Pokemon Diamond Version

"This long running series is starting to get very stale."

Another round of Nintendo handheld consoles, another pair Pokemon games. Really though, is anyone surprised that there's a new Pokemon duo for the DS? What I find most remarkable about this franchise is the fact that the series still manages to sell millions of copies with each and every release. It's strange, this series hardly changes twixt games, there are only minor changes, and naturally more pokemon added to each subsequent release. Yet for some reason, there are people who shell out thirty plus dollars for these games, hell there are even those who by both versions of each generation of Pokemon game. That is of course to say nothing of the third version that each generation gets as well (Yellow, Crystal, Emerald, and soon Platinum). Perhaps I am not one to complain about the stagnation of the Pokemon series, as I still buy these games, and most of the time I enjoy them.

The games this go round are Diamond and Pearl (and as mentioned above the forthcoming Platinum), the games take place in the Sinnoh region. The game starts off with you choosing your gender, and then your friend (who becomes your rival, naturally) who lives in the same town as you dragging you to the local lake searching for the mythical Red Gyrados. Upon arriving at the lake you find Professor Rowan and his research assistant (the female character if you chose the male, and vice versa) also researching the red Gyrados. You end up getting attacked by some wild Pokemon and you end up choosing a starter pokemon (which are the compulsory fire, grass, and water types) and after defeating the wild pokemon are charged by Professor Rowan to go forth and research the pokemon of Sinnoh using the Pokedex. Naturally this devolves into you having to go to the various Gyms of Sinnoh, beating the leaders of said Gyms, and culminating to the climactic marathon battle that is the Pokemon League. Also there's the obligatory Organization that is intent on world domination; the team this time is Team Galactic, who are a bunch of lunatics who plan to utilize the power of the pokemon evolutionary process to control time and space. Something that's always bothered me about these games is the fact that the moderately interesting story of the evil syndicate always takes a backseat to the regional Gym/Pokemon League challenges. Both the games follow the same exact storyline, the only real difference between the two is the legendary Pokemon that Team Galactic are trying to capture. In Diamond it's Dialga, a pokemon who can control space or something, and Palkia, the one who can control time (might have the two mixed up).

That's about the only thing different between Diamond and Pearl, the legendaries on the cover. That and there's the tried and true formula of leaving out a large number of pokemon from the other game. This time around there are 493 different species of pokemon running around this time, a rather sizeable number. Except for this outing it's not just a simple method of getting the previous games and just trading them to the new ones. No, in this you don't get to trade straight up, rather what the game does, you put any of the GBA Pokemon games (Fire Red, Sapphire, etc.) in the GBA slot on your DS and then you go into something called the Pal Park (or some nonsense name like that) and then you go and capture the ones from those games. Then there's also the ever so delightful fact that a number of the rarer pokemon can only be acquired from attending some event. What that means is if you don't attend these Nintendo sanctioned events you cannot complete your Pokedex.

If you've never played a Pokemon game before what you do in the game is you run around the countryside getting into loads of battles, leveling your pokemon, and battling other trainers. Also you have to run around collecting a metric ton of pokemon to beef up your roster and add a bit of variety to your party. You're allotted six slots for pokemon in your active team, which is good actually, I've always liked the fact that it's always a six man team, it just feels solid for some reason. Anyway, since there are numerous different types to take into consideration (Fire, Water, Electric, Metal, Ghost, etc.) it pays to have different types of pokemon in your team. Almost every type has an advantage over at least one other type, for instance, water types has an obvious advantage over fire types, while electric types win over water pretty much every time. Then there are the less obvious type advantages, fighting has a major advantage over normal types, for example, or air types have the advantage over bugs. It's nice and all, it adds a certain sense of strategy to the game, however, there's so damned many different types that you'll never be able to remember every single type, and who has an advantage over it (and if you actually can, without aid of a strategy guide, more power to ya).

Battling in Pokemon Diamond is a pretty straightforward affair; you send out your pokemon, and you choose an attack, and then you swat each other until the other falls down. However, as the goal in these games is to “catch ‘em all” you also have the option to capture any wild pokemon. It's pretty cut and dry, you just select items on the battle screen, and choose the pokeball option in that submenu, chuck the ball at a wild pokemon and hope that luck is on your side and capture the creature. Throughout the game you do get pokeballs that have a larger probability to capture any given pokemon (the obvious great, ultra, and master balls). There are also multiple pokeballs that are allegedly better use against specific types of pokemon, net balls, for instance are apparently better against water types. I can't really swear to their effectiveness over say, ultra balls, primarily because of the fact that I never actually used them, in my opinion you only really need ultra pokeballs to capture a majority of the pokemon in the game.

One of the problems I have with this game is the fact that after you defeat the Pokemon League there's really nothing else to do in this game. Yes, yes I know that you can strike out and try to complete the Pokedex with all 493 of the damned pokemon, but really there's nothing to do at that point. Something that I loved in the older Pokemon games (particularly the Gold and Silver games) is that after you defeated the League in those games you could actually go into the region that Red and Blue takes place in (not sure if you could do this in Sapphire and Ruby). It added a little something to the game to make you want to keep playing, but in this after you finish with the League you only have a small island to try to run around on, and that's it.

A problem I have with this game is the fact that the battles are pretty stale. Like I mentioned above you just take turns hitting one another till the other falls, I know it's a staple of RPGs in general, but it's just really stale here. The battles I really liked in this game are the double battles, where you send out two pokemon at a time, I think they're pretty cool. Something else I find annoying about these battles is some of the status effects, granted they are mostly the same straightforward types found in other RPGs (Poison, Sleep, etc), it's the fact that a lot of them stick around long after it seems like they should be gone. For instance, confusion, in seemingly every RPG out there when your stricken with confusion as soon as your hit you almost instantly snap out of it, yet here it sticks around until the end of the battle. Also the status effect pressure is really irritating, pressure you see, is a delightful status affecter that makes you use up two of a moves PP (I have no idea what that means honestly), instead of the normal one. Obviously if you battle enough your pokemon gain levels; after enough level grinding they inevitably learn new moves, some of which are utterly useless (tail whip, seriously). Eventually when you level them up enough your pokemon begin to evolve into stronger pokemon, which is a pretty straightforward deal. However, one of the annoyances I have with this game are some of the condition specific evolutions. I don't mean the “trade with a friend” type of evolutions, I mean the happiness evolutions, and those are frelling annoying. To make a pokemon happy you have to use them a lot in battle, give them massages, or feed them specific foods to give them enough happiness to evolve. I don't know why, but I find these particularly aggravating, I'm sure there are those out there who like the happiness evolutions, but I do not number among them.

Something I noticed with this game is that it doesn't really take advantage of the DS's dual screen capabilities. You get an item early on in the game called a Poketch, that's fundamentally a glorified watch. There's really nothing special about it, the only mildly useful app on the thing is there's a screen you get that shows you the current health of your pokemon, other than that it's really not useful. I mean, does the game really need to include a pedometer as one of the “useful” apps on the watch, or the coin-flipping app?
One of the other uses of the touch screen is that you can now simply tap the option you want to use in battle. Of course, you don't necessarily need to tap them; you can still use the d-pad to navigate through the menus. The only other thing I can think of that utilizes the touch screen is there's a mini-game you play in Heartholme City where you make some small snack things called Poffins. Which again there's no need to do, making them is quite pointless, the only possible reason to bother making them is to give them a slight edge in the pokemon beauty contests, which again are quite pointless. The only other use the poffins are is to make a pokemon a bit friendlier, and that's only needed if it's a friendship specific pokemon evolution, even then there's really no point to make them.

Graphically the game is about the same quality as the GBA Pokemon games. It's nice and colorful and everything, it just not especially good. The sprites on the map have a nice chibi look about them, it's just they look just the same as the ones from the GBA Pokemons. Something else that bothers me are the character sprites for the battles, they don't look especially good in my opinion. The pokemon themselves look pretty decent, a majority of them however are okay looking but only a few are really memorable, the evolved forms of the starters, for instance.

Overall, the game is decent I suppose, the gameplay is decent, it just gets very old after a while. A majority of the problems I have with this game is the fact that this game really hasn't changed all that much over the years. If you've never played a Pokemon game before Diamond and Pearl will certainly entertain you. It's just if you've played Pokemon since its inception back on the original Game Boy you'll get bored of this game real fast.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/02/09

Game Release: Pokemon Diamond Version (US, 04/22/07)