Intro
Contest aren't a new aspect of D/P but still part of the game and are fun to compete in. With D/P having changing a whole lot of things, contests got a change to. Instead of there being 2 Rounds, there is now 3, Visual, Dance and Acting. But still has the 5 categories, Smart, Cool, Beauty, Tough and Cute and the the 4 Ranks, Normal, Super, Hyper and Master.
Visual
This is when feeding your Pokemon Pofin comes in handy. You have a minute to dress up your Pokemon to the theme the judge gives you. So use your fashion case to the max here. On the touch screen you drag your fashion items from the fashion case onto your Pokemon. After you have dressed up your Pokemon the audience will view your Pokemon on how it looks. The more Pofin and the closer to the theme you got will make your points go up or down.
Dance
Each competitor will get a chance at making the steps for the rest to follow. They will try to make you stuff up and get less points. So, you try the same thing, make it quite hard so they screw it up and you get higher points. On the touch screen you chose to move Up, Down, Left or Right. As you do this, on the top screen above your Pokemon it will say if that was a Miss, Great or Excellent. When you follow, you have to get the right button at the right time. You use the touch screen for that too. At the end of this stage, the MC will say who is in fount.
Acting
This is the good old contest stage from R/S/E. You get to chose a move to use then a judge to preform it to. The other Pokemon do the same. There are 3 judges to chse from. At the end of the proforming, if you where the only person to proform to that judge, you get 3 more hearts, if 2 Pokemon proform to 1 judge, thats 2 more heats, 3 to one judge, 1 Point and if all Pokemon go to the one judge, they all get 0 heats. As you proform, the judges get a thing called voltage. When you max out your voltage the Pokemon that maxed it out gets some extra points. If one of the 2 judges on the end max out their voltage, you get 5 points. If you max out the middle judge's voltage you get 8 extra hearts.
At the end of all 3 stages, it will show you the resoults of all the stages and who is the winner. When you win a stage for the 1st time, (e.g. Beauty Hyper Contest) you get a fashion item that you can use in your next contest!