"It's truly a great game, but there are too many problems that keep it from perfection."

Aaah, the Pokemon series. I still remember the days of elementary school where I bought Blue version and traded with some of my friends at school just to get Charmander, Squirtle, and Bulbasaur. Games have come a very long way since then, but the Pokemon series has continued on, not changing a whole lot. Pinser still doesn't have an evolved form, the nurse at the pokemon center still says "We hope to see you again!" after you heal your Pokemon, there are still pointless HM moves that you have to teach your Pokemon, there are still FIVE people you have to fight in the "Elite Four." There are still plenty of changes, though, and if you're a person who feels like enjoying the days of Red and Blue again, then taking a look at this game would be a good idea.


Graphics:
Never exactly the Pokemon series's strong point, they're...about the same here. The one major change to the look of the series is that some buildings sort of shift as you walk past them, making it look a bit more 3D. This is a nice effect, but it doesn't really change the whole look, and once you're in a building things look just like the GBA series of Pokemon games. The sprites have improved and the animations the pokemon show as they enter battle are nice, but still not too impressive (though, when you consider that there are 493 pokemon that had to be fit in, it becomes a lot more forgivable). Many of the animations for old attacks have been reworked, as well. Some of them actually look pretty nice, and are a significant improvement from previous games. As for how the new Pokemon look, well...it's a mixed bag, really. There are a few that look good, and a whole lot of really ugly ones.
Graphics score: 7/10



Sound:
Ah, another point that the pokemon series was never really all that strong in. Almost all of the tracks are either forgettable or annoying, but here and there some stand out as being alright. There are a few other new sound effects in the game that add some personality, like the ringing of a bell when you get on your bike. The new cries of pokemon are good for the most part, but here and there a few are just...strange. Dialga is supposed to be some mighty dragon, so why does it sound like a strangled ostrich? The sounds of Pokemon aren't the greatest, unfortunately, but they still do a decent enough job.
Sound score: 7/10




Story:
To be honest...the story is by far the weakest point of the Pokemon games. I wouldn't be expecting some epic novel that would captivate my interest and draw me in to replay the game for story alone, but the story here is just plain bad, on top of being very similar to it's equally unimpressive predecessors. You start out as a (roughly) 10 year old boy or girl who gets a pokedex from the professor and sets out to see all the pokemon in the world and conquer the pokemon league. But during the story, you encounter an organization that wants to use pokemon for evil. If you thought that sounded far too familiar...you'd be right. Trust me, the story here is nothing worth noting.
Story score: 3/10



Gameplay:
Ah, easily the high point of the series. Gameplay in Pokemon Diamond and Pearl is still fairly similar to previous installments of the series, but some overall changes have been made. The game still progresses just like the old ones at the beginning; you go around, battling trainers and Gym leaders to work your way up to being the Pokemon Champion. Going throughout the game is a fun experience, and the level of challenge is fairly consistent throughout the game. The Pokemon available throughout the regular progression of the game are a mix of old and new; you'll get new Pokemon like the trio of starters and Lucario, but there are plenty of old favorites, like Abra, Zubat, and Gastly. The selection of Pokemon that you can see in the beginning of the game is a bit limited. There are actually only TWO final form fire type Pokemon available throughout the regular progression of the game - Rapidash, and the final evolution of the fire-type starter. Of course, other Pokemon exist in the game besides the first 150 that you see, but to get those you have to either finish the game and gain the capability to find them, transfer them from Pal Park, or trade with someone whose FC you have. This creates a problem for people who want to play through the game with an Squirtle, Charmander, or another older Pokemon. The ONLY way to do this before finishing the game is to trade with someone online whose FC you have, so you'll have to persuade someone to trade a starter to you even if you have one ready and waiting on your older Pokemon game. This leads us to one of the game's poorly implemented features - the Pal Park.

Being able to transfer Pokemon back from your older versions of the game sounds like a great idea, but it's done very badly. It would make sense that Nintendo wouldn't want to you transfer your lv 100 Mewtwo from FR/LG and storm through the game with it, so some limit should've been in place on the system. But instead of trying to balance it (for example, only letting you bring back Pokemon at level 5 or under), Game Freak decided to just prevent you from transferring until you complete the game and a rather lengthy side quest. Not only that, but you can only transfer 6 per day, and instead of just being able to transfer them directly, you have to go through a rather pointless and time-wasting sequence where you catch them in a specific area with specific Poke Balls.

In terms of the core gameplay, there's only one major change (besides all the new pokemon and attacks, of course). Whereas all fire attacks used to be special based and all ghost attacks used to be physical based, now each attack type can be physical OR special. This makes perfect sense (Fire Punch is a PUNCH. It should deal Physical damage.) and helps some underused Pokemon be a lot better. Some types are still much more physical or special oriented (there's about 3 or 4 pokemon that can use special-based ground attacks effectively), but the split is a great addition to gameplay. The metagame is still as balanced (or unbalanced) as it used to be - some pokemon are just plain better than others, making using a team based on nothing but your favorites difficult.

The one real source of in-game challenge is the Battle Tower. Similar to the one in RSE, you can fight tough level 50 opponents for good prizes. It's a bit unbalanced, unfortunately - the early opponents you face are using unevolved Pokemon like Pupitar, but later on you'll run into things like Double Team that are banned in competitive play, and your opponents will have stats that are impossible to get without hacking. The main thing that you want to do in the Battle Tower is keep your winning streak, since you get more battle points the longer you've been going. This is made even harder by the fact that some opponents rely on total luck strategies, and if you face them enough times, you WILL lose, no matter how good you are. And the really good prizes cost absurd amounts of BP (the currency of the tower), so you'll be in there for hours just to get one TM.

One thing that does hurt the game for casual players is the amount that your Pokemon are influenced by Natures and IV's. The measure of the usefulness of an individual pokemon is determined mostly by luck. Imagine fighting one legendary Pokemon for half an hour, and finally subduing it after what feels like hundreds of tries. After the battle, you check it's stats, only to find that it has a bad nature and poor IV's, meaning that it borders on useless in a fight. Breeding for stats is also a boring, time-consuming process that's nearly required if you want to play competitively. It would seem that differentiating Pokemon's stats was an attempt to add diversity from Nintendo, but all it ended up doing was making the game unfair for those who aren't willing to waste time.

Throughout the game, there are plenty of little changes - some good, some bad. Breeding for good stats is now much harder to do, since the babies will start at level 1 and it's difficult to get a good idea of their stats. Surfing is now extremely sluggish, though there are less water areas that you're forced to surf on. There are still useless and annoying HM moves that you HAVE to teach your Pokemon to get through the game. There are still several Pokemon that aren't obtainable without using a hacking device or going to some super-rare Nintendo event that nobody ever hears about. There's still that annoying trade sequence that takes about 30 seconds to complete when in reality the data could be exchanged in less than a second. You can't put items in your PC any more, so you'll always have to look through a huge amount of useless junk in your bag.

There are good changes, as well. Growing berries is now much simpler, which it really should've been from the start. There are a bunch of new available items, which add a lot of strategy to gameplay and make some new strategies viable. Battles can be performed entirely using the touch screen, which works very well. When on the field, the bottom screen is used as a Poketch, which is basically a multi-purpose...thing that has a lot of different, useful applications, such as friendship checker, berry checker, and DayCare status checker, and a bunch of useless ones as well.

Overall, the gameplay is great, but there are just too many changes that make no sense and make the game worse to give it a perfect score.

Gameplay score: 9/10



Multiplayer:
To be totally honest, multiplayer was almost a total non-factor when I was playing all the previous series of Pokemon games. I had only a few friends that owned the games as well as me, and buying a link cable just so you could trade was a nuisance. This is all fixed by the DS's online capabilities. You can now trade and battle online, and...well...it's not as good as it could be, but it's still a great thing.

The first online feature of the game you're likely to encounter is the GTS. Basically, at the GTS, you can trade any Pokemon with people around the world. Sounds great, right? There are quite a few problems with it, however. First of all, you can only trade for Pokemon that you've seen. So no trading for a Charmander at the start of the game for you. Even if you HAVE seen a Charmander, though, you still can't trade for one using the GTS until you finish your Pokedex. You can't check the stats or nature of a Pokemon, either, so there's no way to see if the Pokemon you're getting is absolute garbage or a great addition to your team. You have to search for an individual Pokemon that you want, as well; you can't just say "Okay, I've got this really rare Pokemon here. What can I get for it?" Lastly, there are quite a few Pokemon up for trade that are blatantly hacked. The GTS is a cool idea, but it's brought down by a lot of limitations.

The trading online with friendcodes is generally good, but there are still problems with it. The first problem is the friendcodes themselves; entering them in is a nuisance, and there are only 32 slots, which you'll quickly run out of if you trade online actively. The trading also seems to have been designed so that you can be scammed. The game doesn't allow you to do straight 2 for 1 trades, so you'll have to trade one junk pokemon as well as the good one if you want to do a trade like that. However, if you disconnect, you keep the trades you've already completed, so some jerk could easily disconnect halfway through the deal and keep your pokemon. Also, you can't see all of a pokemon's hidden information while trading, so it's easy enough for someone to lie about the stats.

Battling online is probably the best part of the online experience. It's generally just like playing in the game, with the fact that you can't use items besides held ones. Playing online with friends or other random people is a blast, especially when you get bored of the main game.

Also, both battling and trading are brought down by simply inexcusable connection problems. Sometimes, the game will just randomly refuse to connect to another, even if all the conditions are fine. It would make sense if this was a fast-paced fighting game where the slightest bit of lag could make the difference between victory and defeat, but there's absolutely no reason for there to be so many connection failures. Also, as far as I know, Nintendo hasn't taken any steps towards fixing this.

Multiplayer score: 7/10



In conclusion...while Pokemon Diamond and Pearl improve on the formula of the previous games, there's still plenty of aspects that could've been improved upon, and a few pointless changes were made as well. This may be more my perfectionist nature (and the fact that I love pokemon and want it to be as good as it possibly can) speaking than anything else, though - the game itself is excellent, in spite of it's flaws.

+ Good general gameplay
+ The touch screen is used fairly well
+ Online play!

+/- Hasn't changed a whole lot from the previous games

- A whole lot of features could've been implemented better
- Online play has some problems
- Might require too much of a time investment for casual players

Rent or Buy:

BUY! There's no way you'll get all the satisfaction out of the game by renting it.

Final Score: 9/10 (Not an average)

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/11/07, Updated 09/17/07

Game Release: Pokemon Diamond (US, 04/22/07)