Review: Pokemon Diamond
Game: Pokemon Diamond
Publisher: Nintendo
Release Date: Apr. 22, 2007
Genre: RPG
Rating: 4/5
This article was written by my boyfriend, an avid Pokemon fan.
For those of you who played Pokemon Red and Blue back in middle school or possibly high school, an exciting new age is upon us. April 28th brought the fourth installment in the series to the Nintendo DS, Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. My job at a popular electronics store allowed me to be one of the first of the public to play it. I am only about thirty hours in the game, but feel that is sufficient to give an accurate rating of a 4 out of 5.
Ultimately the game-play hasn’t altered greatly from the originals. The transfer onto the DS has overhauled the graphics. Buildings, windmills, and other surrounding elements now appear in 3D. Also the sprites of the Pokemon in your party, your main character, and various NPC’s are all much improved.
The difficulty level is still relatively easy. I was surprised however that the second gym in the game was grass-type, which I found unusual since other than a starter Pokemon, it was impossible to get a fire Pokemon at that point in the game. I managed to overrun the gym leader with an army of birds.
The story is basically the same, you’re a child of roughly 12 who lives in a small town with your mother. One day a great professor of Pokemon comes through town stirring things up a bit. You and a childhood friend curiously follow him out of town. After introducing himself, you and your friend discover that he left his briefcase in some brush. Upon opening it you discover that it contains 3 Pokemon. You select one of the Pokemon and fight your way home. Whichever Pokemon you pick, your friend always selects the other. You and your friend attempt to return the Pokemon to the professor who recognizes your abilities at rearing the young Pokemon. He asks you to keep it, and begin a quest to attain all 8 badges, and 150 Pokemon of the Sinnoh region.
I was slightly disappointed at the relative uselessness of the second screen. Most of your time playing the game you will ignore it or fool around with it only to realize you could do the same thing more effectively with the buttons.
The three starters follow the general fire, water, grass pattern. Chimichar a fire monkey, Piplup a water bird, and Turtwig a grass turtle. You may recall that Squirtle from Pokemon Red/Blue was also a turtle, a bit uncreative on Gamefreaks part. I must admit however, I started with Turtwig because well, hes awesome.
Two features that the game really encourages are berry harvesting and beauty contests. The two are relatively time consuming and as far as I have noticed offer little in the way of rewards. It may also be important to note that playing with multiple players is necessary to truly unlock all these features have to offer. While simply playing through the game you will most likely ignore these features until after you have nothing better to do.
I am enjoying the various new Pokemon. I often find myself busy training just to see what the second forms of the new Pokemon will look like, or what new moves they learn. Likewise when I see Pokemon from previous games it’s like seeing an old friend again. I am slightly disappointed that Pokedex entries have been reduced to a single page consisting of roughly 2 sentences.
Getting around in the new, larger world of Pokemon requires a series of vehicles. I was happy to see the triumphant return of the Running Shoes, which allow you to run when holding B. Even more exciting is the fact that you can now run indoors, which really saves time when making runs to the Pokecenter. Any player of the various Pokemon games for the game boy systems will fondly remember getting the Bicycle. It may have been a bit of a crime to call it a bicycle in the Red/Blue versions, in which it appeared more as if your character had sprouted a wheel from his groin. Anyway, you get the bike after the second badge. While I am not positive, it also appears a new HM is being introduced to the mix. I saw a wall which was embedded with a series of large pebbles. Upon examining it my character sounded as if a Pokemon could scale the wall. Perhaps this has something to do with Flash being knocked down to TM status.
All in all Pokemon is a truly fun trip down memory lane. While it may not be mind-numbingly difficult, the tiny differences really make it worth experiencing. For an average price of $34.99, Diamond and Pearl are essential to the DS owner, and it couldn’t hurt to pick one up just for this game. What are you waiting for (should I say it?) get out there and catch ‘em all!
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL