Written by Orca Blademaster
Imagine you’re on a large cruise ship, traveling through the ocean in the middle of the night, when a gigantic bird with evil red eyes swoops down and steals your entire ship in one fluid motion, carrying you and the entire vessel into the night sky, never to be seen again. That is the opening cutscene to the newest outing of Nintendo’s most popular franchise, Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness.
Pokémon XD takes place five years after the events in the last Gamecube Pokémon game, Pokémon Colosseum. As such, the game takes place in the exact same region, with most of the same locations, so playing this right after Colosseum would make it seem like an extension of the original rather than a true sequel. Despite that, it still retains some of the charm of the original while bringing a new story to the franchise.
The story of XD is based loosely on Colosseum, so those that haven’t played it will be lost on some of the references and in-jokes based on the first game, but otherwise it isn’t much of a requirement. In XD, Team Cipher is an organization hell-bent on turning all Pokémon into Shadow Pokémon. Shadow Pokémon are those that have had their hearts closed, so they turn into purely destructive fighting machines capable of wiping out whole towns in single blows. You play the Hero of the story, a young orange-haired boy who’s mother runs a Lab. When disaster strikes, you equip the Lab’s most top secret device – a Snag Machine, capable of stealing Shadow Pokémon from others. The goal of your adventure is to snag Shadow Pokémon from other trainers and to stop Team Cipher.
The gameplay is exactly as it was in Colosseum – You use two Pokémon at a time in battle, and can carry a total of six at a time on your journey. Having to use two at once during battle requires some extra strategy in order to come out on top. Knowing when to know to use what attack on which enemy is key, especially if that enemy can one-shot one of your Pokémon with ease. Sometimes this becomes pathetically easy; at others, ridiculously hard. The battles seem more like a huge game of rock-paper-scissors in the long run, but are still fun if just to see how they play out.
There’s plenty to do in game, from battling, to exploring, to catching some wild Pokémon, to…. well, more battling. The battles are the core of the game, which is what can get repetitive. That’s the biggest drawback to the game – there isn’t much diversity to the gameplay, although that’s not all bad.
The graphics in the game are great. The attacks are very detailed, from fantastic rain effects to insane walls of fire, all the way down to physical body slams and tackles. Even when not attacking, the Pokémon are animated. They do move around, scratch their ears, sometimes let out a little cry or something. Not something you’ll want to stand around and watch all day, but a clever little touch to bide some time. The sound is also pretty good; Electricity crackles, fire burns and water splashes, it’s all good. The only thing that gets to me is that the music is the same in most of the fights, but that’s something easily forgotten in the middle of a hard battle.
Aside from all that, though, there are some things that bring this game down a bit. For one, the game isn’t too far a step up from its predecessor, meaning that if you played Colosseum, this game will more than likely be a cakewalk. Also, as this game is an RPG, there’s a lot of reading involved, something that can shy away some gamers. Also, the game isn’t too long. Average time to beat the whole story is roughly 20 Hours, which is really short for an RPG.
Overall, this is a good game. It’s a decent RPG, although I’d only recommend it to diehard Pokémon and RPG fans, or if you can wait for the price to go down, anyone who’s looking for a short-term time-waster. 
