A Remaster, Not A Remake | Why I played Pokémon Brilliant Diamond, and why I wish I didn’t

There has been a lot of backlash since the release of the widely desired Pokémon gen 4 remakes. Many agree that it seems like there was not as much love put into these sets of remakes compared to past ones.

When I was 8 years old, I received my first handheld in the form of a DS Lite for my birthday. Paired with that was a copy of Pokémon Diamond. This is likely my most played video game hands down. Last time I check my playtime, it was over 300 hours, so, it’s safe to say that I was really into Pokémon Diamond.

I have not touched my save file in years, having moved onto other games, I never felt the need to go back into a basically finished game, but I would sometimes think about it with nostalgia. I knew that one day, I would be able to play the Sinnoh story again because of the trend of Pokémon remakes, and it seemed like any upcoming Pokémon Direct could drop the announcement. And then, Game Freak announced the long awaited Gen 4 remakes with Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl.

I, in my typical fashion, had to wait a bit longer than everyone else to get ahold of my copy. My mother has kept up with her tradition of gifting me Pokémon games for Christmas, which meant that I was a little over a month behind all of my friends who got the game around launch.

I tried to stay away from footage of the game, but that was basically impossible. So, I did see some things like the graphics and the UI, but other than that, I was able to dive into the game blind.

Oh, boy was this NOT the game that I grew up with. Jumping in, I was hoping that seeing the graphics all over the internet would have stockholmed me into liking it, but it just didn’t. I tried so hard to make myself like the “cute” chibi art, but I just felt like I was tossed into a mobile game. I will say that I enjoy the art we get when in a battle, I would have much preferred if the whole game used those models.

Stepping away from the sad appearance. The content was another let down.

So, Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are gen 4 remakes that stay pretty loyal to the source material. I, like many other fans, were hoping for this set of remakes to go the route of Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire with added content and what feels like a definite edition.

This was not the case.

What made the past remakes some of the greatest games in the franchise was how they took the older games and enhanced them with better pixel graphics and mechanics from the current generation of games. It made them feel new.

Brilliant Diamond DID include some quality of life enhancements, but not all of them were well received. One of the best things the remakes implemented was the automatic running shoes, being able to run from the start is the best thing this game did.

One of the things that I appreciated was the markers on the map that guided you to your next plot point because I tended to get lost Pokémon hunting and forget where I was in the story.

Something that has irked many players is the fact that there is an automatic EXP share from the start turned on, with no ability to turn it off. Some people liked it because it made it easier to level newer Pokémon that you would like to try out, but if you wanted to play through with your original team, they would be so over leveled by the time you got to the gyms that it would never feel challenging until you hit the elite four.

Another added mechanic that had left players feeling like they have an unfair advantage is the bonding with the Pokémon. If your Pokémon really likes you, you will get what feels like almost constant crits, they will live with one HP because they didn’t want to see you upset if they fainted, and they can even dismiss status effects at will. These take a lot of strategy out when you have a high enough friendship that your Pokémon is constantly seemingly breaking the game.

Throughout the base story of gym and trainer battles, nothing really felt like a challenge, with my main Pokémon team being able to one shot every opponent because it would show which of my moves were effective, I really never felt challenged up until the end.

Finally reaching the Elite Four is where I felt like the game actually made me focus. All of the Elite Four and Cynthia had a team of competitively viable Pokémon with items best suited for the battle. This gave this stretch of the game a huge increase in difficulty. For me, someone who has played Pokémon since my childhood, I didn’t struggle terribly, but for younger and newer players, it was common to see posts online about how they could not beat this section and were getting extremely frustrated at this difficulty spike, some posts even talking about how younger, less experienced players were so discouraged that they dropped the game entirely.

The debate for whether or not this was needing to be altered was running wild after release, my thoughts are that this set up would have been perfect for the rematch battles, but I thought the spike was a bit sharp when looking at the overall difficulty level leading up to the fight, especially since no matter how you look at it, GameFreak does direct these releases for a younger audience.

My main annoyance with the game is related to a minigame that I would spend hours playing in my original playthrough. Brilliant Diamond has RUINED contests. They used to be something that I could sink hours into by trying to max a Pokémon or two. Seeing contests get demoted to a lackluster rhythm game really hurt because there was no reason to take that out.

One odd thing that was changed was the removal of the casino and replacing it with the outfit store. This does introduce some new customization which is a nice touch, but I’m sad that they insist on taking things out instead of replacing the empty houses.

The underground was bittersweet for me. I loved spending hours underground before, and I still like it now. I do wish they had kept the traps and games that were included in the original because I never really got to experience, but I guess I can deal with it because the stores seem to be better.

Having the inclusion of catching underground Pokémon and getting the statues was neat for a bit, but with the limitations of the pokédex, they wouldn’t even be able to be registered until after you beat the main story.

The worst way that this remake compares to the older ones is that it refused to include anything content from Platinum. There were so many things that were included in the third edition of gen 4 and none of the seemed to carry over to the remakes like many were hoping. This made it really obvious that these games were copy and paste instead of innovating. The least they could have done was include something new in the post game, but we got nothing which was a huge disappointment.

After finishing the main story of Brilliant Diamond, I really had no motivation to do anything else with the game. I didn’t want to work on any teams, I didn’t want to catch or evolve for my pokédex, I was just done.

It felt like I had played through a worse version of the game that really made my childhood. The original Pokémon Diamond was my most played game, so I was going into these remakes with hopes of reliving the same enjoyment that I experienced in my childhood, but with a beautiful fresh coat of paint.

At the end of the day, I played through Brilliant Diamond, and I got some enjoyment out of it. I got that rush of nostalgia when going through sections of the game that I had forgotten about, but the nostalgia really drove my playthrough.

After finishing the game and taking a hard look back, I’m not sure if I truly enjoyed it or just NEEDED to enjoy it for the sake of not throwing my hopes of the Pokémon franchise in the trash.