So this is going to be partly a review of Pokemon Colosseum, but it’s also going to be my overall experiences and thoughts on the Pokemon franchise as a whole. For context, I grew up around the time when Pokemon first came out, but I didn’t get into the video games and become a major fan until Generation 3. I played a lot of Sapphire, Firered, Diamond, and Platinum, and I also played through Pokemon White once, but after that I kind of lost interest in Pokemon and moved on.
Pokemon Colosseum was another game I played through, and I remember as a kid I liked it, but didn’t love it. Going back to it as an adult, I can see why. The main thing I really appreciate about this game is that it was trying something a bit different from the usual Pokemon games. It had a unique setting, a different storyline, new concepts, and a slightly more mature and darker tone. It was also nice that it was clearly made for Pokemon fans with little to no hand holding. Most of the mainline Pokemon games all act like they could be the very first Pokemon game the player has ever played. This results in a lot of explanations and tutorials, and it can take a little while for the game to get going, something that helps new players but makes things more tedious for veterans. Pokemon Colosseum is refreshing in that it cuts all of that stuff out, as it’s fully aware that lots of people already know how Pokemon works, and doesn’t try to bend over backwards to cater to newbies.
The setting, music, and story are all pretty good, and very different from anything the other Pokemon games have ever done. I also like the concept of the Shadow Pokemon, and how the protagonist, who is more of an antihero, has to steal Pokemon from bad guys in order to heal them.
But while the game is okay, it does have its fair share of problems. It’s a fully 3D game, and since trying to do a full Pokemon adventure on par with what the handheld games did would have been rather difficult, there’s not much exploration, and the game is limited to a rather small pool of locations scattered across the map, and most of the region is only ever glimpsed during the loading screens when the characters travel from one location to another. The fact that the game is fully 3D also makes it a little harder to suspend your disbelief compared to the 2D sprite based handheld games. In those games the constant Pokemon battles make sense, as that’s pretty standard for an RPG, and the simple sprites make it easier for your imagination to fill in the blanks. But when the environments and characters look relatively realistic, it does make you wonder why everybody is using their Pokemon just for battles instead of for more practical uses like killing or knocking out your enemies before they can summon their Pokemon. There was also one boss that summoned a Steelix, and if I remember correctly Steelix is so big that it should have instantly crushed everybody in the room as soon as it appeared. Ironically making the game look more realistic makes it seem less realistic, as it draws more attention to the details you’re more willing to overlook in a top down 2D game.
Probably the biggest problem with Pokemon Colosseum is the pacing. This is a game that curiously enough feels too short and too long at the same time. It feels too short in the sense that, when it’s all over, you didn’t actually go to that many places and defeat that many enemies before the final area became available and you fought the main villain. In terms of the narrative it feels a little rushed. But when it comes to the moment to moment gameplay it feels painfully slow. In the game boy advance games all of the battle animations and interactions were quick and snappy, and the pacing was fast enough to keep things engaging and exciting. But here, it’s so unbelievably tedious. The process of getting into a battle, introducing your opponent, having them send out their Pokemon, selecting your moves, having each Pokemon do their little attack animation, and repeating, all of it ends up taking a fairly long time, and since you’re going to be doing this over and over and over again, the slowness and repetition really gets to you before long, and by the end you get really sick of certain tracks that have been played to death over the course of the game.
While I give Pokemon Colosseum a lot of credit for trying something different, when it’s all over it does feel a little underwhelming compared to the other mainline Pokemon games. While the locations you get to explore are fairly unique, there’s not very many of them and they are rather small. The Pokemon that are available to catch are pretty cool, but there’s a much smaller pool compared to most Pokemon games. Personally I think it would have been better if you had been free to steal whatever Pokemon you wanted from the bad guys, but I guess that would be pretty morally dubious for what is still supposed to be a family friendly game, which is why they introduced the Shadow Pokemon to make the stealing more justifiable. On the whole, I think Pokemon Colosseum is okay, but not great. I can understand why some people love it, and I can also understand why some people hate it.
Personally, though, Pokemon Colosseum reminded me of why I lost interest in Pokemon, as for all its differences it does share a lot of similarities to the mainline Pokemon games. The Pokemon games are colorful, creative, and fun, and it’s no surprise why they’re so popular. But I can’t really enjoy them anymore because there are some rather major flaws with the games, many of which have been present from the very beginning.
From the very first games Pokemon has been built around having to catch them all. It was the franchise’s most famous tagline. And finding and catching all of these creatures was a novel and fun idea at first, and while 151 is a lot, it’s still manageable. But even the first games messed it up in several ways. The first was that they arbitrarily sold what was essentially two versions of the same game, just with minor differences, including some Pokemon being exclusive to each version. This meant that it wasn’t actually possible to catch them all in game, you had to trade with the other version, which required either you or a friend to buy the other version. This was a cheap and blatant marketing trick to pad out their sale numbers, and it’s one that has always been a scam but somehow is almost never questioned.
Another insidious flaw is that even if you have both versions, it’s still not possible to get all 151 Pokemon, as one of them, Mew, was exclusively available only through a few external events. Of course, if you missed those external events then there’s no legitimate way to catch Mew, meaning your Pokedex is doomed to never be quite complete.
With each passing generation Pokemon expanded its roster and added more and more Pokemon. While this did add new life and creativity to the franchise, especially as they continued to polish and refine the formula, the expanded roster also multiplied the foundational flaws. The game was still built around catching them all and completing the Pokedex, but with each passing generation that task became more tedious, more time consuming, and more expensive.
I don’t think the creators were trying to be deliberately exploitative, but it's a fact that the core design of Pokemon is practically tailor made to exploit people with certain compulsive tendencies. They’ll catch all of the Pokemon because they feel bad about leaving the game incomplete, and they’ll do whatever it takes to finish it. Even if finishing it requires dozens if not hundreds of hours of mind numbingly tedious busywork, even if finishing it requires them to buy several other games, they’ll still do it. And rather than fixing this problem and making the games more fun and more rewarding, all Pokemon does is release another batch of Pokemon for these people to catch every few years, ensuring that these people will never escape from this boring but lucrative hamster wheel.
I used to be one of these people. I was really into the Generation 3 games, and I was determined to do whatever it took to catch them all and complete the national Pokedex. Even as I became increasingly numb and exhausted while doing the various tasks and chores required to reach this goal I was still obsessed. For months practically all of my free time was spent on these games as I slowly but surely filled out the national Pokedex bit by bit.
And then one day it suddenly hit me: I wasn’t having fun. Not at all, actually. And I realized that if for whatever reason this cartridge was destroyed, that would render all of the time I had spent on this a complete waste. Because I wasn’t doing any of this because I really wanted to, but because I felt obligated to do it. Ever since then I’ve been more careful about how I spend my time playing games, and if I’m not having fun I will quickly bail.
There are ways Pokemon could fix itself to be less insidious and less exploitative. I’ve seen other RPGs that have a roster of creatures that use a mechanic where in order to fill in the game’s bestiary you just have to use a spell or device that scans the creature when you encounter it in battle. If Pokemon were to do something like that, and make it so that you just have to encounter each Pokemon at least once in order to fill out the Pokedex, rather than catching them all, that would make the games a lot less tedious and more rewarding. But to the best of my knowledge there hasn’t been a Pokemon game that’s done that yet.
I think what makes Pokemon so insidious is just how blatant the cynical marketing is even in game. I mean, I’m sure something like Breath of the Wild was created to make money as well, but when you actually play it it’s easy to forget that and just have a fun adventure. It feels like something that was made to be a good game first, and a product second. But with Pokemon it’s next to impossible to avoid the cynical motivations behind the franchise, because the in-game Pokedex will be a constant reminder that the game is incomplete, and if you want to complete it you have to buy at least one other game, or at least know someone who did. Breath of the Wild may have its faults, but at least it didn’t constantly guilt trip me for not finding all of the shrines.
I also think the franchise is tired and either needs to end or be seriously shaken up. For the first three generations the concept still felt fresh and new, and they were constantly improving things by polishing and refining the formula. But while Generation 4 also brought some good changes to the table, it was the first time the series felt like it was losing steam. Not only was the new roster of Pokemon kind of a mixed bag, it also felt like they didn’t even want to introduce any more new Pokemon. A bunch of the new Pokemon were just evolutions of Pokemon from previous generations, and not only did they have two legendary Pokemon that were the physical embodiments of Time and Space, but they also introduced the Pokemon equivalent of God. I mean seriously, how on earth do you top that? That’s the kind of thing you should only do if you’re drawing a definitive line on the roster and firmly saying that there won’t be any more new Pokemon, and that the franchise will move in a different direction now.
Of course, they apparently couldn’t think of anything new, and so for Black and White they just went ahead and added a bunch more Pokemon to the roster in a transparent attempt to disguise the fact that they were just doing the same old shtick yet again. Now, in some ways I actually like Generation 5 more than Generation 4, as I think it had a better roster and much better presentation, but I have to admit I was disappointed that this was what they went with. While Generation 4 had its faults, it at least went all the way with its ideas, and presented the series with the chance to close out the roster and try something genuinely new and different going forward. Generation 5's choice to ignore that and just keep introducing yet more Pokemon was a creatively empty choice that did nothing but perpetuate the increasingly stale status quo of the franchise. I enjoyed White, but after that I decided I was done. They can’t just keep introducing more and more Pokemon, they have to do something else, something actually new and creative. But as far as I can tell, they haven’t.
And not only is this ever expanding roster of Pokemon bad for customers, as it perpetually exploits those with certain compulsive tendencies, it’s also bad for the developers. Not only is it difficult to keep such a large and constantly growing roster properly balanced, but it’s a nightmarish amount of work to make sure they’re all properly modeled and animated. It’s a workload that only keeps growing as they keep introducing more Pokemon and as technology and graphics keep improving. This is not a model that is sustainable forever.
This all came to a head when Pokemon Sword and Shield was first revealed, and they announced that they wouldn’t be bringing back all of the Pokemon from the previous generations. This got an understandable backlash from fans, as the series had spent years getting fans attached to their Pokemon, and constantly expanded the roster, only to take away from it instead in the latest games. I’ll admit I was only half paying attention to this controversy at the time, as I was busy with other things, but I was secretly hoping that this backlash was a sign that fans of Pokemon were finally fed up with the stale formula, and that these games wouldn’t do so well, forcing the developers and/or publishers to actually rethink things and do something different and fresh with the franchise.
Then, of course, the games became some of the best selling in the entire franchise, sending the dismal message that nothing would change or improve anytime soon. After all, if it’s broken, but makes a lot of money, why fix it? It also reinforced again that, unfortunately, the consumers that actually care and demand better are all too often a vocal minority, and the majority of people are either unaware of the problems, or are aware but don’t care.
And that’s why, for all its problems, I still have an appreciation for Pokemon Colosseum, because it was actually trying to do something different, something that wasn’t just the same old Pokemon formula that’s been done to death. It was a breath of fresh air, something that this series hasn’t seen in a very long time.
Also, Miror B is awesome.
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