Topic: Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl

@Ralizah I believe it was originally meant for all ages, then slowly evolved for children mainly.

@VoidofLight Nah, the game creator made Pokemon in mind for kids. It came about from how he use to catch bugs as a kid and wanted to create that feeling for kids today (well 90's) since they no longer do it themselves. It's why the Pokemon "faint" as he wanted to make it a kid friendly as possible yet didn't realise evolution was gonna be the controversial bit lol

I think the issue is that Pokemon's oldest generation of fans have realized the property never grew up along with them. It's beautifully symbolized by the anime still running with the same ten year old kid who I watched on TV as a youngling

@Ralizah The older games are still fun, but I think that's probably part of it. Another part is how the directors sort of refuse to add actual post-game content to the games, due to modern children not being interested in gaming anymore, and being "too busy".

I also long for an Anime that's made for people who are fans of the games, and not an anime with a protagonist like Ash.. who can't even see through obvious disguises.

@VoidofLight Pokemon Generations was pretty much that, and it turned out awesome. Pity we'll likely never get a long-form series in that same vein.

@Ralizah Yeah. Generations and Origins were awesome. I honestly wish we got a more serious anime like that, which expands on the lore of each game, or the important events of each game. Games like Sword and Shield need it the most honestly.

It completely flew over my head when watching the Oled reveal, but it looks like the graphics have been upgraded in this game, compared to the original trailer, the color palette looks much more pleasing, and the battle background looks just better in general.

I got into an argument on another forum over this, with people saying that it "hasn't changed at all", and that "It shouldn't be rewarded for the bare minimum polish!". Someone even told me that it was "an Illusion made up for the trailer" and "Different locations in game"..

However, it honestly looks good, and I think it's a drastic improvement over what it looked like when it was first revealed. I'm curious as to what the Over World looks like now, and what Legends will look like.

Hopefully at the very least the new color palette will extend into the overworld.

The trainer model also received several noticeable improvements. I honestly hadn't noticed the backpack was just a smooth flat egg in the original trailer. It now looks more like an actual backpack when viewed from behind.

@Eel Yeah. Them touching up the models and adding proper shading makes me hope the Chibi models don't look as odd either, and that the lighting in the overworld is also improved compared to the build back in February.

Perhaps ironically, the reveal trailer was more or less how I expected Diamond/Pearl to look like back in the day. I was naive enough to expect a full 3D Pokémon game on the DS considering that the hardware was more graphically capable than the N64 (just compare Super Mario 64 to the DS remake and Mario Kart 64 to Mario Kart DS to observe the night and day differences).

I expected Diamond/Pearl to look at least as good as the Pokémon Stadium games, so, naturally, I was quite disappointed with the end result, which was almost completely 2D (with overworld elements in 3D).

And while the opening shot of the reveal trailer with the zooming in of the DS filled me with excitement, my enthusiasm dissipated immediately upon seeing the ugly chibi model of the female protagonist.

I am cautiously optimistic that they will improve the overworld aesthetic. Ideally, they should delay the game in order to give us a visual overhaul that does Gen IV justice, but with The Pokémon Company prioritising merchandise on shelves over quality, I won't be holding my breath either.

I am nevertheless looking forward to experiencing Sinnoh again (however disappointing the remakes will be), but I can't help but yearn for what could have been. Frankly, I would have preferred the Let's Go treatment over what we are actually getting, especially if my idea of Let's Go Chatot/Mime Jr. with exclusive Joy-Con for both characters had come to fruition (being a Joy-Con with a microphone for Chatot, which responds to voice commands in and out of battle, while the Mime Jr. Joy-Con would contain a camera, allowing Mime Jr. to mimic you in and out of battle).

Eh.. I kind of like the style they're going for, since it's trying to recreate the games in full 3D, keeping the same aesthetic. My only problems were that the lighting and character models looked off, but they're improving them. I still don't know if I'm going to be picking these up though, since I finally got my Platinum copy to start working again.

Legends interests me more as well, given that it's the first open world game in the series, and it's a fully 3D Sinnoh. Just hope it'll be good.

@Snaplocket The original language often is the one with the most money put into it though. While you have some exceptions (FMA Brotherhood had absolutely fantastic voices in English and Japanese to the point where I watched the series in both languages), there's often a significant lack of ability for the creators to enforce quality on a dub that they cannot understand. It's very rare for the original language to not at least be tied for the best performance.

Obviously, there's some fantastic exceptions (XSEED comes to mind), but when a company licenses out everything to a foreign company and is completely hands off (as is common now), it's not a good sign.

...as this regards to Pokemon though? Despite their missteps with Mario Sunshine, Nintendo has otherwise had consistently good VAs when they actually use them. And TPC knows dubbing incredibly well. A voiced Pokemon has a very decent chance of sounding better than the average video game dubbed.

@VoidofLight It's not enough to convince me the game will look great, but it's certainly enough to prove the game is still receiving drastic improvements. Model changes, texture changes, increased foliage and lighting changes on a good chunk of the scene mean what we saw was definitely not representative of the final product.

My main hope for the overworld would be for them to tone down the green from the regular ground grass. Making it contrast a bit nicer with the tall grass, and trees.

Anything else they improve would be a bonus.

@link3710 Yeah. I'm still of the mindset of waiting and seeing how it turns out. I know some people are expecting the art style to be drastically changed, but I highly doubt that'll be the case. I just hope it'll look more polished than how it was presented at reveal.

@Eel I wanna see improvements for things like the grass texture, and lighting mainly. Something about the overworld looked better than the battle screens, but still looks a bit cheap to me.. however, I can't really put my finger on as to what.

@DarthNocturnal I don't really see them adding in Pokemon from Gen 8 honestly. I can see trading being a thing between the two, but nothing more.

The sinnoh underground is back, since they showed it off in the first trailer.

@Snaplocket Compare the shots in the trailer with the same shots of the reveal trailer. It's a night and day difference, especially with the lighting.

The grass and trees are completely different models. Just for starters.

The question is will Archeus catchable easily on BDSP version ?