Faithfully Bad | A Review of Pokemon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl 

Happy New Year you guys! Enjoy Stay tuned for what's in store come 2022

"Just box your friends to not end up overleveled" "Just abuse your friends to avoid friendship bonuses" These people hate Pokemon in a literal way...

There's a reason people wanted "gen 4 remakes" Not "diamond and pearl remakes" All 3 games have parts that should be included, But platinum by far has the most of them.

ill describe it this way: fire red made me not want to play red, soul silver made me not want to come back to silver anymore and omega ruby made me not want to grab my ruby copy because all three remakes improved upon their originals. brilliant diamond? made me grab my copy of platinum as fast as I can get, and never let go

I love how you make a point I cannot believe people don't consider: NOT EVERYONE CAN UPDATE A NEW GAME. Sometimes the wifi may be awful, maybe someone lives in the countryside, and a ton of different reasons. A game MUST be playable base, period.

Pro tip: Good remakes are supposed to be improvements to the originals rather than just remasters with current gen graphics.

I think one of the worst parts about this game is when during a battle it says "your Pokemon turned around and nodded in understanding!"… bitch no it didn't? Don't gaslight me.

Y'know maybe Silver had a point, maybe forming a bond is suboptimal.

My VERY FIRST thought when playing BD was "wow, they really captured the feeling of playing on 15 year old hardware!"

The Giratina origin form battle is just as big of a middle finger as the “battle frontier project” in oras. They basically said “Yeah we know we could have put more platinum content in the game… But screw you this is all you get.”

I am glad this game was made in Unity, because holy moly the mods for this thing are gonna be nuts if people care enough to make them.

Ngl, having my pokémon turn their head towards me in the 3DS era games was such a nice touch, it sucks that that system has devolved into what it is now

Ill never understand the "but a new patch fixed the game." Yes, fixed the issues that shouldnt have been in there in the first place

The amount of bugs and glitches that often resulted in me having to reset is just unacceptable in a game from the highest profit franchise on the planet. I got a refund, and replayed Platinum.

I miss the era when games were completed the moment they were released. When they cared about adding stuff that you won't find in any modern pokemon game. I miss the time when the developers used to pour their heart into their games, instead of forcing out soulless mediocre products one after the other. The Pokemon franchise has grown too big for its own good. Big enough that no matter how many fans have gotten sick of the same old yearly sloppy release, new fans will replace the old ones and the massive sales will keep justify their choices, while at the same time said sales speak louder than any complain uttered and ignored by the pokemon company.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Brilliant and Shining isn’t a good title for these games more like Broken Diamond and Unpolished Pearl if anything

The most frustrating thing? Rowan is a professor that studies Pokemon evolution, so why wouldn't they bring back Mega Evolution and expand on it through Dialga and Palkia and Arceus? ORAS expanded on it, so why not here? Other than being lazy to make money.

If they ever made Gen 5 remakes it will be the ultimate definition of fixing something that isn't broke.

"I cannot believe such a useful feature [like the VS Recorder] that was present on both the DS and the 3DS is yet to make a single appearance on the Switch." This should not come as a surprise to anyone paying attention. We have asked for years for so many features to come back. I'm not sure I've seen a games series so vehemently opposed to keeping good features like Pokémon. It's actually insane.

For a game that's so "faithful" it didn't even have the full battle frontier.

In a nutshell, it's like a Disney live action remake, but with Pokémon

I find it so funny that Twitter is telling people to poison and faint their Pokémon so that people stop complaining about the friendship mechanic. It's like telling people to stop complaining about their flight being cancelled and that they should just walk to another country

"Force em to faint" "Feed em bitter herbs" Ah yes abuse my mons! Like that doesn't fly in the face of one of the things N was talkim about.

I just don't understand why is so hard to add a toggle for the affection and EXP-ALL on the config menu, it should be really simple.

I feel like Miitopia implements the “happiness” mechanic so much better; characters in your party form bonds with each other and gain powerful abilities like teaming up in a single turn, shielding damage for someone, sharing food, or briefly becoming more powerful when their friend is KO’d out of revenge, and these buffs become can stack with multiple bonds. These things sound game breaking at first, but the difference between Miitopia’s system and Pokemon’s is that the bonds in Miitopia are built into the core game experience and the battle difficulty is balanced around these buffs. As a result, choosing which bonds to strengthen is not only a fun thing to do for the whole fantasy of the game (“an RPG starring you and your friends”) but also a strategic element of play based on the roles everyone has, especially in the late- and post-game. If battles in Pokemon were harder, stuff like increased crit rate, free focus stashes, and dodging 100% accuracy moves would feel less like cheating and more like a fair and strategic powerup.

Remember how getting the Regis in gen 3 basically felt like exploring the entire Hoenn region to find treasures that had been hidden away for centuries? There's no sense of reward and accomplishment anymore with legendaries and I don't understand how some people don't see that. Sure the puzzles to get the Regis were pretty obtuse and a guide was likely required for first-time players, but its _FAR_ better than just being handed two powerful legendaries just for throwing money at The Pokémon Company in the past

Imagine waiting over 10 years for them to remake Sinnoh. Only for them to do this.

As a youtuber known as davo_ once said: "If a game needs mods to be good, wouldn't that imply that it's, well, not good?"

I don’t have these games but the friendship haxx makes me laugh so much. “Poison heal Gliscor shook off its poison so you wouldn’t worry!” Toughing out a hit cancelling out a destiny bond takedown. I think I would scream if I actually had to play

Also: The PLATINUM DLC OUTFITS are NOT DLC, they’re MYSTERY GIFT, so in a month or so if you want to start a NEW GAME again, then the outfits will be gone FOREVER and can never be redownloaded. The games also WON'T ALLOW SAVE DATA BACKUP. So the costumes are gone forever on a new system.

I think JRose’s Bidoof run on BDSP says all that needs to be said about how broken the friendship mechanic is.

I’ve been replaying HGSS. That was a masterclass of a remake. Took the best of DPPt, the best of crystal, and incorporates them into an lightly improved GS storyline. I was already bummed that ORAS didn’t just remake emerald, but at least they still made a great game with the best of the current hardware. This remake is less than half assed and is really inexcusable. Shame it sold so well. Blind devotion keep giving gamefreak the excuse to half ass.

If they want to do "retro" remakes, I'd love them to take the Final Fantasy Pixel Remake approach--the Pokemon and trainers all keep the 2D artstyle of the DS games, add some flashy battle effects, orchestrate the music. I think people would be really receptive to that.

Unironically the bugs and glitches were the most interesting things about these games. Like ohh boy, it’s amazing how these glitches are on the scale never seen in this franchise since red and blue (which basically obliterated any integrity . Hell the scale of some of these glitches somehow rivals the 8F glitch in red and blues which that glitch was literally a code execution glitch that allowed the player to edit their Pokémon PKhex style in game.

First time I broke out of the cycle and refused to buy, it was a no brainer

It was already a red flag when they advertised it as a "Faithful remake". I don't want a faithful remake of D/P. Those games had massive problems that should be fixed, like the lack of fire pokemon for most of the game, the low amount of pokemon to catch in the first half of the game, and consumable TM just to name a few. Those changes wouldn't make it faithful enough apparently, but forced exp share is okay I guess. The only problem they ended up fixing was HMs.

If I wanted to play "faithful recreations" I would just play the originals

Gamefreak: Our hardcore fanbase loves these games, so don't do ANYTHING different, or they will be furious. Keep it as close to the originals as possible ILCA: Gotcha. 100% faithful Gamefreak: Oh yeah, and you have 7 months. ILCA: W-Wait, WHAT?!? But COVID has made- Gamefreak: I don't care, neither does Ishihara, just get it done. ILCA: Uh-Oh........Okay........ *Same Problems from the Original games are prevalent, completely unfixed, game is rated low because of it* Gamefreak: Well, I have no idea what you did wrong, since it's exactly what they wanted, but at least it's not our fault this time! ILCA: ...........

When I was younger, I hoped we'd see Black 3 and White 3 when we get to Unova remakes. Now, I feel the more realistic game for GameFreak to make is Pokemon Black and White HD Edition...

The sad thing is that people will still continue to get hyped for future Pokemon games even after all of this mediocrity.

Gen 5 is my favorite generation, and the way these games are going, the moment I hear word of a "Gen 5 remake" I'm going to be pre-emptively mad.

Regarding the affection mechanic, I was thinking it could be an interesting use of it if they were to boost your Pokemon's IVs rather than unlocking cheats. The series was always about bonding with your Pokemon so it always seemed a bit jarring when the best way to get the strongest Pokemon was to selectively breed ones with the highest stats, so encouraging you to bond with your team by making them the strongest versions of themselves would be a cool way to do it IMO Not saying to remove IV breeding entirely, just as an alternative way to get those max stats.

I find it quite crazy that Battle Revolution, a Wii game from gen 4 that is *thirteen years old* , visually obliterates this 2021 Switch "remake". Polygon count aside, the combat presentation is parsecs ahead of BDSP. If you were to tell us when we were young and playing both DP and Battle Revolution, that Pokemon games over a decade in the future still wouldn't even come close to what we can already see and play on our home tv, there's no way we would've believed it.

They should’ve added difficulties………. I don’t want an EXP share. I want tougher trainers. I want a game that feels like it’s worth beating.

It really feels like GF was breathing down ILCA’s necks here, preventing any creative input on their side. If I remember correctly, the leaked concept art showed off lots of platinum content, so my best guess about why they fell on the rest of it is because GF didn’t want it to overshadow Legends Arceus Plus I’m gonna cut them some slack for the animations, they almost definitely had no input on that matter Edit: also wish some important npcs had affection on their pokemon, it’d balance it out while keeping the “power of friendship” stuff

I felt pressured in picking this up cause all my friends were playing, but I'm happy I didn't. Felt this gen deserved alot more.

I feel bad for people who grew up with gen 4, and after all the long wait, they get... whatever this is.

If I was given a free Mew or something like that when I was a kid playing my first Pokémon games, the experience would not have been as deep or stuck with me the way it did. It was the feeling of overcoming actual challenging situations with the Pokémon I had raised that made it special. As a kid, you don’t realize how important that is until after it happens. if a kid is given an OP game-breaking tool, they’re gonna use it. Would Pokémon have been such a lasting experience to all of us, and stayed in our hearts, if we had less of an adventure and more of an easy game-sweep? I can only hope this BS really WILL be detrimental to how much new generations of kids even like Pokémon, causing them to not KEEP liking it as they grow up the way we did… and then in turn causing drop in sales. That’s the only way I can see Pokémon being forced to change.

man, the pokemon charm has finally worn off for me. Every single prior pokemon game, no matter how much i didnt enjoy it, i would always finish to the end. This is the only time i didn’t finish a pokemon game. I couldnt even bring myself to finish the second gym. This game is unbelievably boring, like it takes effort to create such a boring, mindless product. I had it with this series.

DistantKingdom & Arlo: Yeah, it's been long enough, time to release this BDSP review that rips into its mediocrity.

If the glitches weren't more fun than the gameplay, I would have returned the game already.

If this was OR/AS style remake with new megas and primal Dialga and Palkia as well as the improvements from Platinum this would have been the best thing ever

I mean I’m here for the glitches, the original Gen 4 release had a void glitch, Gen 1 has a ton of glitches, and it’s one of the most fun parts of those games even though they’re unintentional.

I wish they had added Pokémon Amie as the way to increase affection and kept friendship the number of steps taken. I miss being able to pet my babies 😭

"A delayed game is eventually good, a rushed game is bad forever." - Shigeru Miyamoto.

Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire were so good both for casual players and competitive players. Not to mention Heart Gold and Soul Silver which were BETTER than the original and honestly the best games in the whole series by my standards. It just sucks that the love put into those remakes wasn't put into this one. I'd been wanting a revisitation of these for a while now and I feel I'm constantly disappointed the last few years.

Is it unfinished? Or are they seeing how little they can put in each "game" they make and still get rich?

The moment they made a point of the fact that BDSP were going to be "faithful recreations" of the original games, I freakin' called it that they were going be half-baked cash grabs I'm legitimately terrified to see how they'll handle the inevitable BW remakes. I just hope Legends Arceus doesn't turn out like this cause if it turns out as another mediocre game then I think the writing's on the wall for this franchise.

Yes. Faithful to me is even less of an argument when you consider this: When you played those games, Diamond and Pearl, it was not just to play another Pokemon game but you were playing the most up to date game in the series with the newest features etc. So when you think of a Pokemon remake, you don't just want the same game but in 3D (especially if it's ugly 3D) but you want it to make the region the newest and best version of a Pokemon game and have the most recent advancement just like it used to. These remakes are useless. I would never play this game over the originals. Playing it would just make me sad at sight of this bothched remake and witnessing how they failed us. We were expecting this for so long, and rightfully so since they put out remakes regularly and they must have known how excited we were about the Sinnoh remakes seeing as we are so vocal, with concepts and wishes being plastered all over the internet. It is just a slap in the face.

I was going to get Brilliant Diamond for Christmas but on a gut feeling, I decided to go for Monster Hunter Stories 2. After seeing this video and the reaction online, I dodged a bullet.

If you can bond with your pokemon for buffs your enemies should be able to do too.

the real "definitive" gen 4 experience is pokemon mystery dungeon sky, it actually incorporates Dialga and Palkia's abilities into the plot

DK + every sane person: "wow BDSP is such a lazy nostalgia cash grab" Pokemon company: 💲💰🤑😂🤞

I agree with mostly everything. I saw a video regarding the development of this game and it showed that the concept art from ILCA shows a BDSP that looks a lot like legends arceus. Im not sure how true it is, but it seems like ILCA wanted to make a full blown,full scale game but was forced to downgrade the game into a DP port.

I'm so incredibly happy I didn't waste my money, THANK YOU for such a thorough review.

You can't even really call it faithful due to the forced EXP Share being such a big change.

All I'll say is if you want a Gen 4 game with difficulty, is actually fun, looks good, has few glitches, and even adds fairy types... Just get Renegade Platinum.

I've been playing through this game and looking for the best in it, possibly to justify that I spent $60+tax on it. Now that I've thought on it... I think I hate it.

I like how in the intro to the remake, you can see Barry running on water😂

I didn't get BDSP because of the reasons listed here. We didn't need the game to leak or anything to know this is exactly how the game would turn out after the promotional materials dropped.

The term "Faithful Remake" has got to be the most asinine oxymoron I've heard of in recent memory.

So for gen 5 remakes, don't expect PWT or BW2 Unova map, we will get lucky, if at least has BW2 dex and Kyurem fusion forms.

Y'know i heard that ilca had way bigger plans for bdsp, even wanting to bring in lots of platinum content but masuda fought them every step of the way. That doesnt mean its true but it would explain some things

There are 2 approaches for remakes as far as I'm concerned. HGSS chose to master the gen 2 games and add some new content, but mainly just made the original content near perfect and including newer mons and the islands and expanded postgame. ORAS, despite not including some key Emerald content is the other approach. They at least updated the story and included a LOT of new content including the primal legendaries and a whole bunch of new megas and ALSO including a bunch of newer mons. BDSP did NEITHER of these methods and it's painfully obvious that Gamefreak put in the bare minimum effort. It didn't master the old content while including some key new stuff nor did it try to make a large deviation from the originals to try something new. It's literally just a 3D port of diamond/pearl. I refuse to buy new Pokemon games, despite being a fan since gen 1 because Gamefreak has gotten so lazy that they think they don't need to try at all and people will still buy their games. Even Sw/Sh was unacceptable, but BD/SP is really the last straw. I'll either emulate their games or just stop playing their games altogether til I see improvement.

My friend bought this game for me knowing I loved gen 4 so I gave it a shot. After gym 3 I was so bored out of my mind with the mind numbingness I returned it. Drove to my parents... Dug out a shoebox. Found platinum and my dsi. Beat that shit in a week. Wtf happened to my favorite gen.

We cant forget the decision to include fairy type, which completely undermines the difficulty of the original games, and what made Cynthia so much more difficult. Her garchomp didn't have a direct weakness before, but now its hard countered by a fairy type pokemon simply existing.

wait, so its not my fault i dont enjoy the game? i don't know how to feel about that

I sailed the high seas and was still left like I lost something playing through this game. I couldn't bear playing this game by the 6th gym, so I just replayed Platinum.

Can’t wait for the next remakes, Total Black and Absolute White. Where they answer our criticisms of not have changed BDSP story by trying to smash Black and Whites story with Black 2 and White 2, ruining both. Because why have quality when you can make all the money while pretending to care?

0:35 This is the most realistic meme of Gamefreak I’ve ever heard lmao 😂

Modders turning BDSP into a Platinum remake, is such a power move lmao. "Fine, I'll do it myself'

What really bothers me about BDSP is that they literally didn't improve anywhere, I've expected it to be similar to SWSH gameplay. Not only that, People have to realise that this carbon copy of a 15 year old DS game is freaking 60$ PER GAME! If another game company would do that, they would be cancelled as hard as EA, Bethesa, etc by the gaming community. But because the brand Pokémon is slapped on it, some fans refuse to remove their nostalgia glasses and defend these games with every inch of their sweat, coming up with excuses (or copium) defending these cash grabs of lazy games they wasted their money on. It's the first time in my entirely Pokemon journey that I've skipped a Pokemon game.

I have a really bad feeling that Legends Arceus is also going to release a lot more unfinished. Especially that we haven't even seen much and the game is one month from launch.

I already decided against buying it after I saw the graphics and am happy to hear that it was a good decision for many more reasons.

7:34 funny enough the Pokémon manga actually integrated those math puzzles in fantine’s actual strategy because those puzzles were meant to gauge her opponents rationality and see whether or not they would be susceptible to illusions. That on top of the high elevation with disorient most challengers she fights.

I just can't get over how bad the art direction looks. The DS titles looked chibi because they had to be. The 3D chibi used in BDSP is just awful, like everything's made of plastic. But hey, Nintendo's never winning my loyalty back as long as home exists and my 3ds games and earlier will one day be permanently cut off from the future generations so.

I had someone get upset with me because I said Pokémon boot-lickers were actively ruining the series and allowing TPC to make bad games This idiot took it as me saying anyone who simply liked the game was a boot-licker TPC boot-lickers are just hilarious

A lot of my friends don't understand when I say that I'm becoming increasingly disillusioned with the mainline Pokemon games, and stuff like this is why. So many features in place that take away control from the player, making you play it the way that *they* want to rather than how *you* want to. So many things that could have easily been much better than they ultimately ended up being (following Pokemon, not needing to teach your team HMs, stuff like that). Lacking so many features that really should be expected, like a VS Recorder or the ability to customize various options in online matches (or, ya know, an actual opening cinematic and credits cinematic at launch). I was pleasantly surprised that in BDSP I actually had to strategize to beat Maylene, and the boss fights overall weren't total pushovers. But that was because I was also actively leveling up almost 3 whole teams of Pokemon without grinding, a lesson I learned after my first playthrough of SwSh and implemented on my second playthrough to avoid getting overleveled, which worked surprisingly well and actually opens up a lot of new teambuilding options that you wouldn't normally have. But essentially *needing* to do that in order for the game to be challenging is just awful. Stuff like this is why I've increasingly turned to playing rom hacks of games. Drayano's hacks like Renegade Platinum and Sacred Gold/Storm Silver have overall been some of the best experiences I've had playing Pokemon games. They're challenging, have good Pokemon selection, and have a ton of QoL features that a lot of rom hackers have come up with that have *never* been implemented in mainline Pokemon games, or have only been present in an entry or two. And a lot of rom hacks have begun implementing the modern experience share as a *toggleable key item*, which allows me to have the interesting team building experience I've essentially had to make the modern Pokemon releases in order for them to not be too easy, and the challenge that they've been unable to deliver on.

1:04 my man Barry is so fast that he can run on water now

The new affection system causes my poison heal gliscor that I worked so hard to get to CONSTANTLY heal itself from poisoning 😤

The funniest thing about this game to me is that it was made in the unity engine. The most successful media franchise in the world couldn’t be bothered to use a more powerful engine or make its own.

It is heart breaking to see what could've been.

Actually Pokémon Yellow was the first 3rd version, not Crystal. Crystal was the first, to implement the female trainer and sprite animation.

Funny enough, Cynthia would've destroyed me if not for that friendship bs. It's literally what saved me. My team were in the 60s in levels, highest being my Garchomp at 64. This elite 4 is very challenging. Its just that the exp share makes the rest of the game, save for Maylene(her Lucario is broken AF) easy.

I spent the whole game expecting and preparing for certain things to happen only to be disappointed when I realized that "oh... that was a platinum thing..."

I LOVED the affection mechanic. Finally, the game's message of bonding and friendship is made tangible. You are objectively a better trainer for bonding with your pokemon.

I would use affection in the older games and I remember the benefits of affection not occuring near as much as they did in bdsp.

The abusing pokemon bit reminded me of a side thing you could do in Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness. There were disks that you could find that contained mini challenges once you progressed to a point where you could run the disks (my favorite was the four-way metronome battle). One of the challenges was to defeat the opposing party within a set number of turns. The preset pokemon were less than stellar matchups, but the third in the party could defeat both opponents. The only thing was you didn't get enough time. I had to look it up and you had to intentionally make one of your pokemon faint by making one attack the other. That's when the game made me take a step back and step out of the immersion. Because at that point the pokemon weren't your friends. They weren't your partners. They were a means to an end. And even if in-game it's a simulation, it was still troubling to me.. Also technically bitter herbs wouldn't be poison based on the fact that it does heal the pokemon, but it would be like forcing someone to get sick to give them disgusting medication (Buckley's comes to mind), or getting injured just to pour peroxide on the wound. If someone did that to you, you would end up despising them too.

People like to poop on ORAS, but at least ORAS had updated movesets and reusable TM's. I've come around on the full-team exp-share because it encourages catching more pokemon and evolving them without doing an excessive amount of grinding, buuuuuut, I do agree 100% that it should be optional.

I hate that when people bring up that the animation and game design is bad people immediately jump on them to ask if they "want the animators to die" or "asking the game designers to make it is to much" but beyond the fact that it is their JOB to release a good product and it is not impossible for them to make. The pokemon company is ALREADY crunching them. BDSP literally didn't have the music finished for release thats how bad it was. I want good pokemon games that take 5-8 years to release and I am not joking.