Pokemon Brilliant Diamond

 Switch
User Score
5.2

Mixed or average reviews- based on 917 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 322 out of 917
  2. Mixed: 214 out of 917
  3. Negative: 381 out of 917
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  1. TinCanStone
    Nov 21, 2021
    1
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Pros: Some song remixes are pretty good (but even the worst Pokémon games tend to have decent music), some battle backgrounds look nice.

    Cons: -Awful chibi style in the overworld that makes some scenes that are supposed to be tense into jokes (Cyrus awkwardly waddling around the edges of the carpet before talking about putting an end to everything)
    -Little to no Platinum features (no Charon, Looker, or Villa for example)
    -Costs about 9-6 more dollars (assuming you bought DP/Pt when they released for $40) than the originals when accounting for inflation and not including a NSO subscription
    -Forced EXP Share, regardless of if you hated grinding or not
    -OP Amie buffs upon reaching 100% friendship
    -Scuffed following Pokémon mechanic with the same exact issue SwSh had with some Pokemon being incredibly slow even though they literally got it correct in LGPE
    -Overworld Pokémon scaling so bad it’s hilarious
    -Only the original 493, not even any regional forms which even LGPE had (the same game that also cut cross-gen evos)
    -Still has many issues that plague the Pokémon series (Clunky and slow battle system with text boxes for everything, bad in-battle scaling, static/boring idle and attacking animations, lack of difficulty options)

    Basically, just play Platinum or some ROMHack if you want to play a Sinnoh game.    … Expand
  2. Uncle_Flipp
    Nov 21, 2021
    4
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. When it comes to keeping their word, Pokemon Company is top notch. both Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl and very faithful remakes to the original games of Diamond and Pearl. They are so faithful that they severely harm the quality of the game.

    Diamond and Pearl were great games for their time. They had a fantastic story, great characters, and the strongest champion ever, but the games weren't without their problems. Even the Pokemon Company and Gamefreak recognized that Diamond and Pearl needed something else to truely be a well rounded game with re-playability. That is where Platinum came in. Platinum added so many amazing quality of life features, an alternate and in my opinion better story line, as well as more post game features. So why is it that BDSP does not include many of the features from Pokemon Platinum that even the Pokemon company recognized as necessary to make the game better? This decision was a huge folly and if they decide to implement an alternate story line later to make up for this mistake, it better be a free expansion and not cost money.

    Next, I would like to discuss the graphics. The graphics of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl have easily been the most controversial decision that was made for these remakes. Ever since the announcement of the chibi design is has been the most argued about feature in these two games. I won’t lie; I was one of the people who were abhorrently against this decision because it felt like a choice made to be lazy during game design and also felt like the games were going backwards, instead of forwards. Even though I hated the decision at first, the chibi design actually grew on me to the point that I don't hate it, but I don't love it. It still feels like it was a choice made to save time and cut corners under the ruse of "staying faithful" to the originals. After so many hours of playing I have grown accustomed to the chibi design and think overall this was a good decision, but terribly executed. In 2021, if you are going to remake a beloved game in a chibi design even though previously released games weren't chibi, then the models must look great, you need to use angles that make the chibi models look alive, and the movements and controls of all the chibi models must be smooth. Everything I just mentioned was failed on. The chibi models were poor quality and looked lifeless. Slopily, adding bouncing movement to certain parts of the model like hair and arms doesn’t make the character look alive, it looks robotic and poorly programmed. Also, the faces have blank stares and don’t move further bringing attention to the robotic nature of the models. On top of that the game tries to use camera angles as a wow factor, but the camera angles end up zooming in on the ugly character models they developed. Not every character looked terrible but a majority of them did. Any time you aren’t zoomed in on a chibi model the chibis look fine. Then you have the slightly terrible background graphics. Why is the upper third of the screen blurry like you are playing a character that is near sighted? The blurriness of the screen actually hurts my eyes after a while. The mixture of fast camera movements with the blurriness has even given me an occasional migraine.
    Lastly, I would like to discuss the controls for the game. There are three major complaints I have with the controls. First is the terrible reaction time between controller and character. If you are already going left and try to go right, there is a 1 second delay before the character even turns around. If you needed an example of good controls for a chibi, then look at Animal Crossing New Horizons. In ACNH The chibi model has a great reaction time between chibi and controller. This delay in turning adds to my second complaint which is the ridiculous “Sticky Wall” feature as I’ve come to call it. For some reason if you accidently touch a wall when walking/running your character will slightly be stuck and there in another second delay before your character can turn away from the wall in another direction. This is extremely irritating when you consider that the running is so fast, yet the areas are so narrow with tons of obstructions.
    Overall, this game is riddled with problems. There are indie games made by a team of 6 people that have higher quality graphics and better controls than BDSP. Which is a sad statement considering that Pokemon is the single biggest game franchise in the world by a long shot. The only reason I didn’t give these games a lower rank is because of it very few redeeming factors like it’s fantastic soundtrack, the Grand Underground (which we will probably never see in a future game knowing Pokemon company), and the fact that they kept the champion Cynthia at a high difficulty level. Unfortunately, these redeeming factors aren’t enough to make this a good game.    … Expand
  3. AquaArmour
    Nov 20, 2021
    0
    Been waiting for a Diamond and Pearl remake for about a decade now, excited for when it would be finally Sinnohs time. Pokemon Diamond is my favourite game of all time, and it hurts to see this game turn out to be such a disappointment.

    The graphics are bland, the chibi art style doesn't fit the grand story and lore of simmoh at all. The textures are faded and blurry. Only good thing I    Been waiting for a Diamond and Pearl remake for about a decade now, excited for when it would be finally Sinnohs time. Pokemon Diamond is my favourite game of all time, and it hurts to see this game turn out to be such a disappointment.

    The graphics are bland, the chibi art style doesn't fit the grand story and lore of simmoh at all. The textures are faded and blurry. Only good thing I can say about the graphics is that I like the post processing bloom and depth of field. The beautiful faded bluish green grass of sinnoh has been replaced by ugly high contrast dark green.

    Gameplay is copied directly from the originals, with the map being 100% block to block recreation of the originals. Most of the features are the same, but some features are even take away. All the platinum features, the exp share as an item etc. are all missing. The exp all breaks the entire leveling curve, which would have been fine if it was adjusted, but that was ripped directly from the originals as well.

    The marketing seems to hide behind the term faithful remake, which all the defenders of the game seem to parrot. Pokemon remakes were already relatively faithful compared to what other developers were doing with their remakes. Every Pokemon remake before this was able to stay faithful while still adding a lot to the table. The faithful remakes term seems to be just an excuse for not adding meaningful content to the game. Game design decisions need to benefit the game in some way right? art wise or gameplay wise? This does neither, so it is obvious it was a time and budget saving measure. Making the game faithful does not benefit anyone at all, old fans or new.

    If a rating of 0 seems too harsh for you, then please take into mind that this remake of my favourite game of all time, made into one of the few games I actually hate.    … Expand
  4. USAGI7
    Nov 20, 2021
    0
    Graphics: sword/shield better
    Pokemon: there are only 4 generation pokemons, no added latest pokemons.
    Level: very easy at first, but hard to see an ending because of an insane Cynthia
    Total:sword/shield better. ILCA should not make a pokemon game.
  5. Ali566
    Nov 21, 2021
    0
    Bad art style. Visually this game looks bad. Chibi models, the grass and a lot of other parts of the game don't look good especially when you compare it to pokemon games like Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee that looked a lot better
  6. GameBoyAdv4002
    Nov 21, 2021
    3
    I did not buy this game. If that spoils this review for you, stop reading, because this review is not about the quality of this game. This review is about Pokemon. The largest franchise in the world. And it puts out something like this. This game has nothing new to add, and everyone knows this. The negative reviews complain about the lack of new features, the positive ones enjoy the returnI did not buy this game. If that spoils this review for you, stop reading, because this review is not about the quality of this game. This review is about Pokemon. The largest franchise in the world. And it puts out something like this. This game has nothing new to add, and everyone knows this. The negative reviews complain about the lack of new features, the positive ones enjoy the return of the old stuff. But nothing new. This is a failure to innovate, from the franchise which should be out there making risks, because it is too big to fail. But instead they make a game that probably could run on the Gamecube with some optimisation, that does not expand upon the original in the ways the other remakes did, that doesn't even match the presentation effort of the originals despite the Pokemon franchise's indefinite growth. This isn't a review of Pokemon Brilliant Diamond, because I am not buying this game. This is a review of the Pokemon Company, that has refused to live up the reputation of the biggest media franchise. Play the games that do live up to that label. Play the games that try and fail to live up to that label, because it is better to support a game like that, than support a game that is not trying at all.… Expand
  7. Thorai
    Nov 21, 2021
    0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. This is honestly the worst Pokemon game I've played so far. I just finished the league and I have no motivation whatsoever to even go on playing or look at anything postgame. I am severely disappointed.

    The good:
    - The new Underground is great

    The bad:
    - Incredibly boring, repetitive gameplay
    - Poor style, even if you like the chibi-look, the movement in cutscenes is unnatural and clunky
    - EXP-share makes any grinding the originals might have needed redundant.. but of course they leave in every single trainer that you needed back then, forcing you into unavoidable battles that feel like a waste of time.
    - They abandoned everything Platinum improved on for an utterly boring story. Yes, our 'Fire Type' Elite 4 still only has 2 Fire Types in his team of 5. Because the only ones that exist, outside of the Underground, are the Fire Type starter... and Ponyta. 2. In the entire game.
    - The former Touchscreen Poketch features are basically unuseable with how much of a hassle it is toeven try and use them

    My playthrough experience: For about 28 hours I fought the same 15 or so Pokemon over and over, mostly consisting of pokemon in their unevolved forms somewhere between level 15 and 30 while your own team has already passed level 40. Half of that time it's either Trainers with Bidoof, Bugs, 5 magicarps or at least 4 Geodudes and 1 Onix with sturdy... which all give you about 20 to 30 exp. While in the grass the NPC is standing in you can find the evolved form of what they're using at about 6 levels higher. In heavy contrast to that, the Gym fights are suddenly 15 levels higher than the trainers you fought right before that and actually pack a punch. Which would be great if the way there wouldn't be an utter chore.
    The only enjoyable part is Victory Road where you are suddenly encountering Trainer types never seen before, using evolved Pokemon of a decent level, making you actually feel like this is worth your time. And then we come to the Elite 4... which seem to have Pokemon with perfect IVs and EVs as, for some reason, even a 7 levels lower Golem manages to outspeed and oneshot your darling Penguin. In the end, despite beating the Elite 4 in what could be a thrilling battle, the game leaves you too drained and annoyed to even feel any joy for beating Cynthia.
    Sadly, that makes a grand total of maybe 1 hour of 'interesting fights' within the 30 hours of gameplay it took me to get through.

    In summary: I regret buying the game and wasting my time. If you miss Diamond and Pearl, play Platinum instead. If this had been a Remake of Platinum, which already covered so many of its predecessors weaknesses, it might have been a good game... but this way, they were basically shown what to do to improve their C-Grade game into an A-Grade one - and decided to just put a little graphics-glitter on top instead of anything else, then wondering why it's still C-Grade.    … Expand
  8. Forketta95
    Nov 21, 2021
    0
    A good remake, I think the chibi style fits better than the Sword/Shield's Graphics.
    Anyaway 60$/€ is waaaaay to much for this.
  9. qweqaz123
    Nov 21, 2021
    0
    This is a remake from a game made over 10 years ago who in my opinion don't live to the hype does not justify the increased price-tag of 60 bucks.. While they were able to fix some of the flaws of it's original version they also gutted content from the original like the secret bases and contests, not only that but this has made some dubious choices like turning back TM's to being breakableThis is a remake from a game made over 10 years ago who in my opinion don't live to the hype does not justify the increased price-tag of 60 bucks.. While they were able to fix some of the flaws of it's original version they also gutted content from the original like the secret bases and contests, not only that but this has made some dubious choices like turning back TM's to being breakable and the weird art-style who tries to resemble the original but it makes this game look like some low quality mobile game even thought artstyle wise the LGPE games already had a way better inbetween of the original sprites and the more modern and anime-like models. I don't deny they did some good like HM's not being forced, customization and the underground mons letting you get pokémon not on the dex but those sounds more like putting up a flatboard over a huge hole and calling it a bridge. It makes me wonder though was it just ILCA responsible for those games being so underwhelming or higher ups messing up the gamedev? I dunno what I know is when compared to EVERY single remake this one falls flat, even the ORAS ones were able to bring more stuff to the table than this one.… Expand
  10. huguiringo
    Nov 21, 2021
    4
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. El juego no permite un dificultad para los jugadores experimentados, en el apartado gráfico hace ver al juego una casita de muñecas, el avatar al caminar es torpe y el repartir experiencia no se puede desactivar ademas reparte demasiada experiencia… Expand
  11. wemelchor
    Sep 2, 2023
    1
    I'm giving this a negative score because the game is so incredibly lazy. So much thought and care not put into this game. A small team of ONE PERSON, who isn't paid by Nintendo can make a Rom hack that looks way better than this game. I am also taking score off because this game is so poorly made, that you are forcing me to go look for a better pokemon game made by competent people. YouI'm giving this a negative score because the game is so incredibly lazy. So much thought and care not put into this game. A small team of ONE PERSON, who isn't paid by Nintendo can make a Rom hack that looks way better than this game. I am also taking score off because this game is so poorly made, that you are forcing me to go look for a better pokemon game made by competent people. You should be ashamed of yourself gamefreak. I want to play pokemon, I want to play pokemon for once in my life but I cannot touch anything you have put out since Generation 5 in 2012. Your programming and story writing is atrocious. Your level designs are forgettable, your content is shelf filler. AI can make a better game than you.… Expand
  12. eefeef
    Aug 31, 2023
    3
    Nothing about the story or gameplay of this game is different from the original, so we'll comply. But what's the point of a remake that adds low-quality graphics and bugs?
  13. Eyean
    Aug 5, 2023
    4
    This game barely qualifies as a remake. The new content is very hit or miss, and the omission of Platinum content makes this 2021 game feel outdated compared to its 2008 predecessor.
  14. Kejoko
    Aug 23, 2023
    4
    I loved Diamond back when it came out. I was so obsessed that I've printed the whole pokedex before I could play the game. It is still to this day my favorite pokemon game.

    Then the remakes finally got announced after waiting for so long. I saw the presentation and I was shocked. I felt like these games deserved a way better presentation and a more Sword and Shiel or Sun and Moon like    I loved Diamond back when it came out. I was so obsessed that I've printed the whole pokedex before I could play the game. It is still to this day my favorite pokemon game.

    Then the remakes finally got announced after waiting for so long. I saw the presentation and I was shocked. I felt like these games deserved a way better presentation and a more Sword and Shiel or Sun and Moon like artstyle. I get why did this, for the mechanics and HM stuff etc. But it feels like this series did not get the love it deserved. At least we got Legends Arceus to fill the Sinnoh gaps with some more adventureous stuff. But I feel like this is a big potential wasted and I pray they give Sinnoh another shot in a new generation. Don't do this with Black and White please.

    I feel like with Scarlot and Voilet, fans are getting robbed from a magical experience. Yes the games are still fun, but it feels like we miss that love of detail we got in previous games.

    I still played it, and still liked it for the nostalgic feels. But the framerate and overal artstyle made me enjoy it less than the actual original versions.    … Expand
  15. Jazzparagus
    Aug 31, 2023
    0
    How do you make a remake of Pokemon DP, make the exact same mistakes that game made, ignore all of the improvements Pt made, and STILL remove features???

    It genuinely baffles me that Pokemon Contests have been reduced to only the rythm game section, you have to download the music because the company was too lazy to use bigger cartridges, the capture the flag minigame is gone, there's    How do you make a remake of Pokemon DP, make the exact same mistakes that game made, ignore all of the improvements Pt made, and STILL remove features???

    It genuinely baffles me that Pokemon Contests have been reduced to only the rythm game section, you have to download the music because the company was too lazy to use bigger cartridges, the capture the flag minigame is gone, there's godawful level scaling because they slapped the EXP share right on without editing trainer levels.
    It's not hard to imagine a game where all of DP's problems were fixed correctly because it EXISTS! It's called Pokemon Platinum and you should play it instead of this dumpster fire.

    This series has gotten to the point where I dont want gen 5 remakes anymore.    … Expand
  16. TreasureOrTrash
    Sep 8, 2023
    0
    Trash!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Awards & Rankings

2
#2 Most Discussed Switch Game of 2021

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
73

Mixed or average reviews - based on 89 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 38 out of 89
  2. Mixed: 51 out of 89
  3. Negative: 0 out of 89
  1. Nintendo Insider
    Sep 9, 2022
    70
    Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are faithful remakes of the 2006 Nintendo DS games. They probably lean too much on the safe side, not achieving an awful lot to improve on the originals other than a few quality-of-life improvements. The improved Underground sections are a welcome addition, but the missing features from Pokémon Platinum are a big let-down. All in all, though, the Sinnoh region offers just as brilliant of an adventure as it was 15 years ago and the formula that worked back then (and then some) is still as addictive to this day. If you are a fan of classic Pokémon titles, this is a no-brainer.
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  2. Nintendo Force Magazine
    Mar 7, 2022
    65
    I honestly think ILCA's decision to play it safe was the biggest thing that hurt Brilliant Diamond. Maybe if it had included a few more of the story beats and improvements that were introduced in Platinum, I'd be giving it a higher grade. [Issue #57 – January/February 2022, p. 66]
  3. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Feb 18, 2022
    60
    Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl is a decent remaster transferring the fourth generation from Nintendo DS to Switch. The authors handled well the absence of the second screen, but in the case of game mechanics they could go a bit further.
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