Pokémon Has Reached a New Low

You’ve gotta love that they just didn’t include all the major improvements of platinum that make Gen 4 actually good

I feel like the best way to deal with the EXP share is to have it be toggleable between 3 modes- off, active for one Pokémon, and active for the whole party

I think the biggest disappointment for me is that they didn't include any features from Platinum. At all. I was at most hoping for a Delta episode involving Giratina, maybe expanding the plot a bit more and giving more much needed personality to Team Galactic. ORAS did it for Emerald, so I didn't see why it would be impossible for BDSP. At minimum, I was hoping for the smaller changes from Platinum to work its way into the game to make it a more enjoyable and cohesive experience. Unfortunately, it carried more of SwSh's bad traits and ultimately soured the game experience for me. As a diehard Gen 4 fan, I'm nothing but upset with this outcome.

"POKÉMON HAS NEVER BEEN A HARD SERIES! IT'S ALWAYS BEEN EASY SAM!" glances nervously at B2/W2 where all it took was a bad type matchup with a random trainer or wild pokemon for your pokemon to get deleted

In my opinion they went wrong when they decided to remake D&P instead of platinum. D&P were always just “lesser” versions of platinum to me and I think this is really visible here.

I hate it when people bring up the "Pokemon was always easy" argument because there's a big difference between a game being easy, and a game being BRAINLESS. If you compare pokemon to like Dark Souls then yeah Pokemon is easy. But if a game literally plays itself, that defeats the purpose of playing the game LOL you're just watching an interactive video or movie at that point. Games like minecraft are obviously very easy even on hard difficulty, but even veteran players know to watch out for unlucky point blank creeper explosions or falling off a cliff. Or if they're trying to build a fancy project they need to collect rare blocks for it. Pokemon BDSP essentially plays like Minecraft Creative Mode. There's a complete absence of challenge to the game. Challenge =/= Difficulty, and it grinds my gears whenever people say it is.

I miss the rival's dance before he fights you. Little things like that missing just adds to the emptiness of the characters and lack of personality in this new version.

The Pokémon affection levels used to be an option in the Pokémon feature where you pet and feed them. That's unfortunate it doesn't seem to be optional. I feel like that's way worst than exp share.

Going into the grass patches in each new route was always fun in newer Pokemon games because of the usually wide selection of Pokemon available. In BDSP it feels like the grass patches just exist to slow you down.

I remember after I presented my reasons as to why I didn't like how BDSP looked, people were telling me I would STILL buy these games cause "it's Pokemon". Here we are, nearing the release of Legends Arceus and I STILL don't give a f*ck about these ugly remakes. Imagine being able to get full fledged stunning 3D remakes with a mix of SwSh/Let's Go graphics but polished AND maybe some voice acting to add life to these games, and instead settling for this funkopop/playmobil looking garbage. But I absolutely cannot blame Ilca, I blame game freak and nintendo for thinking we NEED a pokemon game every single year. I would've been fine with waiting for another year or 2 for actual GOOD remakes of these games. Hyped for Legenda Arceus though and also curious as to what gen 9 is going to look like. HOPEFULLY they'll have voice acting!

I remember a couple years ago looking forward to the Diamond and Pearl remakes because I was thinking it would be like ORAS where I happily put a lot of time in. So naturally was very sad that this is what we got.

World of Final Fantasy is a game that has chibi models (specifically, ones that look like Funko Pops), but the important ones are all super expressive, with facial expressions and wild gestures.

It's honestly kinda funny, but yeah these "remakes" have actually inspired me to go and properly play platinum, since I never really played it (A friend had bought me an action replay around the time I got platinum, and I hacked the shit out of it.)

Something I noticed while emulating Shining Pearl was that that the reason why the analog controls are trash is not because the environment is not well made for it but rather the analog stick acts more like a really jank dpad. The 8 directions have large areas mapped on the stick while having a few small areas in-between those that are freely mapped. Because of this, you will often accidentally go to far and hit the diagonal. What makes it funnier is that this is the exact same reason why moving units in the original Starcraft is jank, the Warcraft 2 engine was never designed with diagonals. The exact same problem is occurring.

I avoided a lot of trainers just to prevent myself over leveling but the volume of trainers between the second and fourth gyms got me ahead in a way that I couldn’t make up for. That’s not to say that I don’t like the party exp system but it’s as you eluded to, there are simply too many trainers in this specific entry for this system to be balanced. The party exp would be a great end game item because the biggest reason I like it is for evolving the Pokémon I’ve collected to fill my Pokédex and for getting late game Pokémon on my team before the Elite Four without too much grinding. The system works great in late gen but not for the earlier games that were designed in a way where the player is expected to train their mons individually. The biggest crime here though is the affection system. Not only does it make the game easier than I want it to be but it also subjects me to additional animations and text which slows down gameplay. However I must say that I did enjoy the game and it was refreshing to go back to this kind of format after the over-openness of Sword/Shield.

Something else super unfun and clunky about the menu, is that new items are placed randomly in their pocket. Not at the bottom, not where you are at the moment in the bag. It just dumps it in a random spot. So, you either have to sort it, hope you remember the general order of how things are supposed to go, and find it from there, or scroll up or down and hope that you went the right direction to find and use the new item.

As a kid, having already played the previous three generations, I played Diamond and Platinum so much that I got my DS taken away from me by my parents on two occasions. But I couldn’t bring myself to buy BDSP. Seeing what has become of such a large piece of my childhood is like meeting a friend I haven’t seen in years and discovering that they’ve let themselves go and become an asshole.

I remember that Cynthia apparently being "Harder" than she was originally was a selling point? Which is hilarious considering the clip I saw of a player surviving an attack due to that dumb affection mechanic only to then one shot Cynthia's last mon with a critical hit caused by none other than the affection mechanic.

4:50 They're not the same thing. BDSP actually did it worse. In the originals, you see your player Overlaying, not Overlapping. That gives the illusion of you passing by. There was no weird mixture of Yours and Barry's sprites. But in BDSP, they literally made you phase through him.

I feel like a lot of the issues of this game come from Game Freak / Nintendo just being stuck in their ways. They just don't learn. The xp share was an issue in Sword and Shield too. They didnt fix any leveling issues in ORAS either, but they made it interesting by including features from Emerald as well as XY, even going a step further with Zinnia and Mega Rayquaza.