Pokémon Diamond and Pearl in their original form were odd, unbalanced games. The remakes reduce them to a smooth, but entertaining, remake.
Now, let’s discuss the Experience Share. A basic feature seen in every main series Pokémon game since 1999’s Pokémon Gold and Silver, the Experience Share (abbreviated Exp. Share) allows you to share the experience a Pokémon receives from defeating other Pokémon with the other members of your party. There are a numerous uses for it, but the main one is to improve your gaming experience: the Exp. Share is the most powerful tool you have to control the game’s difficulty, enabling your whole team to level up more quickly when it’s turned on or more slowly when it’s turned off.
Since then, the experience itself has evolved from being earned solely through battles to involving all successful catches of wild Pokémon. This is because public tastes have changed over time, and main series developer Game Freaks has changed along with them. Lastly, and perhaps most benevolently, it has been locked to “on” for the whole of generation eight with the release of Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl.
This isn’t a huge deal in the other generation eight games, Pokémon Sword and Shield, because the games were designed to function that way, at least in theory. Regardless of how you feel about the way they pace the game, the opposition trainers, their Pokémon, and their levels were included with the mechanic in mind, and the game was made with some thought given to it as a whole. However, it goes without saying that Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl were not created with an always-on Exp. Share in mind.
These are remakes, albeit very closely so, of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl from 2006, which are very different games from Sword and Shield from 2019. As a result, the outcome is predictable: the eighth generation’s easy, weightless momentum is dropped into the world of the fourth generation, with trainers, encounters, and opponents essentially the same in terms of level, stats, and strength as the originals. This implies that even if I was only ever up against trainers, collected wild Pokémon that had never been caught before, avoided all other encounters, and sometimes switched out a’mon from my party, I was still eight or ten levels ahead of my opponents the whole time. I could attempt to avoid as many trainers as I can or cut down on the number of Pokémon I usually carry on my team to offset that, but those options aren’t very good and could be easily avoided by just giving the option to disable the Experience Share.
The fact that this is so representative of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl overall is what really sticks out, however. The original games were odd, uneven affairs, featuring some peculiar battle difficulty spikes, a notoriously bizarre type imbalance (a game that was largely Steel-heavy and only had one Fire-type evolution line to counter it, Ponyta and Rapidash, if you didn’t choose the Fire-type starter), some strangely easy-to-miss HMs, and a strange blend of Chibi and Pixel Art. The result of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl’s catch-all attempts to smooth that over—like the parachuting in of the always-on Exp. Share—is something more bluntly palatable but far less natural, smoothed in all the wrong places like an oil-based portrait yassified through FaceApp. They’re coarse and awkward, but crucially, at least characterful as a result. Put plainly: they’ve just mastered the incorrect material again.
In the series, Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are in a difficult position. The Pokémon Company is releasing a main series game for the first time that wasn’t created by Game Freak. BDSP is being handled by ILCA, which stands for I Love Computer Art. ILCA is the company that created the Pokémon Home storage app and has assisted in the creation of games like Yakuza 0, Dragon Quest 11, and NieR: Automata. Additionally, it’s coming out only a few months ahead of Game Freak’s Pokémon Legends: Arceus, a prequel rather than a remake that takes place in the same Sinnoh area as Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum from generation four.
Pokémon fans have been demanding “Sinnoh remakes” for months, if not years, hoping for the same modern makeover as the previous three generations of FireRed and LeafGreen, HeartGold and SoulSilver, and Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. This puts them in a difficult situation. Nevertheless, because the Pokémon Company is known for its unpredictable nature, we should expect two distinct game types rather than the standard current-gen graphics and mechanics adapted to old games. Legends: Arceus introduces Pokémon into a quasi-open world with what appears to be the most sophisticated mechanics to date, while BDSP takes a somewhat conservative approach, eschewing features like freely moving cameras, more intricate models, moves, and animations, Mega Evolution, and the modern equivalent of Dynamaxing in the hopes of drawing in new players and satisfying nostalgia in the hearts of Sinnoh fans.
It’s unfortunate for more reasons than one, since the three previous remake cycles produced some of the finest games in the series and brought a feeling of completion with them, adding new features to graphically improved versions of intricately designed game environments. It’s unfortunate since BDSP are often a lot of fun, and there’s a strong feeling of wasted potential.
The arrangement seems to be the same as in Diamond and Pearl, not Platinum, which had a significant amount of additional content and an enlarged Pokédex of monsters to capture, including a few more Fire-types. In general, the older two are chosen if there is a discrepancy between those two and the improved version. For example, the narrative revolve on the events of the two originals, the Hearthome Gym is the fifth gym you’ll encounter rather than the third, and the Pokémon you may find in the wild match the identical versions as the originals.
The Grand Underground, a reimagined area beneath Sinnoh’s surface with miniature Wild Area-like rooms, visible Pokémon roaming the overworld (standard random encounters are all you get topside), and an extremely addictive mining minigame that grants you some useful items, is where things sort of merge. Although there are theoretically even more encounters in this area than in Pokémon Platinum, the majority of them are still locked behind late-game progress, meaning you have to complete the main story in order to access them. This is a little disappointing. That’s unfortunate since, after you’ve completed the majority of the plot in which you might have utilized them, there isn’t much of a need to go back and collect all these other Pokémon.
It’s still an improvement, though, and one of the few instances where BDSP improves upon the originals successfully: the Grand Underground is enormous, inspiring a sense of wonder and exploration as if there’s a whole other half of the game to literally dig into whenever you fancy it, even though that half of the game is relatively one-dimensional. It’s also fun and, crucially, a bit weird, which Pokémon must always be in some way.
The other adjustments are rather small. A brand-new rhythm-based minigame has been added to Pokémon Contests, a specialized section of the original games that is enjoyable for role-players and completely independent. Talking to the locals, you’ll hear a lot about how you can choose to be the kind of Pokémon Trainer you want to be, how you can go through Gyms to defeat the Elite Four and save the world, or how you can just collect adorable Pokémon to use in competitions. However, as fans of the series are aware, fantasy doesn’t really make sense and never has in Pokémon games. You can do the latter, but in order to truly enjoy it—that is, to acquire more moves, capture more Pokémon, and collect more Poké Ball stickers, which is a little new addition—you will still need to complete the former.
The redesign of hidden moves, or HMs, the metroidvania-style skills that restrict your advancement in Pokémon games, is the last significant change. They are divorced from the moves themselves in BDSP, which is important. They are mapped to the Pokétch, a screen you may bring up picture-in-picture to utilize on the go. You may use an HM freely in the wild without teaching any moves to Pokémon in your party or bringing anything with you if you have the Pokétch app for it and beat the corresponding Gym Leader. Rather, a wild Pokémon will do the rock-smashing and tree-chopping for you. Typically, this is a Bidoof, which seems like a humorous throwback to it being the preferred HM slogger in the originals. It’s a very welcome change, though it’s a little strange that Game Freak and company haven’t come up with a more personal solution yet. For example, it would be great to have a Pokémon that you’ve caught help you even if it’s not in your party. This seems especially feasible now that you can access your storage boxes to swap Pokémon at any time, anywhere.
The other modifications are all minor, but very welcome additions to the user experience, such as instant access to the box and the option to launch a Poké Ball straight from the combat screen without reaching into your bag. The feature that lets you have a Pokémon in your party follow you behind is a clear standout and has been a frequent request from fans, who are happy to see it return. These are little details, but they give the world life, and that vitality is what makes Pokémon so popular in the first place—after all, these are games about the wonder of nature. It is stated clearly in the term.
The aesthetic comes last and is always subjective, albeit it is very difficult for me to adore, and I imagine it is for many others as well. This style is chibi, but only in a very literal sense; it has overly simplified character models with sticker-like eyes, underanimated Pokémon, and uninspired attacks. It gives off the impression that someone was trying to recreate something, but not sure what. The impressionist, often lyrical pixel imagery that prompted the player to fill in the blanks with mystery and creativity is no longer present.
The substitute is a simple, flat object. It sometimes verges on being excellent; the gentleness of sunrises and sunsets is often lovely, serving as a pleasant reminder of the enjoyable day-night aspect of the originals. The key to that ultra-tactile hygge world is the minute details in both visual and acoustic detail, which Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl can’t match. For example, a polyester carpet next to a hand-spun woollen rug hints at but falls far short of the cozy, Animal Crossing-like feeling. Additionally, it seems to lose some of the accuracy of the original’s straightforward up-down-left-right movement in the process; for example, walls become strangely sticky when partially run against with the analog stick.
And it pretty much sums up these games, regrettably. It is really annoying, not to mention that despite their oddities, the originals were at least memorable for their oddities, and their excellent organization is still unmatched. The series’ crucial, almost unparalleled atmosphere of awe is derived from its intriguing side locations and big secrets. One such spot is the truly eerie Old Chateau, which is located in an easily missed portion of Eterna Forest and has flashing red eyes painted on it. The massive, imposing Mt. Coronet, which rises from the region’s center and seems to be trying to drag you into its magnetic depths. Sinnoh’s mines, marshes, and ruins. the many side missions and riddles involving legendary Pokémon like Darkrai and Spiritomb. Continues without end.
It’s all still there, fantastic, and well worth your time. If you’ve never played the original Pokémon games, wonderful Diamond and Shining Pearl include a genuine, palpable, and wonderful game that you should definitely play. But you’re better off with the originals themselves, in my opinion, since these remakes smooth over so much of their worn-out feel.