LogFAQs > #962061687

11. Pokmon Brilliant Diamond

Ever since I was a small, dumb child, I have been enamoured with the Pokmon franchise. Not just the main line of video games, but also the Japanese animated television series based on the Pokmon video game franchise. Around the time I was going to college for literally advertising, I began to obsessively consume Pokmon products, such as numerous seasons of the animated series, the first thirty or so volumes of the Pokmon Adventures manga. fully completing the at-the-time brand new Pokmon Y within about two weeks, which I also went to my first and only midnight release to collect, and completing various quizzes on the website Sporcle.com to eventually remember the names of every Pokmon created to that date, as well as their assigned number. This level of interaction with the franchise was, ultimately, quite minor in comparison to what all was available to me. But the amount of Pokmon content I have consumed over the course of my whole life is troubling at best, and lethal at worst.

But there was a period in my life where I was a teenager, and therefore completely fake and also an assbag. This was the period of my life which saw mainline releases for Pokmon Diamond, Pokmon Pearl, Pokmon Platinum, Pokmon HeartGold, and Pokmon SoulSilver. I did not play any of these games on their initial release, only going back to them during that phase I went through as a moody college student, and playing both Pokmon Platinum and Pokmon SoulSilver to story completion exactly one time and never again. Pokmon SoulSilver happened to be a remake of Pokmon Silver, which was a game I engaged with for hundreds of hours, but Pokmon Platinum was a brand new experience which I had not engaged with at all, and continued to keep unengaged from after a comparatively short 20 hour playthrough.

I bring this up solely to note that I went into the recent remake of Pokmon Diamond having engaged this section of the Pokmon franchise less than any other limb of the grotesque amalgamation the mainline franchise has become. An equally important note to make is that it has been about eight years or more since I actually experienced the fourth generation of Pokmon games. Pokmon Brilliant Diamond had every opportunity to capture me with the magic of a new-ish Pokmon experience in the easiest possible way, especially given how upset I was from having played Pokmon Sword.

Did it succeed? No, not really. But its still pretty fun! The biggest gripe I have with the game is the decision to create a superdeformed aesthetic for the overworld, then proceeding to use full character models in battle. The overworld character design is quite off putting, and the decision to still use full character models within battle scenes has me struggling to understand why this was the direction taken. My cynical side will blame it on and approach to cut costs, since the simplistic design makes it look no better than something youd see on the Nintendo 3DS, but Pokmon Sword used full-scale character models in the overworld, and that game also looked like it was made for the Nintendo 3DS.

Ever since the Pokmon games moved away from sprite work, theres been a strong need for designs of both human characters and the Pokmon themselves to stand out creatively. As much as I hate Pokmon Sword, Id be more of a fool than I already am if I tried to argue it wasnt aesthetically one of the best games in the franchise. The designs for Pokmon Brilliant Diamond were initially done using sprites, so perhaps it felt more visually consistent to use the superdeformed style? Either way, it is a significant downgrade from the overall look of the Sinnoh games. I normally dont pick at something like this with any sort of actual critical eye, but the Pokmon franchise is pretty well-known for its visual appeal, and a lot of that appeal is removed when the older games are adapted to the new current style present in the series.

One thing which hasn't changed, fortunately, is the addictive gameplay loop of capturing new Pokmon, training them to evolve, and proceeding through a fast-paced story thats as long as you want it to be. I sunk about sixty hours into my time with Pokmon Brilliant Diamond and by the time I finished that seemed like my own personal cutoff for enjoyment. The game could easily be beaten within 15 hours, especially given the new experience share system which completely negates any needed grinding. It even maintains the late-game difficulty assuming you don't go into the final battles overleveled. Cynthia is still the hardest champion the series has seen, and even though she can still be beaten by abusing items or having an above surface-level understanding of the games mechanics, she can still surprise you with the unique team she has built up. The only time I ever really die in these games anymore is due to me farming levels for weak Pokmon to evolve them. Having my primary team of six wiped out was an oddly satisfying experience to see, even if it was really only due to my lack of planning and some horrible luck with critical hit rates.

Sonically, the original soundtrack for these games is arguably the most acclaimed in the franchise. This is despite the fact that the sound on a Nintendo DS is actively nauseating to listen to. Its not even as charmingly terrible as Gameboy Advance music, where the garbled mesh of noise can actually feel endearing in some way. The DS cleaned things up a bit, but not to the point where anything from that system sounds ideal. The new compositions present here are massive improvements, despite what nerds who like the original will tell you. This is, hands down, the best soundtrack the series has ever had, and theres not really even a close contender.

Pokmon Brilliant Diamond is obviously not perfect. They keep some of the more archaic design choices present in the 2007 releases, and do practically nothing to the experience to make it worth playing over Pokmon Platinum or most other generations released after the originals. But this is my list, and it felt fun to actually engage this generation of games honestly, even if all they gave me to do it with was developed with fairly low effort into differentiating it from its origin. This writeup isnt filled with bad jokes because I wanted to focus on giving it a fair critique because I dont think its really been receiving such from the fanbase. Its easy to write this off as a cash grab, and yeah, youre probably right with that, but were also talking about the largest media franchise in the world. Everything made is going to be a cash grab. Pokmon Brilliant Diamond is a small piece of a megalithic structure, and resources will always be allocated accordingly. At the end of the day, despite the ease of which many upgrades could have been implemented into it, Pokmon Brilliant Diamond is standardized Pokmon fare. If you like the gameplay present in these games, its going to be a fun ride from here on out. As is, the series doesnt need to innovate to achieve its goals, and you can make the choice of whether or not youre willing to engage that type of franchise.

Pokmon Brilliant Diamond Score: 4/6