A Long Critique of Pokémon Bugged Diamond & Shipped Early Pearl

whoa that's a lot of crazy vibrating why are you vibrating so much why are you shaking i feel like more people would get mad at me for that than like what the hell what the what what uh how is this game programmed am i hovering what the hell is this why can't i go left here what is this out of the way please i just wish that that could have been used to uh what is this camera why is my fallout pokemon gone why does the follow pokemon just randomly get disabled sometimes and i have no idea what does it i can't use my gamecube controller i cannot use my gamecube controller right now what the heck why do i have a black screen people thought that the new pokemon remasters we're back to 2d 2d roots jokes on you 3d baby pokemon brilliant diamond and shining pearl recently ish released and has certainly had its fair share of mixed reception at the time of making this i just recently beat the game myself and let's just say it was an experience yeah that's a good word but how did we get to this point what exactly is going on with this new title from such a beloved ip like pokemon that's a topic i hope i can do proper justice for with today's video essay [Music] february 27 2021 this date marked the reveal for pokemon's upcoming new remakes generation 4 is arguably one of the most beloved generations in series history people have been excited for a gen 4 remake for a long time now and all the lore ties to sinnoh with games such as pokemon sun and moon just stokes the fire for fans to be on the edge of their seat about this game's prospect and how it would tie together these new elements here it was finally revealed except wait a second something's off here but to understand what that is we actually need to go back in time further you see pokemon remakes initially started as a way to make older mods available from the gameboy advance onward due to hardware limitations and a smaller reason being pokemon's stat calculations becoming vastly different though they figured out how to make it work like a decade later it wasn't exactly possible to transfer your game boy or game boy color pokemon to the new and improved gameboy advance which is also what led to the dropping of the slogan gotta catch them all from the box arts whoops as of generation 4 it was now once again possible to catch them all unless you are willing to 100 the gamecube games and attend a few events in gen 3. the main purpose of the remakes was now done but the pokemon company definitely took notice of these games also doing quite well for themselves and so began the tradition of pokemon remakes leading to a generation 3 remake and later generation 4 remake one of the fascinating things about pokemon remakes however is that they were still vastly set apart from their original titles for the generation 1 remakes with fire red and leaf green there were the sevi islands as the biggest additional feature which were whole new areas to explore and featured a lot of dodo pokemon and a ton of smaller new features alright not a massive ton brand new or anything but we're dipping our toes into the water of trying something new here and in the style of the other games of this generation then with the ds game heart gold and soul silver some of if not the most loved pokemon games in series history these games introduced over their original titles the poka athlon arguably one of the best sets of minigames in pokemon history and i was honestly addicted as a kid follow pokemon which was easily one of the most charming parts pokemon platinum's version of the battle frontier some new areas such as route 47 the safari zone global terminal the wi-fi plaza new legendary events and of course the original pokemon go add all this and more to the already insanely beefy amount of content gold and silver had in addition to the additional content of crystal and you get one of the most beloved games in the series then came the generation 3 remix of omega ruby and alpha sapphire the time of making remakes available to actually be able to catch them all had passed so these would need to really stand out over their original titles to make a name for themselves though heartgold and soulsilver had already done incredible steps in that regard generation 6 was kinda when pokemon had its panic moment where they seemed to be getting more worried about their relevancy dying out by making more games with very similar formulas so they decided it was time to introduce gimmicks with each generation for generation six it was mega evolution gen 7 it was z moves and in gen 8 it was dynamaxx generation 6 with x and y was the first big gimmick with megas so following x and y what did auras do it expanded on this new mechanic introduced by the title before it it expanded on the then modern standards and felt like a new main series title disguised as a remake in addition to the new mechanic megas brought along a new lore and the game introduced countless features over the originals such as the deck snap latias ladies soar being able to catch all the previous legendaries a whole new epilogue story with a delta episode which also featured one of the best battle themes in the whole series don't at me these titles however weren't exactly perfect examples of learning from the past like why did these games have no customizability like x and y which was like one of the best features those games added or lacking the battle frontier that was present in emerald literally a decade ago so there was definitely room for improvement but these titles still took a classic experience and gave it a new modern twist to feel vastly different from the originals expand on modern standards and grow what's been established in previous titles let's fast forward back to that important date that marked the reveal of pokemon brilliant diamond in shining pearl the reveal really threw off a lot of people myself included why because these titles look like they were just remasters just the original game skill though they didn't look like a new modern twist on a classic formula and it was also a new record speed for pokemon introducing a new gimmick and then trashing it soon after dynamax only being a one game thing for sword and shield that's rough buddy sure there are absolutely games out there that are largely faithful remasters that get critical reception do well for themselves link's awakening on the switch for example was pretty well received but it's important to remember that different ips have different standards and consumers will expect different things for example zelda remakes or remasters are typically very close to the originals being either a pretty faithful remake like link's awakening building directly off of the original games as a base like ocarina of time in majora's mask 3d being an enhanced port slash remaster with new additional features like wind waker twilight princess hd it's typical for a series like zelda to have remakes or remasters very close to the original or take studios like bethesda or rockstar that are just pretty content selling you the exact same game over and over again for over a decade these have become the standards for these ips and therefore it's what consumers expect but in pokemon its standard has been a brand new main series title disguised as a remake with how new they feel it's almost like every pokemon remake was a link between world situation that's been established to be the norm for pokemon so on reveal that it was a faithful remaster it understandably threw a lot of people off but that was far from the only cause for concern for consumers before the game's launched another concerning sign is part of an epidemic that's been gradually taking a root in the gaming industry as a whole over the past decade-ish now fomo the fear of missing out if you're on the fence about getting something not sure whether you want it or not or think that maybe you'll just pick it up later if you're still interested in it by then then that's exactly the kind of situation companies will use fomo in to increase sales this is most commonly used through what we now know as pre-order bonuses but it also takes several other forms such as time limited games or events if you're really passionate about some game and want 100 it well then you better hope you pre-ordered it or else you'll always be permanently missing the smidge of content and never truly be able to have a perfect save file imagine if other media like movies or books did this watch during the opening weekend for a bonus scene get it this release weekend for the exclusive prologue this is just one of those gaming industry things we really don't see much at all in other media industries it's something nintendo as a whole has started pursuing a lot more as of the switch era super mario 3d all-stars super mario 35 nintendo switch online bonus offers fire emblem shadow dragon better be getting them now before you can't anymore and as of brilliant diamond is shining pearl it's something we see pokemon taking advantage of now too like there have been pokemon pre-order bonuses from certain sellers for a long time like to this day i have a giratina figure i remember i got with platinum but something physical for fun like that is a bit of a different entity from dictating whether you can ever obtain everything in the actual product you're buying if i'm playing metroid dread and i'm aiming for a hundred percent completion i'm not gonna beat myself up like ah i can't believe i didn't get the pre-order pins but maybe i beat myself up like ah i can't believe i can never have perfect e-tank and missile tank numbers because i don't have the samus and emmy amiibo if it's a physical item it really does feel like a bonus it's not needed but it can be nice but actual in-game content feels like you're missing out on this content you would have had otherwise in the case of brilliant diamond shining pearl these weren't pre-order bonuses but rather early buying bonuses which makes sense to capitalize on trying to get potential consumers to get it through the holiday season if you wanted the platinum outfits better buy these games early or else it'll just be impossible to obtain until the end of time unless you cheat i guess as well this game featured an entire chart of early buying rewards i've seen things like pre-order charts for games before but it's not the kind of thing i ever thought i'd see pokemon stoop to the really interesting thing here is the only way to actually get all the things listed on the chart is if you buy the double pack digitally of course the option that's easily the most profitable for the company and helps eliminate the already dying middlemen like game stores it's also worth mentioning that the double pack is literally the same price as buying the two games individually well if you want to be exact it's technically one penny cheaper to buy both games individually rather than the bundle and the only actual difference between these two games is an internal flag that says whether it's a copy of pokemon brilliant diamond or a copy of pokemon shiny pearl which i guess makes sense from a programming standpoint but when the company is literally trying to incentivize you to pay full price for these two different titles that were the only difference is an internal flag i normally charge a hundred dollars but for you i'll throw in an egg laying set child care set and an education set for only three hundred dollars how about it one of the largest ways pokemon is criticized is with this typical two version release format i do genuinely believe that when this concept was first put into motion with the original games it really was to bring people together encourage trading and cooperation even rivalries no other rpg of the time was really doing this and i'd argue it's one of the key ways that pokemon grew into the world's largest grossing media ip like it has it was later down the line that they realized wait some people are actually buying both versions both versions are desirable for collectors or people who have no friends like me and want to catch all the pokemon so i would argue that pokemon's multiple versions started with good intent and genuinely trying to bring people together which it still achieves to an extent but i'd argue that the reasoning nowadays behind multiple versions is primarily because of profit first and then only bringing people together second we see evidence for this with them taking these stances of trying to give consumers incentives to buy the double packs one could argue that these rewards aren't all that much of an incentive anyway though it's just quick balls and pokeballs it's not like these are particularly hard to earn in game but a kid isn't going to know that they're just going to see a chart of rewards where the only way they can get all the cool things is if they get both games digitally i'd argue pokemon is a game intended for all ages a broad audience and a good family game but it handles its marketing primarily towards children so seeing stuff like this i'm going to be honest it disgusts me and i feel like the fear of missing out with pre-order or early buying bonuses for permanently missable in-game content is something that just shouldn't be allowed in the gaming industry in general one day in the future we will be doing a video essay on larger scale issues like this within the gaming industry as a whole another large concern for the game was the state it appeared to be in across its trailers the game was revealed in february and released in november so there was only 9 months between the reveal and release it's not too particularly out of the ordinary for a span between reveal and release by any means what really caught a lot of people's attention though was how much the graphics seem to be improving in the last 9 months leading up to release graphical improvements before release is a good thing right sure but with the way it was being handled here it was a bit concerning let me explain with a large project like a video game it's common practice for the sake of play testing demoing and marketing your game to create what are called vertical slices essentially if this entire timeline is your game if you make a cut here and a cut here to take this section this is a vertical slice it's a small mostly completed section of your game if you play a game demo before release then that's a vertical slice though those are typically on the larger side for vertical slices developers will get multiple sections of their game to states that are basically done it allows them to test if it's functional and be able to base other areas off of if you have this one mostly done hella cool area show that off in the trailer here's another nearly done hella cool area show that off in the trailer too of course that means there will still be plenty of the game unfinished but that's just what you don't show in your trailer obviously in game development when you have your engine done and your direction for the game decide on and developing the actual game itself can begin it's usual for it to be handled in this way where your team is developing a handful of sections at once get them mostly done move on to another section maybe come back after a bit to the finishing touches over here and doing things in an organized and logical order like this it's not handled in a way where basically the entire game is being worked on equally at once like some people seem to think it is leading up to a release there were a lot of people parading around this term of game footage not final it says game footage not final guys you're not allowed to criticize any of the trailer information oh but praising it is apparently fair game pretty much every game trailer ever is going to have the note of game footage now final every game is going to change in some way leading up to release obviously but look at other popular game trailers breath of the wild sequel just looks incredible from the get-go metroid dread just looks incredible from the get-go or even branching outside nintendo related stuff a game that released earlier this year under bandai namco was tales of a rise when that game revealed it already looked stunning it's definitely not uncommon to see these games touched up slightly before release especially for games revealed years before their actual release but it's typically not going to be something major what you saw in the trailers are likely very close to the final product why because these are vertical slices of sections that are basically done and close to what we can expect to see for these respective sections in the final release as well it's pretty common in the gaming industry that if you've got your game in a state where you don't have vertical slices yet that you're ready to show off but you want to build up the hype then do a teaser trailer you can do a proper trailer once you're closer to release and more at the ready if the game has several vertical slices at the ready you can make into a trailer then maybe you'd like to showcase this trailer at an opportune time and then set a tentative release date like a full-on year like 2022 that has a lot of wiggle room around it and can potentially be delayed if need be to accommodate for additional needed time it's a healthy way to handle making sure you can get done what you need to in time and if need be you've got the option to take time if something unexpected like a global virus comes up what was really concerning about bdsp was it was revealed in a state that seemed to be quite a decent bit different than the final product we'd be getting and immediately after being revealed its release date was set in stone 9 months away 9 months away from release and they don't have vertical slices close to the final look you should expect a large reason for the graphical changes was probably because of backlash from fans so maybe it wasn't expected to graphically change so much until after the initial trailer but if something unexpected like this comes up and turns out you need to add something drastic to the workload like overhaul the graphics then that's where you delay your game to make sure it can be done in time not try to maintain the exact same release window while tackling a greater than expected workload because that's how you get a game shipped in an incomplete state but surely pokemon would never ship incomplete wait a second rather than having a tentative release date window that you can set in stone when you're more confident you can get done what needs to be done in time the amount of changes with later bdsp trailers seemed to be a potential indicator that the decided approach was set the release date in stone right there and then fingers crossed we can get done what we need to in time don't want to miss out on those holiday sales after all unfortunately this is a tune we hear being played not too uncommonly in the gaming industry while the graphical improvements of later trailers were definitely nice this really isn't normal for the gaming industry to change so much in the last 9 months leading up to launch with a release date you refuse to budge on and to imply that you may not have even had proper vertical slices well not finished ones at least and yet a lot of people seem to latch onto this term of game footage not final a disclaimer that seems to have a very different meaning for pokemon than any other video game apparently this disclaimer was like the holy grail and it's what had people being like it may look bad now but it says game footage not final so it'll be so much better before it comes out with way less than a year to go so for these vocal fans when a new trailer released that looked way better it was like salvation has arrived hallelujah praise the game footage not final we told all you non-believers in my opinion if you don't yet have some vertical slices at least close to what you expect the final product to look like then you're not ready to set your release date in stone nine months out because that's just a near guarantee to ensure your game ships in a very rushed state and believe it or not we still have one more red flag before the game's even released the company behind these games ilka yeah they've never actually made a video game before they're a company that helps other companies with their video games they're an outsourcing company for parts of your game you're developing that you don't want your core team to spend time and resources on i've had the discussion several times during my streams and even a couple times during our brilliant diamond playthrough about how for large scale projects there's a lot of moving parts that go into it and you may have to get creative with how you handle your resources let's say you need trees for your video game do you develop them in-house with your main modelers do you hire somebody willing to do contract work for cheaper than your staff because they're just really passionate about making trees or do you outsource some other studio to make trees for your video game ilka seems to be one of these companies that can handle some of the other side tasks for studios to be able to focus their main staff on the bigger things that's my guess at least i have no clue what elka does and that's part of the issue as well you can hear about countless projects ilika has worked on but i couldn't find anything pertaining to what it was they actually did on these games if you can find this information please let me know what i'll put in the pinned comment their resume was a mystery knowing who they've worked for but not knowing what they've actually done it's like saying yeah i worked at apple for a while i've done work with disney i worked with rolex for a while but maybe you were just the janitor in all those places or something their actual experience remains a mystery the only thing we seem to know they for sure developed was pokemon home the service that holds your pokemon behind bars until you're willing to pay a decent sum for their bail if you've got more than 30 pokemon which is so far fewer than the 234 or whatever it is total unavailable pokemon in modern games anyway and the service that doesn't let you trade with your friends unless at least one of you is paying the rent that costs almost as much as nintendo's online service in the first place pokemon has always been very picky about who they allow to work on their ips especially when it comes to their main series games we've seen some ips go to new passionate developers who'd love the opportunity to work on them and take the series to greater heights we've seen it with mercury steam and metroid dread but the first time a main series pokemon game is given to someone else to work on it's an outsourcing company that hasn't even made a video game themselves before and the public doesn't even know what their work experience is so before these games even released they already had a lot of red flags around them it was no longer a brand new main series title disguised as a remake a brand new take on a classic formula with modern standards it was pretty much just the classic formula pokemon had followed the lead of other crummy gaming industry practices like the fear of missing out this game didn't seem to have vertical slices or be handled in a way where what needed to be done could for sure be done in reasonable time and the company behind the game hadn't even made a video game themselves before and their actual experience was a complete mystery none of these things necessarily had to mean the game was for sure going to be good or bad by any means but they were definitely large causes of concern i really don't think there's any good way to say this so i'm just gonna say it this game shipped without its opening movie title screen soundtrack closing movie or post game if it shipped without its soundtrack you may be asking what music the game is shipped with the answer is placeholder sounds that if you install a day 1 patch these become a ds sounds option in the menu even though they actually sound worse than the original ds soundtrack [Music] ah [Music] [Music] um oh my ears [Music] oh my ears though the day one patch was three gigabytes according to official sources and the digital download size of the game which therefore includes the day one patch is 6.7 gigabytes we can then surmise that the game without the day one patch is 3.7 gigabytes this means that in terms of the total game data the physical game itself accounts for 55 of the total game data and the day one patch is 45 of the total game data i have never in my life seen such a beefy day one patch with so much of the game content lock behind it but why is this let's go through a few theories the theory that states it's because of leaks the theory that the game was rushed and the theory that it was to save on manufacturing costs let's start with the first theory it was preventative measures against leakers i've never subscribed to this theory myself because it doesn't actually make any sense but i've seen some people slapping it around in youtube comments and on twitter so i'll address it here the argument is essentially that the pokemon company knew this game was going to get leaked so they shipped out an incomplete version of the game so that not too much was leaked too much apparently meaning the opening movie title screen soundtrack credits closing movie and post game so it's lacking a lot of the basic parts of the game here if they knew it was going to get leaked and that naturally leakers were going to share whatever they could on the game with the masses who are making up their minds whether these games are worth buying or not then wouldn't you want people following the leaks to get a good impression of your game rather than a bad one i don't know how some people have bought into this weird notion that the pokemon company was like ah pranked we just want you to think our game is bad but surprise it's actually not that's not how i think anybody with common sense can see why the preventative measures against leakers theory doesn't hold up to the point that i didn't think it was something i have to mention here but apparently i do the second theory the game was rushed out before it was complete this was the theory i first subscribed to the game seemed like so much of its basic visuals were completed really late into development and that the game lacked vertical slices it seemed like the release date was set in stone without any room to budge and they'd ship it out in whatever state it's in that's what i thought happened here the game shipped with what was done and whatever's left would have to be crammed in between it being produced and shipped and it actually releasing and that content would be included with a day one patch but it didn't quite add up the content missing without the day one patch it wasn't a messy disorder of different things that felt just like wrapping up what there was left to be done these were all very select things each of which are things that take a lot of hours put into them likely over the course of a great many months and by a lot of different people you can't just whip something together like a soundtrack or post game from scratch between shipment and release well the placeholder soundtrack you definitely can considering it's just the original midis some minor changes but the actual soundtrack there's no way as much as i wanted to jump on this theory after careful consideration it just didn't make sense which is where we come into the third theory saving production costs let's take another look at the game and day 1 patch sizes 3.7 gigabytes and 3 gigabytes all together making 6.7 gigabytes for the total game now let's look at available switch cartridge sizes which are 1 2 4 8 16 and 32 gigabytes you know what happened here the pokemon company put their game that needed at least the eight gigabyte cartridges onto the four gigabyte cartridges instead and the burden of providing the rest of the storage space we put on the shoulders of the consumer why else would the data in the day one patch be so specific like this opening movie title screen soundtrack credits closing movie post game it's like when you look at the storage space on your nearly full phone so you're deciding what you want to delete for now that you can re-download later that puts your storage space to the mark you want only in this case it's the pokemon company or nintendo or ilka wherever the heck is responsible cherry picking out certain aspects of the game until it put them under the four gigabyte mark so they could ship it out on the cheaper cartridges to save money that the highest crossing media ip in the world clearly needs after all thanks to the wonderful power of the internet all this other data could just be slapped in with the day one patch and all the consumers who didn't take the time to read up on what the day one patch even is because why would you would be tricked into thinking that it's just a big day one patch so it's not like directly lying to consumers per se which pokemon has already seen happen on the switch but it is incredibly manipulative and underhanded a day one patch is supposed to be things like some bug and glitch fixes maybe some minor tweaks or slight balance changes not nearly half your game how crazy is it to think that one day when brilliant diamond and shining pearl are as old as the games they're based on and the nintendo service is no longer online for the switch anybody playing these titles on a switch that didn't already have the patch installed would never be able to play the post game be able to listen to any of the soundtrack so by the time bdsp is as old as the original diamond and pearl the original diamond and pearl will clearly be the far superior games how sad is that there have only been two somewhat similar-ish situations i've seen before xenoblade chronicles x launched as a 22.7 gigabyte game and it came with a 10 gigabyte day one patch on paper that sounds pretty messed up but in reality the 10 gigabyte patch was actually optional and what did it contain it was just data that made the game load faster so monolith software xenoblade x was transparent with consumers essentially being like if you have the space for it on your wii u download it and it'll make your game load faster if you don't have the space for it don't worry you're not actually missing any content by not downloading it your game will just take a bit longer to load how the patch that made the game load faster was nearly half the size of the already incredibly beefy game itself i have no idea honestly i have no idea how a game as ambitious as xenoblade chronicles x was able to be run so well on the wii u in the first place in this case those behind the game were transparent about this situation and well aware of how crazy of a patch this was so there was nothing needed to really play the game behind this optional patch if you have the space go for it if not you can still enjoy the full game just with a bit more waiting the second similar situation i've seen has been assassin's creed the rebel collection which is a title on the switch with assassin's creed iv and rogue along with all their dlc this total game size clocks in at 11.7 gigabytes except if you buy it physically it contains assassin's creed 4 with all its dlc and additional content but not assassin's creed rogue you have to go to the eshop page to download rogue as what is essentially counted as free dlc going back to the switch cartridge sizes this means it's likely ubisoft save production costs by putting the rebel collection onto what must have been the eight gigabyte cartridges with all its content except for assassin's creed rogue and then the burden of providing the space for assassin's creed rogue will be put onto the consumer but unlike pokemon this is not a full price game here in canada full price games are 80 this game under normal circumstances is fifty dollars hey that's a pretty all right price for literally one of the most ambitious open world games the wii u ever saw along with another just as vast open world game as long as you have the space for it but a big difference between ubisoft and nintendo is ubisoft loves marking down and putting their games on sale the most recent black friday sale of this game 19 that's like 15 usd i'm gonna be honest i'm a sucker for assassin's creed iv as my favorite game in that series so that's a freaking steal it can't be that crazy of a sale for physical copies what with the manufacturing cost shipping costs and what's taken by the middlemen selling it as opposed to digital where the only one of those additional costs is the middlemen being nintendo in this case but this still gets marked down pretty well i picked up this game physically to play on my channel for like 25 honestly like some of the best 25 bucks i've spent on this channel as well there's also transparency here information on this game is easily findable online it's not like it's some deep secret that the cartridges assassin's creed iv along with dlc and assassin's creed rogue is a digital download it's not like they put assassin's creed rogue behind a day one patch and try to cover it up by making it look like all it is is a pretty big day one patch and you can still play assassin's creed iv as intended without any issues without it it's not like pokemon where you can play it but prepare your ears and also no post game for you sucks to suck xenoblade chronicles x had further game optimization behind an optional day one patch but no additional content and there's transparency about what this patch is assassin's creed rebel collection had one of its two featured games behind a free dlc to save on production costs but the other and arguably main game is still completely playable as intended without any issues apart from normal ubisoft issues at least there's transparency being able to find out that the cartridge itself is black flag and rogue is an additional download and the game goes on sale at least every few months and for pretty darn cheap for the content pokemon brilliant diamond and shining pearl however has a lot of content behind its day one patch you can still mostly play as intended up to a certain point if you're alright listening to the midi and default cubase trumpet sound without the patch but nearly half the game's worth of data is an additional download and it's kept under wraps by being the day one patch not the other actual half of the game update or whatever else you can call it there's no transparency here deceiving consumers into believing that they're just installing a decently large day one patch that's not unheard of in the industry after all when in reality consumers are actually providing the space themselves for essential portions of the experience space that you would think would be on the shoulder of the producer if you're buying physically imagine if every game did this you buy physical but need to download nearly half the game digitally anyway every physical game buying switch owner would need to buy pretty beefy micro sd cards as well and it would erase a lot of the purpose behind buying physically in the first place do you know what this honestly reminds me of fallout 76 that game is shipped physically except you open up the case and it's just a cardboard disk with a download code for the digital game this was one of the many things that that game got insane backlash for bethesda showed that trying to save on most of your physical copy production costs wouldn't fly in the gaming industry pokemon however was smarter rather than trying to save on most of their production costs like bethesda they'd save on some of their production costs by paying for smaller cartridge sizes and sneakily putting the other half of the game onto consumer's console under the ruse of a day 1 patch by not overreaching like bethesda did pokemon's able to keep misdeeds like this way more under wraps few people take the time to look into it and are made aware of it it's why you see like basically nobody talking about this scheme because few people are even aware of it pokemon's deception succeeded with flying colors so we finally get to talk about the game now isn't that crazy where to even begin are these bad games necessarily no not really they're all right i guess are they bad remakes though yes from what i've seen it seems like people either love this game because they're faithful remakes or hate this game because they're faithful remakes in regards to gameplay i did a playthrough of pokemon platinum earlier this year to refresh my memory in preparation for these games so i could more accurately compare them so when i played bdsp after a release in november i found myself getting just really really bored and one of the largest reasons for it was because i felt like i was playing virtually the same thing i just finished a playthrough of a couple months ago i feel like had i not gone back to play platinum had it really been all the way back from roughly 2007 to 2009 that i would have been playing these games last had i not known about the past several years of lies crummy practices manipulative tactics and had i maybe not played literally any other pokemon remake ever made then and only then maybe i would have liked this game but having recently played platinum it's evident how little was changed and how this title doesn't really seem to do much to actually stand out on its own in this series like the previous remakes have combine that with the weird situation going on with available pokemon on the switch titles and it feels almost like let's go where it feels kind of like a main series spin-off game than a proper main series game if that makes sense the other main series remix have felt like they were the natural next main series title like the next big thing to play to continue the series after the last game you know this game does not at all feel like the next step after sword and shield it feels like a kind of spin-off revisit to cinna it doesn't take and expand on what's been introduced in titles in the past decade since the original games just kind of does away with it it does introduce a decent bit of new stuff that wasn't in the original diamond pearl but each one of these things is a far downgraded version of what previous titles have seen trainer customizability is here except it's a handful of complete outfit sets this makes brilliant diamond and shining pearl the least customizable pokemon game ever since the mechanic was first introduced nearly a decade ago in x and y except for or as for some reason like seriously what was up without being missing from that remake every other main series pokemon title since then has had customizable outfit pieces for you to create your own look even let's go did this across brilliant diamond is shining pearl you can catch every legendary pokemon from generations 1 to 4. so in the 2021 remakes of generation 4 you can catch every legendary from gens 1 to 4. in the 2014 remakes of generation 3 seven years ago you could catch every legendary from gen's one to five glad to see we have our priorities straight here and in case you're curious in the last generation of games of gen 7 with ultra sun and moon you could catch every legendary pokemon at the time and in sword and shield you can also catch every legendary pokemon if you shell out for the expansion pass twice if you have both games because it counts as a separate dlc for each game wild pokemon can now physically exist in the world but only in the side activity of the grand underground they're back to being random encounters everywhere else again a come on why did they bring back random encounters this is so annoying love it or hate it sword and shield along with let's go did a lot of really interesting things one of which was pokemon actually existing in the world it let you feel like this was a real breathing world sure you could run into a battle with a wild pokemon you didn't want to sometimes but it'd be something like this wild pokemon seeing you and chasing you down to whoop your butt and it's like whoa whoa dude chill we're just going through the grass really fast and accidentally running to the figure that was in the way but in bdsp if you're randomly running into pokemon well that's just rng for you time to load up on a million repels if you don't want to see zubats contact you about your extended warranty at every opportunity they get random encounters existing for pokemon when they did made sense with the available technology but nowadays we have a better alternative that's just chosen not to be used walking pokemon make a return this is a really nice change over the originals when it works properly which isn't as often as you'd hope it is also worth considering how generation 4 was actually the generation that introduced this in the first place it was just heartgold and soul silver that fully implemented it and at a much better scale than the remakes handled your pokemon are literally just shrunk down with their regular models so you've got pokemon like rayquaza the god of disguise who's a tiny green garden snake a lot of pokemon very clearly don't match the world around them and it feels very off as well some of them are really really slow i suppose this is realistic for these respective pokemon but if you've got a hella slow pokemon then i hope you're ready for your ears to get spammed with the constant teleporting sound the pokemon pathfinding isn't even worthy of the term pathfinding because literally all it is is move in the direction of the player this means that if you go around virtually any corner if your pokemon isn't right behind you they're gonna have to teleport pokemon also have collision now you don't walk through them or have them teleport to your other side if you get too close like let's go no you need to push them out of your way and it makes having follow pokemon round feel like a hassle if you're going through narrow areas or using something like the dowsing machine follow pokemon also don't like snow for some reason and aren't possible to walk with you in these areas and there's a lot of things that'll just break follow pokemon from working properly or disable pokemon from following you completely until you enter and exit a building so walking pokemon is a nice change over the originals but it's half-assed implementation and it barely working takes away a lot of the charm this mechanic is supposed to have so this game introduces new features that are a step forward from diamond and pearl but also several steps back from where we're actually at now in the series if you've only played the original games and then hopped onto these remakes then holy crap it'd feel monumental but if you've continued with the series since then and then tried these titles it's like oh well all of these things are good sometimes but they're just worse versions of what we've already seen shouldn't they be at least as good as they've been in previous titles if not better not only did these games not seem to learn enough from the series up to this point but they also seem to learn very little from even the third enhanced version of platinum when i say these games are faithful to diamond and pearl it's no joke the changed buildings and layouts altered story events increased decks and post game facilities of platinum yeah that's all gone diamond and pearl featured the battle tower but platinum featured the battle frontier with five different game modes for you to play in post game brilliant diamond is shining pearl yeah it's back to just being the battle tower so in terms of new challenging battle game modes for you to play platinum from 2009 has it over 2021's brilliant diamond shining pearl why a lot of people seem to defend this as a it's a diamond and pearl remake not a platinum remake as if that somehow defends and excuses it why would there ever be any excuse to remake the worst version of the same game imagine if when link's awakening released on the switch the game was completely in black and white and all of a sudden zelda fans stood up and defended it like oh that's because it's a lynx awakening remake not a lynx awakening dx remake this is literally just one of those things that you'll see pokemon fans defending that literally no other fan base would ever defend there is one aspect taken from platinum sort of the story of platinum featured the player going to the distortion world to quell giratina and save the world and whatnot a lot of people really like the distortion world but when i went through platinum earlier this year for the first time in over a decade honestly the distortion world was cool for a bit and neat with its trippy effects and whatnot but i just kind of didn't want to be doing things there for very long it was a cool place but a cool place where there was just a whole lot of nothing to do past some mandatory boulder pushing puzzles it's probably meant to feel like there's a whole lot of nothing for story purposes a distorted landscape baron of any life or only giratina is home where it lives its existence alone it also blows up with that boulder pushing puzzle anyway the lake trio are trying to tell you something and they need you to push boulders wait why so i thought the distortion world was cool and all but a little bit annoying to go through and brilliant diamond is shining pearl gear tina is just where he was in the original games or platinum if you didn't catch it the first time except at a so much weirder scale than the original games he's just kind of there chilling i guess but if you want to change gear teen into its origin form you need to go to a special place that is essentially a distortion room and fight a dark shadowy origin giratina for the right to this greasiest orb you can't catch it it's a level 100 boss pokemon a challenge for you to overcome to unlock this form honestly this is pretty awesome the distortion room is really cool and it doesn't stall me with boring boulder puzzles like the original distortion world i imagine a lot of people will be upset with a distortion room rather than world am i weird for actually honestly preferring this distortion room over the distortion world well in some ways the distortion world was a fascinating plot point but i like being able to get right to the chase with what it is i'm trying to do unless the scenery is just so absolutely breathtaking like xenoblade chronicles or tales of a rise or something i typically just go and do the thing i want you know it's probably why animal crossing wasn't quite my cup of tea i get why people like it but just too slow for me in the original distortion world i want to get to giratina but i have to go around pushing some boulders for a while and it's been brilliant diamond is shining pearl just show up here's this hella cool looking place slap your membership card into the thingamabob and here's this crazy neo boss it's kind of like how i felt about friend aries and pokemon mystery dungeon blue and red rescue team compared to rescue team dx as i described in videos that you should totally watch after this one in the original games to put pokemon into your team you had to go into the designated friendly area to talk to them and put them in your party but in rescue team dx it's a menu you just navigate to them and do what you need to with them with these sure you lose a certain amount of charm with a change like this but you no longer need to beat around the bush you can just do what you came here to do you know so that's kind of how i feel about the distortion room the grand underground it's like the underground you remember but better but also worse you've got the same addictive mining minigame you remember but if you don't you might also find yourself getting addicted to it anyway the pokemon dens are actually really cool new places and it's fun to dip into them and see what kind of pokemon they hold sometimes they make you fly and literally unable to leave the room because you're now way above the door forcing you to leave the underground and come back which is kind of annoying but even more hilarious you thought this was essentially a 2d game guess again secret bases make a return except get pranked they basically don't in the originals these were places that you could customize with furniture appliances stuffy pokemon all kinds of ghoulishes you could essentially deck this out like a secret underground home i remember this feeling so dang cool back in the day play underground with your friendos and show them your home man this is where it was at before i started playing minecraft a year or two later this was a place all about customizing however you see fit make your own personal ideal secret base and that was so dang cool but with the reveal of pokemon dens as a new feature now the player needs to place down specific statues to augment what pokemon are appearing in dens so the place all about customizing the way you see fit you now need to customize in specific ways to get pokemon you want doesn't that defeat the purpose of customizing something in your own ideally unique way so i was already pretty bummed out about that but it's only after the game actually released that i found out that literally all secret bases are now is places to put statues that's it no furniture no appliances no pokemon stuffies nothing it's literally just a square space that's a personal dumping ground for your terracotta army what used to be a place you could turn into your own personal secret underground home is now a statue trash heap this feels like the kind of thing once owned by a maniac that you'd open up and find on one of those storage locker auctioning shows there can be some strategy here in ways you place things down i guess what you place down and different ways they fit and whatnot it kind of reminds me of xenoblade chronicles x in that way where on the gamepad screen map you could try and deduce the way to put your probes across the world map in ways that benefit you the most it was like a complicated puzzle grid of sorts that you could rearrange at any time from the gamepad screen and brilliant diamond and shining pearl it's a similar ish idea rearrange things in different ways to affect what you get except here it's an actual physical place you need to go to rather than something you can rearrange from anywhere and it overwrote a previously actually customizable area it feels very much like they took away one of my personal favorite features in pokemon diamond pro platinum in favor of what could have easily been a menu option like xenoblade x's mining probes it's almost as if they want an excuse to cut content in a way that's like hey it's still here it's just different now and because i wasn't sure where to put in this part of the script the second best part of underground secret bases from the original games playing capture the flag with friends yeah that's gone now too speaking of things that feel like an excuse to cut content by just being different when really it's much worse pokemon contests i remember back in the day watching the pokemon anime from generation three to four this was a really big plot point in the show back then especially in generation four it had been so standard in the pokemon series that the pokemon adventure is about getting your starter pokemon and setting out to take on the gym challenge and battle the elite foreign champion but here the show toyed around with the idea that trainers had two large paths they could take the gym challenge as had been standard in the series up to this point or pokemon contests or pokemon ranger 2 technically as that was an ongoing spin-off series during the dslr as well so the games at the time played off of this the main goal of the game was stole the gym challenge that's still what the game was but contests were a very notable side activity you could augment your pokemon's attributes with puffins and strategize on what moves you wanted to have not for battling but for wowing the judges contests had three main stages in the first one you customize and dress up your pokemon to impress the audience the second phase was dancing where you try to match the moves of the other contestants and when it was your turn to set the moves it could be fun to try and screw with your opponents and then finally was the move showcase time to wow the judges with your pokemon's moves this actually involved a lot of prediction for which of the judges your opponents may choose to try and wow and strategy for what kind of move you want to use when contests may not have been a dedicated other path for you to follow as a trainer like an anime but it was a side activity with a lot of depth to it you could really grind at if you really wanted to make it a new goal on the side for collecting these ribbons so now that it's well over a decade later this whole dedicated side activity should be better than ever now right well what did they do to contests this was like a whole other in-depth game mode in the original games now it's pressing a i am at a complete loss for words honestly at the uh state of these games it's literally just pressing a now throughout the span of 60 seconds and during that time using one move once it's like guitar hero if guitar hero only had one note and that's it in other words it's complete garbage they took what i would argue was one of the most flushed out and in-depth side activities in pokemon history and threw it all in the trash in favor of pressing the a button what an absolute joke [Music] both contests and secret bases i would argue are just excuses to cut this content but to give the impression that they're still here something that doesn't take a lot of effort and resources to make but is good enough that you can say that those features are still there after all then you can have trailers that show pokemon contests looking more beautiful than ever all the people who passionately remember contests may feel more inclined to pick it up under the false impression that these features they know and love are there only to be like pranked contests are basically gone i legitimately feel like the contests in this have to be one of the most boring things i've done in a game in a very long time also the ui sucks don't give me the option to select stuff i don't even have access to or grayed out or something how the heck am i supposed to remember where i'm at in each of these categories if you make a bunch of contest progress and it's been a while and you don't remember where you're at you essentially have to select each one of them from highest to lowest rank until you find the rank where you left at that's pretty cool but secret bases and pokemon contests aren't the only cut content replaced with something far inferior the global trade station is in that group as well in the original games you could trade pokemon all across the world organize trades request or send pokemon it's the gts we know from pokemon generation 4 onward button brilliant diamond and shining pearl you can now only do wonder trades which is where you select one of your pokemon to give to somebody out there you don't know and they do the same for you you have no idea what pokemon you're going to get and the person you're trading with has no idea what pokemon they're gonna get from you you just put in a pokemon and get another pokemon somebody else put in it's a mystery a wonder what you might get wonder trades are an interesting concept for pokemon but it's pretty crummy in practice my cousin has a couple kids who look up to and love playing games with me they have sword and shield and would use the wonder trait quite a bit it seemed pretty common for them to get shiny pokemon and the pokemon's nickname would be the name of some website presumably where they want you to pay money to them for them to give you hacked shiny pokemon so in bdsp the global trade system now only has one feature and it's a feature that's flooded with bots trying to advertise websites for hacked pokemon or at least i assume it'll be just like sword and shield with the bots at the time of making this video that's the kicker this game launched without even being finished and is that really all that surprising you can't even use this major gts downgrade over the originals and you can't go into the union room with more than two people pokemon home compatibility these are all things that come sometime after a launch you know how i expressed worry about them setting a release date in stone for shortly before the holiday season and fingers crossed they can finish the game in time yeah they didn't finish the game in time let's move on to the next topic to discuss tms remember how when generation 5 introduced infinite use tms everybody just hated it everybody was like what the heck i can keep on using this to teach this move to more of my pokemon that sucks i should only be able to use this once then it breaks and then i should have to go waste all my poke on more tms or grind around until i randomly get one to appear if i ever want to teach that move to any other pokemon again yeah i don't remember that either but apparently that's not what the pokemon company or masuda or ilka or whoever is responsible thought they heard when generation 5 introduced infinite use tms it was like this was a whole new collectible and something really awesome to have once you have that tm you now have that move forever and until the end of time on that save file you can teach that move to as many compatible pokemon as you want because of this collecting tms felt really cool it was like permanent options you are making available to yourself so having all the tms was a really nice feeling i was still developing my living decks back then but honestly there were times i cared more about collecting all the tms and catching them all but now lo and behold brilliant diamond and shining pearl have really gone out of their way to be a faithful remake unless being faithful is too much work at least but if it's stuff that's just as easy or easier than the alternative anyway like random encounters or single-use tms oh heck yeah let's be faithful all the way sword and shield experimented with a mix of infinite use tms and single-use trs and it was [Music] tr's kind of made sense as raid battle rewards at least if you're pursuing that as one of the main side activities at least tmz and brilliant diamond and shining pearl are just like well time to go shell up more poke for it at least that's what i thought at first but turns out it's much worse very few of the tms are actually available in shops so where can you get more copies of the ones not being sold from the grand underground from the sellers down there where their inventory is completely random so if you used up your only use of this one tm on one pokemon and want to teach it to another you literally have to grind in the grand underground for who knows how long until you get the rng you need to get the move you're looking for as well if you check your tm's pocket it shows the tm numbers on a list so if you're looking at the list for a specific tm unless you have all the moves memorized for what number they are there's no way to find the move you're looking for without hovering over every single one until you find it or not despite the fact that there's all this unused space that has more than enough room for the actual move name this hasn't been a problem in pokemon games for a long time now including get this diamond pearl and platinum another change over the original generation 4 games is that there is now a mandatory exp share across the entire party when i heard about this i thought it would be like the party lead gets 100 of the experience and the party pokemon each get 50 or something nope nothing of the sort no idea what affects it but everyone seems to get a sizeable amount of experience every single time naturally this means that your pokemon are going to be gaining levels way faster than in the original games so of course the game would have to be balanced around this somehow right the developer's solution to this was to jack up all the pokemon league battles and leave the entire rest of the game as is from the originals so let me get this straight diamond and pearl had battles designed around what the player's level should roughly be at the time when you consider only one pokemon is gaining experience at a time maybe split it however many ways if there's a single exp share if there was some switching involved so you take every single opponent in that game and leave them exactly as is but take the players pokemon and make them all gain the same battle experience they would have had in the originals instead of just one so with a full party you're gaining what six times the experience points of the original game it can't be that much the experience that other pokemon gained is probably still lower than the main battle pokemon let's say for this example it's half which it definitely still feels way more than but that's still at least 3.5 times the experience with a full party so your player is now gaining anywhere from 3.5 times to 6 times the experience they would have with a full party in the original titles but you're leaving every single opponent at the exact same level they were before what does this result in a game that is a serious contender for one of the easiest video games i have ever played it took very little time before i was horrendously over leveled for every single encounter and all i did was fight the trainers along the way i never did any grinding at all so not only was i getting bored because it felt like i was playing the exact same thing i played earlier this year but i was also getting incredibly bored because it felt like i could just turn my brain off [Laughter] [Music] again all i've done up i've not done any grinding up to this point at all all i've done is just fight the trainers that have been here up to this point so this should be a very standard level to be up to this point i just send out my freaking torterra and he just sent out his tiny little unevolved burn starly [Music] i got so bored that i decided to use the help of my happiness shine spark due to its sequence breaking capabilities to go to sunnyshore city early where i challenged the eighth gym as my sixth gym finally i could get some form of challenge and honestly it was probably the most fun i had with the entire playthrough i wasn't as under leveled as i thought i'd be though my east was only three levels under vulchner's so when you have the type advantage it's still pretty clear who's gonna come out on top i literally needed to skip like a fourth to a third of the game to feel like i had to at least somewhat use my brain so rather than rebalancing the whole game to account for the absurd amount of experience you're always getting as was clearly needed the developers just decide to make the final rival battle elite four and champion stronger and when i say stronger i mean literally give them competitive items bred ivs trained evs beneficial natures and some will even employ strategies so dumb that it straight-up banned an actual competitive pokemon like flint's driftblim spamming minimize to baton pass when you get here your pokemon you've casually caught along the journey will be outclassed by a lot so now the enemies are too strong what do you do buff up the player again pokemon gain friendship pretty much for free if you just take them along with you and use them from time to time and you see the power of friendship gives you the ability to pull off move was strong enough to knock you out guess not the very earth itself is literally violently shaking as tectonic plates shift not to worry on fire just stop being on fire how about none of this is strategy it's literally just rng so how was the pokemon league for me and keep in mind i missed a lot of experience after skipping the whole team galactic plotline with my sunny shore sequence break oh it was super easy yeah i got pretty good rng with how the power of friendship regularly defied the laws of physics but not everyone's going to get good rng and i've heard of a lot of people getting seriously stumped and frustrated here because of how outclassed they are and i'm not getting rng like i did so why is the whole game up to this point kept so absurdly easy so much easier than the original titles but then the pokemon league is designed to be so absurdly hard assuming you don't get good enough rng at least these feel like two separate difficulty modes like the main game feels like an easy mode and then the league is hard mode yet there are no difficulty modes this is just the way the game is it really makes me wonder literally who is the target audience of this game it's not newcomers playing their first ever rpg as the league would absolutely destroy them and it's certainly not those seeking a challenge with pokemon with how mind-numbingly easy the main game is and how just rng can bailly out of anything that could potentially be challenging this game doesn't have a target audience because it can't decide what its target audience is just have an option in the menu to turn the exp share on or off as well as actual game difficulty modes fans have been asking for a long time and it really doesn't seem like too much of an ask remember though when i said everyone had their original teams and levels yep that's all based on diamond and pearl not platinum for example the gym leader of electric type pokemon uses a friggin octopus or the fire type elite four flint has literally over half of his team as non-fire types yeah this makes perfect sense this game doesn't have any platinum teams or even the expanded platinum decks though you can still find platinum pokemon in the grand underground but you just don't get pokedex entries for them until you unlock the national decks fantastic now on the topic of the national decks comes the whole overarching issue of dexter that's been over pokemon for the past several years and been one of the most hotly debated topics which for anyone who isn't familiar is the cutting of allowing every pokemon in sword and shield which has a bit over 230 pokemon missing and now in brilliant diamond and shining pearl these titles only go up until generation four which means they're missing about 405 pokemon let me just solve dexter real quick with some simple math that i'm honestly embarrassed i didn't use during my dedicated pokemon video essay pokemon sword and shield are 10.3 gigabytes which means they must at least be on the 16 gigabyte switch cartridges for the sake of this example let's say that all the sword and shield data is pokemon alone so if we divide 10 300 megabytes by the total available pokemon sword and shield we get 15.5 megabytes per pokemon in this example so now we multiply 15.5 megabytes per pokemon by 234 pokemon missing and you get 3629.8 megabytes or roughly 3.6 gigabytes add that to 10.3 gigabytes and you get 13.9 gigabytes so even if literally all of sword and shield data was pokemon alone which is obviously false there would still be more than enough room on the current cartridge sizes of 16 gigabytes and we know that these models already exist since they've been reusing the same 3d models for the past nearly decade we know that full animations including walking and running already exist as they were found in the data of pokemon sun and moon so all the pokemon could absolutely exist on modern hardware the reason why they don't is pokemon home so if you want to manage your pokemon on modern machines you have to pay nearly as much as nintendo's online scam in the first place pokemon is constantly trying to stay relevant with new content and new generations as the largest grossing media ip even though the games aren't the largest revenue source for this ip it's what all the media under this ip is based around the merchandise the card games the anime the movies i found out not that long ago from one of my fellow youtubers that it's also the freaking capri sun what all of these things orbit around the games so a new generation and new pokemon is new merchandise to sell more trading card game expansions new anime seasons so on and this is a formula that would have to come to an end eventually the day would come it's no longer possible to have every pokemon but that day was not even close to yet but pokemon brought it early on the prospect of making a ludicrous amount of revenue off of pokemon home of course there's a quote-unquote free version so fans fight each other and can't agree on whether it's good or bad so that pokemon doesn't have to change anything but if you want to transfer pokemon from older games you gotta pay if you want to manage more than 30 pokemon at once so far fewer than the 234 missing you gotta pay you want to trade with your friend at least one of you has to pay so one of the really neat things behind previous remakes was the access to newer pokemon since the time the originals came out unless your name is fire red and leaf green which had a super weird thing going on with it until post game i couldn't succeed [Music] but in brilliant diamond and shiny pearl after decks it you literally can't have a new adventure through these classic titles with new pokemon you've got the exact same selections and possibilities as the original which funnily enough even includes not being able to evolve pokemon like ligar until post game what reason do you have to play these over platinum and the dexter and pokemon home issue also brings along even more inadvertent limitations in previous remakes you could still play with other games of the same generation ruby sapphire and emerald players could battle and trade with fire red and leaf green players diamond pearl and platinum players could battle and trade with heart golden soul silver players heck you could even play the platinum battlefrontier across heartgold and soul silver with platinum as well x and y players could battle and trade with a mega ruby and alpha sapphire players mostly there is a weird thing with the new mega evolutions introduced but brilliant diamond and shining pro players can only battle and trade with each other and that's it sword and shield players can only battle and trade with each other and that's it let's go players can only battle and trade with each other and that's it brilliant diamond and shining pearl have literally the least interact ability out of any main series pokemon remake in the entire series history nowadays if you want the things that were basic functionality of previous titles you either need to shell out for more games or more services want to trade with your friend with a different game you better buy that game too along with nintendo's online service or shell out for pokemon home assuming it's even a pokemon they can have in that game or you're receiving a pokemon you can even have in your game pokemon is getting more and more limited for greater and greater costs you literally had so much more interact ability for so much less cost over a decade ago with the original diamond pearl and platinum how pathetic is that and one last thing about the gameplay before we move on to the next section as i wasn't sure where to include this the glitches this game has some super major glitches which luckily in most cases you're probably not going to be seeing in a normal playthrough and will probably only be done by experienced speedrunners it's kind of like breath of the wild in that regard where those with a great understanding of the game behind the helm can break the game in half with stuff you never would have guessed possible in your casual playthrough and the major glitches genuinely make the game better and more fun if you're able to pull them off unlike breath of the wild though you're probably not going to get through this game casually without running into a lot of minor glitches along the way this game sometimes has weird black bars on the textures almost as if you're playing the original games on an emulator what is that black bar there do you see that like it was at that right there my goodness gracious not even close to i just ride the rocks myself while b barrels like in the ground what are these black bars what is this an emulator i experienced pokemon in trainer battle sometimes freezing the game for a moment before the event for the battle would actually load and start you know more breathing room to be uh wait was the exclamation point like delayed so yeah there was absolutely that was a weird delayed encounter it like stopped me and then a couple seconds later the encounter happened my follow pokemon would randomly get disabled or any cutscene would stop them from moving all the while their animation still plays on in the distance he wants to come but the universe has just frozen him in place the poor guy you've got weird visual bugs all the time like this random purple bar does it just not proc if it's the end of a battle whoa did you see that bar or sending out my torterra would always have the camera jump to this other shot for just one frame every time hold on yeah look the text box disappears and then there's like a frame of a different camera angle and then there's this camera angle then poke one can just send you to the sky apparently i feel like more people would get mad at me for that than like what the hell what the what sometimes the ui just stops working there have to be something really where'd the health bar go where are the health bars what the hell was that things that are supposed to be lined up aren't even close to lined up it depends on how things work out why am i like above b-barrel i'm not even remotely close to b-barrel there's invisible walls in a decent amount of places why can't i go left here what is this furnace pump started leaking are you kidding me i can't look you can clearly see the space there but then you come down here and you just can't npcs will sometimes teleport to face a certain direction rather than actually turn that way he doesn't even turn he just teleports down again nurse joy will sometimes randomly rock out while healing your pokemon whoa that's a lot of crazy vibrating why are you vibrating so much why are you shaking ice just doesn't work sometimes is that the trick what the heck kind of movement was that transitions just don't work sometimes like i i really wanted to see like what explanation they'd have for themselves for like what there wasn't even a transition it just it just popped in what the hell anyway i don't know how i did it but i literally got the music to turn off completely during this one scene there's no music anymore it's okay the music's gone the music is gone grab rave i guess or something there were countless visual and gameplay glitches like this throughout the journey we should be a-okay right well i'll just go through the ceiling that's yup what is this loading look at this look up there look at the render distance on this hi because of the trick room you can't use payback with the double damage secondly what the heck what the heck was that out of the way please i just wish that that could have been used to uh what is this camera either was it what what was that weird spit i did i'm glad i got to take part in the crowning of cinno's new champion now then step on to the why did the name cynthia disappear from the text all right well we now have three what the hell was that a good hiker got a boost of energy when surrounded by boulders coming at you like blow off some steam this isn't a double battle why isn't this a double battle with the other hiker what excuse me am i losing my mind what the hell is that what is that what the heck um so just tap it down well this is a perfect game with no bugs or flaws whatsoever all the gym leaders seem to follow this rule of like the first time you battle them they'll be like far off to the right like that and then subsequent times they'll move around um to somewhere between this being roughly the most far right point and the most far left point they can be being somewhere around the center-ish and it seems like the only two big exceptions to that have been crasher awake and byron but for whatever reason every gym leader seems to have the same range except for crasher wake and byron that have their own unique ranges and if you do decide to actually try some of the more major glitches who knows what kind of crazy domino effect it's going to have this is not a hard game to break in half remember how i said i sequence broke the sunny shore yeah i only came back to do the events at spear pillar later and i managed to discover what i can only guess was an early tech demo version of the spear pillar scene that still existed in the game's code nobody battles you like they're meant to having only their dialogue that they'd have if you talk to them after you beat them which makes sense since it's not like you can talk to them without battling them the first time anyway professor rowan and lucas are literally inside one of the pillars so that they're out of the way but still loaded in for this scene for when they come in later cyrus isn't interactable as there's no point in which you can press a on him to talk anyway since cutscenes are supposed to automatically play when you get close the only thing here that's interactable at all is dialga who automatically battles you when you get close likely because this battle when you get close is just tied to the model itself if you do battle the battle background is palkias rather than dialgas the legendary lake trio pokemon are around where the legendary would be in a triangle formation they'd never be here like this during normal gameplay and none of them are interactable behind the legendary you can get the adamant orb and brilliant diamond or the lustrous orb in shining pearl whereas in my case i found both of them just stacked inside each other after the battle with dialga rowan lucas and the rival are just gone you know how i mentioned a while back that these are the same games apart from a single flag i honestly think this was a tech demo designed independent of version considering i got both orbs and pelkey's battle background it's likely dialga may have just been used as the standard legendary for testing and setting up this scene with this version my spear pillar is also just eternally in this bugged state until the end of time now as well my bugged spear pillar never actually set the flag saying that i've beaten it this means that i can't encounter or catch the legendary lake pokemon except for buxy for some reason who i was able to catch even before spear pillar shortly after yuxi was supposedly taken by team galactic so i guess there was just two yuxi's as i had a yuxi and soda team galactic this flag never being set also means the guy in front of sunnyshore is never going to let me pass thank goodness i can fly to sunnyshore anyway but i can also never get the pokedex entry for pelcia in celestic town so without trading using this game alone this now means i can never get the dex entries from mesprit azelf or palkia which means i can never obtain the national decks which means i can never access postgame and why do you need to complete the sino decks before you can access post game anyway that's such a dumb thing to carry over from the originals better hope you battled everyone along the way to get all those dex entries for seeing those pokemon fun fact this means that if you don't get the very basic math questions wrong in the heart home gym you never get to fight someone with a drift loon and you literally need to wait for a wild drift loan to appear on a friday and changing the switch clock doesn't change this so if you didn't suck at basic math and you want to play the post game you literally have to wait anywhere up to a week to be able to do so anyway back to me not being able to get the legendary dex entries i need this means that if i couldn't trade with other people to get these entries this save file would literally never be able to access postgame i call it a single player post game hard lock and i have no earthly idea what set of things i did to make it happen was it the sunny shore sequence break was it catching uxie early i still have no idea why yuxi was just there early but the other of the lake trio weren't this is a game you can absolutely break in half just from some domino effect of other small glitches you pull off maybe it wasn't any of those things that resulted in this and it was something completely different so as i had the displeasure of finding out you can hardlock yourself out of post game but this game also has a lot and i mean a lot of soft locks got stuck in the middle snow point snowballs that's a soft lock i've fallen and i can't get up went into a couple specific corners in amity square that's a soft lock depending on your pokemon press the a button a little too fast that's a soft lock or even a game crash in some cases caught a pokemon that can just randomly soft lock you too with the infinite black screen of doom yeah let's see here we'll hatch the egg another time maybe like maybe we'll add the egg to our party properly another time but for now for now we have muffin jr why do i have a black screen [Music] you might not run into any of these soft locks during your casual play through but the fact that there's so many ways you can soft lock yourself is a bit ridiculous did i mention how ilk has never made a game of their own before or how this game had signs it was going to be rushed before even came out well we certainly see that in full force with the they're not bugs their features this game offers these are undeniably the most broken pokemon games ever made after the original several titles it's honestly stunning how this game shipped so the art style and world as a whole i feel like it worked and had its charm in the original titles but struggles a bit here and there's the same spiel i gave earlier about not expanding on modern standards like the previous remakes and it definitely is disappointing to see that in their original games this was the world because that was the available technology it was trying to represent something so much more grand but it was limited by the technology of the time so now that technology exists how is it remade well it's disappointing in regards that it means we'll likely never get to actually experience the world these games were trying to represent but couldn't yet the chippy art style here is it feels very much like it was designed with top down as the sole focus so these crazy close-up shots are pretty jarring a lot of the time i feel like my trainer is one of those cats you put clothes on and it gets all their limbs to stiffen up and the way the game seems to render facial details is well very questionable a lot of the time with certain shots like half the character's face will be fully loaded and the other half will be pretty blurred it's just really really weird it's also really hard to take characters seriously like this all i can think of when i see cyrus is that he really angry i can't take character seriously when they look like they were ripped out of some mobile app the reflections however those are really good anybody around here for a long while knows i love me some great reflections people in sinnoh must wax floors like crazy though i'm pretty sure wood isn't typically that reflective so there are some instances like that where it's a bit overboard but it's not like that's a super bad thing by any means it did make me wonder in scenes like rowan's lab though why the reflections in the distance are so gosh dang beautiful but the face is right in front of me aren't even fully rendered the water is also really nice most of the time honestly with a lot of the ways this game turned out i fully expected the rivers that are as jagged as the originals to have something going on where they float towards the corner then all of a sudden hey it's flowing the other way but no you can actually visibly see it flow around the corner and it's really nice some of the bigger bodies of water can feel like they're vibrating a bit much though and i can't get the image that some weird vibrating jello to my head the lighting effects a lot of the time they're pretty alright not always though like lamps don't actually seem to do anything about the shadows around them for example so the lamps don't actually give off any light the elite four as well and they had dedicated environments in each of their rooms in platinum to match them in their pokemon type yeah this really was a pretty faithful remake to diamond pearl it's 12 years after platinum and that's been completely done away with nice the battle environments honestly one of my favorite parts of this whole game i think there was only two battle environments i didn't actually like one of which was the beach why the heck is the beach just a vast desert that extends all the way across the horizon i feel like i'm battling in a desert environment adjacent to an ocean and it's just really really weird there are also the rival battles where each time you get transported to a differently colored fog dimension for whatever reason oh my goodness we made it to the freaking fanta dimension apart from those the battle environments in this game were actually really beautiful i think my favorite might be the pokemon den underground water cave now that right there is some serious eye candy in the gyms i really love the attention to detail with things like the studio equipment and lighting high up making this feel like it's a set of some kind like i'll think back on watching the anime in gen 4 where there were these spectator stands for gym battles for people to watch these matches this felt kind of like the gym was set up in a way where it could be a professional set for an audience watching or something the actual full character models for in battle these are beautiful i actually really like the human character models in sword and shield and i'm not sure which of the two sets of models i prefer honestly well probably sword and shield by a decent smidge just because i actually get to see them way more often so they are able to leave a greater impression on me unlike brilliant diamond in shining pearl where it's just reserved for battles once the battle's over crasher weight goes right back to looking like he's just some really fat dude that put on a shirt with fake muscles on it or maybe he got himself a set of anchor arms these models are really good and it makes me really wish that this other perspective we go to just for battles was the actual world i was having my adventure around instead of the mobile app looking thing i'm actually playing now here's something that counts for visuals but also sort of counts for gameplay but i decided to put in here this game was very clearly designed from the beginning with the grid-based design of the originals with open movement being put in later every person in this world operates based on the grid you can choose to as well with a d-pad or use open movement with the left stick the fact that during every cut scene every character has to move in straight lines and perfect 90 degree turns it just feels so incredibly dated it feels like this was the kind of thing that would be used to test the cutscene setup as an early tech demo version except it's what was actually left in the game in so many instances it feels like this game was deliberately made worse just to be more faithful being faithful feels like just a different way to say being excusably bad take the gym leader versus screens for another example in pokemon platinum these would be epic versus screens where it's like oh my goodness this gym leader is getting ready to absolutely lay it down on me no holds barred button brilliant diamond is shining pearl we get this what did it even say versus rorke are you kidding me right now another instance of being faithful to diamond and pearl it would seem instead of an epic versus gym leader name and them looking ready to give you a serious battle it's just a long bar with nothing on it save for a generic png just slapped on and what's super crazy is it's not even slapped on correctly as i discovered a glitch i've dubbed the rorke scale as it was the first gym leader rook who i initially discovered it with which you briefly saw in the glitches showcase from the gameplay section but i'll explain now in better detail so the first time you face a gym leader their sprite will always seem to be around this right-ish point any subsequent times which includes even just opening and closing the game again they seem to be randomly placed anywhere in the range of this right-ish point to around the middle of the bar the only exceptions to this rule seem to be byron and crasher wake they would still have random positions across the bar but within a much smaller and different range with wake's range being the smallest you might not even be able to tell the positions are different at first glance but you can tell by looking closely at the squares behind him so not only are the visuals of the gym leader versus screens just these ugly almost barren bars that got rid of everything good about the platinum bars and now just have a silly looking png slapped on but it literally doesn't even function properly or to be more precise how closely it functions towards putting the sprite where it's supposed to go seems to be determined by pure rng as far as i can tell another good example of being faithful just being a means to be excusably bad would be the trees the year is 2021 a new aaa title has just released from the highest grossing media ip in the world and this game's environments are made up of literally the exact same tree copy pasted over and over and over go anywhere you want along the same area and you're never going to see a tree that's even slightly different from any of the others besides why would you even consider having your environments be made up of more than literally one tree when doing that would no longer be faithful i've played indie games made by just a small handful of people where this isn't even a problem i've also played a decent bit of planet coaster on this channel which is the spiritual successor to roller coaster tycoon which is all about building and managing an amusement park when i'm developing the environment in my parks i don't just copy paste the exact same tree over and over in a perfect grid with the exact same alignment please i have standards i'll select the first kind of tree put it in one place rotate it 90 degrees put it in a pretty different place rotate it so on after i've got a good rough distribution of tree type 1 then i'll move on to tree type 2 where i start putting it around semi-randomly always with a bit of different rotation before each placement i'll repeat this until i've gone through all the different types of trees i wanted to place down that match my theme and this game really needs more winter trees and then i start placing down my rocks i'll place rocks down similarly to the trees but i also only have so many rock models to work with so i'll get creative by merging some rocks together to create brand new rock formations i'll tinker around with the placement and rotation of these and hey presto i have my environment around my rides mate people watching my planet coaster streams sometimes like to be like you're really going to all this effort just for the one ride it's like that thanos quote but instead of all that for a drop of blood it's like all that for a merry-go-round heck yeah all that for a merry-go-round i don't care about trying to make the most profitable park possible i grew up playing so much roller coaster tycoon that i've gotten tired of doing purely that now i care a lot more about making an end product that i can be proud of i'm no expert designer by any means but whether i'm playing planet coaster or minecraft or what have you i still give it my best effort to create something that i can look at and be proud of give my best effort to make something visually appealing and really immerse you into the world it really is a shame the highest grossing media ip in the world doesn't seem to feel the same it's also not just the trees that were left exactly as is but the whole environments so going in and out of this gym is just a one tile wide space between the trees and the building narrow single tile environments are actually the biggest pain to get through with the open movement and you even need to use the open movement in some cases if you don't want a glitch to take away all your progress getting here there's even some rock climb spots to interact with that you literally can't even see and you need to wiggle around spamming a until you find it because nearby buildings completely block the visual indicators this wasn't even a problem in the originals as far as i'm where aware it is that rocks back there what the you can't even see them are you kidding me you literally can't even see the rocks the building's in the way this is so dumb okay you can see it from here but like it's so you can't what is this overall the game aesthetics when i say aesthetics i'm referring to aesthetics as part of the mda framework for those who aren't familiar mda mechanics dynamics and aesthetics is one of the lenses through which to analyze a game mechanics are the game mechanics what are the rules to your game what's possible and how so things like you can use a move on a wild pokemon and if you choose you can throw one of your pokeballs to try and catch it which has some percentage chance of happening based on a few things dynamics is what actually happens in your game so dynamics here may be i use tackle on the wild pokemon to reduce its hp and i chose to throw a standard pokeball and i wound up catching the pokemon aesthetics is how the dynamics actually make the player feel how does playing this game make the player feel so maybe i felt happy that i caught the pokemon for example so in the mda framework the mechanics result in the dynamics and the dynamics result in the aesthetics so let's use another quick example the mechanics here are that the game will trigger this event of this guy telling you to turn back because sunny shore is having an outage if you cross a certain line in front of him but only if no other event is currently taking place so the dynamics for what i did while playing is i hatched an egg on the exact spot that his event would normally take place skipping his event and allowing me to move past the aesthetics here would be how it made me feel which could be accomplished relieved that it worked excited for getting to sunnyshore early so this overall experience accounting for both the gameplay and visuals what were the aesthetics of this game to me how did this game make me feel to me this game feels dated like it belongs in the past or as a mobile app i feel like this is what we might have seen diamond and pearl as had it been a 2007 home console game rather than handheld game it feels like it would make a really good fan game but a really bad aaa game i felt bored from never getting challenged and playing close to the same game i just played a few months prior except with even less content i felt incredibly disappointed knowing that the one time i'd be seeing a remake of this region that started out my pokemon journey turned out like this i felt manipulated and like the consumers are being played for fools by having half the game data installed locally for this game that sold 6 million in its opening week alone a number countless other games would be ecstatic to reach in their lifetime and being given a cheaply made game by an outsourcing company that's never made a video game before i only picked up this game for review purposes and still felt scammed i can only imagine what it'd be like actually going into this with high expectations there were some brief respite i would be charmed by things like the battle environments or the human battle models and animations like seriously look at this man but any positive feelings are just completely overshadowed by the overwhelming disappointment of this game that was slapped together solely to make easy money off of nostalgia [Music] with a name like acoustic armonia music is absolutely one of the aspects i'm most passionate about in regards to games unfortunately i didn't actually get to experience the remastered soundtrack during my playthrough since i played without the literal other half of the game patch and on launch i struggled to actually even find the remastered soundtrack to tune into because countless music channels were confused like wait which one is the remaster and which one is the placeholder so people were uploading the placeholder as if it was the actual remastered themes when it wasn't what a mess since then however it's now a lot easier to actually find the remastered soundtrack and i've listened through the full nearly 5 hour long soundtrack for the sake of this video so how is the remastered soundtrack in this game it's pretty great yeah it slaps pretty hard it incorporates so much more of an orchestra than was possible with the original titles the route themes were already so pleasant to listen to in the original and now it's even more so i could totally see myself using the soundtrack of this game in the backgrounds of more videos in the future a lot of the parts of this game feel like this is better than the originals in these ways worse than the original slash platinum in these ways and it's a whole mixed bag but i can say wholeheartedly i believe the soundtrack is better in every way well if you install the missing half of the game that is my only real complaint with the soundtrack is i do wish a lot more of it was like a remix than a remaster change more things around to help it stand out from the original take champion cynthia's battle theme for example that still uses a lot of the weird electronic-y sounds that just don't really do it for me imagine if these electronic-y sounds were instead say a violin or something like that that'd be so dang epic and add a new flair to this theme or maybe add some new tunes in the mix that weren't in the original rather than just making what feels like a simple upscaled version of the original [Music] it's still better than the original but it could be even better than that is what i mean take the smash remix of cynthia's theme for example it's still the same tune same feel as the original but a distinctly different new and vivid theme compared to the original as opposed to bdsp's cynthia theme which just feels like an upscaled version of the same theme so for whatever reason i would continue getting copyright claimed at this point in the video for champion cynthia's theme from pokemon black and white which isn't even the current cover that you're listening to and it always being claimed by a group that i have never even heard of so that's certainly something so enjoy my additional talking here to help fill in the void and make this audio a little bit different so that fingers crossed this doesn't get copyright claimed but we'll see now for another example let's listen to the pokemon masters version of cynthia's theme [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for another example of official remixes that can really take a soundtrack to the next level let's go to zinnia's theme this battle theme was already absolutely incredible and great proof of how awesome violins can be the smash ultimate remix not only improved on it but introduced brand new elements as well [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] and how about the pokemon masters remix [Music] [Music] or for another example a theme from xenoblade chronicles and its remaster on the switch the final dungeon of the game the end lies ahead [Music] [Music] this was already an absolutely incredible theme in the original so they expanded on that and introduced new elements these new elements help make these remixes still feel like the originals and yet also distinctly different as if it's been brought to a whole new level [Music] so while a lot of the soundtrack of pokemon brilliant diamond in shining pearl is really good i feel like it could have been elevated to a whole new level if it incorporated more remixes rather than just remasters it's not like this is a criticism only for brilliant diamond and shining pearl i honestly feel like most remakes and remasters i play could do this way better for example i felt like it could have been a much more pervasive aspect of pokemon mystery dungeon rescue team dx and i loved that game but my goodness i'd be lying if i said the final boss theme wasn't an incredible disappointment of a missed opportunity for something so much better i'd love to see more remakes out there in the gaming industry as a whole that did more remixes instead of just remasters to hear something with still the same feel but distinctly different and like it's the next step forward in depth for this music so most of the music in this game is a remaster from the originals there's not really a massive ton to say about them apart from them just being better than the originals however there are a few themes new to this game what with the newly repurposed area of romanesque park the brand new music to brilliant diamond and shining pearl is romanus park minor legendary battle and major legendary battle so let's go through them but remember how i mentioned my game bugged the heck out and hard locked me out of post game yeah so keep in mind i didn't actually get to experience these themes in actual gameplay so i don't really know how it feels when paired with the gameplay it'd occur in i'll get back to you on that front when home compatibility releases for this game so i can trade myself the pokemon i'm bugged out of getting the entries for otherwise or maybe i won't so reminisce park it definitely fits the theme of theirs imposing legendary pokemon around here but it's not like they're out in here right now so i don't feel like it has to embrace this feel this much right now and it also doesn't really give any other feels or themes here it doesn't really feel like i'm exploring around a mythical mysterious place where i can discover legendary pokemon instead it just kind of feels like some evil force is about to jump me at any moment now the legendary battle themes i'm kind of pairing them together as the major legendary battle theme is essentially a more intense version of the minor legendary battle theme which first off i really like that touch it makes these feel like similar but different situations by using the same light motifs these battle themes honestly these are pretty freaking awesome it's honestly really epic and it hits a lot of different feels throughout it it would have been really neat to see more actual new stuff in these games over their originals and therefore more new music so my overall verdict on the soundtrack it's still really really dumb that you need to install it and a lot of other essential portions of the experience as part of the facade of the day one patch that means that anybody without the internet connection without the space or just playing it sometime after nintendo support of the switch is long done will be subjugated to an awful version of the soundtrack that's straight up worse than the originals but if you do decide to let them get away with putting the other half of the game on your shoulders rather than theirs this actually is a really really good remastered soundtrack an absolute joy to listen to my only real complaint with the remastered soundtrack is i do wish there could have been more new elements in these classic themes give them some new twists throw in some more remixes over remasters this is something i don't really see happening in like 90 percent of remake remasters i've played though so it's not like it's all that out of the ordinary but it's something i really wish i'd see more games do as for the small smidge of brand new romanus park just really doesn't do anything for me but those legendary battle themes are awesome i'd say the soundtrack of this game is easily the best part about it and i'd highly recommend checking out the soundtrack if you haven't already oh [Music] this is a chapter i wasn't originally planning on doing it's a main series pokemon story after all which naturally means it's going to have a super fascinating world and lore but a story that doesn't really capitalize on or explain much of anything unless your name is poke on black and white but while doing my playthrough of this game over on twitch which you should totally check out by the way eventually the conversation got to the original diamond and pearl manga i recalled i'd read a series way back it was diamond and pearl adventures which to this day is the only manga i've ever read and this was the spin-off series they had apparently there was a main series one as well that was more true to the games but i never read that one but i remembered i still had this series on my shelf and so i gradually read through the series as my playthrough of bdsp went on it really helped to open my eyes to how much more these characters could be take cyrus for example he's a real imposing threat that feels way stronger than the heroes after being pursued by our hero the hero is able to narrowly take out cyrus's first pokemon after a hard-fought battle and he says you might be a bad guy who does really rotten things but this battle is super fun you're really good cyrus hides a small grin fun in a pokemon battle when was the last time he was able to have a bit of fun like this but soon his grin turns to shock how could he have possibly thought such a thing having fun from a battle how was this kid able to put such ideas into his head he's too dangerous to be left alive cyrus immediately pulls out one of his most powerful pokemon to destroy the bridge they were on and seemingly leave the hero for dead in the river below he's exasperated sweating he was truly afraid for a moment there about what a danger this kid could be to his resolve brilliant diamond and shining pearl story on the other hand is literally just angry chibi man wants to make a new universe and that's it he never feels like a real threat just some guy you see from time to time for an excuse of an antagonist he's never humanized never really feeling threatened by the player you just kind of show up beat him and oh no my plans you've beaten me adventures was also able to paint a better picture of his convictions showing his mentality of the ends justify the means and exactly what he's willing to sacrifice to create what he truly believes would be a better world in bdsp he just wants to remake the world because you know honestly i don't know why adventures shows how much cyrus commanders idolized him and how imposing cyrus can be after defeating saturn at the lake cyrus removes saturn as a member of team galactic being a commander who lost to such a new trainer saturn is devastated by this begging for forgiveness it's as if his life has just been ruined when he finds an opening saturn uses it to catch the hero by surprise in a desperate attempt to regain cyrus's favor he is allowed back into team galactic but on a short leash in bdsp we never see anything even remotely like this and hear literally nothing of the relationship between cyrus and the galactic commanders we also see cyrus humanized here he truly believed he was in the right and doing what's best so even after his plans are ruined and he learns that he cannot create his new world after all he'll still do what's right and he's the one at the end who tells the hero what he needs to hear to save the world bdsp defeat angry chibi man and ah you ruined my plans i will still find a new way to make my new world and then you never see him again adventures you get to see conflict amidst team galactic volumes one to five focused on the diamond and pearl plot and six to eight factored in platinum elements such as giratina and cheren as another team galactic commander after cyrus's plans fail charon assumes command of team galactic and imprisons cyrus and forces him to watch the new direction for team galactic cyrus chooses to remain prisoner he failed as the leader of team galactic and he wants to see if cheren's new direction and world view is what team galactic truly needed cyrus and sharon are motivated by very different things cyrus developed a hatred for the world that i honestly wish we could have seen be explored in more depth he wanted to create a new world what in his mind would be a utopia and believe the end justified the means he truly believed himself to be a hero to a new world even if that meant being a villain to a world not worth saving charon on the other hand is purely selfish motivated purely by money and power we get to see the conflict between these two team galactic leaders that take this organization in very different directions and how it divides team galactic we even see cyrus and the galactic commanders working together with the heroes by the end to stop cheering's plot to control giratina in bdsp there is no charon there is no conflict within team galactic there is no humanization or redemption for cyrus even in platinum i think i only saw cheering like twice in the main story as far as i remember and i don't think he did anything he was just kind of there hanging out i guess i mean he did try to control heatran for selfish reasons in post game so we at least see a smidge of this although it could have been done way better and bdsp doesn't even attempt anything with him at all he doesn't exist how does it feel to be stricken from the cannon sharon and more importantly looker too the story of these games is literally just oh no evil baddies are trying to recreate the universe stop them from doing that wow you did it great job main series pokemon games have always had pretty simplistic plots that very infrequently have much depth but why does it have to be this way they always have such fascinating and in-depth lore why can't that be used to make a fascinating and in-depth plot with characters the player can be genuinely interested in adventures is a good example of how the current generation 4 plot could be adapted to have leagues more depth and this is without even talking about how the hero is able to change others around them how other characters could be set down a wrong path but find true happiness in a new path how new characters can become more important figures that have direct impacts in the story being told a remake was the one opportunity to tell an incredible version of this story within the games but apparently being faithful is more important than being good i don't think adventures is a flawless version of what could have been done with generation 4's plot there were definitely some things i think could have been handled better or differently but i do think it's a good example to show that even using the exact same premise it's possible to craft a league's better plot too bad we'll never get to see anything remotely like that in these games leaving the story completely unchanged has even more consequences than just having a crummy story this is a series after all so sometimes titles will draw connections to other titles five years ago with pokemon sun and moon we saw the lore of this story have ties to sinnoh a specialized pokemon was created to combat ultra beasts codenamed the beast killer beast killers would have the ability to switch between types by holding the corresponding memory with this ability coming from research done in the sinnoh region in canalave this ability would come to be known as the rks system and was derived from the ability of the sino-mythical pokemon arceus the ability even matches the name rks arceus as is the correct pronunciation of arceus though i just prefer saying arceus because of the ability to embrace every type these pokemon were given the name type full and three of these test subjects were successfully given the rks system however all three subjects bodies rejected the rks system and went berserk as a response these pokemon were given limiter helmets to lessen the effect of the rks system's rejection and it put them into cryogenic stasis the project was deemed a failure and the pokemon were renamed to type null gladion however frees one of the type null saving it and hoping to find a way to free the shackles of this limiter helmet and allow type null to use the full power of the rks system he forms a bond with type null and it's this friendship that allows his partner to shed this helmet and evolve into silvally a pokemon able to make full use of the ability stolen from arceus a second one of these type null is eventually given to the player the third subject however its whereabouts are completely unknown perhaps it was somewhere in sinnoh it's where the ability was first researched after all there was technically a type null in pokemon sword and shield but according to bulbapedia this one was created by chairman rose's company by using research notes stolen from alola this is not the third missing type null from sun and moon the fate of this one is a mystery to this day so the story you're telling in these games includes a plot point which is left hanging implied to have the gap eventually filled in with later games it's chekhov's gun you've left it on the wall creating intrigue for when the day comes that that gun is eventually fired for when we get closure to this part of the plot which must have been included for a reason the aether foundation seemed to have a strong fascination with sinnoh and it was research in sinnoh that allowed them to recreate arceus's ability with the rks system as a method of combating ultra beasts this naturally meant that if there was ever to be a generation 4 remake we would have some ties to this plot and maybe it would enlighten us about the fate of the mysterious third type null so what does brilliant diamond and shining pearl do you guessed it nothing it's been five years and the game that would have been the natural stepping stone to resolve this plotline instead completely ignores it if you take the time to really delve into pokemon sun and moon lore especially surrounding the aether foundation and type null it's clear these games were building up to something that would have to do with sinnoh and as if we would only get to see how this lore unfolds when the day comes that we eventually revisit the sino region again five years back that this lore was established is a long time it's technically even longer ago than that when you consider how these pieces had to be made before they were ever even on a game release to the public this plotline and lore has to have been created far before brilliant diamond shining pearl would have been in production so what i honestly think happened is that there were plans to develop this lore about type null and the aether foundation within sinnoh when sinner remakes rolled around that would expand on modern standards it was probably only later that some higher-ups decided wait this is pokemon main series pokemon at that and with a label of diamond and pearl this is gonna sell insanely well no matter what so why should we even go to the effort of making a new sinnoh that expands on what's been established by its predecessors when we can just get this outsourcing company to faithfully remake the original games we see them care a lot about penny pinching and maximizing profits considering chapter 2 with the cartridge issue and trying to incentivize consumers to get both versions and almost everything about the state this game shipped in and i mean to be fair sure any company will try to maximize its profits but when you're doing so by trampling on the passion and creative vision that would otherwise be possible to see pursued in a meaningful way it's just disgraceful so before we wrap up let's quickly speed round through all my pros and cons most of which were mentioned throughout the course of this video but some other minor things may not have been if it didn't feel worthy of having a dedicated section to talk about the pros of brilliant diamond and shining pearl the distortion room is pretty neat and the shadow guaranteeing a boss fight is honestly pretty awesome the elite four and champion rematches that go so far as to make cynthia tougher than red is honestly pretty neat pokemon dens is a cool new feature hms being gone is pretty nice most of the battle environments are pretty cool along with the human character models associated with them the remastered soundtrack is great the cons of brilliant diamond in shining pearl it doesn't do anything to expand on modern standards like literally every other pokemon remake ever made does these games employ the crummy gaming industry practices of exploiting the fear of missing out to increase sales these titles were developed by an outsourcing company who's never actually made a video game before and while what they do is help with video games their actual work experience is a complete mystery to save on production costs nearly half the game's data was cut to be put behind a day one patch so they could be shipped on the cheaper smaller cartridge sizes this means that storage space on your switch is used up to provide room for what's supposed to be on the shoulder of the producer if you're buying physical and also means that if you don't have the storage space for it internet access or the nintendo service for the switch has been shut down once these games are as old as the titles they're based on you can never experience the opening cinematic title screen soundtrack closing cinematic or literally any of post game and this makes even diamond and pearl the better versions if the day one patch is out of the question all of the actual new features are just worse versions of what's been seen in previous games such as legendary pokemon follow pokemon trainer customization and pokemon existing in the world are single use and you also need to grind for who knows how long in the grand underground to get more uses of most tms platinum changes are gone which means no improved buildings and themes no diversified teams no change story events no chairing no looker no wi-fi plaza no back button on the poke meaning if you go too many pages forward you need to cycle all the way back around again no actual good gym leader versus bars and the implemented versions don't even function correctly no battle factory no battle arcade no battle castle no battle hall secret bases are gone replaced with an over glorified menu option pokemon contests have been replaced with one note guitar hero the global trade station is gone replaced with the far inferior global wonder station the game shipped incomplete at launch you had no global wonder station no union room with more than two people and no home compatibility all these things are still unavailable even after over two months since launch no new looks for the characters the way characters were redesigned in previous pokemon remakes characters are now less charming than the originals because of the power of charm and nostalgia that clean pixel graphics can have as demonstrated by games like octopath traveler that are new but still feel nostalgic and charming with clean and while there are charming new full models for each of these characters they're reserved exclusively for battles meanwhile in the world that you're actually playing in 90 of the time you've got these janky looking characters that look like they belong in a mobile game i would also argue even the official looks of the characters are way less charming than the originals faithfully recreating the world that only existed at the time because that's what the available technology at the time was when it was trying to represent something so much grander but now that that technology exists they just do the exact same thing everybody except for the player always needing to follow this insanely dated and clunky grid-based movement the open movement in a world designed for our grid results in some events not even registering properly such as double battles the world being kept as it is tile for tile results in a very clunky experience for open movement especially through narrow corridors where you're constantly hitting walls ledges that only work if you take them at perfect 90 degree angles areas where you literally can't even see what it is you need to interact with to progress grass and environments that do not at all look natural trees that are literally one model only for every given area that's just pasted around over and over it's so incredibly dated and not the kind of thing you'd expect from a 2021 aaa title from the highest grossing media ip areas that were designed for rewards around a specific hm no longer have any meaning in the originals here's a tree to chop with an item behind if one of your current party pokemon you're adventuring with nose cut you get the reward if not you don't now that you always have every hm after obtaining it there is no question of whether you get it or not you will always have access to the reward no matter what which invalidates any reason to have an hm interactable thing here in the first place why were the areas not redesigned to account for a new reward system instead of just handing every possible reward from the original games to the player at no cost the entrances in deforests just look like somebody somehow got a coffee stain on a digital texture apart from the player's bike every other bike looks like it would belong in a game like a roblox a remake being the one opportunity to fix and build on an otherwise mediocre story but nothing of the sort was even attempted not possible to go on this classic journey with new pokemon since the time of the originals gen 5 pokemon and onward are just completely unavailable the exact same diamond and pearl decks not being able to get even several of the new generation 4 evolutions until post-game what platinum pokemon there are in the grand underground just straight up don't get pokedex entries until post game it's impossible to trade or battle with any other switch pokemon games if you want to play with your friends who don't have the same games as you you need to shell out for more games or more services you still need to see every pokemon for your sinnoh decks before you're allowed to access postgame this also results in some really dumb cases like needing to wait anywhere up to a week before you're allowed to play post game if you didn't suck at basic math and fantina's gym to see driftloon 4cxp share results in the player gaining a ludicrous amount more experience and levels than in the original games and yet the trainers all keep their exact same teams and levels which result in the player becoming insanely over leveled even from just fighting the trainers along the way without any grinding the pokemon league running builds that far outclassed the player to the point that some are even banned in actual competitive pokemon the combination of the entire game before the league being so incredibly easy and the league designed to be so incredibly hard leaves this game without a target audience it clearly doesn't target newcomers looking for an easy time and clearly doesn't target hardcore fans who want a challenge no difficulty modes which could have fixed that last issue pokemon friendship having you break the game and potentially get free bailouts from any potentially challenging situation based off of pure rng to the point that apparently a lot of people have recommended players to make their pokemon hate them to get a better gameplay experience so these friendship events don't trigger there has to be something seriously wrong where in a game about making connections with your pokemon people are recommending you to get your pokemon to hate you for a better gameplay experience being handed a couple mythical pokemon shortly after your first gym if you have save data for the other switch pokemon titles further breaks the game balance games such as sun and moon were hinting at a larger picture lore connection to sinnoh and with pokemon like type null in silvally pokemon created based off of research in sinnoh and with an ability based off of arceus's it seemed like if there was ever to be a generation 4 remake this plot point could be given insight and closure in a meaningful way after five years of fans waiting to see how this story would develop this plot point was instead left completely abandoned chekhov's gun being left unfired and forgotten facial details not even loading things not being lined up like all the time textures in this game sometimes acting like the original games would on emulator where you've got thin black bars or dots separating some textures yes they kept it faithful to the emulated versions countless additional visual glitches look i'm going easy on it here i could have easily listed every other visual glitch i ran into on my playthrough alone a lot of ways you can soft lock yourself in some places the movement just straight up doesn't work due to glitches glitches that don't seem like they'd break too much can apparently just snowball into absolute craziness like hard locking you out of post game as a whole being the most glitchy pokemon games in the entire series after the original several if anything these games truly are brilliant and shining proof of the power and influence both a brand name and nostalgia can have these games are below mediocre at best but with a name like pokemon and a label like diamond and pearl they'll easily sell more in a week without even breaking a sweat than most games could hope to achieve in their lifetime it really is a shame with so many ips out there that have to fight their hardest to be relevant and make people genuinely interested whereas for established powerhouses that are going to sell well no matter what continuing to grow and improve becomes optional it becomes a matter of how do they want to make their revenue quality or quantity do you want to work at making breathtaking games no matter how long it takes and create something that will have incredible sales or do you want to pump out many low production games that don't really do anything new because you know with your brand name that each title is still going to do pretty well for itself after all several low production games selling pretty well for themselves will probably be more profitable than one high production game that sells incredibly well insert whatever shooter game here insert whatever sports game here insert pokemon here maybe it doesn't have to be that way though legends arceus is right around the corner maybe it will be the prophesized chosen one to break the cycle i worry that it won't but i really truly hope i'm proven wrong pokemon is such an important game series to me pokemon mystery dungeon blue rescue team was my first ever handheld game i played and first pokemon game and playing diamond and pearl helped forge incredible connections that i deeply treasure to this day pokemon mystery dungeon explorers of sky is straight up my favorite game of all time as an experience that truly changed my life i really want to see the series be the best it can be brilliant diamond and shining pearl unfortunately did the opposite in that regard things are really banking on legends now i feel like it really has the potential to be one of the best pokemon games ever made or one of the worst pokemon games ever made let's hope it's the former and that with it we can look toward the future for this incredibly impactful brand not with disdain but with a smile thank you for watching the video you

Channel: AcousticHarmonia

Views: 958,272

Keywords: pokemon brilliant diamond, pokemon shining pearl, pokemon brilliant diamond shining pearl review, pokemon brilliant diamond shining pearl criticism, pokemon bdsp review, pokemon bdsp criticism, pokemon bdsp essay, pokemon diamond pearl remakes, pokemon review, pokemon bdsp, brilliant diamond, shining pearl, pokemon, ilca, pokemon brilliant diamond shining pearl essay, brilliant diamond shining pearl analysis

Id: kQbEE_HYpJw

Length: 139min 52sec (8392 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 23 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Gulopithecus]

To clarify, while this might not be a true "BreadTube" video, this review essay brings up topics like FOMO (such as with preorder bonus content) content-cutting, and annual releases and how they negatively impact the quality and artistic integrity of a video game, if not a franchise as a whole. While it doesn’t specifically say capitalism itself is to blame, one can certainly put two and two together to see how late capitalism is the root cause of these issues within the gaming industry.