LIKE COMING HOME TO A WARM HUG.
I grew up during the PokéMon mass hysteria of the 90s/early 2000s and fell off as the move into the GameBoy Advance era began. I barely knew PokéMon had advanced past Crystal on the GameBoy Color until a friend showed me PokéMon Emerald. It was neat, but I still wasn’t swayed to return to PokéMon until I saw the previews for the first entry on the Nintendo DS. PokéMon Diamond/Pearl seemed so cool, added minor 3D aspects to the world as well as weather effects, a real time day and night cycle based upon the internal DS clock, a very cool use of the DS’s secondary screen. These were all big draws for me on top of the new PokéMon as well as those that I missed during the GameBoy Advance era.
What I didn’t expect was that on top of an extremely good PokéMon game was online trading and battling, extensive backwards compatibility, a large underground area to dig up fossils, and competitions that were based on PokéMon’s appearances and skills rather than battling that also had a cooking minigame. PokéMon Diamond quickly stole my time in high school because it felt cool to like PokéMon again and that there was no single “right” way to do so. I traded with others, entered my PokéMon in plenty of beauty contests, dug up fossils, and traversed its lengthy campaign and I still attempted to get as many PokéMon as I could in my copy of Diamond by buying Leaf Green on the GameBoy Advance to import PokéMon through the Pal Park feature, as well as buy PokéMon Ranger to unlock Manaphy, as well as inevitably invest in an Action Replay for the DS because some of the event PokéMon were never released in Canada. I loved PokéMon Diamond and just never recaptured the magic with Black/White or PokéMon X and I sort of fell off during the 3DS era. I did play PokéMon Soul Silver but missed the forward steps PokéMon Diamond and Pearl made. I just figured I had grown out of PokéMon finally.
PLATFORMS: SWITCH
MSRP: $59.99
PRICE I’D PAY: $59.99
But then they announced PokéMon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl and here I am excited all over.
I feel like it is pointless to really speak about PokéMon as if people don’t know what it is, so I’m just going to get into the changes and what to expect. First and foremost is the return of the forced experience share amongst all PokéMon in the player’s party. I don’t know if it was adjusted since it was changed in PokéMon X to be an all party experience share with the option of simply on or off, but I actually found it more time saving than a wall that kept pushing me forward with little time to breathe. I mention this first because I genuinely feel this was a big part of the reason I stopped playing PokéMon X and I assume that for others it may have been a reason for long time players to ditch the series. The second is that the chibi translation of the PokéMon Diamond/Pearl art actually works really well. It allows a faithful recreation of the originals while also being full 3D polygons. I even liked how the battles looked in 3D, with rival trainers entering battles in static, sprite like poses.
The DS features of the original have been reworked into having an optional HUD pop up with the face of the PokéEtch in the top right corner of the screen to make up for the fact that it used to be the bottom screen on the DS. It works okay, but I find myself interacting with it less than I did on DS because of this. Of course the day and night cycle returns but because there is more graphically going on, the weather and time of day are reflected in battles now and that’s really cool. If I wanted to see PokéMon battle in 3D in Diamond and Pearl I would have to buy PokéMon Battle Revolution for the Wii, hook my DS up to my Wii via a wireless connection, and then battle and that was it (PokéMon had cooler extras). In Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, that’s just the game.
The Underground where fossils could be dug up is now the Grand Underground and uncommon PokéMon as well as other surprises can be found there and it serves as more than just a diversion like it was in the originals. Contests are back and operate like I remember however it has been close to a decade since I played PokéMon Diamond so there are likely some differences. Wi-Fi works way better because getting a DS online was a nightmare and yes, I did have the Nintendo Wi-Fi Adapter and it was crap. Changes have had to be made however due to the Switch being a different console with different features than the DS, so the Pal Park where players could import PokéMon from GameBoy Advance titles are gone as is PokéMon Ranger save data transfer, but the tradeoff is a different park that features legendary PokéMon from other games and Manaphy is/was a Mystery Gift download for early players.
There’s plenty of little life improvements but to me, and I realize this is extremely biased, is where PokéMon peaked and to remake PokéMon Diamond and Pearl this well is quite something. I think it’s hard to find complaints with Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl outside of simply not liking the formula of PokéMon. There’s so much to discover and do that it comes very close to feeling like living in the world of PokéMon and I suppose that’s all I ever wanted. Let me compete with friends on whose PokéMon is the cutest, see who is the toughest, and then let us hang out in the dingy underground digging up fancy gems together. Maybe when we’re done I’ll save the world from some evil group and catch some legendary PokéMon too. It brings me back not just to my teens, but to the feeling I had when I borrowed my friend’s copy of PokéMon Red and for a game to continue this long and still hook me after all this time is more praise than I can necessarily articulate.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
