Review: Pokemon Battle Revolution (Wii)

Its difficult to judge a game like Pokmon Battle Revolution, where not much should be expected purely on the basis of it being an expansion pack. The main draw of the Stadium series, after all, is just the chance to see your battle-hardened handheld creatures take the fight to the big screen.

However, even by the standards of the previous games in the series, this entry is somewhat lacking.

Make no mistake; this game is about nothing but constant Pokémon battling, over and over and over again. Granted, there wasn’t much more to the Stadium games than that anyway, but the total lack of mini-games or encyclopaedic functions make this fact all the more jarring. With nothing to divert players from the battling, the repetition soon sets in. Without a copy of Pokémon Diamond or Pearl, the game doesn’t even allow you to make a Rental team chosen from (nearly) all of the critters. Instead, you’re restricted to using pre-selected Pokémon on a limited number of Rental Passes, most of which are complete rubbish. Without one of the DS games, this game is, for lack of a better term, worthless.

Of course, if you have one of the DS games, then more options are open to you. You can copy all of your caught Pokémon to your Wii, make a Custom Pass, and choose any of the creatures you caught in the main game to form your party. You also have the ability to customise your Trainer, choosing from six templates and accessorising them with a wide variety of shirts, bags, hairstyles and so forth, even been able to change the catchphrases they use in a battle. It’s a nice feature which we wish was part of the main games, and some very amusing characters can be made. However, using your own Pokémon suddenly makes the game too easy, since almost none of your opponents use fully-evolved creatures and very few will give any trouble to even a fairly average squad. The initial charm of being able to use your own creatures and customise your Trainer doesn’t last long, and earning coupons to buy more accessories just isn’t enough incentive to play through all of the stages more than once, even at higher difficulty levels.

The main selling point this time around is the chance to take the game online and battle players over Wi-Fi. However, the online sessions we tried were somewhat less than robust, and prone to copious amounts of lag, making the Pokémon fights last longer than usual. Considering this feature has already been available for some time in the DS games, there’s nothing to differentiate it other than flashier graphics.

At least the graphics look nice, with some great effects used for the attacks, and some nice-looking stadiums and Trainers. The Pokémon themselves look good with some amusing animations. However, a lot of the creatures look rather shiny, like they were made out of plastic, and some actions, such as dodging attacks, have no animations at all. The presentation also seems very bland, with only some boring menus to navigate. Why not give players the option to walk around the island they’re supposedly on? Music and sound effects are also forgettable, and there is also a highly annoying (but thankfully optional) commentator.

It is probably the fact that our expectations were quite low for Pokémon Battle Revolution which is stopping us from giving the game a lower-than-average score. However, it’s impossible to recommend to those who don’t have one of the DS games, and while die-hard Pokémaniacs will doubtless get some joy out of it, even they should avoid paying full-price for what is a somewhat limited expansion.

Rating: 5 / 10

Words by Drew Middlemas