So after 200+ hours of gameplay and after successfully endorsing the game to both my wife and daughter, I'm finally ready to review Pokemon Diamond. Pokemon Diamond is the latest major Pokemon installment in its storied franchise this time for the Nintendo DS. This version aims to take advantage of the Nintendo DS' abilities from a feature standpoint rather than strictly a raw hardware one. It manages to maintain its simplicity while delivering a deep game with some minor and major improvements.
Story
The story begins with you and your friend from Twin Leaf town wandering to a nearby lake on a tip that a rare pokemon has taken up residency there. Your quest takes you all around the Sinnoh region as you seek to collect rare pokemon and battle the most powerful trainers. In addition you'll unravel the plans of Team Galactic as they seek to harness the power of pokemon for their own person agenda.
Gameplay
The gameplay for Pokemon Diamond follows the same basic premise of previous Pokemon games. You wander around the world of Sinnoh battling and collecting Pokemon. Your goal is to become a Pokemon Master by defeating the most powerful trainers in battle. However becoming a Pokemon Master is simply one milestone in Pokemon Diamond's various other activities.
Pokemon Diamond is at its very core a turn based roleplaying game. You start off with one of three species of Pokemon and gradually increase the size of your Pokemon collection by capturing wild pokemon. Capturing wild pokemon is as easy as weakening it in battle without causing it to faint, then throwing a pokeball and hoping it's still not strong enough to break free. You're allowed to carry up to six pokemon with you to use in battle one (or sometimes two) at a time. The rest are stored in a computer accessible in all towns and even some other areas of the game.
Battling is the most common element of the game. Each pokemon has a set of up to 4 moves. These moves either cause damage or create an effect in battle. These moves along with the pokemon itself have at least one type. The goal is to deplete the life points of your opponent's pokemon. The first trainer to cause their entire opponent's pokemon to faint wins the match.
Matchups play a big role in battling. A pokemon can belong to one or two elemental groups (fire, water, dark, steel, etc.). Each of its moves also belongs to one of those groups as well. Certain groups are strong, weak, or even immune to others. So being able to use effective attacks that take advantage of the weaknesses of your opponent's pokemon is the key to victory. Thus you're main asset among your team of 6 pokemon is diversity and the ability to overcome weaknesses. Other matchup issues can come into play as well. Some pokemon can dish out a lot of damage regardless of which group they belong, while others can take a lot of damage. Some pokemon are designed to alter the landscape of battle too. These types of matchups add yet another layer to the mix that resembles that of a rock-paper-scissors matchup set.
Battling has roughly remained the same from previous incarnations of pokemon. It's still turn based, and the element group matchup grid still is the same. However one significant change is physical versus special attack types are no longer categorized by element type. Now you can have a physical psychic attack or a special fight attack. This I see as a huge improvement over the previous battle system as it lends to more unique move sets and pokemon as a result.
The game really plods along very slowly at times. In fact, in order to advance past certain points in the game, you're almost required to randomly battle wild or trained pokemon in order to increase your level. This is especially true towards the end of the game as you battle against the Elite 4. The only saving grace is that there are many options to get by this part without having to monotonously level grind your way through, including trading for some high level Pokemon or using a legendary pokemon you captured beforehand.
There are quite a few new pokemon ranging from the very cute to the very effective in battle. There are also quite a few new moves available too, which take advantage of the new battle rules I stated above. Still, many of the new pokemon have striking resemblances to pokemon of previous generations. For instance, Starly very closely resembles Pidgey. Also, many pokemon seem to appear very often throughout the game. I'll see Geodudes scattered throughout most caves, while Bidoofs seem to inhabit most outdoor areas.
Besides battling and advancing in the story there are a few other activities you can partake in. There's a gaming corner where you can play a pokemon themed slot machine, Pokemon contests also return which acts as an alternate form of battling. Only instead of increasing you're pokemon's experience level, you create diverse move sets and increase other personality attributes like beauty, smarts, and toughness.
Finally, you can trade and battle online via the infamous friend code system. By collecting friend codes of other players, you can challenge them to matches if you see them online. You can only see them if you both register each other's friend code. You can also trade pokemon as well to help complete your collection or to assemble that powerful team.
While on the surface the gameplay seems rather simple and perhaps even juvenile to some, beyond the basics yields a vast set of attributes and statistical modifiers for any given pokemon. These statistical modifiers can either be bred into your pokemon (in the case of Individual Values or IVs), or trained into your pokemon by battling certain types of pokemon (in the case of Effort Values or EVs). Finally, by breeding pokemon you can even give them moves which might otherwise not be available. What this means is that assembling a competitive team of 6 pokemon is akin to create a Magic the Gathering deck designed for tournaments. It's this extra layer that really appeals to the gamer who wishes reap the rewards for time spent assembling a competitive team.
So in my opinion the gameplay is by far Pokemon Diamond's strongest asset. My daughter gets a lot of enjoyment out of it because she can collect cute creatures, while I get a lot of miles out it trying to create a competitive team to battle other players online. There are so many layers to the gameplay, which can each be transparent to the other, which really make this game succeed far beyond other games in the same genre.
Controls
Keeping to the tradition of Pokemon games, the controls are very basic for the most part. Most of the movement of your character is via the dpad. Combat and menu based actions are also primarily driven through the dpad as well. The sensitivity is very balanced and fine tuned such that you can accomplish certain tasks without it being too sensitive or not sensitive enough. Some menu functions have an optional stylus driven interface on the touch screen. My experience with it suggests that it just isn't as quick as using the dpad. Most of the actions revolve around spinning a pokeball to select certain items in a menu. It can cycle much quicker than the dpad, but if you move it too quickly it can stop or even cycle backwards, which is very annoying.
There are other control aspects to the game which are driven entirely by the stylus. One of which is the poketech feature. Some poketechs can perform basic operations by touching it with your stylus. It isn't a necessary portion of the game, but it can be useful at many points. Another aspect is creating poffins by spinning batter in a bowl at a certain speed. The stylus control sensitivity for creating poffins is great. You rarely can spin too fast and it has pretty decent touch recognition. You definitely are rewarded with consistently well executed poffin creation.
Graphics
On the surface the graphics look mostly like an overhauled version of Pokemon Emerald. The colors look brighter and more refined, but the game is still a sprite-based 2D adventure with only rare uses of 3D layering. In the Pokemon spirit, I didn't expect a huge 3D adventure and the game does look good, but it was clearly a conservative effort on the graphics part. Aside from that, the graphics do the part of making it a solid Pokemon game. Sprites look detailed despite the size of the screen, and the animations bring the world to life even if it's just in a 2D sprite-based world. Some of the special scenes are also primitive, but at the same time they are much more elegant than in previous versions. Overall, I would say the graphics aren't spectacular, but they are very functional.
Sound
Like the graphics and controls, Pokemon Diamond doesn't do any spectacular in the audio department. The music contains solid theme songs which really capture the environment, however they aren't terribly catchy. Although the good part is that I didn't have any songs stuck in my head either. Pokemon has never been known for its epic musical scores other than branded through familiarity.
The sound effects are a little more polished that its Gameboy counterparts. The sound effects serve to highlight certain actions. They aren't too plentiful and they aren't annoying either. Overall the audio does a good job, but clearly not a spectacular job.
Replay
The addition of WIFI Battles clearly makes Pokemon Diamond a winner in the replay value department. The ability to match up against any other Diamond or Pearl owners creates endless competition for those who like to battle. Sadly the trading mechanism leaves much to be desired and it doesn't add much to the replay value as it speeds up your ability to "catch'em all". Within a tight knit community, online battling thrives. The community exposes members who cheat (i.e. Spiritomb with Wonderguard) rather quickly leaving the competition pure. For those who do not wish to play online, you can always play compete in the Battle Tower. However, the teams seem to be rather repetitive and not battled with the same techniques as human players. Still one cannot ignore it's ability to inject new life into the game well after it's finished.
Most of the replay value draws from Pokemon's Diamond's plodding pace. This is one of the longest roleplaying games ever seen on a portable game system. Only massively multiplayer online games have a slower pace. Still, the game mechanics are finely tuned and really make the monotony rather fun for a long period of time. I ended up putting in 170 hours into the game before I finally had to set it down, which goes to show why such a game still sells for $35-$40 on retail shelves.
Overall Pokemon Diamond doesn't do many different things from its predecessors and it's a shame that it took them until 2007 to add an accessible online component to the series. But still, it's impossible to ignore the fact that Pokemon Diamond is one of the best games available on the Nintendo DS. It has one of the best online components and has the community to support it as well. So if you're a roleplaying game fan who likes solid game mechanics over an engrossing storyline, then this is a game to have.
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