It wasn't impossible to beat the entirety of PS2 with only Rental Pokemon at all. Yes, it was very difficult, but I've managed to beat a lot of it using just Rental Pokemon. Maybe you just need to try harder. Compared to the Battle Revolution rentals, the PS2 rentals were god-sends. The PBR rentals weren't even fully evolved and stood NO chance at all. Moreover, you couldn't even pick which Pokemon you wanted to use. You HAD to use a selected team, which really isn't as good at all. Variety is a huge factor, and PBR gave very little.
While it is indeed possible to beat PS 2 with only rental pokemon, it's very hard. And in the same way, it's possible to beat PBR with only rental passes, it's just very hard. You have to abuse the fact you can mix and match rental passes.
It really isn't amount the large battles in a row. To be honest, it's mostly the gimmick of fighting your favourite Gym Leaders that you saw in the handheld games and possible in the anime, on your TV screen, rather than personality-less characters designed solely for the game. I liked fighting the Kanto/Johto Gym Leaders with improved rosters as well as the Team Rocket subplot that took place in between. It was a lot better than the bore of PBR. PS2 was everything about it's handheld bretherin and tried to maximise the experience of the handheld games.
But in the end, it's just a bunch of trainers in a row, with the only distinguishable difference being the teams, and the fact you occasionally saw little portraits with lines.
I don't know why people keep going on about the mini games. The mini games were about 5% of what made PS2 so good. They were cool and a nice break, but if they released a Pokemon Stadium 3 providing it had the other features of PS2, I really wouldn't be all that choked up. However, it was a nice feature of PS2, and at least it had them in it when you didn't feel like battling, unlike PBR.
PBR's name implies you really shouldn't expect anything other then battling.
PS2 had so many extra features which made it great, and offered variety. PBR just seems like a cheap, rushed imitation of it. The "varying" colosseums are just a cheap imitation of the Stadium and it's cups. Except, they have no longevity whatsoever. In PS2, you could play the cups with different rules (like Little Cup) and each cup had a difficulty level from Pokeball to Masterball to complete, with them getting progressively harder, adding huge longevity. In PBR, you have colosseums that attempt to use the different rules like Little Cup in a similar fashion, except it just gets boring. You fight random trainers that have so significence, as opposed to trainers you fought and remember during the game. PBR is a huge gimmick in itself, so PS2's gimmicks deserve a say too. At least they actually worked. On top of the boring gameplay, you just have 1 colosseum to complete for each "rule." Boring.
If you do all the calculations, counting each difficulty and round 2, there were 40 total cups in PS 2.
PBR on the other hand had a total of 96 Colosseums, counting the different ranks and the optional 2 special rules.
Also, PBR is more based off of the Battle Frontier then the cups, considering that each Colosseums had special rules,
PS2's storage system was also INFINITELY better than Battle Revolution. Not only were you given the option to trade through PS2, you also had a 3D Pokedex and the most important feature - the computer. It allowed you a HUGE storage and amazing organizational system, which let you store Pokemon there if you ever felt like redoing the game over, and let you organize your Pokemon in real time. I realize that PBR can't do that because we don't have Game Packs anymore, but PBR's cheap imitation of it is pathetic. Oh, WOW. I can copy my team onto the game. But, then, what if I want to go and later change items? Yeah, I have to go onto my DS, change the item and overwrite the save state that it created on PBR. What if my Pokemon grows a level? Again, the hasstle of doing that. What if I want to swap around party members which really is going to happen a lot based on the situation? ONCE AGAIN, I have to do the same thing. It PALES in comparison to the PS2 system. What's better? You have a copy of your Pokemon on the game. Wow. So, if you ever lost the game, you have your team to use on the most boring Pokemon game in existence. My advice: Take better care of your games.
PBR's copy -> Storage system was a lot more convenent then PS 2's, as all you had to do was just copy over boxes. Not only that, but even if you did change your pokemon around a little, there isn't a giant hassle with editing the PBR pokemon. You just re-connect to PBR and PBR will update the pokemon for you. It's not that hard, and it's certainly easier then the trading.
And PBR's copy system allowed for you to copy a large assortment of pokemon at once, meaning that even if you lost the handheld, you still had a large pool of pokemon to use.
Continuing on, another PS2 feature that makes PBR seem crap in comparison: Free Battle. Just the variety and flexibility of it made things fun, along with the rental system. Don't want a tough stadium battle? Just relax and have a fun battle on Free Battle, with a selection of rentals. Want to test out a Pokemon? No problem. Do it quickly and easily. Want to have a "Who Would Win?" battle? NO PROBLEM! PBR can't offer anything of the sort, and it's meant to be a pure battling game. How sad.
PBR had Free Battle you realize. Look harder; it's there. And it allowed you to use Friend Passes, Rental Passes, and Custom Passes.
While it's a very small feature, the announcer was much better in PS2 than in PBR. He commented a lot more often than the PBR announcer, had a better voice and had a comment to say for EVERY attack in the game. The PBR announcer seems like he was badly rushed, has a meh voice and only says things for specific, random techniques. It may not be much, but at least PS2 put in more effort into it. Variety is everything, after all. Another small feature that was also nice was the 3D "My Room" feature. Sure, it didn't offer much in terms of game play, but it was a nice little gimmick, and at least they bothered to add in a feature that wasn't JUST about battling. Finally, another small feature that was in it was the Gameboy Tower. While not amazing, it was still nice to be able to play your Pokemon game on the big screen. PBR has nothing to compensate for these lost features.
While I admit the PS 2 announcer is better, may I point out the fact that both are still annoying, and that most people shut them off either way?
And while PBR doesn't give you the ability to play D/P/P on it, there really wouldn't be a point to that, as Pokemon is mainly about portability. So while it is a nice gimmick, it's not really practical.
Going back to the game play for a moment, PS2 had great stadiums and had Gym Leader Castle for both Johto AND Kanto. On top of that, the stadiums had 4 rounds each, and then, after you completed everything, you also got a Pokemon Stadium 2 Round 2 where everything was tougher and you could relive the experience again, except with a bigger challenge.
And PBR had 10 Colosseums, an extra 2 counting expanded rules, 8 ranks, and a Wi-Fi system.
PBR was better in a FEW WAYS. It had some better features, such as Wi-Fi connectivity allowing you to randomly battle trainers in real-time (which would be fairly obsolete if they had done it right in Pokemon Diamond/Pearl), the graphics were better, although still only enhanced versions of Pokemon Stadium graphics, which is a little disappointing. The attacks, in my opinion, are much too flashy in PBR. I prefer the simple rendering from PS2. But that's just my opinion. The music. PS2 was better. PS2 had a lot of it's music taken from the handheld games and remixed, which made it nostalgic and nice. PBR, I can't even remember any good music from it. That says a lot about how memorable it was. One thing I will commend PBR on is the ability to buy back old items and TMs you've used, as well as some Pokemon. However, the latter features are already availible through Diamond/Pearl/Platinum. The customization was really not that big of a deal. You had some random trainer with random customizations that said some random sentances every now and again. Woooowww. That really IS a revolution! No. If they took that feature out in the next 3D game, I wouldn't care in the slightest.
While the music was bland, it got you through the game.
And the character customization allowed you to actually see different characters on the screen, instead of seeing pokeballs from nowhere or the same character model again and again. And the customizable lines were just icing on the cake.
Along with awkward tutorial screens, a lot of unpromised things left out, and overall shoddy workmanship, I would say PBR <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< PS1 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< PS2.
