Pleasantly surprised by this one.
It is definitely feels a bit half-assed at times but it's a nice attempt at trying to spin the Stadium formula a bit, having a proper story instead of the extra minigames/Elite 4 Tower.

I love the concept of Shadow Pokémon and the smaller Pokémon pool. Many people hate being forced to use "shitmons", but the limited selection of mons makes you not always use "the strongest Pokémon" is a breath of fresh air and adds a bit of difficulty. Shadow Pokémon contribute to this, since it's harder to just switch between new Pokémon and incorporate them to your team. Sadly, when you already have a well constructed team, Shadow Pokémon just build up in your PC, and purifying them is a complete chore (luckily the infinite walking glitch exists, which I sadly had to use).

Double battles in a game like this is really cool, you can definitely feel that you have to think a bit about how to play your cards instead of just playing rock paper scissors like in mainline games. However, this coupled with the long animations drag the battles quite a bit.

The story itself is better in concept than when you actually get into the meat of it. It really is edgier than mainline, but it has no actual sauce at all, I'd say most of the main series is actually darker than this one. The intro cutscene and MC design are cool but very misleading. The MC in particular is set up to be this cool renegade but is still the bland template guy we're accustomed to. I like that it's shorter than other games in the series, but even then I think it's still quite a bit padded, with a lot of backtracking between the same 2/3 cities and having to go through long chains of battles.

I actually played this only to get the legendary dogs, Ho-oh, Celebi and some other Pokémon missing from mainline, so despite its flaws I had a great time playing this. Fully recommend if you're tired of playing fangames and didn't give this a try yet. I still like the minigames though, bring back the minigames.

I like this game more than I probably should. Gameplay-wise it can get a little repetitive due to the sheer amount of battles it throws at you, and the story, while good at the time, isn't really anything special compared to what we got in later titles. However, the vibes of this game are just amazing. It's edgy in a way that ends up coming off as legitimately cool. The setpieces and unique locales, the music, everything comes together to give it this grand scale that the other games up to this point don't even come close to. Pacing issues and repetition can't hold me back from loving this game.

Pokemon colosseum is an odd one when compared to the rest of the franchise. With it being a spinoff it has a different way of doing things, the most notable things being it's double battle system, it's darker tone and it's difficulty.

There are multiple reasons as to why this game is hard. The first reason being the very limited pokemon pool with it being more than eight times smaller than the modern games which have around 400 in their base games. This makes it so that you're options for team buliding are quite limited. Combine that with a lot of the good TMs being quite hard to obtain it names for a very very limited team building experience.

Now even with this said you can build good teams and when you have a good team built the late game is one of my favourites in the franchise with every late game team having great team comps and tricky strategies making the majority of these battles engaging and sometimes nail bitingly close, the final battle being extremely difficult with the types of strategies that have been seen in the competitive scene over the years.

The other thing that this game is known is it's tone. Being darker than most of the other games and stealing pokemon instead of catching them, although even when to compared to other pokemon games I'd say there other with mature storylines. The story itself isn't too dissimilar from the evil team plots of the mainline games but the twist that the player character used to be apart of one of the evil teams and defected by blowing a hole in their base and stealing their most prized possession is a really cool one.

Coloseum is a lot more streamlined than most other pokemon games in both its exploration aswell getting rid off routes in favour of small town sections to keep the attention on the battling.

Overall pokemon colosseum is a flawed in some of its executions of its ideas but the design of the battles in this entry still makes this a satisfying to play unique entry in the pokemon series.

Pokémon Colosseum is an interesting game that has a lot going for it. This is the third game to be fully 3-D behind Pokémon Stadium 1 and 2 and the first of two games to fully force the player to play double battles as well as explore the Orre Region and the concept of Shadow Pokémon.

First, the positives. The tone of the game is really damn unique with how the characters design and the setting looks. It's so grimy and rustic, yet its still charming which helps stand the Orre Region out from other games. The forced use of double battles makes the battle more dynamic and tense since there is a lot more options and strategies to think of. The 3-D animations are still great though the looks of some of Pokémon do look blocky due to gen 1 and 2 models being ported over from the Stadium games. Music is straight up complete banger with all the songs being catchy, yet cool at the same time. Finally, I like the idea of restricting Pokémon to force players to use other Pokémon they would never use in another game. It makes building a team a lot more meaningful.

However, there are a few negatives that really do drag the game down. First, while I said I like the game was pretty restricted, the actual choices of Shadow Pokémon available are kind of a mixbag. Some a good to great, some are dogwater, and some are really great, but you get them way too late in the journey. It's probably my preference to how I perceive specific Pokémon, but I felt the choices were lacking due to the amount of the Shadow Pokémon being filled with a lot of Gen 2 mons. Second, the story kind of hypes itself up way too much in the opening to the point people have an inflated perception of the game's story. Make no mistake, it still is a Pokémon game where you still stop an evil organization - just without the gym badges nor the goal of becoming Champion. Third, the process of stealing Shadow Pokémon is cool, but the process to catching them while not accidentally defeating them is a pain to deal with. It doesn't help that some Shadows only have one chance to show up in the game. Finally, my biggest gripe of the game is the bad level scaling between generic enemy trainers and the Cypher Boss Admins, and the final boss. While the generic trainers are manageable, the Cypher Admins and the final boss are way too drastic difficulty spikes to the point of needing to really grind to actually enjoy them as a challenge. Since there is no random encounters, you either need to refight some weak trainers or train in Mt. Battle, which are still going to be pace killers. If it wasn't for the bad level scaling in difficult, the game would probably be about 15 hours at bare minimum and I would've been more gracious with it. However, the excessive amounts of grinding killed the pacing the game and thus ruin what could've been a pretty amazing game.

Despite my problems with the difficulty curve, I still enjoyed the game and its many unique features. I do think it's a bit too overrated though the ideas from this game still could be used for any future games when GameFreak decides to come back to it. Otherwise, solid game that is ultimately hurt by the level curve and the pacing of excessive grinding. 3.5/5.

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.

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.

Creo que es uno de los Pokémon más infravalorados de la historia.
En su momento, para mí fue un salto gráfico bestial. Un protagonista más mayor con un diseño muy guapo, una historia muchísimo más tétrica de lo habitual y una OST genial. También el hecho de ir acompañado todo el tiempo con la compañera me gustó bastante, le daba un toque especial. Si bien era limitado en cuanto a mapa, combates y Pokémon, yo lo disfruté muchísimo. Y si ya tenías el conector de GBA para pasar los Pokémon a tus ediciones Zafiro, Rubí, Esmeralda, Rojo Fuego y Verde Hoja (como era mi caso), era la única manera de poder acceder a los Pokémon de Johto, para mí era un subidón de adrenalina increíble. Los combates dobles al principio chocan, pero luego te acostumbras (con esa entrada tan chula con Espeon y Umbreon, se perdona).

If you grew up with this game you are as attached to it as a junkie with his needles. Every single person I've met that has played this game LOVES it, and honestly I see the appeal

Very poignant negative about the game is that it gets really repetitive with the sheer amount of double battles it throws at you, backed by the gimmick of being able to snag other trainer's pokemon, that part gets old fast. Apart of me wishes you could waddle through tall grass like the gold old days but I recognize how that'd neuter alot of the charm and uniqueness of the game. Speaking of charm and uniqueness, other than that this game is a blast. The pokemon variety is boundless, the characters and setpieces are creative and rememberable, the animations are more fluid and detailed than even gen 9's (making fun of modern pokemon, I'm so bold and different), and shit the music slaps. As far as pokemon experiences go, this is my preferred pick. , it feels like a true evolution of the pokemon formula and something future pokemon games should strive to emulate.

Possibly one of the most 2000's games ever made, and I mean that in a good way. I can't imagine any other timeframe this game coming out than in the early 2000s, entirely due to the game's outwardly edgy aesthetic.

The vibes and soundtrack of Colosseum in general are excellent, but it's sadly counteracted by the egregiously slow combat, alongside the horribly grindy shadow purification mechanics. And without an interesting enough story like most other JRPGs from this era have, it's really all atmosphere and not much else. I really want to like this game - and there's a lot I do like about it - but it just wasn't very fun.

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.