Pokemon Stadium 2 Is The Worst Pokemon Game I've Ever Played!

[Drathnoxis]

Recently I've been playing pokemon Crystal and decided I would try to catch all 251 pokemon. I recently read that Pokemon Stadium 2 has an unlockable emulator that runs at 3 times the game speed, so I dusted off my (barely touched) Pokemon Stadium 2 cartridge and thought I'd just get that real quick.

40 hours later and I'm not even close to unlocking one of the 4 sped up modes, and the game just makes me want to --

It turns out that the game is horrendously long and you have to beat it once on each difficulty mode to unlock triple speed for gen 2 games. This just makes no sense to me, Stadium is all about raising a whole bunch of pokemon past level 50, on your gameboy, in different combinations and strategies to try and meet the unreasonable challenge of the game, but you don't get the ability to do this more quickly with sped up emulation until after you've already finished the game and thus have almost no need for sped up emulation. Until then you have to grind for hours upon hours even to get 1 pokemon up to scratch, so if you need more than 1 team, or messed up on your selection, that's another dozen hours down the drain. The emulation speeds should be available right from the start so that you could actually get some use out of them.

I mentioned that the game was interminably long, and is it ever. There are around 120 trainers in the game, and most of them are chained in groups of 4-8. This means that if you lose to the last trainer in a group you need to fight them all over again. It is so bloody tedious and boring, because about 3/4 of the trainers I've fought so far have been complete pushovers and just filler until I get creamed by the last or second last trainer in the group. To make it all the worse is that the game moves at a glacial pace. The unskippable move animations drag a match that should take a minute or two out to a 15-20 minute ordeal. That means that it usually takes about an hour to get to the last trainer in a group only to lose and have to do it all over again.

That brings me to the difficulty! The game isn't just hard, it's so unreasonably hard that you pretty much can't beat it without any extra peripherals . You absolutely have to import pokemon with a transfer pak, because the 'rental' pokemon the game provides are the most intentionally weak pieces of crap you will ever play with. You will never see a rental pokemon with a decent moveset, example, you might get an abra with psychic, but an alakazam only gets confusion. Not to mention that the stats are about 20% lower than any pokemon you would raise yourself. I tried and tried to beat the game with rentals, and after about 20 hours and using a guide I was able to beat the prime cup, that's about 1/20th of the game. So I gave up on those and played through crystal until my pokemon were close to level 50, then focused on grinding for a bit and got them to 54. This is where I found out that in the pokecup tournament you are only allowed to have a 3 pokemon level total of 155. It would have been nice if the game was more up front about this, because on the tournament selection screen the game only tells me that the level restriction is 50-55, so now my team is garbage because they are about 3 levels too high to enter and there is no way to fix this apart from leveling up another team from scratch.

Anyway, I've hit a brick wall, I just can't beat the champion of the elite 4 even with my own team. I fought him twice and was kind of close both times, but I just can't face another hour of elite 4 filler to get another chance. Now, I know I'm not that great at pokemon, my strategy doesn't go much farther than make a team that has every type advantage, but why does the game need to be so time consuming in every way! If you lose you waste time fighting the same trainers over and over, if you still lose, you waste time needing to level up a new team from scratch. It's all just so tedious and boring! And for what? My goal has been to save time on the GB games, but I think I've wasted more time on Stadium now than I would have saved.

And I swear, if I hear the announcer go "Oh! It's _______!" one more time I'm going to have a major freak out!

So what did you think of the Pokemon Stadium games? What would you say is the worst game in the Pokemon franchise?

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I bought an N64 back in the day just to play stadium. For a pokemaniac like myself all these complaints about things taking long are silly since it's nothing compared to the hundreds of hours you'll have already spent with the portable games by that point. Basically, compared to beating the elite 4 for the 5000th time, doing stadium stuff felt incredibly refreshing.


On my Silver (which I still have) there is every single even slightly viable pokemon leveled up to lvl 50 so as to be used in Stadium 2. And I'm talking about all the evolutions for some of them too. Compared to how long it takes to do that, beating the ingame stadium 2 stuff is nothing really. I had leveled up all these pokes to play with my friends (since indeed the rentals sucked ass).


But yeah, if you're not a hardcore fan and have to use guides and stuff, it's not really for you.

 

[Drathnoxis]

I bought an N64 back in the day just to play stadium. For a pokemaniac like myself all these complaints about things taking long are silly since it's nothing compared to the hundreds of hours you'll have already spent with the portable games by that point. Basically, compared to beating the elite 4 for the 5000th time, doing stadium stuff felt incredibly refreshing.


On my Silver (which I still have) there is every single even slightly viable pokemon leveled up to lvl 50 so as to be used in Stadium 2. And I'm talking about all the evolutions for some of them too. Compared to how long it takes to do that, beating the ingame stadium 2 stuff is nothing really. I had leveled up all these pokes to play with my friends (since indeed the rentals sucked ass).


But yeah, if you're not a hardcore fan and have to use guides and stuff, it's not really for you.

Wow, that's some dedication! You might want to transfer those pokemon from your Silver cartridge over to the boxes on Stadium 2, since the internal battery on gameboy games only last around 7-10 years before dying and losing your save. I read that Stadium uses flash memory though, so there would be no danger of the data just wiping itself over time.

 

[Hero of Lime]

I have very little experience with Pokemon Stadium. I know I rented it when it first came out, but it did not really impress me that much. It was cool to see Pokemon with 3D models, but when I found out it was still turn based, I lost interest. It was a cool concept looking back on it, I just never played enough to have a good idea if I like it.

As for least favorite Pokemon game, I guess it would be Pokemon Shuffle. It's a match three puzzle game that relies too much on chance, it was fun for a few days, but I stopped playing soon after.

If we are talking main series games, it would probably be Red and Blue. They were amazing back then, but they have aged terribly, and their remakes make them completely obsolete in every way.

 

[Lufia Erim]

I only played the original pokemon stadium and pokemon battle revolution on the wii. Many awsome hours was spent playing those games. Especially online battle with PBR

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I bought an N64 back in the day just to play stadium. For a pokemaniac like myself all these complaints about things taking long are silly since it's nothing compared to the hundreds of hours you'll have already spent with the portable games by that point. Basically, compared to beating the elite 4 for the 5000th time, doing stadium stuff felt incredibly refreshing.


On my Silver (which I still have) there is every single even slightly viable pokemon leveled up to lvl 50 so as to be used in Stadium 2. And I'm talking about all the evolutions for some of them too. Compared to how long it takes to do that, beating the ingame stadium 2 stuff is nothing really. I had leveled up all these pokes to play with my friends (since indeed the rentals sucked ass).


But yeah, if you're not a hardcore fan and have to use guides and stuff, it's not really for you.

Wow, that's some dedication! You might want to transfer those pokemon from your Silver cartridge over to the boxes on Stadium 2, since the internal battery on gameboy games only last around 7-10 years before dying and losing your save. I read that Stadium uses flash memory though, so there would be no danger of the data just wiping itself over time.

Haha, my stadium 2 hasn't been in my possession for over a decade now and it wouldn't work on American stuff anyways since it was a european n64 and cartridge.

It's alright though, I have redone this with every subsequent version of pokemon game (more or less, I haven't bothered to level literally everything in the later ones) and last time I looked at my silver (it still worked like a year or so ago) I cringed at what movelists my childhood self had given to those pokes since I had actual competitive knowledge by that point. I distinctly remember this charizard who had fire blast fire spin flamethrower and firepunch. And back then these crappy things were enough to go through the games with even! lol





But yeah, pokemon is a really deep rabbit hole. I should really put things into perspective.


To be competitive in pokemon, outside of the EV and IV training which takes ages to do (but it's much quicker in the later games), you have to remember not only the type of every single pokemon and all weaknessess and resistances but also their stat allocation (you know, how mewtwo has insane speed and special attack, low physical defense and decent physical attack and special defense) as well as every single attack they can learn (this includes bred-only moves which can't be learned through leveling or TMs) and all the potentially viable held-item combinations for that pokemon. You have to know all this for every single competitively viable poke, which by now is in the hundreds.


Compared to learning all these things, leveling up 3 pc-fulls of crappy pokes to 50 is really not much at all.

 

[RJ 17]

So let me get this straight. You're playing a Pokemon game - games which are specifically designed to be amongst the grindiest games in the history of gaming - but you don't want to grind as much...so you get another Pokemon game which requires you to grind so that you can eventually unlock a way to make the grind in the previous Pokemon game not-so-grindy. And now your complaining that said easy-grinding tool requires you to grind before you can unlock its easy-grinding functionality?

Ummm...you do realize you're playing Pokemon, right? The entire purpose behind any Pokemon game is to grind. You'll grind, and grind, then grind some more. Eventually you'll realize that you're actually grinding away at your very soul because the grind that you're going through is the very same grind that you've already ground out 3 times before.

So yeah, I don't really see the point of complaining about a massive grind-fest when you're dealing with a series that is built around being a massive grind-fest. If you hate grinding that much, I'd suggest discarding your interest in Pokemon all together...because it's frickin' Pokemon: if you're not grinding, you're doing it wrong.

That or just master the Magikarp 1hp Flail technique and destroy all who stand before you.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

Sounds just like the 1st Stadium, except Psychic no longer destroys everything.

I got the 1st Stadium, and only later learned that it has a second quest where everything is even more difficult. I would never be able to get that far. The game was definitely designed specifically with the assumption that the player would import their Pokemon from the Gameboy cartridges, and even specifically raise Pokemon to a certain level so they would meet the level requirements but not exceed them, all for the excitement of fighting trainers considerably harder than any of the GB games. Even when I imported mine I still couldn't beat most of the cups on Master Ball level:

Behold the mighty Wrap:


Just like the Gameboy games the AI trainers seemed to get a conspicuous number of critical hits or just hits that one-shot you with no explanation despite not being super-effective, but the zenith of the game's cheapness was the Gambler. All of his Pokemon spam instant KO moves like Fissure and Guillotine that normally have a 10% success rate, but Gambler has a special 'luck' factor even greater than the usual cheating RNG that guarantees it will always work 100%. You may now begin to theorize on how one is supposed to beat him. There was also a trainer who used all three of the Legendary Birds, and he was one of the easier ones due to them having shared weaknesses.

Apparently the following games aren't much better in the fake difficulty department- I hear things about Shadow Pokemon stronger than normal ones that you actually have to CATCH instead of simply defeat during a trainer battle.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Catching shadow pokes is not as bad as it sounds. I used my master ball to catch the shadow Ttar that I was about to die to. Best use of one, ever. Only the legendary dogs were hard to catch. (and still much easier than their roaming variants)

 

[Drathnoxis]

Haha, my stadium 2 hasn't been in my possession for over a decade now and it wouldn't work on American stuff anyways since it was a european n64 and cartridge.

It's alright though, I have redone this with every subsequent version of pokemon game (more or less, I haven't bothered to level literally everything in the later ones) and last time I looked at my silver (it still worked like a year or so ago) I cringed at what movelists my childhood self had given to those pokes since I had actual competitive knowledge by that point. I distinctly remember this charizard who had fire blast fire spin flamethrower and firepunch. And back then these crappy things were enough to go through the games with even! lol





But yeah, pokemon is a really deep rabbit hole. I should really put things into perspective.


To be competitive in pokemon, outside of the EV and IV training which takes ages to do (but it's much quicker in the later games), you have to remember not only the type of every single pokemon and all weaknessess and resistances but also their stat allocation (you know, how mewtwo has insane speed and special attack, low physical defense and decent physical attack and special defense) as well as every single attack they can learn (this includes bred-only moves which can't be learned through leveling or TMs) and all the potentially viable held-item combinations for that pokemon. You have to know all this for every single competitively viable poke, which by now is in the hundreds.


Compared to learning all these things, leveling up 3 pc-fulls of crappy pokes to 50 is really not much at all.

Oh, well as long as you are okay with it. Personally, I'd hate to see all that work get erased by a drained battery, even if it wasn't worth anything anymore, but then, I'm a pack rat.

 

[EyeReaper]

Wait... there were other reasons to play Pokemon Stadium besides this?

Like, I'm being full serious. Lumberjack Pinsir for life.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

^^Clefairy Says for best new game of 1998.

Catching shadow pokes is not as bad as it sounds. I used my master ball to catch the shadow Ttar that I was about to die to. Best use of one, ever. Only the legendary dogs were hard to catch. (and still much easier than their roaming variants)

Sorry if I made it sound like I had played the games. Just going by how difficult Stadium 1 & 2 were combined with the new additions Gale of Darkness made to the formula after also watching the top three battles in this vid:

Spoiler

Either the creator of that vid hasn't fought Gambler, or Greevil and Dr.Wily Evice are just that tough. Guess that's another form of cheating, giving the AI moves that only they can use that are more powerful than anything you can get (Shadow End).