Can you guess what I'm making?

hi gamers im pretty much finished with my playthrough of pokemon shining pearl, i have about 80 hours on there right now so heres my review!

i dont normally post game reviews but since many of you know me as that sinnoh loving guy i figured reviewing a game i wanted for such a long time, a remake of one of my fav generation's pokemon games would make sense, and its easier to post that kind of thing on tumblr so here it goes. also this whole review is spoiler-free.

summary - i really like this game and i recommend it to anyone who loves diamond and pearl or has interest in playing them for the first time! they fix a lot of issues with the originals however there are many missed opportunities thatll talk about under the cut. this game is a good return to form of the adventure that many of us older fans felt when we first played these games as kids. i do not want this to seem like a huge blow to these games but they are not without flaws either.

graphics:

I know the chibi art style was a huge miss by many fans when it was first shown off, but ive always found it cute and fitting of the game. in its final form, the graphics of bdsp are very charming and cute and the natural scenes and backgrounds are better than theyve ever been in a mainline title. this game really does feel like how we would have imagined it as kids! the top-down style works best for this type of game and its very polished. if you still arent sold on the style, i promise that if you just get into the game and start playing it for a bit itll convince you. also this game lacks screen tearing that the originals had (yay!) and the overworld is a lot nicer to look at color-wise.

music:

I have to say i was kind of worried about what they'd do with the music, because it is probably my favourite out of the whole series, but its actually breathtaking and many tracks are a million times better than they were before. they really emphasized the jazzy-ness of this game's music which i really appreciate haha. they even added some new tracks for the post-game area and also the DS sounds key item which is so so great.

new additions:

bdsp greatly expands on the underground feature by letting you catch pokemon down there! this is a feature i never knew we needed but now that we have it oh man i could never go back. its so fun hunting for pokemon down there and digging for statues. i do kinda wish there was more multiplayer stuff you could do down there, cos rn all you can do really is dig together, but honestly thats fine by me since i didnt even get to do That in the originals.

this game also changes how contests work compared to the original dppt. i do kind of miss being able to dress up your pokemon but i do have to wonder how that would even work in a 3d game. anyway i do like the new "rhythm game" approach to pokemon super contests. they are a lot faster to do than they were before so you can do more of them in less time. sometimes the old one felt like rng cos you had to perform moves to a judge and just kinda hope no one else picked the same judge as you. i havent done a whole lot of the new contests just yet but as of now it seems like a welcome change.

bdsp also introduce walking pokemon in the overworld in almost every area, when before you could only walk with a select few in amity square. i think walking pokemon is always a welcome addition but its a bit strange to me how it was done in bdsp. its a huge upgrade from sword and shield (dlc) though i have to say. it really kinda sucks in those games because your pokemon will run to catch up with you and constantly bump into you. they dont do that as often in bdsp but there are times where if you have a slower pokemon they will just never walk with you and are always teleporting about. i think hgss really mastered the walking pokemon because they were always at the same rhythm as you were, and it just seems very half-baked into every other game they've tried to add it into since. (except let's go....it's actually pretty good in let's go.)

also, its worth mentioning that the sinnoh games are no longer extremely slow. youve all seen the meme with blissey and close combat right? yeah that doesnt happen anymore, neither does saving a lot of data (rip), and you surf faster than a snail now.

but the biggest and best feature that bdsp added was the hidden moves app in the poketch. basically, you no longer need to teach a pokemon an hm move (a field move that cannot be forgotten under normal circumstances) you can just open your watch with the R button and use a hidden move from there. its extremely handy and id recommend these games over the originals just for this feature alone. dppt have the most hms required at once time out of the entire series and not having to worry about them anymore is a HUGE plus. you can also access your pc boxes out in the overworld too instead of having to go to a pokemon center, which is awesome.

missed opportunities:

ok, now as we get into some more negative parts I have to say, yes I am aware that this game was never supposed to be a platinum remake. its a faithful remake of diamond and pearl, it is exactly what it says on the tin. (i have to say this phrasing has bugged me since the start, though, it feels like an oxymoron. of course a remake is going to be faithful?) and you know, they did add some platinum dex mons into the game via the underground feature i mentioned earlier. but my issue is, why did they only add some of them and not all? why pick and choose which pokemon we can access when the entirety of the platinum dex IS IN the game? we already know about the rotom in the old chateau and the gift eevee from bebe so why not let us access those? they seem to be walled off for absolutely no reason. and there are still so many of gen 4's added evolutions that you just cannot access within the main story, such as gliscor that you have to wait til postgame for. there is no point to these restrictions so why have them? it was literally not like that in platinum, so why go back to it? and i also like some of the changes to the gym order and designs inside the gyms they did in platinum. but plat is my fav pokemon game of all time so of course i am biased in that regard.

i also have to say that not using platinum teams for trainers like flint and volkner was a missed opportunity too. i like that gym leaders added new moves and abilities onto their team members to keep the battles fresh, but why did we have to go back to these stinky teams when we did it right in platinum? it just seems like two steps forward, one step back to me.

and this is a pet peeve to me but....where is looker???? he hasn't been in gen 8 at all???? he was introduced in gen 4 so....why not bring him back now? and where is the battle frontier gamefreak i want answers.

as for the story, ORAS is one of my fav pokemon games and i love how they freshened up the hoenn region in that remake, and i would have loved for something similar in BDSP. they ended up not doing that and we still have a good game on our hands here with bdsp, but i do think it could have been even better. i think remakes should set out with the goal to transcend the originals and create a definitive version of that generation's game. i think bdsp fell a little bit flat in that regard. we still have legends arceus coming out in about a month though. I do think that this is going to be the game that transcends and im really excited for it! but i think bdsp could have been more too.

also, why did they go back to single use tms? who is responsible for this??? i need a word.

another peeve of mine is that they did not add any pokemon past gen 4. as a kid i desperately wanted to bring my gen 5 favs into sinnoh, so that was a huge blow. again, they should have done it like oras. i dont think anyone would have minded if most of the later-gen mons were post-game anyway. and im not going to mention megas much but i like them and they would have fit so well here ok bye

glitches and crunch:

if youve been following these games since launch you know that they come with their fair share of glitches. of course, most pokemon games do. they are known for it, really. and most of them, even in bdsp, dont really come into play during your actual playthough, you have to actually go out and initiate them, and many of them are being patched right now. however, this game was also released unfinished, with a day 1 patch being required to download in order to get all of the cutscenes, music, and more. now personally i dont agree with that practice...i grew up in the sticks with the worlds slowest wifi, and i was also the type of kid who wanted to play their new games on the ride home. if your game needs an internet connection to download half of your game, that's just annoying. i know that's just the way nowadays...other consoles do it all the time, when you buy a ps4 game on the disc you have to wait for it to download too. in the age of internet its easier to patch games. back when the gba games had a glitch in them (look up ruby and sapphire berry glitch) you had to send your game back or go to a special kiosk to fix it. now you can just leave your switch on at night to download the updates. so while i definitely disagree with this decision, i can see why they did it. i really hope that doesnt become a mainstay for pokemon games going forward. its a real hassle, and encourages the harsh deadlines that nintendo and gamefreak have in place to continue.

challenge level/difficulty:

this game has a....weird level curve in it. it uses the gen 7.5/gen 8 experience share, which means that every pokemon in your party gets experience after you defeat or catch a pokemon. you are not able to turn this off, but you can put pokemon into your pc boxes to stop this effect. anyway, the original games did not have this, and were not designed around it. Around the 3rd gym or so i really felt the effect of it. my team was really getting up there in levels, and it doesnt help that the 3rd and 4th gyms are the same levels, either. so yeah it was getting clear that i was overleveled and the gym leaders and boss fights started to get kinda easy. ok, you might say, of course they were, its a kids game and a game and one that ive played before. not everyone is going to have that experience. however, the pokemon in the underground scale to your badge level, meaning they are typically around your level or higher when you go down there after a gym battle. meaning. you are going to get your ass handed to you down there. but then...not by any of the trainers in the story? probably not until the elite four, who each have ev-trained pokemon (this means they have really beefed up stats that compliment what moves theyre gonna use) with competitive battling move-sets and items. and then the champion, who has a completely cracked competitive team with items on all 6 pokemon. now many of us were thinking that they would dumb down the champion battle, but they beefed it up so so much. as an adult player of the series i really do like this level of challenge. even if youre just doing a vanilla playthrough its bound to be a little difficult. i mean it took me 3 tries! and then if youre a kid playing this game....well its never been easier to grind in a pokemon game than in gen 8. so...i dont know what to say about this i just think the difficulty in this game is kind of lopsided at times.

should you play?

as a new player: yes! these games are more accessible than the og diamond and pearl, which go up WAY past the $60 msrp if you want a legit copy. and with the additions in quality of life i think they are definitely worth it. also, they have online play which the old ones dont anymore. you can emulate, sure, i won't stop you, but if you do emulate either dppt or bdsp you wont have the multiplayer aspect either way. multiplayer adds a lot of mileage to a pokemon game.

as a veteran player: yes! these games miss a lot of content from platinum and are basically the same story, i won't deny that. but they are full of nostalgia for if you love gen 4 and have felt like newer games have been missing the mark. and if you didnt like gen 4, a lot of its issues are solved here like the hm one. this is a good opportunity to give it another chance.