Pokemon Brilliant Diamond / Pokemon Shining Pearl Double Pack

Unlike ORAZ, this remake has a more reliable and conservative approach. Which is not all bad, in fact, it makes the game more nostalgic.

This game gets a 10/10 for being a faithful remake with some of the best in-battle graphics Pokemon has to offer. It's very faithful to the original games with major quality of life improvements. Underground has been overhauled but my only complaint is secret bases have no furniture now. It is clear that ILCA put time and effort into this game, and it's impressive as it's their first big game project as they've only helped with games on the side. The music is extremely good. If someone says the game is buggy, it's because they pirated the game and weren't able to get the update. Ignore the 0ratings for they're review bombing this game and have severe cases of autism. You'll see that they mostly have the two sinnoh remakes as the only game they're scoring sometimes next to Persona or SMTV getting a 10/10. This is due to an extreme case of mental illness and they've ruined the entire SMT franchise as a whole so just ignore them.

I love this game, I grew up playing the original on the DS and this hits the nostalgia hard. Putting that aside, these are still good games. Are they perfect? no Are they fun and true to the original? yes the good: I feel like most of the people giving bad reviews expected as drastic of a change as we saw with sword and shield, which this game was never supposed to be. It has tons of extra pre and post game content, quality of life changes, and everything you loved from the originals. This game was not marketed as or meant to be something more than a remake that's faithful to the original. There are new legendries, extra battles, easier shiny hunting, the new XP sharing system, and the game is more challenging than the originals at a lot of points. Basically if you like pokemon or liked the original games you will like this game. the bad: the price, $60 or $120 for both, is steep. I think $30 would be a much more fair price for one game. There were people who experienced soft locks and bugs, I was not one of those people. Since the 1.1.2 patch, all of those issues have been fixed. I know a lot of people wish they could turn off the new leveling system, I think that should be an option as well, but I also don't mind the XP sharing system. They added a penalty for time skips, so if you change your clock time manually then all timed events (trees, berries, timed pokemon, etc) will freeze for 24 hours. I hate this penalty, as they kept in the annoying timed events like trees taking six hour to find pokemon and berries taking hours of time to grow; they should've found a middle ground. They kept the original battle tower and shop, I think this is bad because the grind to level up pokemon post game takes a long time - I like how easy it was in sword to get XP or rare candies to level up and try new teams, this is a quality of life thing that should've been added. I also think they should've kept the sword and shield shiny hunting and IV hunting methods, the new additions are good, but not preferred imo. the mixed: some people complain that there are glitches you can exploit to duplicate pokemon and items, I personally think these are fun and since they only effect your offline play that they do not hinder the game or other people at all. There are also glitches that let you get timed event pokemon early, since this only effects offline play, I don't see it as an issue and it lets you play the game at your own pace. The post game grind feels like its too much, in order to get legendries you need to do a lot of tedious farming, this could've been optimized better. Overall. the games are what they were marketed to be, a new coat of paint with a few quality of life features added. This game is far better, especially after the patch, (although its annoying they didn't fix the issues beforehand) than the user score suggests. Its worth playing.

Don't let the overly positive user score for double pack fool you, organized raids by reddit and discord are not an accurate representation of the quality of these games. Throughouly average throughout, and as remakes incredibly disappointing compared to HGSS. You can enjoy this game casually but a 9/10 game it is not. Tacked on new content and plenty of removed content from Platinum. You may have fun, but deep down this is not the remake you dreamed of when you first thought of gen 4 remakes. And don't you think it should be? World's biggest IP here folks.

Get Platinum instead and maybe buy an Action Replay to get the mythicals. Switch games are low quality cash grabs with excessively strict terms of service. BDSP is also riddled with softlock bugs. I was once softlocked in Amity Square because for some weird reason they made following Pokemon count as solid objects. I also had a friend send me a picture of him stuck in between unbreakable snowballs in Snowpoint Gym. These were not issues with Platinum so why now?! Finally, the fact they kept the dex cuts for a remake is unacceptable. I think part of why remakes are fun is it's a good old adventure you already liked but with new Pokemon and new features. If I want to limit myself to the original 493 I can simply play Platinum instead.

"...Not so Brilliant or **** even close..." Warning: Physical copy of game is not full game because it's on patch 1.10 and with patch 1.1.1 comes everything else that was promised and showcased but it's not on cartridge. Anyway... Game will not put you in amazing Pokemon experience ... not even close. Visuals are not bad (as some say) if you can go past the chibi style. That's the decision that they choose and I'm ok with it. But! Game is lacking to provide you enjoyable experience. In fact it gets so boring after few hours that you are put on place where you have to force yourself just to play to complete the game that you bought. Quickly you come to realisation how much you are generally overpowered despite what choice you make. Which eliminates almost every possible challenge that this game could provide. After a short while you will start to avoid every unnecessary encounter just to continue breezing through game and even with that being done, you are still way to powerful compared to NPC trainers. Even more, if you add that there are literally not fighting animations, it get's even worse. Only reason why there are positive reviews is because it's Pokemon... Pros: - it's Pokemon Cons: - gameplay - cash grab Visuals: 7/10 (if you don't mind chibi style) Animations: 0/10 (there is none in fighting) Sound: 7/10 (since 1.1.1 patch) Controls: 6/10 (moving through options, running, riding bike with analog sticks is pain) Gameplay: 3/10 (gameplay is generally boring because there is no challenge at all) Value: 3/10 (this is not worth 60$, it's closer to 15$) Replayability: 2/10 (if you decide to take Elite 4 over and over again, otherwise 0) Conclusion: It's Pokemon game and if you are fan or like the genre feel free to try it out but be sure that you buy used physical copy (there are lots of them being sold right now for 30-40$) so that you can sell it afterwards. Why? Because you sure will want to. Even with that price you will feel ripped off. So get used physical copy, sell it after you see yourself and save some money to buy Arceus.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]