

I also beat the game only using Rentals and it's definitely much easier if you use your own game, but I haven't replaced my Silver's save battery and I don't think it works with American versions anyways. But when I talk about the difficulty, keep me using Rentals Only in mind.

Of course I did the minigames first and of course all of them are fun. The only one I'd say I didn't like was the Mr. Mime and Igglybuff/Cleffa ones and the Eevee one was just okay but that means 9 good ones.

The Gym Leader Battle is standard affair, the Johto side has trainers in most gyms (the exception being best girl Jasmine which is true to her Gym). Bring your team that matches theirs, if you lose once you're back to the start. It is kind of frustrating but adds more strategies for you to prepare for a gauntlet. It lacks a continue mechanic that the Stadium Cups have that I'll get to later, but I like it in most cases. It's only bad when the boss throws a huge wrench and that's 20 minutes of your life gone. It's only really bad in the Team Rocket interruption, where you don't know what to expect and all of their teams have a gimmick (Self-Destruct, Toxic Stall, I forget, and Sun) so if one whacks you do it all again. The Kanto side just has the Gym Leaders which makes them too easy, should have made their mons harder to beat to compensate, and then Red who's just a disappointment compared to his games. The real final boss isn't but read on I'll get to it.

Now we get the true hell, the Stadiums. This is a special kind of hell as you have to win 8 consecutive battles, only earning a Continue if you get a Perfect win against a Trainer. This makes actually beating the cups incredibly hard and it feels like unless you get lucky you can't just do it with any old Rental Team. Run out of Continues, there's 45 minutes to an hour of your life gone. Of course, all of this would be true if there wasn't a glitch where if you hit Suspend and then Continue Without Suspending, your stock of Continues doesn't decrease. Infinite retries makes it infinitely more bearable. There are 4 cups all with their unique kind of Hell, get ready.

Little Cup only allows level 5 Pokemon which would make you think it sounds broken but no it can actually get really tough. Stat increasing moves are pointless here and every HP counts, so give it your all or die trying! For not using Rentals you definitely have to breed specifically for this, as the Rentals are good but you can still run into hard walls.

The Nintendo Cup (at least that's what it's called in GS) is your standard battling nothing special cup at level 50 with 4 ranks (Poke-Great-Ultra-Master). Outside the Continue system (assuming you don't exploit it) being frustrating this is probably the best of them.

Prime Cup is Level 100 mons, only one Rank. You'd think it's like Nintendo but it's a lot harder, especially the final opponent who breaks the rules in a way you'll have to see for yourself. Of course, losing to this opponent a lot (without exploiting again) means back to the beginning for you!

Challenge Cup is the biggest middle finger. Your mons and moves are chosen completely at random (with mild stipulations, no too useless/too overpowered mons, and they'll always get attacking moves of their type) and your opponents are random too. Work with what you got, you can't prepare for anything here! Eventually you'll get so hard walled that even with the infinite continue exploits you may find yourself wanting to restart just to reroll for a better team. For example, I had the hardest time on Great/Super, the second difficulty. Did I mention this is also 4 ranks meaning you have to do this 4 times?

The final boss is a pretty cool send-off to the game. The Champion remix is saved just for him, and he uses Lugia, Ho-Oh, and Mewtwo vs your entire team. I chose the guys I went on the whole adventure with:
カビゴン, God of GSC
エアームド, Walling Metal Bird
ソーナンス, Exploiting bad AI until it dies because Wynaut
サンドパン, the Earthquaking miracle
パラセクト, the Sporing Star that rose from Little Cup
ユンゲラ, I bent the rules like a spoon and peeked at a guide for a sec

And this team, after a few losses and re-strategizing, managed to overcome the final boss. It was triumphant.

Would I recommend this for someone getting into Pokemon for the first time? Hell no. Would I recommend this for a Pokemon fan re-discovering Gen 2? Absolutely. Just bring your own cart if you don't want to get aggrevated at the foes that rely on Confuse Ray's 100% accuracy or double team spam or lucky flinches and so on.

It's well animated and the music is good. I legit didn't know Nintendo themselves made the Stadium games!