#inspired purely by Tama's rampage against this game lol

[characteroulette]

Okay Colosseum rant time.

Pokemon Colosseum came to me because, naturally, I was a Pokemon kid. Not only was I a Pokemon kid, though, I was specifically a Gen2 kid. I grew up with Red and Yellow, sure, but Gold and Silver were mine and my sister's (respectively), specifically. Crystal was the first game I fell in true and hard love with, all because I loved Gold and what does Crystal add? The female protagonist who I adopted into myself pretty immediately.

Colosseum has a lot going against it, to be fair. It's main goal is to get fans to spend money and a BUTTLOAD of time to maximise profits and drag out the whole completing the Pokedex thing for Gen3. It's got no wild Pokemon, is double battles only (which was new and scary then and is still contentious???? with fans today???), AND there are only 48 available Pokemon. Less so for the main campaign!!

But for me, it just...works.

For one, the Orre region was the first region based on the US. That's huge to begin with, but it's more personal to me as it's based specifically on the southwest US, which is where I lived for a good majority of my life. The desert is familiar to me and so Orre has a real certain charm to me.

For two, it's edgy lol with crime and darkness everywhere in the same vein as Jak 2, which I enjoyed watching my sister play (I could not play it myself) and was definitely in the age range for it to work. (Hell I think Wes might be the start of my love for white-haired anime boys hahaha) But for real, the idea of Shadow Pokemon is so neat. Pokemon that have closed their hearts off from humans, even willing to attack humans and grow so wild they literally will not listen to you or accept healing. Fascinating! They are mechanically kinda boring, sure, but narratively?? There's so much to do with them!

Three, I actually like double battles a lot! This game is single-handedly the reason, too. I get so upset I usually reset if I miss one of the double battle opportunities in the other games hahaha. Apparently this is an unpopular opinion??? I just want more Pokemon games that are only double battles like this one, I dunno what else to say. (I like pairs.)

Four, your starters are an Umbreon and Espeon!! A hint that our protag Wes is actually a kind Trainer because friendship evolutions!! And remember I'm a Gen2 kid, so Espeon and Umbreon mean a lot to me (and also they are paired forever for me now because of this game. Seeing people take Umbreon off their team because "stats" reasons never fails to make me sad). I even did a whole playthrough of this game using only my Umbreon and Espeon and this game is actually built to combat that! Which fascinates me, too.

Five, again with the Gen2 thing, I was definitely obsessed with the big legendary cat trio as a kid. Entei was always my fave (thanks Pokemon movie 3) (also my natural affinity for Fire types), but I also liked Suicune a lot due to Crystal (and hey! My sis' fave of the bunch is Raikou), so this trio being the big legendaries of this game really appealed to me.

(This is also why XD disappointed me so much, so many Kanto Pokemon.... but a different rant)

Lastly, the soundtrack is an absolute banger!! I love like every single song in this game, but I have also beaten this game like five times over by this point so I've grown very fond of all of them.

I get that this game ain't for everyone. Pokemon fans are generally just not fond of having their options so limited like this (see: Dex outcry time and time again), but it can also get a bit grindy and that ending challenge is... a big one. (Y'all why do you ask for harder difficulties but then decry them when they appear....? Y'all baffle me.) I have never failed to make my sis or friends fall asleep when I play this game while they watch (and to be fair, I get caught in the grind wayyy more often than most).

But it's a weird thing to call it outright bad or just made up of bad decisions?? Like Tama pls you don't have to like it, no one's forcing you to like it, you don't gotta call it absolute garbage. It was formed from terrible marketing shit, yeah, but it's also just not your type of game.

But it sure as hell my type of jam lol. I wasn't even able to get past the Suicune battle for like the first ten years I owned the game and I still loved the shit outta it. I remember restarting the game a lot just to get stuck there again and again and never once was I actually frustrated. For some reason. I was upset about not being able to catch Suicune because I was bad at Pokemon, but never frustrated with the actual game.

And now I've beaten it five times over and I'm sure I'll beat it many times more. So yeah 10/10 game for me personally but 6/10 game when recc'ing it to others for real only 48 available Pokemon and huge difficulty spike right at the finale.