Pokemon Brilliant Diamond review + Upcoming review series

[Ya Gorl]

Hey there! You might recognize me from some fangame reviews over in the fangame expose and in the Rejuvenation forum itself! Pls go read my Rejuvenation review I spent so long on that ;_;

I decided that I wanted to take a crack at reviewing one of the official games this time, since Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl released earlier this year. Just be warned, this is in no way a concise review and I'm probably gonna skip over a lot of stuff for the sake of simplicity. I don't want this one to drag on too much, because Spoiler Alert I really don't have many strong feelings about the game.

 

I'm gonna start with the positives, since it won't take me long to get through them.

First: Faithfulness to the originals. Everybody knows that Ilca have essentially done a copy-paste of the originals and just gone over it with a sponge. It's not a bad thing, per se, it certainly helps with nostalgia, giving you that feeling that you're 12 years old holding your very first Nintendo DS. That and the art style itself is generally pretty nice in my opinion, even if it does make Cyrus completely non-threatening, and I like how the world has been nicely touched up.

Second: Balancing and QOL. There's a decent amount of balancing done to help with the weird level growth going on thanks to the shitey EXP-share. Gym-leaders are generally harder than before and trainers manage to keep up with your skill. Also, even though I called it shitey two sentences ago, I do like the the EXP-Share helps remove a lot of the grinding from the game, which is always my least favourite part of RPGs. I quite like that TMs are now given to you in batches, meaning you don't have to be so careful about using them.

Third: The Grand Underground. It's cool, I guess? I had some fun with it, it's pretty cool going around finding overleveled mons, and it's just generally very expansive and looks really cool.

And honestly, that's kind of it. I really can't think of much that I can say is super great about this game.

 

Now, the negatives (AKA the stuff you came here to see because everyone is a pessimistic ass these days):

Numero Uno: Lack of originality. This kinda relates to my first positive; Team Ilca have essentially just copied the originals directly in terms of game design. There's no experience in the game you can't get from the originals, and they're inferior to Platinum anyway, so you may as well just emulate that instead of giving money to Nintendo or whatever retailer is trying to charge £50 for a nearly 14 year old game. It's depressing, in all honesty. We all hoped for a Heart Gold/Soul Silver style of remake, but what we got was a fresh coat of paint.

Nombre Deux: A soulless feeling. In all honesty, these games just feel like an obligation. Their development was out of obligation, the advertising was out of obligation, and the online support so far has been out of obligation. GameFreak didn't seem to have much intention of remaking these games for the longest time, and in all honesty I can't blame them. Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum are fan favourites, and just doing them again would just be too easy. However, fans wanted them to be remade, so GameFreak caved and took the easiest option possible: They handed it over to some tiny company that nobody has ever heard of, and just let them do whatever. And you know what happened? Ilca took the easy route. Ilca took the originals, said "Yeah these are good, let's do this" and now we have copy-pasted games that disappointed everyone. But hey, GameFreak made money off of it, so it's all worth it for them I guess.

Three: The Grand Underground. It kinda fucks with how fast you level-up, and the base building has no real fun or spark to it any more. The original base building was genuinely fun and had so many options, but now we have a load of statues I guess. Disappointing and uninspired.

 

And that's the review, I guess. Like I said, I've not got many strong feelings either way, so I'll sum up what feelings I do have here. Is BDSP good? Eh, I guess. Should you buy it? Fuck no, that's a waste of money. As I said, there's no experience in the game that you can't get from the originals. It's a generally disappointing game that just doesn't really do anything particularly interesting or new. It is still fun, but that's honestly not by much merit of its own.

 

But hey! Since you're here, I may as well tell you about my plans for the near future! I'm gonna be making a series of reviews of every mainline pokemon game that I've ever played, starting with Pokemon Heart Gold! I dunno when I'm gonna release it, but if you liked this and my other reviews, then maybe check it out when I get around to it! :)

 

And now, I'd like to say thanks for giving this a read, and until next time, I wish you a good night.

[Ya Gorl]

Ayo so I mentioned about how I was gonna do a series of reviews - That obviously never ended up happening lmao

I ended up getting caught up with uni and other life stuff, and I ended up not having time to do anything except coursework and study. That kinda stopped me from playing any pokemon games, which kinda sucked, but I'm back now!

I might continue this if I feel like getting back into pokemon at all, but here's the thing: I'm really burned out on mainline pokemon games. Sword and Shield left a sour taste in my mouth, and Scarlet and Violet seem to be a waste of £40 in all honesty. It's kinda hard to enjoy the older games when you can't stop thinking about the newer ones being so deeply terrible.

That's not to say I'm not enjoying the fan-games though! I absolutely loved Reborn, and Rejuvenation v13.5 has a real breath of fresh air so far. I'm gonna put out a review of the latter once I've finished it, and if I'm bored then I might go play Reborn again so I can review it.

Until then though, sorry for the lack of anything from here (I know that there was probably only like 1 or two people expecting anything but still), I look forward to doing more stuff in future ^_^

Hope y'all have a nice evening :3