A comfortable remake of a less remarkable entry in the Pokemon series, Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl will still delight fans despite its lack of ambition.
Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl
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Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl Review Summary
Critic Reviews for Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl
Like the themes of its story, Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are solid and enduring – leaning on the past, with all of its triumphs and tripwires.
The original Pok'mon Diamond and Pearl were strange, uneven games. The remakes file them down to something still enjoyable, but textureless.
A cheap-looking and unambitious remake of a generic Pokémon entry that seemed bereft of new ideas in 2006, let alone now.
Catching, training, and trading Pokémon remains a blast, and Sinnoh is a great region to explore
Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are comfortably nostalgic, with just enough modern tweaks to smooth over the rough edges.
Nintendo, Game Freak, and The Pokemon Company have made some odd decisions with pricing their products lately. Unfortunately, for many fans, these remakes were a bad omen that these trends will continue. The series has been criticized as being stagnate, and even going backward with things like Dexit. New and casual players likely won’t notice or care that the quality of the games has gone down with the last couple of releases. However, longtime fans are feeling increasingly disappointed, and Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl have done nothing to assuage that.
If you haven’t experienced Pokemon Diamond or Pearl yet and don’t have access to Platinum, then the Gen 4 remakes on Switch might be worth exploring. Sinnoh has its own charm to it, and completionists will likely enjoy the endgame that is Grand Underground collecting. I just hope that when the time comes to remake Black and White, whatever team handles it is a lot less conservative.
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