Nintendo's WiFi service and Pokemon debut on the Wii with Pokemon Battle Revolution, but is it any good? Well, it only delivers half its promise...
GRAPHICS
The game itself looks very good, the trainers are well done and the pokemon look huge and shiny in 3D. The areas you fight in also look like a visual extravaganza, and the moves the pokemon use are nicely animated too. But when you look very closely at a pokemon, their graphics are blocky and blurry, and some of the trainers themselves suffer from minor frame-rate problems (moves at a choppy pace).
Other than the battle areas, the menus look terrible...
SOUND
Hmm... well, let`s just say "He" is back and more annoying than ever. Yes, the Announcer is back, but thankfully you can turn him off at the options menu. The music in the game is catchy, but there are only like six tracks or so, since the other music is basically a remix from the previous games (Nintendo sure got lazy there...). Hell, even the title screen features a remixed track from the Gateway Colosseum. And worst of all, the pokemon still have their DS "screech" and that doesn`t fare well here.
GAMEPLAY
The most important part of any game, and yet, even after the amazing GC games, this game takes it all back to a Pokemon Stadium style with no story and NO minigames, with just battles.
At least you can use the pokemon from your DS and use a " Custom Pass." If you don`t have a DS, you use "Rental Passes" with their own pokemon, but the pokemon they provide aren`t very good, and most of the pokemon featured are second evolution only. ( Combusken - a fire type pokemon with no fire type moves)
And there is also a lack of stages, since you have to fight six trainers in each colosseum, followed by the Colosseum Masters):
(A) - The Game
Gateway Colosseum - Used to get new Rental Passes & Trade Rental Pokemon
Main Street Colosseum - Knockout Battle ( basic 3 on 3) leader wears a Pachirisu outfit...
Sunny Park Colosseum - Knockout Battle -No Outfits here-
Waterfall Colossseum - Best 3 out of 5, leader wears a Kyogre outfit...
Crystal Colosseum - Double Style Match , leader wears a Electivire outfit...
Neon Colosseum - Fortune Battle ( Mix your and enemy pokemon) Roserade...
Thats it, the whole game... embarrassingly easy AI as well. ( Enemy Water Pokemon refused to attack my Monferno and kept attacking Prinplup with Water Pulse...)
(B) - Create-A-Trainer
Bah, lacking options is putting it mildly. You can only choose from a handful, like hair color, some hair color is exclusive to only one, same as shirts and pants except for some pairs.
The trainers are:
Young Boy - typical youngster - Beginning Rental Pass
Cool Boy - Probably the trainer your gonna pick as well
Muscle Man - looks dumb
Young Girl - typical lass - Beginning Rental Pass
Cool Girl - uhh, looks awesome?
Little Girl - wears Pachirisu outfit... wow.
(C) - Shopping
A very fun part of the game, you can buy Gear for your trainer and Mystery Gift items for your DS game. The gear you can buy is:
Head - hats
Hair - hair color, more likely
Face - eyes, or umm paint
Glasses - or shades
Top - Shirts, duh...
Hands - ...
Bottom - why not just say pants?
Badge - Why is this even here?
Bags - ...
The Mystery Gift Items range from Dusk , Shiny or Dawn Stones to decent TM moves.
REPLAY VALUE
It`s great if you have Diamond / Pearl DS games, otherwise it's pretty weak. The WiFi itself is buggy, and throws you off-line sometimes ( Curse the people in there! You and your Arceus army!!)
But, even though it is weak, it is surprisingly attractive. If you can`t spare too much cash, just rent it, but if you already have Diamond or Pearl, you probably should get it.
