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?