Pokémon Brilliant Diamond - Nintendo Switch

The original Pokémon Diamond on the DS was the very first Pokémon game I ever owned. I can vividly recall the anticipation leading up to it, when I finally got it a few days after Christmas, and all of the days and late nights playing it. I was initially disappointed when this remake was announced by the lack of high end graphics, as most fans were. However I decided to let that go because what’s the point being upset about something like that. I preordered and got Brilliant Diamond. I will admit that I teared up a bit when I first turned this game, experiencing a rush of nostalgia that I didn’t expect to. I’ve played Diamond many times since 2007, but I re-experienced a sensation I hadn’t felt since the very beginning. When you walked up Route 201 with your Pokémon, what did you feel? Ive lived for 60 long years. Even now, I get a thrill when Im with a Pokémon.” -professor Rowan The art style of this remake is a modern take on the style from the original games on the DS. Now that I’ve played it, I am glad they went this direction. As far as game mechanics go, this remake takes everything fans loved about the originals and improves on them. It is very much in the realm of classic gameplay and story from old school Pokémon games, but with some much needed quality of life improvements. For example in the original games, you always had to have two Pokémon dedicated to learning HM moves in order to get over the many obstacles along your journey. This was frustrating because it took up 8 entire move slots on your team - two entire Pokémon at the very minimum. This mechanic was much improved for this remake. Now all of the HM moves are added to your in game watch, and using them calls on a nearby wild Pokémon to lend you a hand. This frees up your team to allow you to always carry your favorites around everywhere you go. That’s just one example of improvements they made. I would go as far as to say that these remakes are some of the most complete and well made Pokémon games ever. And I definitely say they are the best Pokémon games that are modern and easily accessible for anyone because the game and the hardware to play it are still being made. Highly recommended if you were a fan of the original Diamond and Pearl. Also highly highly recommend it as a first Pokémon game to a kid in your life

Ive played every mainline Pokemon game and this is definitely Diamond... to a fault really. Its simply Pokemon Diamond with a shiny new coat of paint that you can play on Switch instead of digging out your old DS to play it. It doesnt have a lot of the new quality of life features newer titles have and feels a bit lacking really, like it doesnt even have the stuff from Platinum in it! About the only noticeable change other than the new visuals, is the sudden jump in difficulty for the Elite Four and Champion in this version as someone decided to give them all perfect stats and adjust the AI to basically play like an actual competitive player for these last five battles. Everything else leading up to that though is a cakewalk and even for a remake just feels done to death. Personally unless you REALLY Diamond or Pearl on your Switch, Id suggest getting Platinum on the DS for a more full experience on this generation of Pokemon games.

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