Pokemon Diamond and Pearl
Date: Jun 21st, 2008 7:29:22 pm - Subscribe
Mood: Pleased
Currently Reading: Lord of the Flies ( ISBN: 0-571-05686-5 ): Playing Pokemon Diamond
Ever since the first two Pokemon games version Red and version Blue came out for the Gameboy Color I've adored the series. TV show not so much, but I thought that the games were really very fun for how simple the concept of them was and it provided me with hours of replayable entertainment. Even if the story never changed there were thousands of different things you could do to make the game more easy or difficult and ways to keep the battling fresh with all the different options for teams that you had with your Pokemon.
When the next versions came out along with a hundred new Pokemon and small tweaks to their features ( like the addition of being a guy or a girl and the running shoes and pokenavs/watches as well as double team battling and others ) things got even better. As far as I was concerned they were a solid games series and while they may not have the same depth and strong story that others did with a few minor annoyances such as knowing the bare bones of every story line from playing just one game they were still able to stand up on their own two feet and deserved the wide spread recognition that they got for their 15 minutes of fame. Not revolutionary, but defiantly something worth picking up.
Of course even now playing the Pokemon Diamond version for Nintendo's DS system I'm fairly happy though I'm not going to give this game any sort of outstanding rating nor the same praise as its successors. If nothing else Diamond is nothing more then a more polished and perfected version of the older games with a few new yet uninspired Pokemon and some systems added that don't even work in the way they're intended.
To start off with as I mentioned earlier the story line is basically just a rehash of the same story they've been using over and over and over again with a few minor tweaks and changes to dialogs and characters. You have the same opening speech, the same format or characters that you encounter, the same speeches, and the same badly dressed and oddly named villains only this time instead of signature stupid hats they have bad bowl cuts.
Next is the Pokemon. While old favorites from the previous games have been kept on they attempted to add something new and fresh with a hundred or so more Pokemon to hunt down and capture. The only difference is compared to the innovative and interesting designs of previously added Pokemon these appear very uninspired. It's one thing to recognize creatures like the Mightyena as a dog looking Pokemon, but another to come across an almost exact beaver replica like Bidoof. It would have been nice if they could have tried just a little bit harder in creating a Pokemon that maybe resembled a beaver, but didn't remind you of the exact animal itself. A common theme for a great deal of the new Pokemon it seems though there are some rather interesting and intriguing ones thrown in there such as the Finneon. Of course so far the only new ones that seem rather developed are either uncommon or there are only one in the game that you can ever capture.
Finally I would speak of the new features, but I have to admit I haven't used them enough to speak about them properly. Most new features are online connections where you can trade and battle with other trainers all over the world. Again features that I haven't used, but have heard that they leave a great deal to be desired in the way that they're utilized by most people especially the trading system that they developed where you can 'post' an ad for a wanted trade and wait for someone to respond. Sort of like the Pokemon version of eBay. And just like eBay it's apparently bogged down with so many ignorant and one sided offers it's hard to find anything worth considering. A novel idea, but perhaps a little policing would put things straight and make it worth checking out.
All in all I would say if you were a big fan of the Pokemon series from the begging Diamond and Peal would be a worthwhile game to look into purchasing. However if you were only ever mildly interested in the series then I wouldn't recommend it. If there wasn't enough material in the older games to get you interested then there defiantly won't be anything here that will make you change your mind about the money you wasted buying it.
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