"From a slightly older gamer not that familiar with pokemon"

Introduction
As we all know Pokemon has been around for a while now and I'm quite sure many of you have encountered it hundreds of times in adds and similar environments. Back when the original releases of Pokemon Blue and Red just hit the shelves I had a short romance with the games, playing them through twice but never bothered to 'catch them all' as the tagline reads. Fast forwarding almost a decade I now find myself having finished the latest incantation of this game. Many generations have passed and I was curious to see what directions this franchise took.

Gameplay
As I first fired up this game on my brand new DS, what immediately struck me was the retro feel the game had, even in the title screen you got that old school Gameboy feeling. I was pleasantly surprised as I frequently go back to the SNES to experience this kind of sensation. Almost nostalgically the game asks you your name and introduces the exact same characters from 10 years ago, albeit with new names. And from that point on is when it get ridiculous rather than playfully reminiscent of the old games.

Upon reading other reviews here I will not go on by overstating how little progress has been made since the first games. At the core of the game, there is nothing new what so ever. And that is that. Don't get this game expecting something fresh, you will be sorely disappointed.

Just like in the other games you move across a square grid in a scaled map, navigating narrow pathways or routes with the traditional caves and unclimbable slopes that you can jump down. There routes then connect a network of cities which each contains some key aspects of the gameplay such as food or poffin making, gambling, trading, contests and other centras of minigames and gimmicks. In all towns you find numerous standard PRG NPCs who will repeat a few lines, occasionally offering you a Pokemon for trade, items or small sidequests.

The routes usually contain many grassy patches where Pokemon hide as well trainers standing by waiting for you to pass, so they can ambush you and challenge you with their own Pokemon. The reward is a bit of cash and experience. You unlock more cities, caves and routes by progressing the storyline and beating gyms and gym leaders, earning new important abilities such as "cut", which will clear shrubs blocking important pathways.

Now at the heart of the game are of course the Pokemon. These cuddly little beasts have amounted to quite a large amount now, up to 550 if I recall correctly. In the Shinto region - this game's world - you will have access to 150 initially, some new and some old, before beating the game and obtaining the National Dex, enabling you to find more older creatures as well.

You naturally do battle with the Pokemon and you can carry up to six. Each Pokemon knows up to 4 attacks at any given time but will learn new ones as it levels up and evolves. You fight by selecting one Pokemon and then you fight with your opponent until either of you run out of fighters. Occasionally you will do double battles, having you fight 2 vs 2 battles.

The whole system is based on an expansive rock paper scissor type battle system. Water will deal lots of damage to fire Pokemon and so on. Learning this system is they key to the game and once you have it down you will seldom lose a fight in the single player game. The problem however is that it's not entirely intuitive, as they for balance reasons need all types to be vulnerable to 2 or 3 others while effective against 2 or 3 as well. This creates weird situations were for example water and fighting type Pokemon are super effective against rock type Pokemon. You would assume that punching and squirting water would do nothing to a slab of stone wouldn't you?

The difficulty is low and it is actually harder in the beginning than in the middle. At the peak of the end you encounter a few tough battles but they are few and far between. Overall though the game is extremely easy for anyone but very young players or people completely new to the game.

The game is overall enjoyable and there is an incredible amount of different things to do such as contests, mini-games, poffin making, gambling, among others. The most interesting meta game is of course to collect all the Pokemon. Here however my enjoyment came to a grinding halt. First of all, if you want to have any chance what-so-ever at catching a majority of them you will need at least one friend playing the Pearl version as many of them need to be traded in order to be evolved as well as the fact that some types only appear in one version.

Worse than that, I was very frustrated to learn at the end of the game that in order to obtain most of the older Pokemon you will need to own Sapphire or other GBA Pokemon games and transfer those to this game. Here I feel Nintendo's greed got the better of the game and honestly who will go out and purchase GBA games today? I bought the game and the back says 550 Pokemon. It didn't say "if you own 5 other versions and have friends with a Nintendo DS and Pearl".

In summary, the game is fun and enjoyable on its own but too much of the gameplay is locked away from players who do not have wi-fi connections, lots of DS owner friends or other version of the game.

Story
All but non-existent. You plow through the game occasionally being forced to fight Team galactic to disrupt their pans to take over the world. A few dialogues here and there and some plot-driven boss battles but overall this is not the focus of the game nor is it necessary. Extra credit here for not forcing a time consuming and dull storyline on a game which works perfectly without it.

Graphics/Sound
This is a bit of a low even for the DS. While the retro style is in many cases nice. It feels lazy most of the time. Very very little has happened since the Gameboy versions. The battle system has the same sparsely animated attacks and repeated animations. I understand that with hundreds of attacks and Pokemon it would be hard to give everyone unique animations but they didn't even try to push the envelope here. "If it ain't broke don't fix it" seems to be the mentality here, however I would like to add that if you want to sell more, improve it. I would much rather play with 150 fully animated Pokemon rather than 550 flat and uninspired sprites with 2-bit shrieks.

As for the sound there is no improvement here either. The game is often painfully aged in it in this area and all of the old Pokemon have the exact same extremely low bit sounds and shrieks as they had in Blue/red while the new Pokemon have been given a lot more detailed and natural ones. Nostalgic but not interesting nor improved.

Playtime and replayability
Actually quite good, and even for a casual player like me you should net between 40-60 hours upon beating the Elite four without rushing too much. You can of course increase this tenfold should you be a completionist gamer . The replayability is not spectacular if you want to catch them all but quite good if you would like to run though the game with a different set of six or try a new starter Pokemon. I will might replay it in years but right now I feel very full.

Final Recommendation
If you are 20+ and have played these games before then there is no need to buy or try this game as it essentially offers what it did 10 years ago and I cannot imagine that it has improved much more in the games in-between.

If you have yet to play a Pokemon game then by all means, everyone should at least try it and you can certainly jump right into this one without having played the ones before. Even though you should be warned that to get the most of it you will need the older versions completed and some friends over Wi-fi.

Final Score: 7

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/29/08

Game Release: Pokemon Diamond (EU, 07/27/07)