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Replay – Pokémon: XD Gale Of Darkness
Pokémon is celebrating 20 years this year, and we decided to have our own celebration – by looking at one of the most divisive games in the franchise.
Gale of Darkness is a product of the popular Pokémon Stadium and Colosseum games, which let players bring their 2D Pokémon into a 3D setting to battle. It is the closest the series has gotten to a traditional Pokémon RPG on consoles, but it's missing too many key components of what makes the handheld games so great to have a real lasting legacy. The game was published by The Pokémon Company, but developed by a studio called Genius Sonority, which is mostly known for creating Pokémon spin-offs. We gave the game a poor review upon release (which you will hear us talk about in the episode) and other outlets were not much kinder.
Join myself, Andrew Reiner, Jeff Cork, and the office's biggest Pokémon fan, Ben Hanson, as we play through the game's opening and try to figure out why this game wasn't able to be the console Pokémon RPG everyone wanted it to be.
For more Pokémon, we ranked and wrote about every single one of the original 151 pocket monsters. You can find that list here.
For more episodes of Replay, check out our Replay hub, or click on the banner below to watch episodes on YouTube.
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