Well, folks, I’ve done it. I have officially abandoned my previous ways as a strict PC-only gamer and recently purchased a Nintendo Switch Lite. When I made that purchase, I knew that I wanted the remake of one of the fourth-generation Pokémon titles to be the first “mainstream” game I acquired for my new handheld device. I figured that, since I had Pokémon Pearl on my original Nintendo DS when I was a lad, I would get the newly-remade Brilliant Diamond on Switch in order to see what I missed out on all those years ago.

I’ve got to be honest with you, dear readers. I’m not sure I’ll have all that much to say about this title. I’m not exactly convinced that I’ll be able to make this article long enough to count as one of my normal “thesis papers,” as Keiran likes to refer to them. This game is, at its core, a modernized version of one-half of the story told via the original Nintendo DS releases. It has been given a fresh coat of paint, which brings a new art style along with it, but that seems to be the most jarring change I’ve noticed during my time with Brilliant Diamond thus far. It’s not a deal-breaker for me by any stretch, to be sure.

Then again, as the old adage goes, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” This title’s developers certainly haven’t broken the original spirit of Pokémon Diamond as far as I’m concerned, although they have made quite a few changes that could be seen as quality-of-life updates. Some of these alterations have proven to be rather controversial among certain circles of the Pokémon fan base, though. For example, consider the fact that Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl now split experience points from battles among all non-fainted Pokémon in the player’s six-slot party by default.

This is a practice colloquially known as “EXP Share.” As I recall, in the original DS games, its function required a specific item that was meant to be given to a single Pokémon at a time. That Pokémon would then have to continue holding the EXP Share item until the player felt it had reached a suitable level. Nowadays, however, a Pokémon does not need to actually participate in any battle to receive experience points upon the player emerging victorious, and there are no special items necessary to achieve this.

Furthermore, all of the Pokémon in your party now receive experience points whenever you catch a new Pokémon. In the vast majority of previous games in the series, catching a Pokémon would mean your existing party wouldn’t gain any experience because you technically didn’t defeat any wild Pokémon or trainers. Like I said a moment or two ago, I personally consider these to be quite beneficial changes. I know not everyone reading this review will agree with me in expressing that particular opinion though.

In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that the majority of this review is just going to consist of me gushing about all the new alterations that make Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl significantly more enjoyable. Having said that, I want to clarify that I found the original Pokémon Pearl to be great fun when I first played it. I thought it was a wonderful addition to the Pokémon franchise.

However, at least now I don’t have to manually switch what I’ve taken to calling “initially less-than-useful” Pokémon (like a Magikarp) in and out of battle during every encounter in order to ensure that they level up. That brings me to one change to the formula that I rather strongly dislike, though. Allow me to elaborate.

I found out the hard way that the Pokémon Daycare in Solaceon Town has been replaced with the Pokémon Nursery. Now, I bet I can guess what you’re thinking: “That sounds like a simple name change, so it’s probably nothing to be concerned about, right?” Well, I’m afraid there’s more to it than that. In the original Pokémon Diamond & Pearl, the Pokémon Daycare would (among other functions) allow any Pokémon that players left there to gain experience points at a rate of one point per step the player took.

This meant that if you left a pair of Pokémon at the Daycare as soon as you arrived in Solaceon Town for the first time, they would probably be power-leveled by the time you were close to finishing your quest and came back for them. This could most assuredly work to your advantage, provided you had enough cash to get your Pokémon out of the Daycare. The owners of the facility used to charge more to allow you to withdraw your Pokémon based on how many times your creatures leveled up while they were there.

In Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, however, the Pokémon Nursery doesn’t provide experience points at all for any Pokémon you leave in the care of the elderly Nursery Couple. Rather, the facility is intended entirely as a means of breeding the pair of Pokémon you deposit there and producing Eggs from them provided their so-called “Egg Groups” are compatible. The game makes no effort to tell you this before you arrive at the Nursery as far as I’m aware. That is what really ticks me off the most about this whole mechanic.

I discovered this when I eventually returned to retrieve a level 4 Zubat and a level 8 Onix after taking what must have been several thousand steps, only to realize that their levels hadn’t changed in the slightest. This prompted me to do some Internet searching, which in turn resulted in disappointment. I expected to return to find a significantly leveled-up pair of Pocket Monsters and left empty-handed, save for the knowledge that my Zubat and Onix don’t really like each other.

I haven’t played Pokémon Sword & Shield yet. Perhaps this change was first made in those games and Brilliant Diamond essentially just assumed I already knew about it. Alternatively, maybe the Daycare was replaced because the game’s developers felt it was unnecessary due to the aforementioned EXP Share system. I can’t say for sure. Either way, I just wish the game had said something about this change before I bothered depositing my Pokémon at the newly-rechristened Nursery.

I would say the change that resulted in the Pokémon Nursery is by far the biggest complaint I have about the list of updates present in Brilliant Diamond, though. Come to think of it, that may well be the only thing I’ve currently encountered that I dislike about this title’s changes to its source material. I’m honestly rather impressed by that, especially considering the not-insignificant amounts of flak that Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl received online for making many of these alterations.

Moving on from that, I have another handful of beneficial modifications to discuss whose presence I most assuredly appreciate and enjoy. For one thing, whenever you access the game menu by pressing X while you’re not battling, the game now provides a handy reminder of what you’re supposed to do next in the story. Your Town Map will also show you exactly where you need to go in order to accomplish that goal. I find this incredibly helpful for several reasons, not the least of which is my tendency to forget what I was doing if I put the game down for a few days.

Next, there’s the significant overhaul to what are known as Hidden Moves, aka “HMs.” In virtually every previous Pokémon game of which I’m aware, these moves could not be forgotten or replaced with new moves unless you enlisted the help of a specialized, secluded NPC. This restriction led legions of players to teach as many Hidden Moves as they could to Pokémon they rarely (if ever) used for any purpose besides using these moves for their out-of-battle functions. Such Pokémon were commonly derogatorily referred to as “HM slaves.” However, Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl do away with this practice in two intertwined ways.

These games have first made Hidden Moves able to be forgotten and replaced whenever you’d like without any help from an NPC. Secondly, since all Hidden Moves can be used outside of battle provided you’ve earned a specific Gym Badge, Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl have declared that you don’t even need to teach them to any of your Pokémon in order to use them in the overworld. You might be wondering how this works, so please allow me to elaborate.

Suppose you want to use the Hidden Move Fly to travel from one side of the game’s map to the other. Assuming you’ve obtained the Gym Badge that allows you to use the HM outside of battle, here’s how you’d go about doing that. You would simply double-tap the R button to bring up your Pokémon Watch (or “Pokétch,” for short). This device contains an application that lists all the Hidden Moves you’ve obtained and which ones you’re allowed to use in the overworld.

Once you’re looking at this list, you’d just tap the button marked “Fly,” then select your destination on your Town Map. Upon doing so, the game will tell you that a random, wild, Flying-type Pokémon showed up to help out by picking you up and taking you where you’d like to go. This process is identical for all other Hidden Moves, like Strength, Rock Smash, Surf, and so on. You can still use Hidden Moves in the overworld the old-fashioned way though. The game will still ask you if you want to Surf whenever you press A while facing a body of water.

Now, admittedly, this process doesn’t make total sense to me. In the example I just explained that centers around the move Fly, I can’t help but wonder where that wild Staraptor came from, how it knew I wanted to fly somewhere, and why it bothered to take time out of its probably busy schedule to help me out with that. I know these questions don’t necessarily need to be answered per se, but they do constitute something that’ll likely always be weird to me.

The last change I want to discuss in Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl is arguably one of these titles’ most prominent features: the Grand Underground. As its name implies, this is a massive overhaul of the “non-Grand” Underground from the original Diamond & Pearl. In case you’re unfamiliar, the original Underground allowed players to travel beneath the entirety of the playable Sinnoh region via the use of a certain item whenever they were outdoors.

Upon reaching the Underground, players could do such things as look for treasure and build customizable bases that they could have their friends visit. One of the main things you couldn’t do in the original Pearl & Diamond, though, was encounter and catch wild Pokémon while in the Underground. This has since been changed for the better in Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl. Depending on your location in Sinnoh when you use your Explorer’s Kit to access the Grand Underground, you’ll be able to find several locations called “Pokémon Hideaways.”

As you might expect, you’ll find various types of Pokémon based on the terrain in the Hideaways you can access from your current location. For example, I caught a Psyduck from a Hideaway that (I think) was called “Fountainspring Cave.” It features bodies of water, so you’re likely to find Water-type Pokémon there. This whole Hideaway system operates pretty logically in that regard.

One of the biggest selling points about the Grand Underground is that it serves as a means of potentially finding Pokémon from regions other than Sinnoh before you complete the game’s story and unlock the National Pokédex. The example I’ve seen given most commonly of this mechanic is the Pokémon called Houndoom.

There’s also the matter of the Diglett and Dugtrio you might encounter while exploring the Grand Underground. I don’t mean to say you can actually catch those specific Pokémon as soon as you see them, necessarily, but you should always walk to where you see them. They leave behind energy that you can collect based on which of the Pokémon you saw. Each Diglett leaves behind one unit of this energy, while each Dugtrio leaves three.

You’d do well to collect as much of this energy as you can because each time you acquire enough of it, your chances of encountering shiny Pokémon while spelunking are considerably increased. The only catch is that this effect and the energy both reset each time you leave the Grand Underground. I would suggest keeping that in mind if you’re hunting for any specific shiny Pokémon. For what it’s worth, I think this addition to the whole Grand Underground is a wonderful idea. It gives players more of a reason to actually explore all the Hideaways just to see what they might find.

On a final note, I want to address the controversies surrounding some of the changes I’ve mentioned throughout this review. More specifically, these titles’ developers have been accused of making Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl “too easy” because of things like EXP Share and the overhaul to Hidden Moves. I see where those who make that argument are coming from.

In my personal experience with Brilliant Diamond thus far, the only time I’ve felt like my party of Pocket Monsters might be slightly under-leveled was during the battle against Fantina, Hearthome City’s Gym Leader. As a result, that battle was certainly more of a challenge than I expected. However, because of that EXP Share mechanic, all of my Pokémon were situated at roughly equal levels without me having to engage in any grinding in between trainer battles and Gyms.

I see absolutely no harm in making Pokémon games less of a “grind-fest” to any degree. Instead, I see this change and the alterations which led to it as signs that the game’s developers respect their audience’s time. Therefore, I don’t think the games are too easy by any stretch of the imagination. To be blunt, I really just think a particularly vocal minority of Pokémon purists out there take things like this far too seriously.

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Pokémon Brilliant Diamond

$59.99

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Excellent Retelling of its Source Material
• Great Starting Point for Newcomers and Younger Audiences

Cons

• Certain Changes Don't Make Total Logical Sense