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.