The RPG Group » Discussions


Pokémon Colosseum - Shadow Pokémon Only Playthrough

  • Member
    June 26, 2018

    So just recently as of posting this, I've completed a playthrough of Pokemon Colosseum with a self-imposed challenge; to play through the game with only shadow pokemon and no purifications. For those relatively familiar to Pokemon but not Colosseum specifically, the main plot of the game is centered around capturing 'shadow' pokemon, which are pokemon turned into heartless fighting machines, from their trainers and then purifying them, all while taking down the evil organization behind it. But in this Shadow-Pokemon only playthrough, there will be no purification, and I'd be leaving my starters in the PC relatively early in the game.

    The reason why I started this run were simple; out of all pokemon moves, Colosseum's Shadow Rush is my most favorite. However, it's only available to Shadow Pokemon, which you cannot create yourself, and it was never introduced to the main series of games. (just imagine, Mega Shadow Pokemon! hehe). The Shadow Rush move is lost upon purification, which means in this playthrough nobody's getting purified. Here's a rundown of what happens when you restrict yourself to having only Shadow Pokemon:

    • Shadow Pokemon can't gain experience points, thus incabable of leveling up. (so don't bother with the day-care)
    • Because they can't level up, they can't learn moves or evolve. or gain stats.
    • Because they can't level up, Pokemon in your party will be replaced when you capture new ones, as your old ones are obseleted due to their level.
    • Shadow Pokemon also refuse TMs and can't have moves deleted either.
    • There's a meter all Shadow Pokemon have which unlocks your other moves, reduced in ways similar to raising happiness.
    • Shadow Pokemon can't be traded
    • Using Shadow Rush has a chance to activate Hyper Mode, which massivlely increases critical chance, but restricts the user to only using Shadow Rush. They also will not accept healing items during Hyper Mode, and lose it upon fainting or being called.

    Interesting, eh? The main difficulties are the inability to level up or alter movesets, which is a handicap unique to a Shadow-only-run, and not something you can really do in the main series of Pokemon games. Usually in the Story Mode of Pokemon games, and level disadvantage you have can be made up for by the moveset, and vice versa. However in this challenge, you can't improve either! Some pokemon have absolutely useless moves to unlock, while others can remain useful despite their level due to having useful movesets for capturing pokemon. Luckily though, no matter how bad their moveset is they still have Shadow Rush, and in Hyper Mode a near-guarunteed critical hit. Overwhelming offense is not to be underestimated.

     

     

    At the beginning, the first Shadow Pokemon you capture is Makuhita. But every battle in this game is a double battle, so I didn't shelve Umbreon & Espeon until capturing the second Shadow Pokemon, which is one of the middle evolutions of the Johto region starters. This time I had chosen Croconaw, which now I think was the correct choice because of the usefulness of the Mystic Water item it held. (but I'm sure the other two are viable choices as well). After that point, we'd head to Pyrite town and get to assebling a full team. At first it'll be hard going and slow, but capturing all the 'mons there will be easier as it goes on. Pyrite town is a place you'd spend a lot of time in anyway during this playthrough, so its not that big a deal.

    There were roadblocks along the way for sure, but I started this playthrough a while ago. I had took a hiatus, because at the end of the game Colosseum has a notorious difficulty spike. Before you fight the final boss, first you have to fight a gauntlet of trainers, who I'll refer to here as the Elite Jobbers. I call them that because in a normal playthrough, they don't have story significance outside of being goons and aren't that hard. It's four battles, back-to-back, however the catch is, unlike the Elite Four, you don't get to heal in-between battles. Which made these ordinary four jobbers into very annoying and tough opponents. This was what caused be to stop playing back then, and what I had to deal with when I returned.

    The Elite Jobbers all use only one type, much like the Elite Four. The first uses Normal, second uses Dark, third has Fire, and last is Grass. They only have about 3-4 pokemon each, but since you can't heal in-between you'll soon find yourself being outnumbered. Furthermore, at the first encounter with them they out-level you by roughly 4-5 levels on average. The solution is to slowly capture their Shadow Pokemon and add them to your team until you overcome them. And then eventually reach the end. (Suicune with Surf + Mystic Water was very useful on the third Jobber)

     

    And after that, you get to fight Nascour, who first heals your party (like Rubricante of FFIV), and then squashes you. But to fight Nascour again, you have to survive the gauntlet again. The good news is, you need only survive the battles, and now that your team is stronger it's not as difficult to do so. There's an herbal vendor in The Under who sells Revival Herbs, which do the same as Max Revives, as well as discounted Hyper potion equivalents. So stock up on a dozen or so Herbs, and save before challenging them so you don't need to re-buy items. Nascour's lineup doesn't seem to change, so you can organize your own party accordingly. Miltank was MVP here, as my winning strategy involved getting and maintaining a rollout chain to KO like 3 of his pokemon, and paralyze Metagross with Body Slam. It's very important to quickly KO his Blaziken, as your entire team at this point in the game is weak to either fire or fighting. Nascour also uses X Special on his guys, and you'd have no way of dispelling stat boosts if he sets up. (Also, don't make the mistake of leaving Dusclops for last, because it has Destiny Bond). Eventually I snagged Metagross and the rematch was made much easier.

    Also around this point in the game, I accumulated enough coupons from Mt. Battle to afford a nice hold item. I chose the Choice Band, because I really wanted that Shadow Rush + Choice Band combo! Since Shadow Rush is typeless, means it's a physical attack. Strangely enough, Choice band won't lock you into Shadow Rush, instead it locks you into the next move that isn't Shadow Rush. But it still gives the attack buff, which scales with your attack stat. Metagross and Absol had the highest attack among my team at the time, both near 150 attack, and because Hyper Mode locks you in anyway there wasn't much downside. But for these bosses I needed Psychic and Faint Attack, both of which are special attacks here, so Choice Band mainly saw use for regular trainer battles and new recruits who only had Shadow Rush. So far as of typing this, I've only cleared up to area 9 of Mt. Battle, and area 10 is about 10-11 levels higher than my party.

    After Nascour is beaten, you fight his boss, Evice. Evice's team is all level 60-61, and mine was level 48-50, needless to say we got curbstomped the first time. But I went back, restocked on items and unlocked Metagross's moves and returned to practice fighting. Evice changes his lead pokemon whenever you fight him, but on the bright side you don't have to fight a gauntlet. Houndoom could one-shot his Scizor with flamethrower, and Metagross has Psychic for Machamp, Houndoom is fast enough and Metagross was tough enough so you just have to line those up and the rest of the fight will be feasible. His Slaking is also a major issue, with Earthquake and Bulk Up its capable of OHKO-ing two of your 'mons at a time. His Salamence is also a big issue, as I have no moves that can hit its weaknesses except Rollout, but there's no way you're chaining Rollouts versus a team ten levels higher than you. Instead, Salamence was dealt with using a combination of Metagross's Psychic and Revival Herbs, to revive party members solely to take Double-Edge hits and force Salamence to take massive recoil damage.

    Later that same fight, we then had to deal with Slowking using Skill Swap to remove Slaking's Truant. But lucky for us Slaking was on about half HP and went down soon to Tropius's Magical leaf and Metagross's Psychic (Have I mentioned how important Metagross was here?), which left only Tyranitar and Slowking (rendered useless with Truant). Miltank paralyzed Tyranitar with Body Slam and I won by capturing Tyranitar with my last Timer Ball. It was a hard fight, but not impossible.

     

    I haven't done the post-game stuff yet so I can't speak for that, but IIRC it's not that lenghty if you've already caught all the pokemon you could. But anyways yeah, it's a very interesting challenge and it does mean every pokemon sees use somewhere. I love Shadow Rush!

  • June 26, 2018

    Heh, oh man. I've always been kind of bummed that I never got the chance to play through the Pokemon Colosseum games, they always seemed super interesting and I'm always down for making children's games ridiculously difficult by adding in ridiculous rules that if they were in the real game, would mean that Pokemon wouldn't exist :P 

    Sounds really interesting though, but honestly sounds like you were insanely lucky that the last boss couldn't get that Skill Swap + Slaking set off sooner. Urgh Slaking without Truant is an absolute beast, especially in Gen 3. I mean, Shadow Ball + Brick Break + Return/Facade and Slack Off without Truant on that thing is an insane moveset...Or Earthquake can be moved in there, just insane stuff :D

  • Member
    June 27, 2018

    Dragonborn2021 said:

    Heh, oh man. I've always been kind of bummed that I never got the chance to play through the Pokemon Colosseum games, they always seemed super interesting and I'm always down for making children's games ridiculously difficult by adding in ridiculous rules that if they were in the real game, would mean that Pokemon wouldn't exist :P 

    Sounds really interesting though, but honestly sounds like you were insanely lucky that the last boss couldn't get that Skill Swap + Slaking set off sooner. Urgh Slaking without Truant is an absolute beast, especially in Gen 3. I mean, Shadow Ball + Brick Break + Return/Facade and Slack Off without Truant on that thing is an insane moveset...Or Earthquake can be moved in there, just insane stuff :D

    Well, I've never played Colosseum's sequel, but it's a great game, unfortunately not very long. Colosseum's not that great for adding your own rules though, because the amount of Pokemon you can capture is a lot lower than the main games, but there's some stuff you can do (like this for example). It's also not as long either, they kinda pad out the length by upping the difficulty. There were more roadblocks than this, these ones were just the most obvious, being unable to level up makes the game an uphill battle almost all the time.  But I mean let's be honest only adults play Pokemon these days :P Unfortunately I don't think we're gonna get any more games like Colosseum & XD though.

    I think I may have exaggerated the final boss a bit, the guy before him was harder to defeat due to the way the typings lined up with my team, and because Metagross is so good in the final boss battle. Skill Swap + Slaking is a real concern, but in all the attempts I had, he only ever lined it up twice, and the second time it was too late for him. The AI doesn't switch out to proactivley try to get it, they just do it if they just so happen to have Slaking and Slowking out at the same time. There were quite a few times Slaking just won with Truant anyway...

    Salamence is also hard, its got Dragon Dance + Double-Edge, it was wrecking my team until I saw just how much recoil it was taking from full hp OHKOs. Scizor is the biggest problem, if Houndoom wasn't hitting that 4x weakness. Scizor tries to get Silver Wind boosts and then Baton pass them, and I swear Silver wind was activating more often for that guy! Baton Passing all those stats into Salamence or Slaking was crazy. And Machamp just has super-effective attacks for everyone but Metagross, also really bad if Scizor baton passes to Machamp.

     

    But yeah that's probably one of the best things about Colosseum, almost all the enemy trainers have some kind of strategy or gimmick, the last bosses just take a more multifaceted approach. As opposed to the regular pokemon games, where all the npcs play monotype unless they're Ace Trainers :P

  • June 28, 2018

    Well, I've never played Colosseum's sequel, but it's a great game, unfortunately not very long. Colosseum's not that great for adding your own rules though, because the amount of Pokemon you can capture is a lot lower than the main games, but there's some stuff you can do (like this for example). It's also not as long either, they kinda pad out the length by upping the difficulty. There were more roadblocks than this, these ones were just the most obvious, being unable to level up makes the game an uphill battle almost all the time.  But I mean let's be honest only adults play Pokemon these days :P Unfortunately I don't think we're gonna get any more games like Colosseum & XD though.

    I think I may have exaggerated the final boss a bit, the guy before him was harder to defeat due to the way the typings lined up with my team, and because Metagross is so good in the final boss battle. Skill Swap + Slaking is a real concern, but in all the attempts I had, he only ever lined it up twice, and the second time it was too late for him. The AI doesn't switch out to proactivley try to get it, they just do it if they just so happen to have Slaking and Slowking out at the same time. There were quite a few times Slaking just won with Truant anyway...

    Salamence is also hard, its got Dragon Dance + Double-Edge, it was wrecking my team until I saw just how much recoil it was taking from full hp OHKOs. Scizor is the biggest problem, if Houndoom wasn't hitting that 4x weakness. Scizor tries to get Silver Wind boosts and then Baton pass them, and I swear Silver wind was activating more often for that guy! Baton Passing all those stats into Salamence or Slaking was crazy. And Machamp just has super-effective attacks for everyone but Metagross, also really bad if Scizor baton passes to Machamp.

    But yeah that's probably one of the best things about Colosseum, almost all the enemy trainers have some kind of strategy or gimmick, the last bosses just take a more multifaceted approach. As opposed to the regular pokemon games, where all the npcs play monotype unless they're Ace Trainers :P

    Hey now, kids play Pokemon Go :P But yeah pretty much just adults who've been stuck playing since they were 5 years old and now spend too much time worrying about the most effecient sets and IV's.

    Urgh but honestly, I feel like Silver Wind/Ancient Power/Ominious Wind runs on a rule saying that NPC's have a 60% chance to get the boosts while the player has a 0.0001% chance to get it. I can count on one hand the number of times I've gotten it and that was with Serene Grace Togekiss using OW...It's just, I mean it's fair but NPC's tend to trigger it way too often, and naturally it's usually at the end of a long string of fights. Ah well, still a better chance than fighting a Pokemon with Quiver Dance...just... >.> Quiver Dance.

    But man Colosseum sounds pretty fun, would love it if they did something like that again...or I guess I could get my hands on a copy...eh that's unlikely, maybe Nintendo will release it in one of the virtual stores or something? No clue, but if I get the chance I'll have to play it sometime, love throwing crazy rulesets together for Pokemon games.

     

     

     

  • Member
    October 26, 2018

    Ah, I remember Collesuem, still have it on my N64 somewhere