Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl – Game Review

Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl

(Available on Nintendo Switch only)

For the record, all 3 reviewers picked a different starter, Reece had Turtwig, Elliot picked Chimchar and I took Piplup.

I’ve been a huge Pokémon fan for years and have been excited for most of what has been prepped for the series 20th anniversary. One of the projects was the inevitable remake of the 4th generation of Pokémon known as Diamond and Pearl versions. However, the initial trailer was not very exciting for a lot of people. For one thing, unlike the previous remakes of Pokémon games it wouldn’t be handled by usual development studio Game Freak since they are handling the upcoming Pokémon Legends Arceus. The job was instead handed over to ILCA, and there was concern surrounded by this change.  Second, was the art style that was more chibi as a way to reflect the DS era that the original games came from rather than do what other remakes did of using the new generations style (in this case it would’ve been Sword and Shield). It also was becoming clear there wouldn’t be too much new added to this version and with all of that many were deciding to skip it, but should Pokémon fans skip this one or not? and is this good for people that never had Pokémon Diamond and Pearl? Be aware I am a Pokémon fan, but I don’t go as far as to go nuts for things like IV training and Shiny Hunting so don’t expect too much in on that. Also, for the sake of not having to type a huge amount Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl will herby be referred to as BDSP for the remainder of the review.

Pros

• Familiarity in gameplay: If you like Pokémon, all the familiar gameplay is here with it’s typical turn-based RPG mechanics. Not much has changed from the original games it’s very much the same experience you had on DS if you played it and if this is your first play through of this generation it should be familiar gameplay if you’ve played any Pokémon game prior. As a very faithful remake of Diamond and Pearl it succeeds very well and it’s probably because I’m an old school Pokémon fan that my opinion is, that when it comes to gameplay; if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. It’s probably one of the reasons I wasn’t a huge fan of Pokémon Sun and Moon it messed with the formula a bit too much. I do think the Pokémon formula works and this is one of the games that proves it since even though this game has issues (which I’ll go into) there is something addictive about the gameplay loop of trying to catch that one Pokémon you’re after or beat that next gym leader.
• The underground: The underground received probably the biggest change. It’s now a much bigger map and not only involves several walls to dig into for special items like Evolution stones if you’re lucky, and you can improve your chances by playing online, but you also now have several caves with rarer Pokémon that are worth going for. I really enjoyed doing this in my downtime and if you want a fire type Pokémon and don’t want it to be Ponyta this is a good option (in my case I caught a Magby and evolved it into a Magmar). That being said it will be frustrating since these Pokémon have a much lower catch success rate and the only method, I found that was largely successful was dragging out the battle and using a timer ball.
• The HM implementation: HM’s have always been an annoying part of Pokémon as they often force you to give a Pokémon a move, in order to deal with an environmental hazard. Granted Surf and Fly are 2 of the best moves in their respective elements but they still felt annoying. Future games managed to take this issue away and there was a concern that the progress made would regress. Fortunately, the team has chosen not to do that and has instead given you access to the moves, but you don’t need to teach any Pokémon those moves to deal with environmental Hazards. You just need to have encountered the TM machine with the move and beaten the correct Gym Leader to gain access to it. From there a wild Pokémon will be access to let you surf on the water or fly to a town you’ve already visited which is very welcome.
• Gym leaders: Gen 4 may not have had some of the most memorable gym leaders, but they did have some of the most challenging. In most Pokémon games the gym leader really sticks to their chosen element so you can’t go in Leroy Jenkins style with one or 2 Pokémon that are strong against it. In Gen 4 it seems like every gym leader throws a curveball at you really forcing you to think and train up a few extra Pokémon and you may want to look up a guide, so you have a good idea which Pokémon you want to prioritise training. For example, the final gym leader uses Electric type Pokémon so the obvious choice was to train up my Onix since it had access to ground type moves, but I also was aware his team had an Octillery and a Ambipom so I prioritised also training my Medicham and Raichu in preparation. There are quite a few challenges coming from the gym leaders and don’t get me stated on the champion Cynthia who I only beat with 1 HP stop Spare thanks to a well-executed Hydro Pump. She has to be the most challenging Champion battle ever, prepare to have many a frustrating loss.
• Post-game: BDSP actually has very good post game content. I don’t want to spoil it for those who have yet to experience it so this’ll be pretty blank, but you can have a lot of fun when you’re done with BDSP.

Mixed

• Graphics and art style: This might be a something people disagree with me on but I think that while I like the graphics of the art style of BDSP and haven’t been opposed to it as much as others I do think it’s weaker then what we got with the other 2 mainline Pokémon games on the Switch (those being Sword and Shield and Let’s go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee). If I were to rank them, I’d put Sword and Shield Highest, followed by the Let’s Go games and then BDSP. Now what I did like about it was the way it did a good job giving a modern update to the DS era as well as the very well-done battle animations. Much of the resources for this game were taken from the Let’s go games for Pokémon and battle animations which wad when the game looked best and I kind of wish they went a bit further and really tried to replicate that style for most of the game since I stand by those games looked very good. However, as it stands I did appreciate the games graphics though thought it could be better.

Cons

• Large amount of post-game is locked off: This really peeved me off. Once again, I don’t want to give away too much about the post-game, but I will say many Pokémon you can get in the game are not available without completing the National Pokedex. Now if you’ve been playing the game and faced pretty much every trainer prior to beating the league and go to each of the lakes afterwards as well as hatch the Manaphy egg you get as a mystery gift for starting the game before February 2022 you should have 150 of the 151 but there’s one Pokémon that’s not in any trainer battle and can only be seen on a Friday which is extremely ridiculous, in fact I decided not to wait and traded for it with my co-reviewer Reece.
• Plays it a bit too safe: while I was praising the familiarity of it, I do think the lack of many new feature and the real lack of a change in art style of mechanics does give this the impressions of a franchise going through the motions. Say what you like about the lead up to and release of Pokémon Sword and Shield but there was still some excitement and sense of something new. This game doesn’t have that or even the sense of going through a previous region from a new perspective leading to an underwhelming result.
• Customisation options: One of the things I’ve enjoyed about all the games form X and Y onwards is the ability to customise your trainer’s appearance and it is present in this game. However, it’s gimped beyond belief and is limited to only a few options and can only be changed in 1 town. As a result, your options are incredibly limited in this regard in a way that wasn’t in previous games
• No Pokémon Home support at launch: I want to use some of my Pokémon from Pokémon Shield but was unable to since it supports for BDSP is not available yet. It was really annoying since there was some lower level Pokémon that would’ve benefited from moving them between games and really annoys me that I’ll have to wait until sometime in 2022. Granted when that does happen it’ll probably come with support for Pokémon Legends Arceus as well but I kind of hoped it would’ve been there at launch.

Pokémon BDSP is a good remake that I enjoyed though it has the issues of being underwhelming and having much of the post-game locked behind getting the National Dex. It also suffers from being a game with a lot more limited options which cannot be put down to the hardware it’s on. That being aid as Pokémon game it does work and I did enjoy my time playing it though having this game come between Sword and Shield and the upcoming Legend Arceus does make this feel like Stopgap entry in the series rather than the next big thing. I would most recommend this if you haven’t played Diamond and Pearl since in many ways it is the best way to experience it.

Score: 7.8/10

As I said you might want to save some money back for Legends Arceus but I would say first time players should still pick it up. Other than that, wait for a sale and I stand by that Sword and Shield with the expansion pass is a better Pokémon Game than BDSP.

And now Reece’s review

My experience with Brilliant Diamond is that I have finished the postgame after unlocking the National PokeDex and cleared all the extra content.

I played Brilliant Diamond almost exclusively in Handheld Mode of the new Nintendo Switch OLED. This was my preferred way to play as I found the game didn’t look as good when blown up on the TV using Docked Mode as the new chibi art style doesn’t lend itself well to be stretched over the large screen due to almost static trainers who look more like Funko Pops in the overworld.

Pokémon Brilliant Diamond is a remake of Pokémon Diamond that was released on the Nintendo DS back on 28th September 2006, making these remakes 15 years after the originals came out.

The developer for this Remake is Ilca (I Love Computer Art) who have only worked on one Pokémon game prior being Pokémon Home, this is weird as Pokémon Home is mostly a service to transfer Pokémon between newer games like Sword and Shield while serving a storage system than a full game. Other games they have worked on are Nier Automata and Dragon Quest 11 but haven’t stated their actual input on the games with some sources saying they didn’t add any code and only worked on some visual aspects of those games.

It is also the first non-Game Freak developer to be working on the core series of Pokémon with the only overlap being the director Junichi Masuda who was the Director, composer and plot scenario creator for the original Diamond and Pearl and gave people some hope going into these remakes when they were announced.

Pro:

Graphics.

The chibi art style is adorable and is very reminiscent of the art style of the Overworld sprites pre-3D models like X and Y.

The characters now look more like Funko Pops which is funny for some characters but very disturbing for others (I’m looking at Cyrus for that)

The biggest improvement I noticed was the water texture which is probably the best it has been in any Pokémon game except New Pokémon Snap, along with new water physics that cause waves the appear as you traverse through the waters of Sinnoh.

The battle arenas are now the best in the series seen notably with the Gym Leader battles as seen with Fantina (The 5th Gym Leader) as her arena is now filled with stained glassed windows. Unfortunately, this doesn’t translate into the overworld battles where most arenas are disappointing and the Rival fights where they take place in a void with a coloured background.

The lighting is a massive improvement over Sword and Shield as seen in the environments on certain routes (Eterna Forest with its light beams) or areas like the Pokémon Hideaways within the Grand Underground.

Some Modern Pokémon influences.

Some new features have been implemented from more recent Pokémon Games which greatly help the experience.

This is like the Ride Pokémon feature from Sun and Moon in that instead of needing HMs for puzzles you can summon random Pokémon instead to do that for you. This is definitely felt most in the Victory Road which in the originals needed a total a 5 HMs to travel through so you were forced to compromise on the move set of some of your Pokémon and mostly players alleviated by using Bidoof since it could learn 4 HMs at once, so you only needed another Pokémon to use 1 HM. (This is what also led to the fandom calling Bidoof a God in memes due to how much it was used by the player base).

Another addition that seemed inevitable was the inclusion of the Fairy Type which wasn’t available in Sinnoh before and makes Pokémon that received this new type much more appealing to use, especially since the Pokémon known for having no weaknesses like Spiritomb now has a Fairy weakness and the Champion’s strongest Pokémon now gets destroyed by one Fairy Type attack.

Travelling Pokémon are back.

A beloved feature of some previous Pokémon games was the ability for having some of your Pokémon following you, this feature was last seen notably in Sword and Shield’s DLC with the Isle of Armour.

This does make the game more immersive for the most part, although for others it seems to be bugged or look very bad like Ekans (Which actually slivered in Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee) but it is still great fun to see your favourite Pokémon following you and you unlock this ability not to far into the main story.

The only downside of this is that they failed to bring the proportions of the Pokémon over from Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee where the Pokémon were to proper scale and could keep up with the player. Unfortunately, now their walk cycle and speed is so slow that they rarely walk with you and will start teleporting into and out of the PokeBall causing a jarring effect and can now block the player as they are treated as a physical object compared to previous games where the player phases through them or they move behind you.

Con:

Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl.

Carrying on the business decision to release 2 versions of practically the same game to make players double-dip if they don’t have friends to trade with is just not a good move for consumers. While only promoting the vision that the company only cares about profits over making the best experience for the player since minor content is locked behind a second copy of the game.

This is due to the game featuring almost the exact same contents apart from a few exclusive Pokémon to each, but in my opinion since these are just remakes they could have combined both to make one game as the Regional Dex is only 150 Pokémon, so it’s not exactly a huge roster and people who looked into the code found that when they got early copies of the game that they are the same ROM with the only difference being a flag in the code to say which version you bought and loading that content and players can turn that code the other way and make Shining Pearl load up if they are playing Brilliant Diamond. (This was highlighted for me by an article by Nintendolife)

The story is too easy.

This is a problem that was made way more severe in that the EXP Share can now not be turned off by the player a decision brought over from Sword and Shield and Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee.

This means that when you catch a Pokémon or beat a Pokémon in battle then all of your party members will get experience and level up.

While a noble idea that was made to cut down on grinding for levels, this does mean that it is incredibly easy to become over-levelled so that no trainers pose a challenge for you. As I finished the game being only a few levels under the Champion, who was meant to be a difficulty spike with Pokémon over 10 levels higher than the other members of the Elite Four before them.

Due to these changes, it really sucks the enjoyment out of these games as no other trainer or gym leader poses a challenge as your Pokémon will be a higher level than theirs and almost always instantly knock them out and win without much strategy. The only difference being the Elite 4 still pose a challenge due to their competitive ready teams.

“Mostly a remake.”

While this was marketed as a modern faithful Remake of Diamond and Pearl and while some changes seemed obvious like including the new Fairy typing to old Pokémon to coincide with the newer games.

Unlike those games, it also implemented some changes from Pokémon Platinum Version like the expanded PokeDex from that game, but those Pokémon being locked in the Grand Underground instead of the Overworld.

Another massive change they made for seemingly no reason was the big change to the Pokémon Contests in that all the strategy of planning out your moves has now been replaced by a lazy rhythm game that boils down to just pressing a button periodically.

It also removed TMs being unlimited uses from the current Generation back to the Gen 4 way of being one-time use and instead of HMs you can now summon a random Pokémon to do the HM move for you in the Overworld.

If Ilca wanted to make faithful remakes why include some improvements from later games and not others that would have improved the game as a whole? It’s like having your cake and trying to eat it too, as it feels lazy in that the Dev team didn’t know what kind of game, they wanted to make due to changing core gameplay mechanics.

Postgame locked behind a (mostly) missable Pokémon.

In my opinion, this game failed to fix a major flaw with the original games in that you cannot finish the Sinnoh regional PokeDex until you see Drifloon but if you finish the Valley Windworks, not on a Friday then you will miss the static encounter for it and there is no trainer in the overworld with one (except a gym trainer who requires you to fail a basic math problem to encounter) but unless you fail the problem then there is no trainer with one.

So, unless you know to go back to the Valley Windworks on a Friday to encounter one then you cannot access the National Dex and postgame. This is not very user friendly to new players as by the time you finished the main story there is a high likelihood you would have forgotten about the Valley Windworks.

I would have suggested just adding a Drifloon to a random trainer’s team on a main route since it is not difficult to fight to solve this issue or just adding it to a patch of grass next to the Windworks.

Games felt rushed.

The game is missing features that should have been included on the first release as you cannot even transfer Pokémon from other games into Brilliant Diamond, so you cannot complete the full National Dex as several legendaries are not in the game (Such as Celebi, Arceus and Darkrai).

This also ties into the massive number of bugs in the game (Some of which have been patched out while others remain). For example, the speedrun for this game is currently at 17 minutes alone or how you can get softlocked in the 8th gym and can’t escape unless you use a secret option to rollback your save, but if you can’t do this then you will have no choice but to restart your game over from the beginning.

The game also wasn’t made with 3D movement in mind as the game is still based on a grid system but when you have full 360-degree movement with the thumbstick then the game falls apart when you have to do any tight platforming, as there were several times when I accidentally jumped over ledges I didn’t mean to when I just wanted to walk perpendicular to them. This also extends to the bike as you constantly get snagged on the hitboxes of the environmental hazards like rocks, so movement somehow feels even less fluid than when you use the D-Pad and are stuck to 4 direction movement.

Hidden Bases.

Unlike the original Diamond where you can furnish your Hidden Base with all manner of furniture from TVs, bed to sinks, now you can only put down statues that boost the rate for some Pokémon to appear.

So these Hidden Bases feel less personal and now just feel like Statue rooms instead of having the old customisation back with an additional statue room on the side. The last remakes that feature Hidden Bases being Omega Ruby Alpha Sapphire still allowed you to put down the old furniture to allow you to customise your Hidden Base to feel truly your own and special.

This also ties into the “Trap” mechanic being absent from the Grand Underground where you could put down traps outside your base to stop other players entering your base or going down your tunnels, so you cannot even protect your Base from others in a joking sense.

Randomly forced to have at least 2 Pokémon with you for the main story.

One of the fun aspects of the Pokémon series is going back and playing with self-imposed challenges. This is what leads to the phenomenon known as “Nuzlocke” which almost every Pokémon Youtuber/Streamer has done.

A challenge I have tried to do in several of the games is beating the game with only one Pokémon, but for some reason, you are required to have at least two Pokémon for one random Pokémon Battle in the Story meaning that this challenge is impossible, as no other mandatory story battle forces you to use 2 Pokémon at once.

Original DS sounds locked behind postgame.

Even though the remixed soundtrack and sound effects are nice, I don’t see why it would be locked behind the postgame. When it should have been an option from the start as there is no downside to letting the player choose between them as it is just a Key Item you receive. As it boils down to a simple toggle that could have just been in the options menu instead of a Key Item at the start of the game.

Conclusion:

An above average attempt at modernising Diamond and Pearl, but it fails to live up to the hype it built up by not being a “Faithfull” Remake as it changes some things but not implementing other changes that were desperately needed to help this game live up to its potential.

If you don’t have access to a Nintendo DS and Diamond/Pearl then I would say this is an OK introduction to Generation 4 but for the best experience, I would recommend getting Pokémon Platinum Version as that was the definitive way to play Generation 4.

As a remake the Pokémon series has produced better products with Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire plus Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee, both these previous remakes elevated the games they were remakes of whereas Brilliant Diamond feels like barely an improvement over base Diamond outside the Grand Underground.

But if you are an experienced Pokémon player then these games lose a lot of appeal, since they feel very dated and worse in some respects than the originals, and most players will be playing these games till Pokémon Legends Arceus comes out early next year.

Score: 6.8

And finally Elliot’s

Final team: Lucario (Lv.61), Alakazam (Lv.65), Luxray (Lv.67), Infernape (Lv.68), Dialga (Lv.62), Staraptor (Lv.64)

If there is any mainline Pokémon game that I get very nostalgic for, it’s got to be Diamond and Pearl. Pokémon Diamond was the first mainline Pokémon game I ever owned, up until that point I had only played the spin-off games, like Pokémon Colosseum or Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. So needless to say, I, and many others, were desperate for a remake of those games, which we got when the game was announced during a Pokémon Direct in February 2021, and eventually released on the 19th November 2021. 

I doubt that I need to explain the plot to this game, as it’s basically the same as any other Pokémon game. You’re a new Pokémon Trainer in the Sinnoh region, exploring the region to catch as many Pokémon as you can and take on the Pokémon league by defeating the eight Gym Leaders, all the while battling the dreaded Team Galactic and stopping them from taking over the world. As I said, it’s not really anything new, but that’s to be expected and is by no means a negative. 

As to be expected, the game’s presentation has been massively improved. Of course, the 2D sprites and environments have all been made 3D and it all looks absolutely fantastic. The environments look really good, the 3D really makes them stand out more, and the character models look clean and almost like something you’d find in a Harvest Moon game. The music has also been improved, while many still sound pretty much the same as they did in the first game, others sound a lot less bit-compressed and almost sound like other instruments have been added to make it better. 

The game plays like any other Pokémon game, you travel the Sinnoh region, battling trainers and catching Pokémon you find in the wild. You encounter wild Pokémon by exploring caves or rummaging through patches of long grass, when you do encounter one, you have the opportunity of catching them by throwing a Pokeball (or any of the other types), of course, just throwing a ball does not guarantee capture, thus it’s often best that you deal a bit of damage and maybe give them a status element to make it more likely. You’ll also run into other trainers who will approach you and challenge you to a Pokémon battle (you know, like any random stranger would). In all honesty, there’s not really too much point in explaining how this game works, so most of this review will instead be on the changes they’ve done to this game and how they improve or worsen this game.

Something that you’ll notice is that a lot of the elements from the newer Pokémon games have been transferred into this game as well. For example, when you defeat or capture a Pokémon in this game, every Pokémon in your party gets the EXP received from winning rather than just the ones that battled, though they do get less. While this feature doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of the game, I still feel conflicted by this. On one hand, this greatly decreases grind in the game, meaning that you can battle the Gym Leaders and thus get through the game much quicker, on the other though it really takes away a lot of the challenge with the game, as I found myself way over-levelled in almost every battle. As I said, this doesn’t lessen the fun you have with the game that much, as someone who is a bit of a glutton for challenge in his games, it does make the victories feel a little hollower. This also in general led to me going into long grass less, which meant that I didn’t catch nearly as many Pokémon as I normally would have, and seeing as the main gimmick of Pokémon, it really puts a damper on the overall experience. 

Another change that came from the later games is the HM’s. For those who don’t know, HM’s (hidden machines) in the old games were moves that you can teach Pokémon in the old games, but unlike regular TM’s, you could use HM’s an unlimited number of times, and they were required to beat the game with. In Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl on the other hand, the HM’s are instead regular TM’s that you get multiple of, and you don’t need to teach the moves to Pokémon in your party in order to be able to use them. This, if you ask me, is a blessing. One of the things that I didn’t like about the old games is that I had to teach these to Pokémon when I would much rather have them learn different moves, so this change is a major improvement to me. 

Speaking of improvements, you are now able to access the PC (where you store your Pokémon that’s not in your party) from wherever you want. While, personally, I didn’t use this feature very often, I can definitely see why this is a great quality-of-life improvement. The ability to just be able to swap out Pokémon in your party, from in the wild, a Team Galactic hideout, or a gym is very useful. Again, I didn’t use this, but I do see the benefits. 

Definitely the thing that’s been most improved upon is the underground. After the second gym, you talk to someone in the city and they’ll give you an Explorers Kit, which will let you access the Grand Underground. Just like in the original, when down there you can mine cracks in the walls for items, get an underground base and interact with other players. In this game, they’ve added areas called Pokémon Hideaways, each of these areas will have their own themes (like swamp or volcano), and you’ll be able to encounter different Pokémon that are native to those kinds of areas. These areas give you a lot more incentive to explore the Underground than you had in the first game, especially seeing as a lot of the Pokémon you can find there are ones that are very difficult to find on the surface. 

Just like in the original games, this game also includes the Union Room, where you’ll be able to interact with other players and trade or battle. Unlike that game though, you can play with other players online as well as locally, and you now don’t have to go to a Pokémon Centre to access it. As long as you’re in the wild and not in a key story area, you are able to press the Y button to enter it. While I did really like this and it made me and my friends trading a lot more convenient, I do wish that you could access it from wherever rather than denying me access to it in certain areas. 

Of course, you can’t really talk about a mainline Pokémon game without talking about the Gyms and, to be honest, I remember them being better. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the puzzles even if some were a bit of a headache (looking at you Gym #7) and the Gym Leaders were really fun to fight, but regular battles in the Gyms felt kind of lazy. While they are good in the early Gyms, as you get further into the game you can tell that they were running out of Pokémon and just threw whatever ones in. The most disappointing one of these was the 6th Gym, where the most common Pokémon I fought was Onix… and it was a Steel type Gym. 

The most I can really say about complaints is that they’re pretty much the same complaints as what I would say about any other Pokémon game. Things like the game being too easy (especially when compared to the original game), the random encounters in caves happen way too frequently, things like that. The only complaints that I really think are worth mentioning is that the post game content is locked off until obtaining the National Pokedex, which you can only get by completing the Regional Pokedex. Luckily you don’t have to catch every Pokémon in order to get it, but it’s still an annoyance to have to do. The other one is that you can’t use Pokémon Home to transfer Pokémon from other games into this one. It will be a feature a few months from now, which is better than nothing, but there are no doubt a lot of players that would much prefer to be able to access it now rather than later, especially seeing as most of them will probably have moved on by that point. 

Overall, I did have a lot of fun with the game. It was really awesome to be able to play through my favourite region again and catching all the Pokémon that I could. If you asked me whether I preferred this version or the original however, I couldn’t really say. On one hand, a lot of the improvements make a lot of this game less of a headache and really help lessen playtime, on the other, I prefer the challenge that the original game had, and I feel like I had more fun playing that when I did as opposed to playing this one, I guess it ultimately depends on preference. In the end, I do recommend this game, it’s definitely the best Pokémon game on the Switch, and I’m certain you’ll have a good time with it. 

8.2/10