Pokémon Brilliant Diamond - Nintendo Switch

So there are a lot of people that are upset by this game, and I understand its not exactly like all the other remakes. But this is the by far best remake to me. New content is pretty sparse. But if youre going into this looking to play Pokemon Diamond and Pearl as a veteran player, or a new player for the first time, this game is fantastic. The biggest thing to get used to is the art style. This is as close as they could get to the DS style without making it looks like its the DS game on Switch. A lot of people really dislike the Chibi art style, and I was one of those people on reveal. However, with my 150 hours of playtime currently, the art style continues to grow on me more and more. Battle scenes and Pokemon animations are what you would expect. I would say these are higher quality MOSTLY than Sword and Shield, but its the next game, so youd expect theyd improve. There are a few of them that are kind of bland/boring(The Team Galatic grunt battles for instance) but then you see the ones against the Galactic Commanders and the battle scene grows on you. Galactic Battles are...just kind of a dark background with their G on the ground, and the commanders are that same setup but then you see planets up in the background changing based on which commander youre fighting, which is fantastic. Pokemon Variety was one of the weakest parts of the original Diamond and Pearl, and with the inclusion of the underground, you can find WAY more pokemon than originally available. You can even find Pokemon that werent available in the wild this early until Platinum. You can dig up statues, and use those statues in the underground to influence Pokemon type encounter rates and everything! Something people were worried about was an always on EXP Share. This works exactly like the one in Sword/Shield does. Every pokemon on your team gets EXP when you catch or kill a pokemon. However, in my experience with Sword and Shield, it would leave you horrendously overleveled. In these games, it doesnt. I tend to be the type that will skip trainers. I can say that with my playstyle, it was very easy to fall behind in levels. I regularly would end up 2-3 levels down on gyms because of this. So the EXP Share doesnt break the game. Its great. There is also an affection system, which imo REALLY breaks the game. Heres what it can do. At 1hp or max hp, if a move hits you and could kill you, theres a chance your pokemon shrugs it off, surviving at 1hp So you wouldnt be sad. It ALSO has a chance to shrug off status effects. So if someone say burned your Lopunny, theres a chance that burn just goes away. The Pokemon wills it gone. Or, you could get super lucky with a crit. They land a crit so youll praise them for it (there is no mic on the switch. Its just text.) and these things kill some battles. I won my 2nd Maylene battle because of this. My levels were a bit off, but 3 crits and shrugging off paralysis twice won me the fight. It can make some fights a non factor. I wouldve preferred being able to turn this off, personally, but I can see why some people would like to have this. The biggest disappointment for me was follow Pokemon. You can only unlock this AFTER you get to Hearthome city...but man its disappointing. Most pokemon(Every pokemon Ive tried) can NOT keep up with you if you run. They will fall behind and get a pokeball enter and exit sound to pop up behind you. Ive seen comments from a few people that stuff like Lucario or other bipedal Pokemon can keep up, but currently Ive yet to see any. There are mods abound to fix it though, which leads to... If you have a homebrew Switch, these games get even better because theres already a pretty large modding community around them. Model swaps, minor game changes, and some audio changes are pretty common, but theres even groups working to fix some of the issues people had with the game. Increasing it to 60FPS, removing the DOF effect, fixing follow pokemon...lots of cool stuff. Even increasing the pokemon variety, adding some gifts, making gym leaders harder...theyve got it all! Thats about everything about these games. I would recommend it 100% of youre a fan of Pokemon, or even as a decent starting point! These games are supposed to get Pokemon Home support in 2022, so thatll be a lot of fun when its here. If youre looking for competitive online, Pokemon Sword and Shield is the official competitive stuff, but there is still battling online with people in these!

NOTE: This is a review for both Brilliant Diamond AND Shining Pearl. Sadly a continuation of Sword and Shields backwards direction in taking Pokemon. While the graphics are shiny and updated, and the music remastered/remixed, the Diamond and Pearl remakes fall short in about every way. Lets go over some of the main reasons why I did not enjoy them. Cons: - Everything is the same. Excluding the Grand Underground, which is interesting for about a half an hour, the new games field absolutely no changes to the story or characters. You could place down your old DS next to your switch and play the original Pearl or Diamond and you would be playing the exact same thing. At least when they remade Ruby and Sapphire they added in new things and made it more interesting, while expanding on characters and story elements. This game does none of that. - Far too easy. Unfortunately, just like Sword and Shield, these games feature an automatic experience share that quickly causes your Pokemon team to outpace and out-level almost all enemies. By the end of the game every fight was an absolute joke and required zero thought or skill. Additionally, your Pokemon will now do random things such as shrugging off attacks, scoring extra critical strikes, and even expelling negative status conditions from themselves just to please you, making battles skewed in your favor even if you werent over-leveled. The original Diamond and Pearl were a good challenge, with a powerful set of bosses and a terrifying final boss. These games are... well for little kids basically. There is really no challenge to be found here whatsoever. - No Platinum features. Platinum took Diamond and Pearl and improved on pretty much everything. It revamped enemy teams, added new Pokemon, new items, and generally expanded the game. However none of that is present in this game. Enemy teams are still the dull lineups of the original games that often dont even match their theme. Why is it that several gyms feature trainers with Pokemon that dont even fit the theme? Did they really HAVE to keep the team line-ups from Diamond and Pearl? The only caveat to this is the Grand Underground, which seems to allow you to catch certain Pokemon that were available in the platinum expansion, but none of the enemy trainers in the game will use these. - Generally bland. Somehow, just like the original games, combat is on the slow side, taking a good chunk of time between each action, and causing you to yawn while you wait for abilities and statuses to trigger. The graphics are nice, but simple. Nothing can be taken seriously in the chibi, cutesy style, and there arent many cut-scenes or chances to see things in more standard graphics. - Not great controls. Now that movement is not aligned to a grid, it can be quite wonky. It can be hard to aim your character and get them to walk exactly how you want, and even more annoying to try and take quick exact turns while riding the bicycle. Additionally, without a touch screen, the poke-tech now requires a separate menu that must be selected each time you want to use it, and takes up the whole screen! You must then also manually move around a cursor to click on things. Its very tedious and altogether annoying to use. The hotkeys for key items are also in odd locations and feel weird to use. Pros: No HM requirements. One of this games few saving graces is that it no longer requires you to teach Pokemon on your team the Field moves required to complete the game, which allows you to keep your Pokemons move slots free for whatever you wish to use. However, this is no longer very helpful now that the game is so easy. Neutral: - Contests. I have never messed with Pokemon contests so I cannot comment on whether they are improved from the original or not. Verdict: Overall just a mess. These games could have been so amazing but they are a complete letdown. I will give them 1 extra star above the minimum because they do both look and sound very nice, but in the end I just did not have any fun playing them. It really felt like a waste of my time and money. If you are on the fence then stay away. If you want any kind of challenge then dont buy these, and if you want to return to your childhood nostalgia, then go replay the original Diamond and Pearl, or possibly Platinum. Any of those 3 are better than these new games.

Its been a LONGGG time since i played the DS version, but these are the differences i think their are from the DS version: - art style - Pokémon walk with you?? - Hovering over a evolution stone says which Pokémon in your party are compatible with it. - Fairy types are in this game, which i guess could of been in the original also, but not that i remember. - When you use a item like a repel, where it can wear off, once it does wear off the game will ask if you want to use another. - all Pokémon get exp when defeating/catching a Pokémon [And i think it is weighted, depending on your Pokémons levels, but not the # of pokemon, like if i have a egg pokemon level 1, it will get 622exp compared to the 157exp my level 33s get, and my level 35 gets 146; and having only one pokemon in your team doesnt give all that exp too that pokemon (like the 622+157+146,etc so might as well fill the party]. - If you catch a Pokémon while party is full, itll ask if you wanna put it in your party or send it to the box. - You can go in Veilstone city and buy new outfits for your chibi character and 3d battle avatar, ranging from 8.5k to 120k. [In my opinion they all look good] - Hovering over a city on a map now says whats in it, such as Pokecenter galactic veilstone building style shop etc; So if your wanting to remember where the underground mans house is, you can just switch between the citys on map view. - Moves now show their effectiveness on enemy Pokémon under the move; from not very effective to super effective if you have faced that Pokémon before. - When you switch out Pokémon, its moves will be shown with the same effectiveness tips/info shown for them, so you can go between your Pokémon to find one with a super effective move/etc - Their is a button/shortcut to throw a pokeball - Checkpoint on map saying next stop, and on pause menu it says what to do next, Head to X [When you need to go to the lake, and need strength for mt coronet, at first your objective marker is on the lake, but then you go touch a boulder and it says might be able to move this with a hm, then you get a new flag/icon on the map for where to get strength, i thought that was pretty cool, i didnt have to google strengths location]. - HMs are now on the poketch, so you dont need a dedicated HM Pokémon now. - You can access your Box (normally/still in pokecenter) from your pause menu - If the switch detects a lets go save game on your switch, Itll give you a mew in floaroma town, or a jirachi if you have sword or shield data. - Friendship effects were changed in this game from the old versions. CONS [No longer differences, just things i consider a con] [spoilers]: - Its kinda weird the number of pokemon some homies have, like some trainers will have like 5-6, however the LEADER of team galactic has 3 when you first fight him.... hes the boss of stealing everyones pokemon but he only has 3.... - You beat the Team galactic boss... and he gives you a masterball... he says i have no use for this, but what if his red chain he created didnt work? unless he can farm masterballs it seems kinda strange where he would just give us a masterball without testing his chain first...aka saving the ball for a backup. - It is a pokemon game so you cant except the smartest decisions, but some gym leaders will have 2-3 hyper potions, but use them on their first Pokémon and not the strong Pokémon that they have a little cutscene throwing, that is stronger and has more hp/etc... - If you have a chonker, like Dialga walking with you, if your in a narrow path and you turn around, your character goes pretty slow... pushing around that 1,500lbs behemoth - You cant skip the end credits.... Were in 2021 and this is a pokemon game (aka they have a budget); yet we cant skip it...

got boring pretty quickly after completing the game. There is a pokemon you have to go to GREAT lengths to chase down (you cant chase him down, you actually have to wait til he comes to you but hes invisible so you then have to immediately get into high grass and hope he attacks you rather than a different wild pokemon attacking you. When you fight him, he runs immediately, so you have to have a fast pokemon that wont kill him as your first fighter, so your guy goes first then he runs and you have to repeat the whole thing). Its ridiculous and made me put down the game and never pick it back up. Story mode was fine, 20 hours of reasonable fun.

Unlike many other Pokèmon remakes where they add new things in, such as ORAS with the Delta, there isnt anything new added into this game. When this game was announced, I expected a post game episode, similar to ORAS, but with Arceus and/or Darkrai. However, as of December 2021, there is no legitmate way of getting either. I wasnt expecting lags for a 60$ remake. There are many lags and many times where the audio just disappears, especially the SFX. Not sure if anyone else had this problem, but I sometimes get black screens where I have to close the game and open it back up again. I love that the pokemon can follow you while youre walking, but I hate how they implemented it. For example, if I want to backtrack out of a narrow space and my Infernape is behind me, I literally have to just keep pushing him until I get out of the space. It is very annoying and time consuming. Not only that, but slower Pokémon, such as Gastrodon, will never catch up with you. And thus, the animation of the pokeball being opened to allow the pokemon out will keep happening. At first, I found it cool, but it got annoying after a few hours. I might be in the minority for this, but the art style grew on me, and I love the little animations the pokemom do while they wait for me to pick a move. I love the outfits we can change into. I also love what they did with the Underground. Its one of the only things that was remade and done right. You can catch rare pokemon underground, they made it easier to find shinies with catching the diglets. You can find rare items - its a fun time and I spent several hours there when I first got the Explorer Kit. Overall, this game is mediocore. I wish they did more with this game as it had so much potential to fix issues it had before. However, I will admit, if this is your first time playing Pearl/Diamond, I recommend picking this up.

All these five star reviews are a joke and created by NPC. A 1:1 ratio of this game with the current player controls just does not work. Getting stuck on random objects throughout the map? Poor game design that could have been fixed with one small player-material added. If X&Y (released in 2013) mastered the free movement with the analog stick and then snapping back to the last grid based tile while using the directional pad was flawless and worked without any issue, I would have hoped that a game 8 years later would have the same design philosophy. It does not. Instead of snapping the player to an entire tile, the developers thought it would be a good idea for the player to snap to the nearest 1/8th of a tile. This causes way more issues than it should. First issue being with the cliffs the player jumps off of. You absolutely have to walk to a corner or reenter an area to realign yourself. If you are not perfectly aligned with the grid, you will jump off the cliff every single time even when its not apparent youre close enough. For some reason when walking near doors, the player will automatically walk into them even when just passing by. This forces the player to go into unnecessary buildings. The entire chibi art should have been dropped and used with gameplay and graphics from Sword and Shield with updated textures and models. For a company called ILCA (I Love Computer Art), they did a piss-poor job on making this game look good. How does Pokémon Colosseum (released in 2003) look and PLAY, hence the PLAY part, much better than something that came out 18 years later? The overall gameplay was very, VERY questionable during my entire time playing. Pokémon level up together using EXP share, that cannot be turned off. However, all the trainers and wild Pokémon are not scaled with the players Pokémon, thus making the game easy mode by default. Super contests have been completely watered down to a QTE; taking away any fun the game might have hoped to have. The underground tunnel was probably the only thing remotely enjoyable about the game - for the first 10 minutes. This quickly becomes a tedious and mundane task. The fact that they expect you to spend almost all post-game content farming for items in the underground tunnel is baffling to say the least. Theres nearly 300 employees working at ILCA right now, there is no reason why the gameplay should have been so neglected. There might have been polish put into the graphics, but there was little-to-no effort put into the polishing of the gameplay itself. As long as Game Freak allows any company besides themselves make another Pokémon game, I will refuse to spend money on it. After taxes, this games final price is $65.72. For something that should have been a max of $30 at launch, I truly feel robbed. I have been playing Pokémon games since Pokémon Yellow was released and have never been more disappointed with a Pokémon game itself, and this is coming from someone that occasionally plays Pokémon Channel once every few years.

So, pokemon BDSP, eh? Some people like it, most people hate but, but let me tell you as someone who has never even touched a gen 4 game (theyre way too expensive, even back in like 2014) I had quite a bit of fun with it. Its no masterpiece, but it pretty much is the gen 4 experience you all remember down to each and every mechanic and line of dialogue. However, the original Diamond and Pearl games for the Nintendo DS, released in 2005, have many mechanics many believe to be frustrating and unwanted. This includes the slow gameplay, (mainly animations and HP bars, along with surfing) overuse of HMs, and an incredibly small pokedex until post game, so much so that there are only two fire types in the game, one of which being optional. These problems have all been fixed in this remaster. (Its kinda hard to call it a remake) HMs are now permanent menu options available at all times, making overworld travel a lot easier. coinvent, and most importantly fun. The game engine has also been completely redone, causing animations to run much faster and battles to flow a lot easier. And for the lack of available Pokemon, dont worry! Many mons from the original game that were neigh-impossible to catch have been made much easier to obtain thanks to the reworked grand underground, now featuring a large variety of Pokemon to catch along with mining for items and fossils. In short, if you liked the original Diamond and Pearl, youll like this. And if you didnt like the originals solely due to the annoying mechanics and gameplay problems stated above, all of them have been fixed. However, thats not the main point of this review. This game has received SCATHING criticism from the incredibly toxic Pokemon fanbase, calling it the worst remake in history and crap like that. Now, for the rest of the review, there will be heavy spoilers as I will be defending this game against its most common criticisms. This will include post game spoilers. You have been warned. First of all, many people complain that its too faithful to the originals and that they wanted graphics in the style of SWSH, (not chibi) they wanted new content like ORAS delta episode, they wanted mega evolutions, etc. But heres the thing. This is supposted to be a FAITHFUL REMAKE, more of a remaster than anything else, reworking gameplay, updating graphics and sound, and adding QoL. And you know what PEOPLE COMPLAINED LIKE CRAZY WHEN ORAS CAME OUT. You want to know why? Because it wasnt faithful AT ALL to the original GBA games Ruby and Sapphire. They have a plot that was like 70% original, completely redesigned every character, added in countless new post-game scenarios and sidequests, added crazy new lore, a whole new post game story in the Delta Episode, etc. But now people are complaining again because Nintendo gave the fans what they wanted back in 2015, a faithful remake/remaster than a full-on reimagining like ORAS was. Another criticism this game, BDSP, often gets is that they didnt add in the additional content added in with Platinum, the definitive edition of Diamond and Pearl released in 2008 for the DS. But the thing is, THEY DID. The game features all platinum-exclusive Pokemon and events within the game, no exceptions. The only things not included are the Battle Frontier (which hasnt been in the series since Platinum itself, most likely replaced by competitive battling) and the 15 minutes of extra story with Looker which really amounts to basically nothing. They even have the distortion world in the game as a special post-game dungeon, so youre not even missing out on that. Finally, the last criticism this game gets is that its too easy. This is mostly true, however, only to a certain extent. Unlike the original games where EXP was evenly distributed between all participants in the battle, now EXP is given to all party members in equal amounts no matter if they participated in battle or not, though ones that havent participated do only get 50% of the EXP. This was already very controversial when the choice to turn this feature on was added in Pokemon X and Y (gen 6, released in 2013 for the 3DS) and was made even more so when the feature was forced in Pokemon Sword and Shield. It also seems like that what fans called forced EXP share is here to stay due to its inclusion in both BDSP and the recent Pokemon Legends Arceus. However, this is far from an issue if the game is balanced around it. Pokemon SWSH was balanced around the new EXP formula, but due to the wild area in that game it was VERY easy to become overleveled and since Pokemon dont scale in that game you just steamrolled everything. Unlike SWSH however, BDSP is not nearly fine-tuned enough for Pokemon to match your level, causing you to become overleveled for a large majority of the game. Unlike the original games where for 90% of the game you are severely underleveled, in BDSP you are often extremely OVERLEVELED causing you to steamroll everyone especially since most gym leaders only have a max of 3 Pokemon. But there is one caviat to the games difficulty that changes everything, the final challenge, the elite four. HO BOY the elite four in this game are something else. Absolutely brutal from beginning to end, using actual competitive strategies with EV trained Pokemon and powerful and varied moveset. The final boss, Cynthia, is even harder than she was in the original game, boasting perfect IV and max EV trained Pokemon, competitive items, and viable movesets. She is a force to be reckoned with, and unless you either bring in a lot of items or grind heavily, she will absolutely body you time and time again. This difficulty spike when you hit the elite four is absolutely insane, and definitely turns this game into an incredibly easy game into one of the hardest Pokemon games to date just with the final challenge alone. So yeah, BDSP good, Pokemon fans bad. Goodnight.

I am once again 8 yrs old. Its nice revisiting my first Pokemon game and meeting all of my favorite pokemon again. Im actually surprised I remember a lot of the routes. Nostalgia aside, this is honestly a really good remake. Dont let all the negative reviews or stories fool you. If Sword and Shield were your first games, do yourself a favor and give this a try. This actually feels like a Pokemon game. Heres why I think the game is great: - Complex story. You feel as if youre completely immersed in the lore and storyline. There are so many different stories about pokemon and legends sprinkled throughout the main plot. - Lots to do. Unlike Sword and Shield, where everything was a straight path, and little to explore, theres actually a lot to see in this game. You can explore the caves, Mt. Cornet, participate in contests, go to the underground, and so much more. You dont have to go to the next gym right away, since there are other ways you can keep busy instead. - Graphics. I know people are complaining about the graphics, but I liked how the developers chose to stick with the original art style. After all, the game is a remake and the graphics help the game retain its original charm. - Quality of life updates. The game has features from the other games such as exp share and instant accessibility to the PC boxes among a few others. This makes gameplay a little more convenient. I do wish the exp share could be turned off, but at least its not as generous as Sword and Shield. If you were to follow the plot straight through, your pokemon would be around the same level as your next gym challenge. Maybe a few levels up, but nothing too drastic. - NO HANDHOLDING. Okay I wouldnt say theres no handholding at all (its a game designed for children), but its not super easy. Some battles are actually a bit of a challenge, and other than a little note of where you should be going next, youre basically free to roam and figure out what you want to do. - VS Seeker. Oh how I missed this. This gives you an opportunity to re-battle trainers once youve gone through all of them. Last thoughts: Its not platinum, so dont expect the game to have platinum features. It is a true Diamond/Pearl remake. Other than the lack of fire types, the remakes do the originals justice. Theres plenty of trainers to battle and things to do. The game really is fun, and I am so happy that the new generation of Pokemon fans will get to experience it. If you do decide to get the game, just relax and take your time going through it. No need to speed run and just enjoy your time in Sinnoh.

Id actually like to give this a 4.5/5 star review - This is a solid remake of the Pokemon Diamond/Pearl games originally for Nintendo DS. A majority of things are very similar to the original games, with the addition of some great quality of life improvements. For example, a dedicated HM Pokemon is no longer needed, as you can use these moves in the field as soon as you beat the appropriate gym by calling a wild Pokemon to use the move. You automatically run by pressing the L stick, and walk by using the D pad (instead of having to use the running shoes by pressing B). More modern Pokemon elements - Fairy-types, updated movesets for Pokemon, TM range expanded from 50 to 100 machines, etc. - have also been incorporated. The Grand Underground is a new-ish addition that Im really enjoying. Previously, you could really only mine for fossils and treasures and create a secret base in the underground. Now, in addition to hunting for fossils and items, there are special caverns to explore that hold Pokemon you can catch or train against - most of these are from the Sinnoh Pokedex, but some are not, and you can still use these Pokemon before completing the game and getting the National Pokedex. These are similar to patches of grass in Sword/Shield, where Pokemon will chase you around to battle and you have to either avoid them or get caught up in a fight. Its very fun to go exploring down there, and I could (and have) spend hours just finding new caverns/digging up treasure. To be honest, the only thing I really dont like is that you cant seem to turn off the EXP. Share. Im at four badges right now and already over-levelled, so I can imagine how itll be at the end of the game. I know this has been a mechanic for several games now, but its one I really dislike, and I much preferred it when the EXP. Share was an actual item I could turn on or off. Overall, though, a very good game. Im having a lot of fun going back to Sinnoh.

Arrived on time and made a great gift!