Pokemon Shining Pearl

Genre: Turn-Based Monster Collecting JRPG

Players: 1-4 Co-Op / Competitive (Local Wireless, Online)

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Review:

(Note: Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Pokemon Shining Pearl are for all intents and purposes the same game copy-pasted with minor differences. As such, my reviews of the two games will be similarly copy-pasted with minor differences)

(Note: This game is included in the Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Pokemon Shining Pearl Double Pack bundle along with Pokemon Brilliant Diamond)

Pokemon Shining Pearl (as well as its paired title, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond) is a Turn-Based Monster-Collecting JRPG in Nintendo’s long-running and mega-popular Pokemon series. As they often do, Nintendo has followed the release of their latest mainline Pokemon game (in this case, Pokemon Sword and Shield) with a remake that updates classic entries in the series. This time, the games getting the remake treatment are “Generation 4” games Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl, originally released on the Nintendo DS in 2007.

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Teaching an Old Houndour New Tricks?

Before even going on, we need to address exactly what “remake” means, both for this game and in the context of previous remakes in the Pokemon franchise. Pokemon Sword and Shield were regarded by many longtime series fans (myself included) as a major disappointment, both for being an unambitious game that failed to live up to the expectations of the first mainline Pokemon game on consoles, as well as for removing beloved features present in prior games in the series.

While this was disheartening, series fans at least consoled themselves with the knowledge that the inevitable Diamond and Pearl remakes would be a significant graphical upgrade over the 14 year-old original versions of the game, work in new features added to the franchise since those games originally released, and if series tradition held true these games would allow players to trade their Pokemon with Pokemon Sword and Shield players to get both games closer to having a full Pokedex again.

For the most part, none of that stuff happened.

If Pokemon Sword and Shield’s visuals were underwhelming, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl’s visuals seemed like a bad joke – while they have indeed been updated with improved 3D visuals over the original versions of the game, that upgrade is nowhere near even Pokemon Sword and Shield’s level of visual quality, opting for a “chibi” style with squished cartoony features for characters (at least outside of battles). This style is faithful to the look of the original games, but staunchly refuses to bring them anywhere close to modern expectations for the level of quality players expect from a Pokemon game.

Virtually everything here looks artificial, copy-pasted, and extremely simplified. There are at least a few nice visual touches – nice reflections in polished floors, excellent-looking water, and the visuals in battles at least look almost on par with modern entries in the series. But barring those exceptions, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl don’t just look archaic, they look outright primitive by today’s standards.

The sound fares a bit better, but only within the bounds of the low expectations set for the series – the music updates the original themes with modern arrangements (a few are quite good, such as the Team Galactic Battle Theme), but the human characters are voiceless as always, and the Pokemon themselves are still largely represented with antiquated Game Boy-esque digitized sounds. And the story feels similarly dated, with horribly stilted dialogue and barely even a nominal plot (“Oh, you found my Pokemon? Well, keep them in exchange for going around the world and doing the requisite filling of the pokedex. Hop to it.”).

In short, while the presentation here has some moments of… er, brilliance… this largely feels less like a… er, shining jewel… and more like polishing a turd.

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I Smell a Rattata…

Okay, “polishing a turd” may be a bit harsh – All of the mainline Pokemon games still feature exceptionally strong core gameplay that’s both highly accessible for younger players while hiding plenty of depth for more skilled players. The issue is that this gameplay has remained largely unchanged over the two and a half decades this series has been running. Have you played a mainline Pokemon game before? If so, then you have a very good idea exactly what to expect from the gameplay in Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, and while it’s still good, you will likely be overwhelmed with a “been there, done that” feeling, one that’s made even stronger by the archaic presentation.

That’s not to say that nothing sets this game apart, both from other entries in the series and from the original versions of the game. Compared to Pokemon Sword and Shield, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are much easier games – where Sword and Shield could be a real challenge at times, much of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl feels like a cakewalk, and that plus the simpler visual presentation could mark this as a more appropriate game for casual players, I suppose.

There are also numerous quality-of-life improvements seen in later games in the series and in particular in Pokemon Sword and Shield that make their way here – you once again have enemy weaknesses listed on menus, you gain the ability to swap out your active party with your Pokemon in storage wherever you want early in the game (rather than having to trudge back to a Pokemon Center to do so), and you’re once again not required to keep a “vendor trash Pokemon” on-hand to use abilities like “Cut” and “Rock Smash” to clear your way forward – the game gifts your character an app that does this for you.

Yet other advancements didn’t get carried over to this game – at least early on in the game, Pokemon Centers don’t offer to replace your Pokemon’s move set with abilities they forgot after you have a change of heart, escape ropes can’t be reused infinitely, and Pokemon are once again no longer visible on the map and must be encountered randomly by pure chance when walking through tall grass. This is of course akin to what was in the original versions of these games, but after Sword and Shield updated these mechanics, Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl seems like a huge step backwards.

And much as Pokemon Sword and Shield sorely disappointed fans by ditching the National Pokedex, resulting in the first mainline Pokemon game not to include all Pokemon, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl disappoints by offering zero connectivity with Sword and Shield, making this game significantly more locked-off than the original release of Diamond and Pearl, which could trade Pokemon with the Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Fire Red, Leaf Green, Platinum, Black, and White. Oh, and on that note, this version of the game does not include the content that was added in the Platinum release of the game, because of course it doesn’t.

At the very least, the big new feature, The Grand Underground, does revive the ability to see Pokemon wandering around and pick and choose which ones to encounter. However, this feature is introduced well into the game, feels somewhat tacked-on, and takes place within a visually-boring underground labyrinth.

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Caught in the Spinarak’s Web…

In so many ways, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are lazy, lackluster, feature-poor, and underwhelming, and yet for this players are being asked to pay a full $60? The same price as the much, much better (but still disappointing) Pokemon Sword and Shield? And an even higher price than the much, much better 3DS entries in the series? It’s insulting, and it’s even more depressing knowing that this underwhelming effort wouldn’t be reflected by poor sales numbers – quite the contrary, this game has gone on to sell quite well, something that is sadly a foregone conclusion for any Pokemon game, regardless of how lazy or underwhelming it is.

As I said in my review of Pokemon Sword and Shield, if you have never played a mainline Pokemon before this, go ahead and add a full letter grade to the review score here – the core formula at the heart of this game is still magnificent. However, if you played Sword and Shield or any of the other recent games in the series, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl is not just a woefully underwhelming disappointment, it’s almost an insult, like the folks behind the game were trying to see just how little effort they could put into a Pokemon remake before people would refuse to buy it at full price. Apparently, the answer to that is “less effort than this”.

Do yourself a favor, if you must get a mainline Pokemon game on your Nintendo Switch, get Pokemon Sword or Shield. Those games were also a massive disappointment, but at least they attempted to push the series forward in some ways, even while pushing it backwards in others. Or better yet, get any of the Pokemon games released on 3DS. But don’t buy this cash grab of a lazy remake. Doing so would only encourage them to get even lazier the next time around.

tl;dr – Pokemon Shining Pearl (like Pokemon Brilliant Diamond), is the first requisite “remake” entry in its super-popular Turn-Based Monster-Collecting JRPG series for the Nintendo Switch. However, this is a woefully underwhelming and sorely lacking entry in the series, both by the low standards set by Pokemon Sword and Shield, and by the standards set by previous remakes. While the core gameplay here is still excellent, you could get that exact same core gameplay in countless other Pokemon games, many which look better, have more features, and will cost the same price (or less). Do not waste your money on this disgusting, cynical cash grab.

Grade: C-

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