Pokémon Brilliant Diamond And Shining Pearl

masofdas wrote:

November 19th, Pearl for me I think as it's almost Red

Ahem! Shouldn't you be choosing the one that's almost Blue?
Which coincidentally is the one I'll be choosing, not only because I had Pearl originally but also because I think I prefer Dialga to Palkia (picked Pearl last time for the opposite reason).

You'd think so as I hate Red but you know Charizard why I got Red first back in the day and ever since went for what's close to that.

Jesus. How have I not come across this before? Words fail me.

These things have leaked, big-time.  I'm no fan of leaks, but there have been some things revealed that have influenced my opinion on the game.

Spoiler:

That's odd, as I remember people pointing to various things in the trailer and being all "Platinum Content Confirmed!!!".

I'll still play this game and get a certain enjoyment but it means Platinum is gonna continue hanging over me as something I have to play.

Nothing really changed for me, as I've never played these, just more of what Mon I use now.

I have the dual pack of these games ordered. Am I an idiot? probably.

Though I am avoiding the spoilers and leaks. It can't be worse than Sword and Shield, right? Right?

(Incidentally I played D/P/P back in the day exhaustively, and I even finished the Pokédex in Platinum.)

Sword and Shield were great and this will definitely be worse

Am I the only person round here who thought Sw/Sh were the worst mainline Pokémon games by miles?

Yep.

Sword and Shield were down there with Diamond and Pearl for me. I’m happy to be pleasantly surprised by these two remakes though – at least they’ll be fairly fresh to me as I’ve not revisited this Pokemon generation for over a decade. On the other hand though, they felt really old hat when I played one of the DS originals in 2007ish, and again when I played Platinum a few years later…and how can they be fresh if they’re basically copying the same template that was exhausted fifteen years back?

Looking at the Mon I'm thinking Piplup (Water), Shinx (Electric), Abra (Psychic), Ponyta (Fire), Riolu (Fighting/Steel), ??? as my team

masofdas wrote:

Looking at the Mon I'm thinking Piplup (Water), Shinx (Electric), Abra (Psychic), Ponyta (Fire), Riolu (Fighting/Steel), ??? as my team

Unless they've altered it (or you have a trade), you don't get Riolu until pretty late game.

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I'll take a dated remake over Sword and Shield. Maybe I'm just old and bitter. Not got much faith in the mainline series these days that the eventual Gen IX will be any more inspired if Game Freak is still at the helm.

So many very hot takes for me in this thread, Stu's and Buska's in particular.  SwSh had its good points but it was blatantly unfinished, and it's probably my second or third (XY weren't super) least favourite generation of Pokémon games given the time they released...

...with Diamond/Pearl waaaaaaay out in front!  Or, er, behind?  If SwSh felt unfinished then DP felt like they'd been knocked off in a lunch break.  The fire-type Elite Four member with two fire-type Pokémon out of five!  The electric leader with two out of four!  Say what you liked about SwSh, its finale knew what it was bloody doing, and for all that people decry Dexit it didn't have only 150 Pokémon to play around with when there were several more for the generation waiting in the wings.  Oh, and the Gen. 8 designs were a damn sight better than Gen. 4 ones too.  Lopunny, anyone?  How about some Purugly?  A bit of Palkia?  Thought not.

The irony is that Platinum felt like the game Game Freak wanted to make for Gen. 4, but didn't have time to at first.  Given the extra umpteen years since then you'd expect ILCA (I think that's the name?) to take the finished-feeling version and work on that.  And you'd be wrong.

A low-effort remake of an unfinished game is much worse than a new unfinished game.  I'm a little disappointed about how many people seem to be going to pick it up, because as with 3D All-Stars it's something I don't think the publisher should be rewarded for putting out.  I guess that's Pokémon for ya.

masofdas wrote:

Looking at the Mon I'm thinking Piplup (Water), Shinx (Electric), Abra (Psychic), Ponyta (Fire), Riolu (Fighting/Steel), ??? as my team

If you're not picking a fire starter, Ponyta is pretty much your only option!
There are some good bug types that could round out that squad, or I quite like Carnivine if you want grass.

Balladeer wrote:

I guess that's Pokémon for ya.

In a series where HeartGold and SoulSliver exist, it's sad to see things as they are these days.

I played the original D/P and enjoyed them fair enough, but Platinum was definitely the game D/P should've been. At this point though, HMs were getting completely out of hand.

R/S/E were probably the last games I didn't want to put down in terms of original generations.

Buskalilly wrote:

masofdas wrote:

Looking at the Mon I'm thinking Piplup (Water), Shinx (Electric), Abra (Psychic), Ponyta (Fire), Riolu (Fighting/Steel), ??? as my team

If you're not picking a fire starter, Ponyta is pretty much your only option!
There are some good bug types that could round out that squad, or I quite like Carnivine if you want grass.

Piplup looks like best boy though, not keen on the monkey starter either. I might play it by here as only looked at Sinnoh Dex not national.

I wouldn't call Sword and Shield top tier, but I do rate it much higher than D/P.

For me Sword and Shield falls short in: Finding Gigantamx mons sucks; there's very little harmony between trainers and mons - the world is nothing like Detective Pikachu and there's no real sense that mons are for much but fighting; There's nothing useful to buy; No fun dungeons.

But where it shines, it really shines. The new Pokemon are class, genuinely might be my favourite generation. Galarian variants are amazing; The Gym leaders have loads of personality; The sports vibe is done really well - in fact, I think the game does an incredible job of capturing lots of positive aspects of British culture. That includes the starters, some romanticised variants like Sirferdch'd, the sports, the architecture. It does that stuff very well because unlike a lot of other gens, which at best look the part, this one feels the part by integrating some of the culture into the gyms. I think Sun and Moon was also pretty cohesive in this regard, although I know the trials aren't to everyone's liking. And I fully admit, I'm biased because I'm British, but I still think they did a great job!

At the same time, there are clever critiques: Corsola, the global warming variant, appears alongside robber baron Wheezing and Coalossal - both nods to the industrial revolution and class. Even silly old Stunfisk gets a variant that references the UK's history of trapping by poachers and snaring by landowners (you know traps designed to snare poachers were only outlawed in the late 1800s; stunfisk takes its design from the sorts of traps that would have been used by groundskeepers, not poachers). The rival characters are pretty decent too, and Hop has a good arc even if he's kind of lame.

Oh, and I love the Gigantamax designs. They feel like cool abstract versions of the base monsters. They're not like mega evolutions, most of which are actually Yu Gi Oh monsters.

You can point to aspects of the game feeling undercooked for sure, I'm not saying that it's perfect. It's definitely not troubling my all-time RPGs list. But I don't think you have to look hard to also see a whole lot of love. And that's a lot more than I can say for D/P, with it's embarrassing assortment of crap legendaries, boring antagonists, a poor regional dex, and a lack of any meaningful change to the Pokémon formula (at least that I can remember).The music was good though and some of the mons introduced that generation are also pretty cool.

A lot of interesting chat here! I think I agree wholeheartedly with Muss... but to be honest it's been so long that I played Gen IV that I actually don't really remember what my opinions are on it. Which I guess speaks volumes - it can't have made that much of an impact - but I have preordered Shining Pearl primarily because I'm curious to replay a game from a generation that I actually don't really remember.

For all that everyone's bigging up Platinum, I don't remember anything much about it either, though I do own it. Maybe I'll play it after playing through SP.

Definitely not choosing Chimchar though, even with the dearth of fire Pokemon. I think I'm Team Torterra.

Muss wrote:

The music was good though...

Oh yes - I really didn't like DP's music! Even pieces that started off well, like the snowy routes and the peak of Mt. Coronet, would develop in ways that completely shattered the mood. They played a beautiful contemplative quiet piece just in front of the Pokémon League, exactly where you most want bombast. I think some of this is due to the soundset: pieces like Cynthia's Theme and route 209 sound great in Smash. Nonetheless coming off RSE and their supreme (for the tech) soundtrack, I thought it was an absolute disaster.

stu_the_great wrote:

Balladeer wrote:

I guess that's Pokémon for ya.

In a series where HeartGold and SoulSliver exist, it's sad to see things as they are these days.

I played the original D/P and enjoyed them fair enough, but Platinum was definitely the game D/P should've been. At this point though, HMs were getting completely out of hand.

R/S/E were probably the last games I didn't want to put down in terms of original generations.

And even them, I went back to them with ORAS and thought '...yes that is definitely too much water'. That and the horrible tedious rainy routes. That said I liked Sun/Moon a whole lot.

Question for ya Stu: it sounds like, although you like them more than SwSh (and I think you should tell us what you disliked about SwSh ), you didn't like DP that much either; but you sound set on buying the low-effort remakes. May I ask why this is?

Balladeer wrote:

Question for ya Stu: it sounds like, although you like them more than SwSh (and I think you should tell us what you disliked about SwSh ), you didn't like DP that much either; but you sound set on buying the low-effort remakes.  May I ask why this is?

Why I disliked Sw/Sh. *cracks knuckles* (For the record, I finished Shield with a full Pokédex and the Shiny Charm.)

• The overworld is just a wobbly line of breadcrumbs with zero deviations. They even managed to make caves void of threat, which were always a series lowpoint. Sun and Moon may have been almost as bad, but at least the locations felt cohesive.
  
• Game Freak said it was spending more time on improving character animations when they are quite literally identical to the 3DS animations, even with a smaller roster to work with. I don't like being lied to.
  
• Postgame is practically nonexistent if you aren't into the competitive scene.
  
• Lifeless towns and copy-pasted interiors of buildings seem even more cynical on a home console outing.
  
• Hop is almost literally a reskin of Hau, and even Hau sucked less than Hop.
  
• Why have a wild area early on if you can't even catch a ludicrously overpowered 'mon that you may have legitimately managed to weaken?
  
• General laziness that just sucks you right out of the experience - overworld NPC and Pokémon animations, general static nature of everything. Characters freezing like statues when you walk up a ladder? WTF?
  
• Wild area's weather system is nonsense, even by the UK's standards.
  
• The paltry Pokédex can be finished in a week or so, and besides hunting for shiny 'Mons there is little reason to bother beyond that as the candy system makes training a new team up a joke. See also the XP Share which isn't even optional. Say what you will about the bloated Dexes of older games, but you had your work cut out for you trying to fill them, even with just the in-game wild encounters.
  
• Online trading options are really poor. They had this more or less nailed by Gen. V, so why has it been catapulted back to the stone age all of a sudden?
  

I could go on for ages about things I don't like about this generation, but I will refrain and share some things that I do actually like:

• Some of the environments threaten to look quite nice, particularly the old English hamlet feel of the early parts of the game.
  
• Character designs and overall visuals (except the blandness of the Wild Area) look vibrant and appealing
  
• The new 'Mons. I actually like the vast majority of the newbies, particularly the oddball ones like Cramorant.
  
• The stadium feel of some of the bigger battles helped to raise the stakes a bit on occasion. The cheering crowds were a good addition.
  

In short, my litany of complaints and gripes are more a culmination of general fatigue with the series and Game Freak in general. I have defended their laziness for way too long, admittedly, and this was just the last straw for me. Things began to take a dangerous slide around the time of X and Y in my opinion.

I am genuinely happy for anyone who did and continues to enjoy Gen VIII, as I so desperately wanted to be able to blind myself to many of the issues that have been magnifying themselves in my brain for a very long time now. There is a good game in here, but I just wish GF was able to "do an Anouma" and sit on a new game for 5+ years to really distill all the amazing aspects of this franchise. It and the fans deserve so much more.

I will let someone soak all this up before I go into my reasons for picking up the D/P/P remakes. This post is TL;DR already.

stu_the_great wrote:

]Why I disliked Sw/Sh. *cracks knuckles* (For the record, I finished Shield with a full Pokédex and the Shiny Charm.)

*Cracks knuckles even louder because arthiritis runs in my family*
I really liked Pokémon Sword, which I completed with a full Pokédex and then also completed the Pokédex of both DLCs (apart from two legendaries, a situation I plan to rectify with another playthrough).
Ultimately, I think the difference boils down to this:

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In short, my litany of complaints and gripes are more a culmination of general fatigue with the series and Game Freak in general.

I don't have that fatigue. I still love being in the world of Pokemon and I enjoy the gameplay of those games enough that I don't really feel any cynicism.
Also:

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• Character designs
  
• The new 'Mons. I actually like the vast majority of the newbies, particularly the oddball ones like Cramorant.
  
• The stadium feel of some of the bigger battles helped to raise the stakes a bit on occasion. The cheering crowds were a good addition.

Was most of what I cared about!
On the other hand. . .

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The overworld is just a wobbly line of breadcrumbs with zero deviations.

I think this has been true of all the Pokémon games apart from, arguably, the first two generations, but even in those doing a few things out of order didn't change a huge amount. The only thing that feels like it's been "lost" to me is getting lost in caves, and good riddance. Tedious.

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Game Freak said it was spending more time on improving character animations when they are quite literally identical to the 3DS animations, even with a smaller roster to work with. I don't like being lied to.

There definitely are a bunch of new attacks and animations for monsters moving around 3D worlds and interacting, which will hopefully be used to better effect in future stuff. That said, the messaging around this game was severly borked.

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Postgame is practically nonexistent if you aren't into the competitive scene.

Again, I feel like this is true of most games. GSC had a great post-game but only by having a noticeably brief main game. Gen V was good, I guess, but it meant the first half of the game felt like a false ending. Other than pokédex or battling, what else would one want in the post-game? Surely anything more substantial should just be in the game?

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• Lifeless towns and copy-pasted interiors of buildings seem even more cynical on a home console outing.
  
• General laziness that just sucks you right out of the experience - overworld NPC and Pokémon animations, general static nature of everything. Characters freezing like statues when you walk up a ladder? WTF?
  
• Wild area's weather system is nonsense, even by the UK's standards.

These ones go in the "I guess, but I don't personally care" pile.

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Hop is almost literally a reskin of Hau, and even Hau sucked less than Hop.

Because they're both friendly? Hop had a really interesting arc where he is crushed by the weight of having a brother and best friend who are inescapably better than him, loses his identity, refinds it and then rediscovers himself. He was a great character! From elsewhere, but maybe . . .

stu_the_great wrote:

I'm usually skipping the dialogue as fast as possible when playing an RPG. I'm one of those people.

has something to do with it?

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Why have a wild area early on if you can't even catch a ludicrously overpowered 'mon that you may have legitimately managed to weaken?

Wild Area was clearly an experiment that hasn't paid off yet, but I enjoyed it for what it was.

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The paltry Pokédex can be finished in a week or so, and besides hunting for shiny 'Mons there is little reason to bother beyond that as the candy system makes training a new team up a joke. See also the XP Share which isn't even optional. Say what you will about the bloated Dexes of older games, but you had your work cut out for you trying to fill them, even with just the in-game wild encounters.

Okay. Now you're complaining about something which was a win for me :lol:I never finished a Pokédex until now, but now I've done Let's Go, Sword and both DLCs. I like the idea of smaller, more achievable dexes which will add up to a full living Dex one day. When I'm looking down the barrel of nearl 1,000 monsters, it puts me off.

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Online trading options are really poor. They had this more or less nailed by Gen. V, so why has it been catapulted back to the stone age all of a sudden?

I'm sure you're right, but I only trade with friends!

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I am genuinely happy for anyone who did and continues to enjoy Gen VIII,

Thanks!

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as I so desperately wanted to be able to blind myself to many of the issues

Well, that feels like an unnecessary dig.

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I just wish GF was able to "do an Anouma" and sit on a new game for 5+ years to really distill all the amazing aspects of this franchise. It and the fans deserve so much more.

And there it is. I do actually agree with you. Unfortunately, Pokémon is a snowball that has grown way out of control compared to the little team that made it. Delaying the next generation means delaying a season of anime, a rollout of merch, a set of trading cards, the next three cinema releases, merchandise, cross-media appearances . . .
That said, the way they've rejigged the anime and movies, and the way they're trying different things like Legends and outsourcing BDSP makes me think they are trying to find a way to expand the breathing room around the next main game. Fingers crossed.

I agree with most of Muss' criticisms

Muss wrote:

For me Sword and Shield falls short in: Finding Gigantamx mons sucks;

This feels like it was designed for streamers and people who like Pokémon GO or live servicey games. Glad we can just make soup now.

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there's very little harmony between trainers and mons - the world is nothing like Detective Pikachu and there's no real sense that mons are for much but fighting;

Man, this is always my issue with the main games, and is why I love stuff like Snap or indeed the movie.

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There's nothing useful to buy;

Speak for yourself- I spent a fortune making my trainer a cool chick who looks like she's sponsored by Monster!

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No fun dungeons.

They were never fun!

But mostly, I agree with Muss that:

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But where it shines, it really shines.

Hope this didn't come across as an attack or anything Stu, just wanted to show why I feel so differently to yourself.

Blimey, what have I unleashed? (A good discussion, that's what. I remember having one quite similar to this with Buska before...) I'm just going to pick through some of the main points rather than dissect the whole shebang.

Buskalilly wrote:

stu_the_great wrote:

The new 'Mons. I actually like the vast majority of the newbies, particularly the oddball ones like Cramorant.

Was most of what I cared about!

I'm definitely with Buska here. Less so the other points he cares about most, but this is always going to be my absolute favourite thing about the series. I think it's got a pretty decent standard recipe, so long as it delivers that to potential (I don't think SwSh did quite), so... just let me make new monster friends!

Buskalilly wrote:

stu_the_great wrote:

Hop is almost literally a reskin of Hau, and even Hau sucked less than Hop.

Because they're both friendly? Hop had a really interesting arc where he is crushed by the weight of having a brother and best friend who are inescapably better than him, loses his identity, refinds it and then rediscovers himself. He was a great character!

See, I think that's what they were going for. I don't think they pulled it off at all. Maybe this is a translation thing? Even when there are subtle clues to what he's going through (his team changing entirely each time), Hop himself is written too happy. There's no obvious sign in his writing or expressions that he's actually being crushed. I think this is an area where the writing clashes with a desire to make the games kid-friendly, without realising that kids can deal with things like Bambi's mother or the bloody shoe from Roger Rabbit (ha joking, adult me couldn't deal with that shoe ). So they feel they can't make Hop too sad, when that's exactly what he needs to be to carry the arc.

TL;DR Good intentions and poor execution result in a lousy character still. No way 'Hau sucked less than Hop' mind, Hau didn't even have an arc until USUM. Probably the worst main rival in the series.

Buskalilly wrote:

stu_the_great wrote:

The paltry Pokédex can be finished in a week or so...

Okay. Now you're complaining about something which was a win for me :lol:I never finished a Pokédex until now, but now I've done Let's Go, Sword and both DLCs. I like the idea of smaller, more achievable dexes which will add up to a full living Dex one day. When I'm looking down the barrel of nearl 1,000 monsters, it puts me off.

With Buska wholeheartedly on this one. I hope every new game removes half the series' monsters to keep things manageable. #DexitDidNothingWrong Also, DP does this much worse for me, with the prior-to-postgame Pokédex only having 150 monsters.

Buskalilly wrote:

stu_the_great wrote:

I just wish GF was able to "do an Anouma" and sit on a new game for 5+ years to really distill all the amazing aspects of this franchise. It and the fans deserve so much more.

And there it is. I do actually agree with you. Unfortunately, Pokémon is a snowball that has grown way out of control compared to the little team that made it. Delaying the next generation means delaying a season of anime, a rollout of merch, a set of trading cards, the next three cinema releases, merchandise, cross-media appearances . . .
That said, the way they've rejigged the anime and movies, and the way they're trying different things like Legends and outsourcing BDSP makes me think they are trying to find a way to expand the breathing room around the next main game. Fingers crossed.

Yep, agreed with all of this, including my hopes that Legends will be the special thing the fans deserve.

Buskalilly wrote:

Muss wrote:

No fun dungeons.

They were never fun!

They should be though. Dungeons are good pacing and SwSh really showed this! The story path felt like you were jolting from one place to another, with next to nothing in the way of interesting routes or caves. IMO Game Freak should either get rid of them entirely and work on the routes, or strive to make dungeons more interesting by adding multiple layers, puzzles, visual wow factors, and bosses at the end.


In short: I agree with parts of all three of you, and it would be boring if we all thought the same things, but BDSP is going to be a shiter and that's objective fact.

Buskalilly wrote:

stu_the_great wrote:

I am genuinely happy for anyone who did and continues to enjoy Gen VIII,

Thanks!

This made me laugh.

No attacks felt. Reading through all your responses (Balla, Muss and Buska), I think we just look for slightly different things in our Pokémon games in 2021, and it's quite clear that our gripes come from a place of love rather than hate.

I was really rather upset with Game Freak in 2018(?), but time has softened this a little and I do have optimism that maybe the change in direction for Arceus is the shot in the arm the formula needs. I just wish, as most of us have said, that their ideas were given more room to ferment, as I do think that they have been feeling the burn for many years now with creative fatigue.

As for the D/P remakes: I've played the original games again within the last three or four years, and I just wish to do so again for nostalgia reasons. Nothing more complex than that. (The review embargo is a bit of a concern, however. Not a surprise though.)