Pokemon Colosseum - Just a quick gripe

[mrfrosty]

I'm guessing the franchise is not particularly popular here, or maybe it is, I don't know, but I haven't seen much discussion about it.

I'm a huge fan of the handheld versions and was really looking forward to a proper RPG on the Gamecube. I rented it and found it adequate, which pissed me off.

Is it against Nintendo's policy on this franchise to deliver a decent game anymore? I'm aware of the marketing they're pushing and the whole thing is a massive money pit for them, but Christ!

I think the game is okay as far as it goes, but I have a few REALLY big issues with it (not the least the expense needed to play multi player!) and if anyone else wants to have a go at it with me, please feel free.

[nips]

What other more specific gripes do you have with it?

I've compelted it and the game isn't the best. I think the quote from the forum is that "it's and average Collosseum game and and average RPG". It would have been better to develop the games sepearately to create two high quality games.

However with the lack of diversity between the handheld versions of the game, one may sugges that Nintendo are bleeding the franchise as opposed to innovating it. I have high hopes that we'll see a full on GC RPG version of it, better quality and in greater depth than this version.

My major problems are catalogued here in the first play thread which I'm currently unable to locate. Basically:

The Dual Battles are crap. They weren't good in 2D and only serve to add an extra level to the franchise. It messes up the weighting of moves and makes good pokemon less or more effective give certain people a greater advantage.
The inability to save anywhere messes with the speed of the game. Pokemon is about exploring and cating pokemon in caves and stuff, but taking away saving anywhere it makes the game harder in some places then others (although never a real challenge) and puts greater pressure of people not to snag pokemon because of the pressure of double battles and the lack of a save point.
The in ability to walk from A-B makes the game quicker, but snagging pokemon may be seen as an attempt to exmpand the franchise, however I think it's just inferior to the old method.
The inability to battle wild pokemon also makes it almost impossible to level up your pokemon, and fighting the same trainers over and over is mightlyi annoying.
I remember there was a glaring continuity error in the story line as well at some point, however it escapes me now.

It just feels rushed, a bit crap, and that girl following you everywhere is just annoying. Especially when she gets caught on scenery, you trigger an event like the lift in the Under and you have to wait for her to WALK all the way up to the life from where she was caught. SO ANNOYING.

I haven't even touched colosseum mode. The damn lack of diversity in pokemon levels just pisses me off. I've got a team between level 60-100. A league at level 75 would be great. the difference between levels 50 and 100 is huge, and being unable to battle pokemon at level 50 is annoying. It feels like I've between a rock and hard place. Too weak to battle one arena, to strong for the other. Diversify the levels of the opponent pokemon or let me battle weaker pokemon too.

The game is average!

[mrfrosty]

All salient points, but let me move from annoyance to outright anger.

There are like, what? 360 Pokemon now? I'm all for promoting connectivity, but you can only catch 49? What a ****ing rip! And of the ones you can catch, they're ****ty ones like Miltank and Yanma. Who the hell ever includes ones like that in their team?

I have a 75+ team consisting of the legendary dogs (a necessity if you actually want to get anywhere, which is another flaw) Metagross, Altaria and Flygon. They're nice new ones, but why giving a user a snagged pokemon at level 40 or so? You lose all the enjoyment out of levelling up and exchanging old moves with new powerful ones.

My MAJOR ****ing gripe though, is the amount of time it takes to level up and purify the little bastards. You have a strong team and that's nice, but to get HO-oh and to achieve any sense of a conclusion to the game, you have to spend 40+ hours getting enough money to buy enough vivid scents to purify all 49 of them. ****ing waste of time.

The music sucks, although some of it's average enough I guess and the pokemon still use the Gameboy cries instead of voices which is gay. Fighting the same goddamned people over and over to get enough experience is gay.

I'm not even going to start on the Colosseum side of it. I'll be here all day. But I share your hope that they might actually have a decent RPG on the GC soon. But judging by the way the company are taking (fire red and leaf green? Why rehash the game with new colours? Why not do a new one?) I doubt it. Here's hoping.

All this aside, I did actually enjoy some parts of it. Mount Battle's last 10 are damned difficult and I have to disagree with the 2 on 2 thing. I like some of the Earthquake, flying combos they do. Mmisdreavus and Electrode explosion and ghost type thing is good too. Adds a new depth, but there you go...

Grumble grumble....

[nips]

I couldn't be ****ed with the whole purifying thing. I just cheated and got myself a whole load of those flutes. That seemed like a poor attempt at extending the life of the game.

I also found that when I linked my colosseum to my Sapphire, my pokedex didn't increase. It stayed at the same number. When I connect Ruby + Sapphire and trade, it says I've caught more pokemon, however, when I do it with colosseum it remains the same!

I don't see how I'm expected to complete my pokedex when all my pokemon are not acknowledged by the cart.

Metagross is actually from Ruby + Sapphire, not Colossuem so that's not excactly a 'new' pokemon. And the legendary dogs are ****. After they expanded the number of pokemon types it became almost a necessity to have 6 double type pokemon, instead of just a single type. I assume this is why the Sapphire + Ruby Starters are two types, eg: Blaziken - Fire/Fighting. But becuase the Dogs have only 1 type they generally suck. Especially when you are fighting in double battles and a variety of move types and strengths is a great help. Added to that, one of the Dogs is barely stronger than a normal pokemon, they're a huge dissapointment.

I've given up on that game. It appears that HO-OH will not enter my pokemon team. I think I'k gonna stick with my 3 starters, Metagross, Slamence with room for one more... who do I choose?

I don't think that Nintendo could afford to create a 'new' game that played exactly like the old ones and expect people to pay for it. The series would get very old very quickly. They have a good reason to re-make the old one: You get the Hoenn pokemon from Sap/Rub. The Johto pokemon from Colosseum and the Kanto pokemon from the re-makes. They can afford to re-make the old games becuase they were made what, 7 years ago and you can fill your pokedex on Sapphire/Ruby without it seeming like they are milking the franchise.

If you liked the old ones I suggest you get Red/Green (or blue depending on region). I've played a bit of Red and I instantly fell in love with it again. When you see the old style artwork for the pokemon it flooded back so many memories that I simply cannot wait to get them in the USA. I'm quite happy about the re-makes. They are the strongest of the series (probably just nostaliga) but with a make over and gameplay improvements, they kick ass all over again.

Oh, and the music does indeed suck.

[Crispin]

Gold/Silver are the best in the series. End. Of. Discussion.
And Dual Types are the best? I haven't had time to play Ruby/Sapphire extensively (still at 40 hours, which isn't much), but I'll gladly dispute that for the older versions.

Granted Tyranitar is an ace, ace pokemon, but it's completely ****ed against a fighting pokemon. And since Tyranitar forms the backbone of any team, you can find yourself struggling against fighting type specialists trainers, more so than a normal balanced team. Similarly for Dragonite, except that's a **** pokemon since Dragon moves aren't really super-effective against anything.

Of course, there is one 'ultimate' double type. A pokemon with very few type weaknesses. The only super-effective move against it is Dragon. And since it can learn ice attacks it'll easily triumph.

That pokemon? Kingdra.

Anyway, pokemon with favourable double types often have weak stats or movelists to make up for it.
Come back children when you've learnt some more. As they say, the Doctor is in.

[mrfrosty]

I'm very swiftly approaching the 'sod it!' attitude, but I owe it to myself to do as much as I can with the game before I throw it out of the window. You have, at least, access to Ruby and Sapphire and a cable to join the two up. Imagine my frustration at not even having that, just Colosseum as a stand alone game.

In effect, for me, Colosseum is my first look at the 100 or so new ones, so technically for me, Metagross and all that lot are new-ish. I never got around to buying a gameboy advance, and after this pile of **** connectivity bollocks, I'm not going to. Stuff em. Let em rinse me of cash some other way.

And you're right. They can't keep rehashing the same formula, but what else can they do? It's a bunch of monsters that beat each other up (and you can't kill them, a bugbear of mine since the franchise was launched....). What else can you do with them other than crappy rpg or arenas of some sort?

And Snagem? Why not have Jesse and James from team Rocket, the only reason the telly series shines, in it?

*dies*

[mrfrosty]

Tyranitar is only weak against fighting? Let's see.... Tyranitar is Dark/Rock. What is rock weak against? Water maybe? The Doctor is malpracticing....

[mrfrosty]

And just because a dragon type can LEARN an ice move, doesn't make it immune to ice attacks. All you have to do with a dragon is teach it thunderbolt/thunder to take out any water types that know ice, or flamethrower which removes all ice types that go against it.

[Crispin]

Tyranitar is only weak against fighting? Let's see.... Tyranitar is Dark/Rock. What is rock weak against? Water maybe? The Doctor is malpracticing....

A egg-raised Tyranitar is one mean mother****er. It can take two and a bit full Surf hits. I've tested this. That's usually more than enough to either switch out or use hyper-beam, unless they catch you at the end of a recharge or something. However, fighting moves are 4x effective.

And just because a dragon type can LEARN an ice move, doesn't make it immune to ice attacks. All you have to do with a dragon is teach it thunderbolt/thunder to take out any water types that know ice, or flamethrower which removes all ice types that go against it.

I think we may have our wires crossed. Kingdra is a water/dragon dual type with decent stats. The only super-effective type against a Kingdra is Dragon. This can be remedied by teaching Kingdra ice-beam or another reliable ice move. Very few people send a dragon pokemon out against water pokemon as they usually have ice moves up their belts. Of course you could paralyse them first with thunder wave. And then hit 'em. Bear in mind this leaves you inflexible. Since Dragonite's best combo is safeguard followed by outrage. So that only leaves you two moves, probably one of which you want to be hyperbeam. So that's only one move to play around with.

So Kingdra isn't effected by fire (x1/4 IIRC) or electric (x1) or ice (x1) or pretty much anything that effect either type, save dragon.

Of course I haven't experimented with the new pokemon since like I said, I haven't played enough to understand pokeblocks fully and thus no milotic for me.

How good are the new dragon pokemon?

[mrfrosty]

I've only experimented with a couple, but from what I can see it's more of the same.

Flygon - evolves from Vibrava - Dragon/Ground but has Levitate so it's not hit by ground moves like Earthquake which makes it damned good as a team with Tyranitar.

Altaria - evolves from Swablu - Dragon/Flying. A bit ****, low sp def similar moves to Dragonite, bit with a couple of flying moves like Aerial Ace etc. I don't really go much on this one.

Salamence I don't know much about, but again, it's dropped quickly with Ice Beam and Icy Wind (which is a **** attack Ice move).

I never use Dragon types in my team normally, cos they're bastards to raise from eggs and only when you evolve them (usually around level 60 or 70) to their highest form, they've lost out on the hp and attack stats that go with quick evolution.

My team at the minute (limited to Colosseum based pokemon cos I haven't got the cable to trade!0

Suicune (Purely for Ice Beam and Surf)
Entei (Bit crap but necessay against pokemon with Wonder Guard)
Raikou (fastest legendary so that's not so bad)
Metagross (Only ****ed up by dark and ground moves)
Tropius (Entei's Sunny Day takes out the 1 turn charge for Solar Beam)
Sableye (For a tiny little ****, it's bloody hard to knock out!)

What team do you have and tell the benefits?

[mrfrosty]

And for the record, Gold/Silver is the best I agree....

[Crispin]

Well, I won't give the Ruby team I have because it's incomplete and still highly experimental. I don't really know enough about it yet to decide. When I get home from Uni I'm buying myself an SP and playing it into the wee hours.

In Gold I have all at lvl 100 IIRC (it's been a while)
Dragonite: Outrage, Safeguard, Hyperbeam, Fly
Cast safeguard then outrage for some decent damage without confusion side effects

Tyranitar Crunch, Hyperbeam, Earthquake, Rock Throw
Tough mother, good range of moves. Shame it's not immune to electric paralysing attacks, unlike a ground type. Oh well.

Typhlosion Flamethrower, and some other moves...
Good all rounder. Tough pokemon. Good stats. Good moves. Best fire starter pokemon to date (Charizard is fiddly and Blaiziken sucks as I hate fighting types)

Golduck Ice Beam, Psychic, Surf, Hydro Pump
The ultimate breeding experiment. Ice Beam and Psychic are not moves normally learnt by Gold/Silver Psyducks. Used a smeagol with two sketch moves to breed with a psyduck.

Electabuzz Thunderbolt, and some other thunder based attacks, possibly Ice punch too
Decent electric pokemon. Better than Pikachu stats wise. Electric is a good type for the most part.

My pride and joy:
Snorlax 512 HP, Belly Drum Rest Snore Hyperbeam. Used in that order.

Belly Drum raises attacks, cutting HP to 256 (more than enough). Then use Rest to recover. Whilst sleeping hit enemy with two rounds of snore. If it survives that, finish the bitch off with Hyperbeam. Nothing can survive that.

[mrfrosty]

If you can help me with the following moves, can you tell me exactly what the hell they do and what they're good for? A couple of them from Colosseum leave me confused...

Fake out - Makes you flinch, but what's the point? If you're fast enough, then the next hit's gonna get you anyway?

Outrage - Never understood why the lv50 dragonite did this at the end of Silver. You could get around it with two ice beams. Does it have a benefit after a certain amount of moves?

Bulk up - What stat does this raise?

Foresight - I know it makes Ghost types hittable with normal moves but is that it?

I'm impressed with your Snorlax, particularly the HP. Not one of my favourite's I must say. Articuno's always my baby. high stats, ice beam as standard, and fast. Sweet as a nut.

[mrfrosty]

I wanna know if my lv100 Metagross (HP 400 and something) can withstand your Snorlax attack. Metagross is my favourite for the following reasons..

Iron Defense (use immediately as it greatly raises defense)
Psychic (why not)
Meteor Mash (****ing kick-ass steel attack with high accuracy)
Hyper beam (For when only the best is good enough)

This could easily withstand your snorlax assault, but taking it out would be a ****ing nightmare. When I first tried to beat Red at Mount Silver, I breezed through all of them until I hit Snorlax. I didn't have a move powerful enough to take it out in less than four moves. The **** just kept resting. Bastard....

[mrfrosty]

Oh, and add Rapid Spin to my list of "Why bother moves". Why would you waste one of only four moves on the off chance that you're hit with Wrap or Fire Spin?