Thursday, May 19, 2011

Review of Diamond/Pearl/Platinum. Review 4?

Pokemon Diamond, Pearl and Platinum

Here is a link to a kind review. Then see mine below it.

http://www.gamespot.com/ds/rpg/pokemondiamond/review.html

Hardest game ever, back to the times of the original games where I felt useless… But the music changing at night was nice. I don’t know if it was all the towns but I really only noticed it in Floaroma Town. I used to fly there at night just to listen. I wish that I could have picked the flowers sometimes. A (NON-TIMED) mini quest to pick flowers for the shop owner would have been cool.

Poffins were fun for a bit but also annoying because I had nobody to make them with. In Ruby it didn’t matter because the NPC would help you but in D/P you get nobody. I was disappointed.

Did not like the Contests because they were harder and more boring than the ones from Ruby. And only in Hearthome.

Loved digging in the underground but it sucked that I didn’t have anyone to play the flag game etc with. Loved decorating my secret base! Just like Ruby! EEEE!

Amity Square: Encouraging discrimination against certain types of Pokemon. Otherwise, very good idea.

Gameplay/Strategy: Uh, yeah, the plot was the usual fare. I always like these plots but it gets a bit dull with the same plot constantly being recycled. Some good points. I haven’t mentioned this before but what I do like about all of the Pokemon games is that you don’t have to do the extra stuff to advance the plot. I hated how in FFX-2, you have to be good at that Sphere Coin game, because it is important later on. And how it helped to be good at Blitzball in FFX (and of course I am not). Anyway back to Diamond.

Good that you get the VS. Seeker, although it wasn’t easy to use, I kept forgetting I had it. I did most of my battling at the resort restaurant, and it was a very lucrative time for me. I found this game to be as hard as the originals in terms of completing the main plot. I did not enjoy that. But I have played this game for a long time so I still liked it, it is just so hard. Even though it was meant to be better than Ruby etc, it wasn’t for me because it was so hard I couldn’t enjoy it as much. But I did like the map and cities. Very nice.

Also was able to do Global Trade and get all of the starters yay! Loved that trade was made easier at last.

Music: Good but not as catchy as some of the other games… sometimes came off as monotonous or annoying. Best music was Floraroma Town, I guess. And I like Hearthome City sort of.

Sound: Very good. Better than any of the previous games, of course. Yay! A good thing to say at last! I think that this is when Chatot was introduced and after thinking it was cute and cool, I realized it was essentially a gimmick Pokemon. Although not weak to the point of ridiculous, it is not that great. I still like it though. And around here is when I began to notice the diff between previous gen sounds and gen IV sounds in clarity and tone diversity. It was very different, to the point of being glaring. But although it has become a bit annoying, after a while you get used to it.

Graphics: Very good. I liked the graphics a lot. I did miss being able to change the theme of my dialogue windows, I can’t remember when they took that away. But anyway yeah, I had to get used to a new menu but it was pretty easy. I liked the Pokemon status tabs in their lookups, very detailed and good. I was disappointed that it changed in the next game.

So in case you haven’t figured it all out yet, I really did enjoy Diamond but I found the actual main quest too hard. In the end, I am ashamed to say, I asked a friend to beat the Elite Four for me. I kept failing due to my aforementioned stubbornness and refusal to use items. But then he did it even though he insulted my team constantly. So they can’t have sucked that much or he would have had to use other Pokemon. Men. Always so arrogant and rude about games. They really are annoying. I accept that I am not very good, you don’t have to constantly be rude to me and laugh at me about it. I’m already asking you to help me, you don’t have to stomp on my spirit as well. Anyway, they (my Pokemon) did it.

And I thought, ‘I MUST DEFEAT BLACK ON MY OWN!!!’ So I have to. I have to prove to myself that I am not as useless as I think I am. He used the team I had carefully prepared. He just used items. I must learn to do that too.

Fave Pokemon: Looks: I know I didn’t like all of the Diamond Pokemon, so in terms of looks, I would have to say surprisingly I liked Skuntank. I just have a soft spot for it. I also really liked the legendary, Dialga. I liked Palkia too but it looked too much like the alien from the Alien movies. I liked Misdreavus and its evolved form, they are sooo cute! I also loved Finneon, but not really its evolved form. Battling: Actually I really enjoyed using my Skuntank. Very strong poison/dark Pokemon, and so cool when you teach it Flamethrower. Also my Gyrados. Until this game, I had never really had much time for Gyrados. But now I like it.

Pokemon I didn’t like much : Didn’t like Turtwig or Staraptor at first but got over it. Staraptor looks a bit stupid though with its quiff thing… Anyway I also hated Bidoof. Annoying troll. But Bibarel makes an awesome HM slave, and after playing Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky… well, I like Bidoof now. Stupid plotlines forcing me to like useless Pokemon… I’m sorry Bidoof! You’re not useless! Anyway. I also disliked Roserade, Bronzor and Spiritomb. Design-wise, that is. But the more I look at the Dex, the more I realize how fond of the D/P Pokemon I became.

Fave In-Game Trade/s: The Chatot. Don’t remember the rest of the few trades offered as being worth anything. Why was it named Charap? Because of Chatot’s Japanese name, which is Perap. I think that is a play on the words ‘Parrot’ and ‘Rap’ in English but I could be wrong. Anyway, a lot of the Japanese names are puns, and cheesily appropriate to the Pokemon’s appearance.

Overall rating: **** out of 5, because I hated the difficulty level but the extras were good (not great because of their annoying weaknesses). Part of the problem was of course that I kept switching between this and SoulSilver at the same time. Very different games in terms of graphics, gameplay and how much I enjoyed each one. Now that I remember the parts I liked, I find myself unable to give a harsh score. Also, I liked the three Pokemon Uxie, Mesprit and Azelf. Amazing, for once I liked the three legends (it helped that I was able to capture them all, a rare thing for me). And I liked Dialga and Palkia. Which I mentioned already.

My Team for Diamond:

Lucario

Raichu

Staraptor

Graveler

Skuntank

Gyrados

I had a lot of other faves, actually, but these guys were the ones who beat the Elite Four.

Btw Platinum was different to the other two, as Emerald was to R/S. So here is some guy’s review of Platinum since I haven’t played it (and I don’t mind so much about that).

http://www.gamespot.com/ds/rpg/pokemonplatinum/review.html

Btw on a semi-unrelated note, I enjoyed the Diamond and Pearl anime the most out of all of them so far. But I haven't seen the B/W series yet.

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