Pokemon Coliseum – The Game

By Matt

You’ve already heard about this new (or should I say, old) game. Now there are many different concepts to cover here. This game is divided into Story Mode and Coliseum Mode. The first one is the main story involving the hero (you). Coliseum Mode deals with competitive battling with preset teams, or just linking up a GameBoy Advance and battling with your friends. In Story Mode, the Shadow Pokemon you catch here will not disappear; if you happen to pass by a Team member that has a Shadow  Pokemon (like I did), they will most likely reappear at the end of the game at the same place.

Tyranitar, one of the last Shadow Pokemon you will have to catch, belongs to the boss of Team Plasma, and if you cannot catch it the first time, you can always come back and try again a second time (or as many tries as you need). In battle, the “Run” command has disappeared; that’s because there’s no wild Pokemon in the Orre region! Instead, this is replaced by “Call”, which I’ll explain the effect of later. When you battle with Shadow Pokemon, your goal is to purify them. If you decide to use the ones you captured in battle, you can see that they have five segmented bars of purple where the EXP should go. You have to purify them (in-game, “open the door to their heart”) by battling with them frequently.

The signature move to Shadow Pokemon is Shadow Rush, which is like Take Down: it does damage, but the user takes damage as well. As you progress by taking out parts of the purple bar, it will learn more moves, so you  don’t have to rely on that all the time. Sometimes in battle, your Shadow Pokemon may enter Hyper Mode. In Hyper Mode, Shadow Rush will have a higher critical hit ratio (remember what I said about this? It becomes 12.5%), but when commanded to use other moves, it may not obey you. This is where “Call” comes in handy. Call will remove the Pokemon from Hyper Mode, and take off a part of the purple bar,  depending eon the Pokemon you are purifying.

When your Pokemon has a clear white bar, go to Agate Town and go to the shrine. You can then select a Pokemon to be purified, where it will regain all its EXP points it earned in battle. It will also get a ribbon for being purified, and you can name it now. Somewhere in the game, you will get a Flute of Time. This can be used to see Celebi in a special cutscene, where it will purify one of your Pokemon without having to go through all that trouble. It can be only used once; I would suggest purifying a legend with it. In the Japanese version, there was another disk that came with the game; you could see Celebi and add it to your team. After you purified all the 48 Pokemon you caught (or snagged), you could put this disk in and go to the shrine in Agate Town.

Then, you could go to the stone and meet a resident of the village who will suddenly see Celebi. Then, it will stay with him if you don’t have an extra space in your party and wait with him until you can add it to your party. Quite an amazing and unique game, right?

Tags: Celebi, Nintendo DS, Shadow Pokemon