Pokemon Diamond Review

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The Pokemon series has never been about anything other than raising the best team and crushing the opponents pokemon in the never ending quest to catch them all. And, lo and behold, in the new game of Pokemon Diamond ( As well as Pokemon Pearl), the new goal is to become the Pokemon Champion of the Sinnoh region (this game's location) as well as collect all 493 Pokemon (That's over 100 more for anyone who's counting). One would think that this is quite possible the best Pokemon game to come out for the entire 10+ years that the series has existed. Well, yes and no. This game is more or less a rehash of the Pokemon games before it. Now, before you throw rocks at me and get all in a fuss I'd like to clarify something- it is a good game, yes, but it would have been more astounding to me had it not come with a pokemon logo because, frankly, I know what to expect. And after reading this so should you.

The Gameplay 7/10
The Pokemon ideology is this. You start out in some little lesser known town in a specific region. Here, a professor who is named after some sort of tree gives you one of his prized pokemon. From here your task is to go around collecting new pokemon for your collection (Logged in something called a pokedex). As you collect these pokemon and battle them with other players they grow stronger and learn new moves and evolve eventually (Still with me right?). After All that you go around battle the top trainers of their specific category, called Gym Leaders. They each have a type that they are in charge of and you must defeat them and earn their prized gym badge. After this you can use a specific Pokemon move outside of battle and you must use that move to get to the next area. Whoop de doo. What happens after that? Simple, yet another gym leader for you to battle with. After defeating 8 of these gym leaders you have the ability to go to a place called the Elite 4. Here all your efforts culminate in a series of 5 (Yes, 5) battles after which you are indicted into the Pokemo Hall of Fame and have your name recorded in the history of the region. Hooray. What else can one do during the course of the game instead of raising, catching or battling pokemon you ask? The answer is, not much. One can of course compete in Contests where you use moves in a similar order to battling, but that just gets you ribbons. You can also go and play the lottery in one of the towns but that's where it ends. Yes, besides those things that I just mentioned all there is to do is raise, capture and battle the pokemon. Sure there are countless pokemon combinations and countless moves and abilities to give these pokemon but that's really all you can do. You can have 1 Pokemon vs 1 Pokemon battle, 2 pokemon vs 2 Pokemon battle, restricted battles, online battles with other trainers, set level battles. Really, the possiblities are endless and the battle mechanics are great but this is only good if you like the mindset of there being only one actual thing to do in the game. And, truthfully, it's just the same thing as the other games with more pokemon and touch screen features. Oh about those features, you can touch the bottom screen after getting a Poketch ( A pokemon watch, if you will) to do some fun and yet utterly useless things. These include checking the status of your party, telling the time, a calculator. See where I'm getting at here? These features do nothing except allow you to do things you could previously do by accessing your pokegear in Gold and Silver except now you can use the touch screen. Hooray! But enough about the gameplay, I'm sure you want to see how the rest of the stuff hold up as well eh? I can tell you it's not as good as you can hope for.

Sound 8/10

The sound in pokemon has always been all about having soothing town themes and fast paced battle themes, along with the occasional Pikachu and co chirp in between. In reality it's nothing to write home about but you can't really complain about the sound either. It gets you in the game and that's all it was ever meant to do. There is, of course, no voice acting for any character at all but that is to be expected from a Pokemon game. All in all the sound is good enough for the purpose that is made for and that is all we really ask of it.

Graphics 8/10

Wow! This is a major jump up from the pokemon games of Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald. All the buildings on the world map are in 3-D as well as the numerous landmarks that you see. Of course, I'm not going to oversell any of this. It barely makes any difference and the most important part of what should have gotten a graphical face lift has been left out. The battle scenes themselves. These battle scenes still consist of the exact same things as the ones in the previous pokemon games. There are two pokemon sprites that when they attack a very crude animation happens between the two. The animations themselves have been getting better over the years but they still consist of the same thing in essence. But there is no reason to be so critical, I applaud game freak on making a bold move in the graphics department I however wished to see slightly more.

Online 9/10

Now with the addition of online gameplay you can see your favorite Pokemon duke it out with people from all across the world. Awesome eh? Yes but there is one simple restriction. The bane of Nintendo online games, friend codes. Friend codes mean you need to actually know the person before you can battle or trade with them and need to register them before going online. While it doesn't impede upon the actual battling or trading it makes things a hassle as you need to set up every match. The alternative is the GTS, where you can search for othe Pokes on a server and trade for what they are asking. The downside to this is that you can only trade for what you have already seen so if you haven't seen an Arceus or a Pikachu then you can't ask online for one.

Controls 8/10

Okay, these haven't changed a BIT from the ancient days of Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue, these are the exact same as they always have been. The only exception is that now you press X and Y instead of Start and Select for the Menu as well as using your registered item. A is select, B is cancel and run in the open field. And the D-Pad is to select. Very simple and it doesn't make it seem like you have a DS in your hands. It moves pretty smoothly, barring of course the fact that the noise that my DS ( and I presume other DSes) make when you click a button.

Replay Value 10/10

I can't deny this, you can't deny this. Nobody can deny this. Pokemon games have been centered around replay value from the moment of their conception. The whole idea of catching them all is pure replay value at its finest. If you are looking for a game that will last you the summer season or one that you can take with you for a giant vacation then look no further because Pokemon has you covered.

Value - High, Buy the game

Don't rent it, just buy it. If you rent it and like it then you'll lose all of your data from beforehand and that's just frustrating. Just like replay value, the stuff that you get when you buy the game is amazingly high. For 35 dollars you're getting more for a handheld game then some people get for the full 50 dollar console games, pretty freaky.