Developer: Genius Sonority
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: RPG
Players: 1-2
Console: Wii
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
Hours Played: 6
Progress: Cleared all Colosseums once
Well, I’ve probably already lost all my credibility by reviewing a Pokemon game, but because of the bad TV show, people who play Pokemon games are branded as immature children. What most people don’t understand is that the main Pokemon games are actually well-crafted RPGs. However, does this peripheral installment in the best selling RPG series of all time live up to the standard set before it?
The graphics in Pokemon Battle Revolution are unquestionably its best point. The visuals are absolutely gorgeous, especially for a Wii game. All 493 Pokemon, with all of their variations, are beautifully rendered in full 3-D and in great colour. The attack animations are also fantastic. One minor complaint I have is the lack consistency with the Pokemon animations and the attack animations. For example, when my Salamence uses Brick Break, it raises its left paw and slashes across the foe (left to right). However, the animation for Brick Break goes from right to left, which kind of made me do a double take. With that said, specular highlighting and a high polygon count for all Pokemon, trainers, and environments make this one of the best-looking Wii games around.
The Pokemon noises come directly from the hand-held games, so there are no problems there. The background music is barely noticeable, but is also quite well done. One thing I wish I was glad to say is that they brought back the announcer from Pokemon Stadiums 1 and 2. Sadly, they did a terrible job with him this time around. He endlessly repeats the same things over and over again and generally is more of a nuisance than a great feature. For example, every time I used the move Earthquake (something I did quite a lot), I would hear the announcer say “Earthquake tears open the ground!”. Every time. It got very annoying. Also, when he says the name of the Pokemon, it is very noticeably separate from the rest of his comments. Now, I am sure they recorded the Pokemon names and comments separately in the Pokemon Stadium games as well, but it wasn’t nearly as noticeable back then. This announcer really distracted me from the game with his disjointed and repetitive commentary.
The controls in Pokemon Battle Revolution are a pain. One control scheme has you using the Wiimote to point at the option you wish to choose and pressing the A button to select it. The B button is used for canceling previous decisions. The second control scheme is the same but the A button and B button are reversed in function. I don’t understand this. For as long as there has been A buttons and B buttons, the A button was always select and the B button was always go back. Why should there be an option to reverse this? The main problem with this is the weakness of the infrared receiver on the Wiimote. I had a cold while playing this game and had a box of Kleenex on the table between me and my TV and the Sensor bar signal was being blocked by a single Kleenex sticking out of the box. That got on my nerves, so I switched to the third scheme. This control scheme is identical to controls used in NES games played on the Virtual Console. Now this wasn’t that bad, but I couldn’t just hold the Wiimote in one hand and be lazy while I played the game. In all, I guess the controls in this game are livable, but with room for improvement.
The gameplay in Pokemon Battle Revolution is simple. You pick one of the ten colosseums, you have Pokemon battle with a few pathetic computer opponents and you go on to another one. Using the team I had imported from my Pokemon Pearl game, I completely laid waste to literally everyone there. The only time the game tried to stop me was in one of these colosseums, the game randomly chooses two teams from yours and your opponents’ Pokemon and gives them to you. Now I have known for a long time that I am not very lucky, but if I wasn’t sure before this, I definitely am now. The game repeatedly gave me the garbage Pokemon my opponent brought forth and made me fight the very things I brought in to utterly annihilate them. Thankfully, the game gave me a rental pass containing Pokemon about on par with those I was facing, so using that, I managed to get through there. The unfortunate thing about this entire game sort of has to be mentioned here. There’s nothing else aside from this stupid story (or lack thereof) mode. The N64 games had the fun minigames and the good multiplayer mode, and the Gamecube games had an engaging unique RPG story that was quite fun. This game has nothing more than short romp through a few pathetic opponents to offer, which is particularly odd considering the decided decency of its predecessors.
I suppose there are a couple of multiplayer modes, but there’s a reason I didn’t really mention them before. One of the multiplayer modes lets you battle online against other people. Problem 1 with this: the game suffers from Nintendo WFC’s lack of reasonable matchmaking, so you can really only play with people from approximately the same geographical area as you. Problem 2: Nintendo, of course, put their stupid friend code system in this game as well. If I want to play online with my friend (which I can’t in this game because none of my friends have it…), why can’t I just type in my friend’s username and connect with him? Why do I have to talk to him, have him remember a random string of 12 numbers, have me remember that as well as my string of 12 numbers to give him and we both enter these numbers into our Wiis so that we can play together? Now if this wasn’t bad enough, if I get another online game (like Super Smash Bros. Brawl), I can’t just enter the same string of numbers to be able to play with him. I have to repeat the entire process again because Nintendo won’t allow you to use use the same friend code for every game. To send Wii messages back and forth between consoles, there’s even another code that has to be exchanged. It’s very hard to see how Nintendo ever thought that this was a good idea.
Enough about that. The offline muliplayer is also sort of a let down. If my friend and I both have Pokemon Diamond or Pearl, then we can just battle. This is fine, but what if one of us has a worse team than the other, or one of us just plain doesn’t have one of these games? Well, I can just rent a team like in the old games right? Well, sort of. In this game, you can only rent the Pokemon that you unlock (which is a surprisingly l0w number) and, even by rental standards, these Pokemon are terrible. The multiplayer is just plain awful in Pokemon Battle Revolution, even though Pokemon by nature is a multiplayer-centric franchise, this kind of oversight really isn’t acceptable in current-generation Pokemon games.
In closing, even if you are a die-hard Pokemon player (like me), DO NOT PURCHASE THIS GAME! It is not worth $50. I’m not sure if it’s even worth $20, so it’s not really worth it even if it’s in the bargain bin. It’s not a terrible rent, because when you’re done with it then you can just return it and not have it insult you from its dusty place on the shelf. There are a couple of nice incentives to this game, like the bonus Electivire and Surfing Pikachu that you can download to Pokemon Diamond or Pearl, but these alone do not make it worth $50. About $10 for a rental, maybe, but definitely nothing more.
Graphics:
+ Nice and colourful
– A few small inconsistencies in battle animations
Sound:
+ Pokemon sounds are authentic
+ Attack sounds are good
– Announcer is irritating and repetitive
Controls:
+ Not too bad
– Not too good
Gameplay:
+ Does what it was marketed to do (have Pokemon battles on a TV)
– Does nothing beyond its marketed purpose
Multiplayer:
– Online suffers from the curse of Nintendo WFC
– Rental battles have no variety
Usagi Factor:
– Nothing particularly memorable
– No reason to play it after completion of main quest
