Topic: Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl

God no on anything Let's Go. Let's Go made all of the wrong changes to Kanto, the catching system is so unintuitive and broken, and it simplified the games way too much when they were already too simple to begin with. I'm not touching anything Let's Go with a 10 foot pole, let it die.

Kanto and Johto could use more of a BW2-esque reimagining that actually expands on what RBYFRLG and GSCHGSS did, not a simplification that turns it into a $60 mobile game. I'll even take a Legends type of overhaul, but BW2 would be better since Legends turns the whole region into an empty field. Legends is fine for Sinnoh because there's not much they can do to build on Sinnoh, it's already pretty developed and there's little else to add, but regions like Kanto and Johto are incredibly basic and simplistic regions that should be built upon instead of wiping out all civilization. The regional dexes have even worse variety than Sinnoh, the map designs are incredibly flat, blocky, and lacking in environmental variety, the story is practically nonexistent, the characters have little to no personality whatsoever, and every Kanto and Johto game except HGSS has very few sidequests, gadgets, or QoL features. Let's see Kanto and Johto games that do something about those issues and then we'll talk about them being modernized experiences.

@Bolt_Strike I'd imagine that they wouldn't just keep making the map empty fields in other Legends games, if they continue Legends as a subseries. I feel like there's actually potential for them to use legends to show important history or lore behind different regions, like X and Y's great pokemon war, or the events of the two original kings of Unova. The way I see it, is that the more Gamefreak gets used to open world games, or bigger games like this, they'll start working on adding actual towns to the regions.

As for Let's Go, it was never intended for the core pokemon audience. It was intended for younger children and people who never played a video game outside of phone apps before. It's harmless as a side series, and I really don't see the issues with it actually existing to be honest. If it were outright replacing remakes, then yeah, I'd understand being upset over it.. but it's not, as the Sinnoh remakes are being made.

Arceus forbid they get a chance to grow and improve the concept.

This, this is the problem. Trying to get that market to buy a Switch is foolish because part of the appeal in phones is that they have multiple different types of entertainment, whereas the Switch just plays video games. It's a waste of resources to make a game like that instead of something that appeals to people that would actually buy a video game console. All trying to make a mobile-like game on console accomplishes is angering the fans.

@Eel It can't be salvaged, the concept itself is flawed. The target audience they were trying to attract generally isn't interested, and the sales showed making the games like Go really didn't move the needle.

@DomGC This is what Legends Arceus is for. So they can go a little more crazy with those sorts of things. And we already have evidence that they're doing so with Hisuian variants and Pokemon like Spheal and Ursaring that weren't in the Sinnoh Dex roaming around.

And honestly it really bothers me that there hasn't been some kind of game in older regions that expands on the regional dex, the older regional dexes have so many problems that affect the roster choices. Because obviously people are so nostalgic for Gym Leader/Elite 4 fights where they spam the same Pokemon 3 times.

@Bolt_Strike It's angering the fans, despite the fact that they literally don't have to play it if they don't want to. The game itself does have a market clearly, given how well it sold on launch. I know a lot of people who got their kids into the series with Let's Go, and who got into the series by playing Let's Go.

The biggest crime of the Let's Go games is that they contained even less content than ANY of the 3DS games, while demanding more from the customer. To be perfectly frank, I would have preferred a port of Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon any day of the week.

They didn't even bother to include the Sevii Islands content from the GBA remakes or the earlier forms/evolutions introduced in later generations.

The most pathetic thing about Let's Go, in my eyes, is the fact that the look-out points in the game don't even bother to show you what your character is supposedly seeing, when there is absolutely no technical reason whatsoever for NOT showing us, but Game Freak opted to artificially limit themselves like it was 1996 again and give us mere text descriptions instead. Yes, it's perhaps one of the most inconsequential aspects of the game, but their refusal to go beyond the bare minimum can be incredibly frustrating.

@Silly_G Eh, I enjoyed Let’s Go more than I enjoyed any of the other gen 7 games. However, yeah, by far it’s the worst of the Kanto games. Less content, less post-game, removal of most modern features, etc. However, that’s just how the modern gens are, except they don’t get rid of things like breeding.

I'm not the target audience for Lets Go, but I actually enjoyed it more than both SWSH and Sun & Moon. I don't want them to replace the main games, but as a side series I think it's actually a refreshing change from the usual format which has become a little stale if I'm honest.

@VoidofLight It's unlikely that Let's Go truly reached its target audience at those sales figures, the people you know are probably anecdotal and not representative of the entire market. It only sold about the same as other remakes, whereas the mobile market is MUCH larger, so it largely failed to bring them in. Most likely Let's Go sold primarily to people that were already Pokemon fans and would've bought the game regardless. It's hard to say for sure because we don't have more details on who bought the game and what other games they bought, but I suspect that if they had really succeeded in bringing in new audiences from mobile, LG would've sold 15-20+ million and would've been an unprecedented success for Game Freak. Instead it sold about average which implies it's probably mainly the same people buying it and not doing a good job of bringing in new fans to the series.

Meanwhile, there were other things they could've done that would've been more successful at bringing in new fans to the series. We're seeing one already in Legends Arceus, which is also a very different game that can serve as a subseries, but unlike LG has a much better idea of who's buying a Switch and what kind of gameplay they're looking for. So I suspect that LA will sell about the same if not better than LG (at worst, LG might sell a few million more due to having 4 years on LA, but I suspect LA's sales will still be in the ballpark).

So yeah, Let's Go seems to be a failed experiment, and anyone that really knew the console market and the Switch's target audience could've predicted this because it's a game that totally misreads its market. It still sold well in spite of that, but that likely has more to do with Pokemon having a dedicated fanbase that largely doesn't really punish Game Freak when it does something the fanbase doesn't want and the Switch effect bumping sales for everything than people actually liking the concept. Go style gameplay has its place on mobile devices as much as I don't like that style (and unlike with the Switch, that is much less harmful), but it seems pretty clear that the crossover from mobile to console is fairly minimal and that isn't really the right direction to take the series. If they'd have given us literally anything else, I would wager it would've sold about the same if not better.

@Bolt_Strike I mean, while Let's Go probably did fail, there's another example of mobile crossing over with switch. New Horizons, as much as I despise this fact, sold well primarily because it drew in those who played pocket camp on their mobile devices. I'm pretty sure one of the people working on New Horizons was head of the Pocket camp stuff as well. So saying that mobile gamers have no interest in console games isn't entirely true.

@VoidofLight I doubt New Horizons sold well because of mobile either. The thing about New Horizons was that it launched at pretty much the perfect time to capitalize on the pandemic, between that and the Switch Effect I think that mostly accounts for the bump in sales. So that game doesn't really prove that mobile gamers are willing to make the jump either.

LGPE sold 13+ million copies, which puts it ahead of almost all of the normal remakes and third versions. And, this, mind you, is at a higher MSRP than the games it outsold.

By no stretch of the imagination was it a failure.

@Bolt_Strike A lot of people who bought New Horizons came directly from Pocket camp. I've spoken to quite a few people who only played pocket camp, but got into New Horizons. Yeah, the pandemic did help boost it's sales, but it still appealed to a lot of people who had only touched the mobile game.

Anyway, let me fail to re-rail the conversation to BDSP…

What… Version are you guys getting?

I would normally get Diamond, but since my brothers gonna be getting that this time around, I’ll adjust and buy Pearl instead.

Brilliant Diamond all the way. I've always much preferred Dialga's design and type over Palkia.

I still don't know if I'm getting the games or not. My copy of platinum still works, and I don't really think the remakes are going to beat it content-wise. I really hope they will, but eh.

However, I'm pretty excited for Legends. Still need to see more of it in order to see if I really want to buy it, but it just seems more interesting in comparison.

@VoidofLight
Here is the thing.
The NDS version is 2D style while BDSP version is 3D style.
I personally choose BDSP for better looking and some new contents. I don't really care with people's critiques about this or that as i have never played that game before so whatever things put inside BDSP i will enjoy them.

@VoidofLight well you could always just say which would you get if you were to buy one.

I’d like to believe these will be just all round nicer and comfier to play than the DS originals. With all the advancement in game mechanics and technology… I never played Platinum so I can’t really compare the content.

I’m personally also really happy that we will finally get another game with regular trainer rematches. It’s been so long…

Let’s Go got very boring once you only had the mono-mon trainers… and Sword and Shield had like… very few regular trainers, and none of them can be battled again. The routes became so empty and void of purpose once you passed them through once.

Here’s hoping the gym trainers have rematches as well.

I tend to get the second versions of Pokemon games lately:

• Pokemon Y
• Pokemon Moon
• Let's Go Eevee
• Pokemon Shield

So, I'll go with Pearl, because... why not?

@Anti-Matter Eh, graphics don't really matter to me. I just rather play a game for it's content, and that's why I vastly prefer the older generations to the newer ones.

@Eel If I had to pick, I'd probably get Pearl. Diamond and Pearl's box art legendaries don't really do much for me, like all the others, and that's what I used to base my decisions on in the past. However, What I'm mostly basing my decision on now is effectively just the fossil pokemon. The quality of life is probably going to be nice, given that the original gen 4 games are a bit grindy and slow, but I'll still miss the multiplayer minigames and the battle frontier, as well as the villas.