The Peak of Gen 3: Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness

The biggest crime in video game history was making battle revolution just battles and not giving it the same storyline and rpg elements as XD/Colo. I miss shadow Pokémon and double battles

My favourite CD was the Shedninja one. It isn't hard, but it's hilarious: Your opponent has 6 shedninja, and you have one turn to beat all of them, so you have to use spikes or sandstorm (don't recall), then Roar the first two away to make each Shedninja be instantly wiped out. Such a specific niche, but man is it funny to see a 1-turn wipe.

I still have the disc for this game all these years later. I spent a lot of time on this game as a kid and felt like it was an underrated game. I still feel that way and it has battle graphics that aged well.

Miror B. dominates the field with his giga-Chad energy.

I used to think that Wes was Michael's father, and the mother was a grown up Rui. Granted, I never played the original colusseum, only saw snippets of others playing it.

I still jam to the mirror b theme from this game frequently all these years later. The Next Generations romhack for XD makes it even better as well, 11/10

This is the perfect distraction from watching my favorite competitive gaming scene catch fire today.

Another fun tidbit about XD is the sneak peek of Gen 4 with the inclusion of Munchlax and Bonsly. And I swear, both of them seemed to have the goal of pissing the player off. Bonsly has a whole un skippable segment in the story where you have to chase it around a shipwreck and try to trap it and Munchlax occasionally pops up eating the lures set out for wild Pokemon. And you cant catch it, it just takes off. So you have to set another lure and hope Munchlax doesn't pop up, and you wasted a huge amount of time going out there and back because you only have a small amount of time to get out there before the wild Pokemon flees. I know that it's meant to be a preview for Diamond and Pearl, but I cant help but love the foreshadowing for how slow and frustrating Diamond and Pearl are.

In this game (Colosseum too) Timer Ball is stupidly broken. Each attack counts as a turn, and since it is always double battle, it was very easy to get x3 or x4 ratio. Definitely stronger than using Ultra Ball which has x2 ratio.

RIP Genious Sonority, instead of just dying, they're doomed to a future of mobile puzzle games. Least they're getting more work, that's a small win at least.

On the topic of Battle SIMs, I'm suddenly reminded of Pokéstar Studios from BW2. Many of the battles feature custom opponents specifically tailored to the preset Pokémon you're given. Obviously it's not as complex as the double battle strategies you have to account for in the SIMs, but they're definitely the closest thing to a puzzle battle experience since XD.

Battle simulators are absolutely one of my favorite concepts in video games. Yu-gi-oh championship edition 2005 (I think it was called) had these things called “duel puzzles” which were basically the same thing, rigged draws and all. You could even make your own! I didn’t figure out how to play as a little kid so I never beat them, but the battle simulator did bring back some fond-ish memories of at least trying them.

It's crazy that this games battle animations are better than gen 9's lol

Even after all these years i'm still disappointed they got rid of The Under in XD. Loved that place so much, not to mention the theme of The Under still goes hard to this day almost 20 years later.

Honestly, for me, two mainstays were Houndoom and Delcatty as a pair. Those two just tore apart most things that stood in their way.

In Pokemon white 2 and black 2 the battle CDs do make return as pokestudios. Basically, you take on challenges following a script and figuring out how to win a certain way. How you win can affect the ending of a movie and give you some cool results.

I still have my Psychoboost Lugia from this game sitting in pkm home, mad that the move isn't actually in the newer games at all so I'd be forced to delete it if I transferred

Funny how shadow Pokémon aren't just a thing of the past anymore but now an established part of Pokémon Go

Definitely needed this after Tamashii Hiroka's awful video bashing Colosseum. Jesus!

Seriously thank you for covering these dude, these games have some of the best gameplay and story/vibes of the whole series. Thank you for bringing this too light for anyone to enjoy. Not only is it massively good nostalgia but it had genuine bangers throughout the game whether it be battles, music or story elements loved both of the 2