As one of the two pairs of mainline titles I haven't played in the Pokemon series (the other being Sword & Shield, which I'll get to soon), I almost felt obligated to check this one off so I can finally rate and rank it among the other games. I played Brilliant Diamond on emulator with hardcore-Nuzlocke rules, to try and make things a little more interesting.

Uh, this thing sucks? What I got was an uglier, boring rehash of a game I played almost 20 years ago. I think we all knew this was gonna be a turd when it was initially revealed, with series sole developer Game Freak handing it off to a fucking storage app developer, not to mention its absolutely heinous art direction. Not to give too much credit to Game Freak as a competent developer, but maybe a little credit where credit is due when the first mainline title released by someone else was the roughest, buggiest launch until maybe Scarlet & Violet. Also hurting its initial reveal was it being announced alongside Legends Arceus, which looked much more interesting and also turned out to be exactly what the stagnant franchise needed at the time.

A very common, irritating defense I've seen of BDSP from its few defenders is that it's a "faithful" remake. I guess? It's convenient that it picks and chooses where and what to be faithful, including plenty of modern day QoL updates, like updated effectiveness tables, the Fairy-type, and tons of Pokemon that weren't included in the original Diamond & Pearl pre-postgame in a totally new, upgraded Grand Underground. But then ILCA decides to be faithful in the worst ways - Diamond & Pearl's asinine gym leader & Elite Four teams (the Fire-type Elite Four member has the majority of his team not Fire-type), a vile chibi-styled art direction that I think is attempting to translate the DS sprites into 3D but look laughably bad in HD, and an incredibly bland and boring "remastered" soundtrack that has no life to it.

Previous remakes, namely, FireRed & LeafGreen, HeartGold & SoulSilver, and Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire, took the games they were remaking and brought them forward to meet the standards of the current generation they were in - Kanto reimagined in the style of Hoenn, Johto reimagined in the style of Sinnoh, and Hoenn reimagined in the style of Kalos. They brought new story elements, new gimmicks like Mega Evolution, fun redesigns of iconic characters, and wonderful remixes of classic tunes. BDSP does absolutely none of this, providing the absolute bare minimum of a functioning product (failing even that at launch) and basically has nothing in this that would intrigue a Pokemon fan to play it over the originals or the superior Platinum version.

Countless arguments against the game have been made and there are literally too many issues to list - the barely remixed soundtrack not even being in the game without the day one patch, follower Pokemon that are horrendously scaled to the massive chibi player models, lack of any content from Platinum being among the biggest - but my biggest issue is that these are literally just worse versions of Diamond & Pearl. As contentious as ORAS have become over the years, at least they tried something new? Like, they made those games distinct from Ruby & Sapphire. What the hell is the point of playing BDSP? To fill out the Sinnoh Pokedex on modern Switch hardware? Legends Arceus, arguably the true Sinnoh remake, accomplishes this exact thing in a game that's unique and fun to play.

All of this and more has already been said. An utterly pointless, useless, soulless piece of corporate slop that even Game Freak couldn't be assed to bother with. As Pokemon fans, we're in the unfortunate position of just kind of having to take what we can get (completely unacceptable for such a large IP, but that's a different convo) and BDSP fails to reach even that incredibly low bar. Fuck this game and everyone who defends it.

0 words for how disappointing this felt. To date I have never regretted buying a game more. Until this atrocity, every mainline game remake was a success that added and expanded to the base game, that recreated important moments while adding new ones and shaking up others to make a new game that felt worth playing. Alpha/Omega Sapphire/Ruby brought the games into a 3D style radically different from their beginnings, added new forms and a functionality that let you ride the legendaries, a cute expanded relationship between the player and the rival, included the additions made in Emerald as a post-game story, etc; these kinds of things that were consistent and set as a standard for remakes. The remake brought an older game up to the current standard of the newest mainline game, usually establishing a kind of relationship between the two so they could be played simultaneously, as seen with HGSS and DPPT or ASOR and XY. BDSP did absolutely none of these. It was a 1 for 1 copy of the original basegame, in a deeply hideous 3D style that lacked any sort of consistency with established Pokemon visuals and instead brought to mind a melty plastic off-brand figurine. Down to every single NPC line, tuft of grass, jagged edges of lakes and landmasses, it was the same as the original. These games came out in 2021, era of Arceus Legends and SWSH, and yet they have nothing in common with the graphics, gameplay or mechanics of either. It was a reskinned game from 2008 released in 2021. They added nothing, did nothing original or even reflective of the generation they were released in; they were essentially a 3D switch port. The only caveat is that they didn't include anything from Platinum, and so in a way actually had less content than the originals. Not to mention Poketch functionality was destroyed by the Switch and the Underground is basically vestigial and pointless, with secret bases now just being ugly display rooms for monochrome versions of Pokemon 3D models. The soullessness of these entries beggars belief.
The entire time I played through it, all I could think was 'why the hell did I buy this? It's uglier, emptier, less functional, and twice the price of the original.' (And for people who argue that Arceus Legends was the true Gen 4 remake, sure - but then why did they release this at all? Why not just market it as a port and not a remake, with a price that reflects just how little effort actually went into this game? We know why! It's Nintendo!)
It felt like a bootleg Pokemon game. I was waiting for this remake for 10 years and every mainline game that got released had me more and more excited for how good this was going to be. Needless to say my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is and continues to be ruined by the existence of this dogshit. I seriously lack words for how much these games made me despise Nintendo. The bar is clipping into the floor.

This has to be one of the worst remakes for a game ever.
It shipped as a horribly buggy mess without a title screen, finished music, online, cutscenes, or a postgame. It forces an update on the person that just paid $60 for it (the originals on DS were $40) half the size of the game so they wouldnt have to pay to ship cartridges with more storage which also means it will be impossible for someone to buy this game complete when Nintendo stops supporting the Switch's online services.
The art style is in my opinion lazy and uninteresting excused by it being a "faithful remake" despite it not being faithful to the original underground, contests, or game's fucking balancing. BDSP is soooo """"faithful"""" to the point that they just copied over Diamond and Pearl's code to use as a base, but also somehow managed to introduce even more glitches into it too. Also i guess just fuck every single thing Platinum did to make Sinnoh an actually good region because all they include from Platinum is the new Pokemon, but only in the new areas of the underground. They spit in the face of one of my most beloved Pokemon games, taking out any of it's many improvements to the story, characters, post game, and balancing for the sake of faithfulness to the versions of Sinnoh that nobody prefers.
This game is what happens when you barely pay an outsourcing studio to make a whole Pokemon level remake in only 19 months. A complete waste of time for both the developers and players. It hurts me to think that this game sold over 14 million copies, worst case scenario they'll do they same fucking song and dance for Black and White because they know it sells.

After playing Let's Go Pikachu, I wanted to play a game with less of the mechanics of Pokémon Go and do actual battles, this review will be a short one, I have a huge bone to pick with this game which I will touch on later (difficulty cough).

The expectations were somewhat high, but I almost took a full year to finish this one, picking up other games and leaving it on the shelf for far too long, but I can see why, felt the game was way too easy until the very end when it got challenging, this was the game I used to play to get a sleep inducing experience after work (pressing way too much on A to skip text and spam the same effective moves, there was zero strategy on my part because didn't need to), I feel bad for the game only giving me the spark on the very last parts of it.

The game looks beautiful, even if they went the safe route with this one, it's a very Pokémon experience in regards of a story that I enjoyed, the areas, the music, atmosphere, it has what it makes it a good game except the difficulty really (which is laughable, if you want to give EXP share to the whole party, up all those silly trainers 5-15 levels in the entire game), I lost the joy to keep playing post game even if it has some good content packed.

This didn't stick with me, I'm sad because it doesn't make me look forward to the next entry I'll be playing (maybe Legends or Sword), I'm not feeling a big Pokémon fan at the moment, but it's a 7/10 for me, I wanted to like this one more.

Generally fine remake that has a lot of positive quality-of-life changes but still can't compete with Pokémon Platinum in terms of content.
+ faithful adaptation bringing out nostalgia for the old story and world
+ similarly impressive post-game and side-content
+ HM moves don't need to be taught to be usable
+ fancy world map with a shortcut to Fly
+ fast and good-looking battle animations
+/- divisive graphics overhaul with a mix of chibi and anime art in and outside combat
- practically zero innovation or boldness at display

Pokémon Diamond and Pearl are some of the most important releases for the franchise as they were the games able to reverse the trend of declining sales since Gen 1 and prove the series as more than just a passing fad. A remake of a pair of games with so much importance to so many people and I’m happy to say that this one delivered on every front: awesome new content through the revamped underground feature and Ramanas Park, various quality of life improvements that the originals desperately needed, a charming new artstyle that gives the game a distinct feel, and a much welcome return to Diamond and Pearl’s unique localization that was sanded down in the transition to Platinum. The definitive version, hands down.

I am so desperate to finish this game good lord I just cannot bring myself to. I never thought I'd ever set down a mainline Pokemon game (remake or not) and just FORGET about it. I cannot even explain exactly what's wrong with it, it's just... a blank slate. It's almost like a demo. I even restarted my file after getting to the fifth gym because I thought maybe my team was just boring and lackluster. So I built a beautiful, unique team, of Pokemon I've always wanted to use, and it's... Still the same. I was so excited. Probably the hardest and most disappointing expectations vs. reality I've ever played.