3.5/5 ★ – TylerTurner7's review of Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness.

A game nearly lost to obscurity, Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness represents a time when the Pokemon franchise tried to do something different and just left it in the distant past. Pokemon has many types of games that continue to preserve but I cannot fathom why this game and its predecessor, Pokemon Colosseum, are locked on the GameCube’s hardware. For its time, Gale of Darkness would have felt a little more mature in presentation than its GBA counterparts of the time. The game begins with one of the coolest shots of a Shadow Lugia with a dark purple color schedule that’s seen on the game's cover. The Shadow Lugia takes an entire ship for a reason the player is unaware of. The cutscene then pans away to the main character, who I named Red as I always do. Red begins the game on a fetch quest to find his younger sister who is obnoxious but eventually is caught up in a quest to defeat the evil Cipher organization that infuses Pokemon with shadow energy. You know, typical JRPG stuff. Equipped with the Snag Machine, Red has to capture the bad guy shadow Pokemon and purify them and that is the major thrust of the story. As far as gameplay is concerned there are two notable points. Shadow Pokemon added an interesting challenge to these games that I wish was replicated. Shadow attacks are always super effective against not shadow Pokemon and are always ineffective against other shadow Pokemon regardless of their typing. These shadow mons also maintain their original type weakness so a shadow Snorlax would still be weak to fighting type moves. The other major factor is the entire game is double battling which changes how a team should be built. Area of effect moves can still hit your teammate mon. Just by their nature, double battles require more planning but the amount of battling in the game can be overwhelming in this format. There is never really a time where you just blast through the battles because every train has three or more Pokemon and usually of different types, including shadow mons. The music is popping in this game while the graphics are bland. My biggest criticism was that certain mons, including the title cover Lugia, are so late in the game. If you catch Shadow Lugia, there is literally only one more fight in the main story. Yes, you can do the various battle challenges that are side content but who has time for that? Shadow Pokemon were revisited in Pokemon Go but it has made no sense to me that Shadow Lugia has not made an appearance in the mobile game. Shadow Pokemon, as a plot device, could continue to add variety to gameplay in future mainline Pokemon games. Towards the end of the game, I felt little need to catch more shadow mons because of the time investment to purify them and the constant battling seemed to drag in the final act. Without being able to hunt mons in the while the constant double battles began to drag. My final criticism is that this game sells for two hundred dollars with both the box and the disc. Nintendo, please just release an all-star collection with Gale of Darkness and Colosseum for Switch! Please!