Don't crack it! You don't need to watch this review of
Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. It's just not really necessary, is it? If you're disappointed with the games and
the general direction the Pokemon series has been going--like I am--then nothing in
this review will surprise you. I do suppose that sometimes it's cathartic to listen to
someone being critical of something that you yourself are critical of. If that's the case then
I suppose I can't BLAME you for sticking around. But if that's not you--if you find
yourself annoyed by my constant Pokemon-related complaints--then I also assure
you that nothing here will come as a surprise. Frankly, I don't even know why you clicked
this video. You know what you're getting yourself into with these! If you do not heed
my warning and click away now, then I cannot be held responsible for any annoyance that you may
feel in the coming half-hour or so. This is Arlo, reviewing a Pokemon game. You have been warned.
Before we begin, please keep in mind that this is a very very subjective and straightforward review.
Many people will review a remake ONLY as a remake, and focus mainly on improvements and changes.
Many others have reviewed these games with more experience, and can tell you all the stuff
that's bad now, but it was good in Platinum! Me? I don't know how much of these games are
perfectly faithful. I don't know how much of them would have been different if they'd just been
Platinum instead. I'm just looking at them as games. I'll talk about how they're remakes, sure,
but just remember that I'm giving you my feelings on my experiences, whether those experiences
reflect Diamond and Pearl as they always were, or reflect only these remakes.
Another note, it's really annoying to have to constantly refer to a set of Pokemon
games as plural, when they're really just one game with the slightest differences, so I'm just
gonna refer to them as one game from now on. Well, even if it has no real cultural value,
and contributes nothing good to society, instead only contributing to an
ever-growing sense of snobbish entitlement in the realm of electronic toys that
were never meant to be played by myself nor most of the people watching this, here's my review
of Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. First things first, my history with this
game. I played the original on the DS, and I didn't really enjoy it. This was strange,
because as a kid I was OBSESSED with Pokemon, and just a few years prior had really enjoyed
Ruby and Sapphire. I had loved every Pokemon game I'd ever played up to that point, but
something about this one just didn't gel with me. It felt very rote. It had all the
elements that make up a Pokemon game, but somehow it felt like the heart was missing.
The charm. That little bit of personality to make the experience stick in my mind. Generations
2 and 3 had added so much to the series, both visually AND mechanically, while
each having their own unique identities. But gen 4 just felt like gen 3 but with 3D houses.
I was really surprised. 3D graphics of any kind SHOULD have made a huge difference, and there
was even some touch screen stuff... But I don't know. I just didn't like it. It felt like the
paint-by-numbers equivalent of a Pokemon game. Over the years I heard a lot of great things about
gen 4. Plenty of people have said that it was the last time Pokemon was truly great--or at least
close to the last time. I thought maybe I just didn't play gen 4 at the right stage in my life.
I mean I was a newly-minted adult with a job and college and friends and I didn't have as much time
for games. Maybe my head just wasn't in it! Once my life had settled down a
bit I really liked gen 5... So I was willing to consider that maybe Diamond
and Pearl were better than I first thought. ESPECIALLY because one of my biggest problems
with Sword and Shield was the lack of any real, interesting level design. A cool overworld with
lots of caves and power plants and that kind of dungeony stuff? Nope! Not at all! Sword and
Shield was really just one big string of simple, linear pathways leading from town to town,
with the Wild Area trying its hardest to pick up the slack but not quite succeeding.
So after THAT monumental disappointment, and after hearing so many people praise Diamond
and Pearl, I was genuinely excited to try out a remake! I really tried to go in with an open
mind! But unfortunately, I didn't have to play the game for long before the very same "been
there, done that" feeling started to set in. You start in a little town with four buildings.
You live in the lower-right one with your mom. You have a rival, and this time his thing
is that he's...got ADHD, I guess? There's an old professor guy who wants you to fill up your
Pokedex. There's a bad guy team, and they want to use a legendary Pokemon to destroy everything
and recreate it in their own image...AGAIN, but with a DIFFERENT legendary Pokemon this time.
I know what you're probably thinking, and no, I don't believe it's necessarily a bad thing to have
recurring tropes and themes in your games. Heck, Zelda is the ultimate champion there. But you've
got to do SOMETHING original with each iteration. There's got to be SOMETHING to set it apart.
It can't just feel like a fill-in-the-blank. And to me, that's what Diamond and Pearl is.
It's just the same thing again and that's it. Gosh, I talked a lot of trash about Sword and
Shield's story, but I have to give it at least a LITTLE credit for having SOME sense of character!
The rival is the little brother of the previous champion, so he has more motivation than most to
be the best. The bad guy is a SECRET bad guy! It's not a very good secret, and his motivations
make very little sense, but look! At least an ATTEMPT to be different! And the bad guy team is
actually a team of groupies that are in love with one of the gym leaders? It's something!
But Diamond and Pearl has none of that. It's got a few characters that check up on you
every once in a while, but encounters with them are so infrequent and brief that none of them
make a lasting impression. The gym leaders try to be interesting and make you find them and stuff,
but you just roll in, do whatever they want, blast them to smithereens and skadootle on out of there
in a flash. The bad guys are just mindless drones, and I get that that's kind of the point, but the
schtick gets old REALLY fast. And their boss, the main villain? He's just called "BOSS."
Like, he doesn't even have a name! He's just BOSS. What is this, Paper Mario? Is "Boss" its own
separate race of humanoid creatures or something? And I'll talk more about how the visual
style impacts the game's locations later, but for now I'll say that the world itself is
also greatly lacking in charm. All the towns and roads blend together. They just don't
have much to set them apart besides a few decent exceptions. Oof, and the wild Pokemon
encounters. How many Pokemon were there by gen 4? Like 500 or something? So why am I still
seeing the same handful of Pokemon in nearly every single patch of grass? Why is it still
90% Geodudes and Zubats whenever I go in a cave? Why is it so hard to find something I want to
raise when there are SO MANY POTENTIAL OPTIONS? Speaking of which, remember how Let's Go Pikachu
and Eevee revamped the encounter system so you could actually see Pokemon walking around? And
then Sword and Shield gave us the perfect mix of the new system and classic, random encounters?
*fart noise* None of that here. We've gone all the way back to the original system. Oh, and not only
that, but when you're running there's no minimum number of steps required to get into an encounter,
so you can literally take one step into the grass, get into a fight, run away, take
another step, get into another fight, run away, and get into another fight a few steps
after that. And that might sound like a rare, worst case scenario, but no, it happens quite a
lot! I at least THINK walking makes it better, but that's annoying in its own way. And the
return of random encounters means the return of me being super annoyed when traveling through
grass and caves and stuff. Yes, repels do exist, but they're harder to come by earlier in the game
and they last like two seconds. If a previous remake changed the encounter system, there's no
reason they couldn't have done the same here. The end result of all this--the blase world and
characters, the mega basic story, the agonizingly small selection of wild Pokemon, the frustrating
return of purely random encounters--is a game that just feels like it's going through the motions.
And I just feel like I'm going through the motions when I'm playing it. I'm just trying to get to
the end of each section. Just trying to get to the next town so I can beat the gym leader and
get the badge and head to the next boring town. Gee Arlo, why don't you tell us how you REALLY
feel? Yeah, I got some angry feelings on the game. I do have to say however, the Grand Underground
is kind of cool. It's not quite enough to hinge a whole game on, but I do have to give credit where
credit's due. At any time you can pop down there, and it's a positively sprawling series of tunnels.
There are tons of caves to poke around in, and here you'll actually get more of a variety
of wild Pokemon. These caves utilize the newer encounter system. So like, it IS in the game.
It's just...only down here. *sigh* Whatever. Gotta count my blessings, I guess! A win's a win!
So that's fun, but my favorite thing about the Grand Underground is this little mining minigame.
You've got to try and break gems and stuff out of the walls before the space you're digging
in collapses. I don't end up using any of the stuff I get, but it's still fun to do. And
really, I'm sure the whole Grand Underground is great for people who are really into the game.
I'm a casual player; I just want to raise some cool Pokemon and play through the story. But
for anyone who plays a lot more seriously, and can really use all the items and extra
Pokemon down here, and wants to take part in the social aspect? This is a pretty cool feature.
And the same goes for the post game. No spoilers (if you would even consider the post game of a
Pokemon title a spoiler) but there's some fun stuff to do after the credits roll, and a heck of
a lot more battles to take part in. I hear it's not as much as it was in Platinum, and you can't
do a lot of it until you fill out your Sinnoh Dex, which is disappointing. I don't really feel like
bothering with that. But again, more serious players will enjoy having a bunch of extra stuff
to do. And I also must give credit here, because Sword and Shield didn't have much of a post
game to speak of (paid DLC doesn’t quite count), and Let's Go didn't even have the post game
content from Fire Red and Leaf Green! It's nice that there is indeed a reason to keep playing
at the end of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl! And while we're comparing and giving credit, I
know I've complained a lot about how bland the world is, but at the very least it is a WORLD.
It has some of those dungeony areas I missed in Sword and Shield. Navigating caves and bad
guy headquarters and such is a decent time. There are secrets to find, and you're rewarded
for going everywhere and talking to everyone. Even if it's bland, it's not awfully
designed or anything. It is, at its core, a fine Pokemon world. If it was my first,
I'm sure I would like it a whole lot more. OKAY, it’s time to talk about it. The primary
internet angry thing with the game. Da GRAPHIX. In theory, returning to a chibi art style could
be seen as an artistic choice. Little sprites are charming in their own way after all, and
this does set the game apart from other modern Pokemon titles. But it is very difficult for
me to see this as an artistic choice, and not just a way to cut corners. And that’s because
the WHOLE GAME feels like one giant cut corner. First off, the characters don’t look cute or
fun or anything. They look BAD. I’m already not a fan of the chibi style in the context of
a remake. As I went on and on about in my Link’s Awakening remake review, games used to use little
sprites because that’s all they could get away with without looking weird. That was how artists
were able to create nice-looking, sometimes even expressive characters using very few pixels. But a
remake should enhance and modernize a game so that it feels like the original if the original
were created today. If they had this tech back then, what would the game look like?
I guarantee it wouldn’t look like this. These characters are just plain ugly. They’re
stocky and bulgy and gross, and despite sporting simple face textures stretched over the fronts
of their heads that should be very easy to swap out depending on the situation, they barely
ever change their expressions. I’ve played N64 games where the characters emoted more than
this. Sometimes you’re talking to someone who’s trying to be all intimidating, or trying
to give you a sentimental speech, but it’s hard to take them seriously when they look like a
ridiculous little Funko Pop knockoff or something. But it’s not just the chibi thing. It’s hard
to see so many people who think it’s just the chibi thing that complainers like myself don’t
like, because it goes far, far beyond that. To bring up Link’s Awakening and Let’s Go
Pikachu/Eevee again, as with those two games, I hate that this is another square-for-square
remake. Same as the chibi style, I just think it’s a wasted opportunity to modernize these games, and
using a simple grid-based style feels like more of a cost-cutting measure than an artistic choice. Ah
man, creating a grass pattern that looks at least ALMOST natural? No way, then this wouldn’t be
a FAITHFUL remake! *laughs* How convenient. It’s just such a bummer, and it really brings
the experience down. I already talked about how bland and by-the-numbers I thought the original
game was, and bland, by-the-numbers visuals have done nothing to give the game’s locations
the charm and identity I felt they lacked. “Our town is the flower town!
It’s all about flowers! It’s a beautiful magical wonderland of flowers!”
“Really? Because the FOUR flower tiles copied and pasted around town in awkward
patches isn’t really selling me on that idea.” “Our city is super futuristic! It’s got this
incredible, wonder of the world solar panel bridge that connects everything! HIGH TECH! FLASHY!”
“Uh, yeah… It’s kinda cool, I guess… “Our region is split in half
by this mighty mountain, from which all of our legends were born.”
“Oh, really? There’s a mountain there? Huh. I can’t see it. You know, because of
the whole ‘top-down’ thing. Can’t look up to see the mountain. I can only go through
it with my eyes pointed straight ahead.” This was an opportunity to make the world look
the way it’s described. To make its locations pop, bring them to life, grant them a reason for being.
But you don’t get that in a square-for-square remake, do you? Nope. When all you’ve got
is a stack of tiles to recreate exactly, a CTRL key, a C key and a V key,
there isn’t much you can do at all. And here’s the thing. Even if you’re going to
go the “economical” route and create a bunch of assets that can be copied and pasted in all
their original positions so that the original and the remake are arranged IDENTICALLY… Ugh,
fine. But you’ve at least got to make it look GOOD. I don’t think Link’s Awakening’s style
is a good fit, but I can’t deny that it looks NICE. It’s shiny, it’s vibrant, it’s charming,
it’s fun to look at. Then Pokemon Let’s Go. Yeah, the style is disappointing, and it’s not nearly
as vibrant and fun, but it’s still nice in its own way. Still pleasant enough. Honestly, I thought
that was the bare minimum for a Pokemon game. I thought that was rock bottom--the absolute
lowest amount of effort that I would ever see put into Pokemon’s graphics. To me it was
cheap, but just good enough to still be okay. Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl does not look
okay. Most of the time it doesn’t look BROKEN or anything. You’re not seeing a bunch of stock
Unity assets, things aren’t glitching all over the place. It works. At a glance nothing is off.
But most of the time the visual quality ranges from “passable” to “downright bad.” Allow
me to indulge in some graphical nitpickery… One of the game’s biggest problems is that it’s
got a camera that changes angles sometimes, but it doesn’t seem like it was made to account
for that camera. The characters are whatever from a distance, but way up close is when you can
tell how bad they look, and sometimes Professor what’s-his-name’s face texture won’t even load in
properly. The overworld elements also tend to look much worse when viewed at different camera
angles. And gosh, even the camera itself--the way it swings down sometimes when you talk
to someone. It’s so jarring and awkward. Some cut corners that worked on the DS don’t
work here. The first time I reached a forest, I couldn’t figure out how to get inside. Then I
realized that the two-tree indent with the little shadow texture? THAT’S the entrance to the forest.
I mean it, I legitimately couldn’t tell at first. This is not how forest entrances
look! This is not a GAMEBOY game! Here’s a big one. Your character can move around
in all different directions, but NPCs are stuck to the grid like in the original game. During
cutscenes they walk using the grid pattern, and this is one example of something that
does indeed look ATROCIOUS. It looks TERRIBLE. That is not how you faithfully recreate a game!
You don’t keep the stuff that looks downright bad! Was that really worth the money you saved,
not animating NPCs to walk diagonally??? And don’t even get me started on the
dirt and rocks, you guys. TOO LATE, I’M STARTED. Dirt and rocks looked the way they
did back in the day, with that weird, smooth, geometric pattern forming boxes to indicate
different levels, because that was probably the only way to do it. That was the only way to
achieve the desired effect. But seeing that effect recreated in 3D? It’s dreadful. What is this? This
isn’t how games have to look anymore! Even worse, rock faces tend to have no geometry whatsoever,
and are just flat textures on planes. This looks worst with different camera angles, obviously,
but even when the camera is in its normal place the effect still just doesn’t work.
It doesn’t look like a rocky wall, it looks like a regular wall with rocks painted on
it! The first time I stepped into a cave and saw those walls, with the overly-sharp depth-of-field
effect just to make it that much worse, I audibly wondered how I could be seeing what
I was seeing in a first party Nintendo game. Maybe I am nitpicking. Maybe the
game doesn’t look THAAAAT bad… But you know what? Context matters! I’m not going
to be this harsh when it comes to an indie game. Usually indie studios are literally doing their
best with what they’ve got. But this is POKEMON. You don’t need me to go on and on about how much
money Pokemon makes; you already know! And this is not okay for a $60 game, much less one made by the
stinkin’ POKEMON COMPANY! And no, it doesn’t get a pass because it was made by a different studio. It
was still funded by Pokemon. Pokemon still called all the shots. They still decided to ship it as
it is instead of taking the time to make it look nice. It’s a rush job, pure and simple. A rush job
that manages to fall below my already rock-bottom expectations. I thought we’d seen the worst of
this series’ cheapness in Let’s Go and Sword and Shield, but here we are. And I am actually AMAZED.
Now again, I must give credit where credit is due. There are some elements of the game that
look nice. Each type of trainer has a little animation for entering battle, and one for when
they lose. These are all very short, but they look great. There’s a lot of personality packed
into them, and they’re little dollops of charm in what is otherwise a really dull, drab game.
It’s definitely disappointing to see that the animators were indeed capable of doing something
like this and simply not allowed to do more, though I guess I never really doubted the skill
of the animators. They were rushed just like everyone else. The result is a game where we get
two seconds of fun, then nothing but Funko Pops. Anyway, sorry, talking about good stuff
now. The battle backgrounds are pretty alright. They’re not amazing, but compared
to the rest of the game they look TERRIFIC. A couple of them are downright pretty. You
spend a lot of time in battle, so that’s good. And gosh, what is with the WATER? Out of
everything in the game, why is this the one thing that just looks AMAZING???
Well, amazing…SOME of the time. But not all of the time. Like, you’re in the ocean
and the water looks great. You’re in a lake, and it looks completely different, and it kind
of looks like you’re hovering ABOVE the water. Um…
O-okay. Better than looking good NONE of the time, I guess… (What on Earth?)
Other good stuff… No, I guess that’s kind of it? I actually wanted to talk more about the positives,
but those are all the standouts. Everything else is either bad or fine. Pokemon Brilliant
Diamond and Shining Pearl is a remake that comes fifteen years after the game it’s based on, and
doesn’t even look THAT much better. In fact, one could argue that it actually looks WORSE!
I mean I’ll take nice pixel graphics over bad 3D graphics any day of the week. Just
ask Golden Sun: Dark Dawn! Poor thing. That’s it for the graphics, but I’ve got a little
grab bag of additional comments on the game. I really appreciate how running shoes are on by
default and you don’t even have to hold a button to run. I want to run most of the time anyway.
But something about how collision works in this game is wonky. I get caught on everything, and in
a grid all the objects are jammed close together, so moving around is waaaaay more annoying than
it should be. It’s kind of hard to tell that there’s a problem when just watching; you’ve got
to play it to really feel how aggravating it is. Next, I love love loooove it when Pokemon
can follow me. I’m all about the fun of pretending that these creatures are real, and
it’s great to see that they’re actually there, and not just things I only see in battles. But
man, they really get in the way in this game. Were they like this in Let’s Go? Because I don’t
remember them blocking me and even warping right into my path so often. Some of them also run
really slowly, which is kind of cute because it’s more realistic, but constantly falling
behind and warping back to you…not as much. Sort of on that note, if I like immersion, then
I SHOULD like how when your Pokemon grows to love you, you start to get different little
text things about it on the field, like how happy it is! And it will find berries for you! And
sometimes it will even land a critical hit or stop itself from fainting just because it loves you!
Isn’t that fun? No! It’s not fun, because there’s a big trade-off! Pokemon battles are already
absurdly slow, but when a Pokemon loves you it constantly does little jigs in battle, like
when it enters a fight, and the game gives you all these little updates about how it’s feeling.
Not only does it waste a ton of time, but it also makes Pokemon feel a LOT less cool. You catch this
universe-destroying legendary and the game can’t stop telling you about how it’s about to cry, and
it’s thinking of your smile… The funny thing is, I liked this feature in Let’s Go! But I guess
the novelty has worn off, I’m sick of it now! Few more, lack of Platinum content, complete and
utter nonsense. It was universally deemed the superior version of the game, there is absolutely
no reason to not include it. There’s no scenario where it’s a good idea. If they try to sell
it to us as DLC, that will be awful. If they try to sell a whole third version of the game,
that will be even more awful. If they give it to us for free we’ll be happy, but lots of us will
already be done with the game, and we’ll be like “Why didn’t you give us this BEFORE?” And if
they just don’t give it to us at all, then great, we’re just stuck with the inferior version! It’s a
fifteen-year-old game; would it have actually cost more money to give us Platinum stuff? And don’t
tell me “it’s because they wanted to make the game FAITHFUL to the original” because there’s no
value in being faithful when it just makes the game worse. You want a faithful adaptation of The
Shining? Watch the awful TV movie. Want a GOOD adaptation? Watch the very different Kubrick film.
It’s way better even than the BOOK don’t @ me! *annoyed sigh* Okay, almost done. Forced Exp.
Share. It is probably wrong to have it on all the time with no option to turn it off…but
as I’ve said about it before, I’m kind of a fan? And if it was always optional I probably wouldn’t
have used it, so I’m kind of glad it’s mandatory? Each Pokemon gets the same amount of Exp. after
a battle regardless of how many are in the party, which essentially means that you’re multiplying
your gains with each additional member. This should make the game easy--and it probably
still is easy for more serious players with good builds--but for a casual player like me, it’s
decently balanced. It seems like it’s all been designed in such a way that if I have a full team
and keep my openers in rotation, fighting every trainer puts me just about at the levels of a lot
of my opponents. If I ever start pulling ahead, then I just skip a batch of trainers. Battles
are way more fun when they’re challenging, so as with Let’s Go I’ve really enjoyed a decent
number of these battles. I was actually slightly underleveled when I fought the Elite Four, so
I had to retry some of the battles quite a lot, and had a fun time. Thanks, Exp. Share!
There’s only one more thing to talk about, and there’s a good chance this will be the
most controversial of all. Yes, even among those who agree with me about everything else.
There is some good music in Diamond and Pearl. Some really standout tracks that frequently
come up in VGM compilations that I enjoy. But there is also a lot of music that I…DON’T
enjoy. I would even go as far as to say I DISLIKE it. Usually when music doesn’t do it for
me in a game I’m just like whatever. It sounds fine, I’m just neutral. It’s actually quite rare
for me to be playing a game and stop and listen, and be like, “Man, this sounds kinda bad…”
I remember feeling this way when I first played the game, and I was trying to not even
consider that when I went into the remake. I tried to go in with fresh ears. But the same
thing happened. So much of the music is just so…random? Like the melodies just jump
all over the place like they were written by an algorithm or something, and they don’t
have any sort of structure and don’t resolve in pleasing ways. It just kinda sounds gross.
I know Pokemon music is pretty much across the board loved by all, so I don’t know what’s up. I
have a friend with really similar musical tastes and one day I was listening to some Pokemon
music, and they didn’t know what it was, and it might have even been some Diamond and Pearl music,
and they were like, “This is kind of bad,” and I was like, “I KNOW, RIGHT???” It must just be some
kind of weird, specific taste thing or something. In case it wasn’t already obvious, I do not like
Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. Of course, as with all my reviews I must
remind you that I have no problem with people enjoying it. It’s a Pokemon game, and as
I talked about in my Sword and Shield review, that means a certain baseline amount of fun.
If you’re way into the series and you love that core formula, and you love building up teams and
fighting at least semi-competitively and all that, I’m sure this game is great. And if you’ve got
nostalgic attachments to the original, then you’ll probably enjoy the remake quite a lot! There is
nothing wrong with liking it. If you look at it in a vacuum, maybe it’s even a straight-up good game.
But I’m not looking at it in a vacuum. Like I said, context really matters. To me, it’s
a disappointing remake of a game that was already very bland. I’m not going to give it credit for
being at least as fun as any other Pokemon game, because how far can that excuse go? How far can
they push this cheapness? How many corners can they cut? How far down can they trim the
production process before even that core formula stops being enough? Because it feels
like there’s no end to this. I thought we had already reached the bottom, but Brilliant Diamond
and Shining Pearl are down at a whole new level. We’re in this deep, I’mma just say it,
I would be embarrassed to publish this game. The joke would be on me, because it’s
selling like crazy. But on a personal level, I wouldn’t be able to do it. Such a rushed,
ugly experience coming from the creators of the highest grossing media franchise in human
history… It’s gross. It’s simply gross. The line between art and product is sometimes hard
to see, but not in this case. This is a cold, calculated, shareholder-pleasing product
made exclusively for the 2021 holiday rush. As long as there’s a Pokemon game under
the tree all is right with the world, huh? Well, that's it for my review of Pokemon
Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. But what are your thoughts? Let
me know down in the comments, even though there's no way I'm
reading the comments! See ya later!
