Shadow Pokémon

Colosseum and Pokémon XD's plot revolves mostly around Shadow Pokémon. But what are they?

To start off with the obvious, Team Cipher creates Shadow Pokémon, apparently by artificially locking "the door to a Pokémon's heart". Essentially, Shadow Pokémon are mindless battling machines with no memories or feelings from their former life. Rui, your partner in Colosseum, has an unusual ability to see the dark aura that a Shadow Pokémon emits, and in XD, you have a device named the Aura Reader which does the same thing. Because the poor Pokémon are being abused, you're supposed to Snag and purify them.

Snagging is easy, of course; you just pick Item during one of your Pokémon's turns, and select a Pokéball, like you would do to catch any wild Pokémon in the mainline games. But purifying them is a bit more complicated.

When you first Snag a Shadow Pokémon, its nature will be ???. In Colosseum, it will only have one move named Shadow Rush, which has 100% accuracy, 100 power, and deals recoil damage. It's ???-type so it will affect anything (except Shedinja), ignoring all type weaknesses and resistances. In Pokémon XD, there is more variety, and the Pokémon you snag will know two, three or four Shadow moves each, which can be any out of a variety of moves (noted below), including a reworked version of Shadow Rush. It will be unable to gain experience and levels, and instead of an experience bar it has a Heart Gauge. A Shadow Pokémon can not be traded or nicknamed.

In Colosseum, Shadow Pokémon will have a tendency to go into Hyper Mode, which makes them unruly and have a tendency to disobey your orders if you order them to use something other than Shadow Rush, but also gives them a higher critical hit ratio with Shadow Rush. In Pokémon XD, they will instead sometimes go into Reverse Mode, which is a little different. Like in Hyper Mode, they will tend to disobey if non-Shadow attacks are used, but while a Pokémon that goes into Hyper Mode will not attack on that turn, a Pokémon in Reverse Mode will. In Reverse Mode, the Pokémon also damages itself every turn. You can snap a Pokémon out of Hyper Mode or Reverse Mode by calling out to it in battle.

The Heart Gauge has five purple bars which will slowly empty one after another as you do any of the following:

• Send the Pokémon out into battle
• Call the Pokémon out of Hyper Mode/Reverse Mode
• Walk around with the Pokémon
• Leave it in the Day Care in Agate Village (Colosseum only)
• Massage it with the Cologne Case

And at any point, you can use a Time Flute (in Colosseum) to fully purify the Pokémon in an instant, or (in XD) put the Pokémon in the Purification Chamber where it will slowly be purified as you play the game.

What do you gain when a bar fully clears?

• First bar cleared: The Pokémon regains its first original attack (if there is room).
• Second bar cleared: You can now see the Pokémon's nature, and it will start gaining experience points for battling (though they won't be able to gain levels with that experience until they are purified).
• Third bar cleared: The Pokémon regains its second original attack (if there is room).
• Fourth bar cleared: The Pokémon regains its third original attack in Colosseum. In XD, it just starts to go into Reverse Mode more frequently, as there will never be room for a new attack to be regained.
• Fifth bar cleared: You can now purify the Pokémon at the Relic Stone in Agate Village.

Any remaining attacks will be "held hostage" until you go to the Relic Stone and fully purify the Pokémon. When you approach the Relic Stone, it should start glowing with a green aura if you have a Pokémon that you can purify (you can not purify a Pokémon that is in Hyper Mode, by the way, though XD's Reverse Mode allows it to be purified). To be able to purify a Pokémon at the Relic Stone, you must clear all five bars of the Heart Gauge.

Depending on a Pokémon's nature, the methods mentioned above can be more or less effective. More information can be found in the Purification Guide.

Page last modified January 16 2022 at 19:04 UTC

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