Topic: Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl

I do wish they brought back the battle frontier one of these days.

With how easy it is to actually raise and train competitively-adept Pokémon nowadays, it’s a shame that there’s very little to use them for, outside of unfair online battles and the obligatory battle tower.

_{Also I’d love another game that used double battles as the standard format…}

@Eel Personally, what I'd like back is the PWT. It's insane how they made it only for Black 2 and White 2, and then it just.. never returned.

@VoidofLight
I personally will pick Brilliant Diamond as it has Rhythm mini game on it and i'm really great in playing Rhythm games since rhythm game is my forte. And since i like Chibi looking peoples, the BDSP version looks better in my opinion.

@Eel
I wish Pokemon games have 3 vs 3 battles as Standard battle for entire game like Yokai Watch and other RPG games. Given by opportunity of different abilities from each Pokemon, it should have a Healer Pokemon, a Tanker Pokemon, a Life drainer / Saboteur Pokemon, a Supportive Pokemon, an Attacker Pokemon (Physical attack), a Magical attacker Pokemon (Elemental attack), etc so you can mix and match the three Pokemons combination before battle to get better team.

I will get Brilliant Diamond as i like Blue color schemes and i prefer Dialga design than Palkia design.

@VoidofLight it could be part of a new battle frontier 🥲

@Anti-Matter there used to be two different 3 on 3 battle formats. But they retired them in the recent games

@Eel
Ah, too bad.
Because 3 vs 3 battles sounds fair to me as I can set up my team with at least one Healer Pokemon to heal the whole team rather than depending on Potions.

I honestly like the original's style more than BDSP, although BDSP's style grew on me. The original game just looks interesting, given it's 2D sprites but the world is 3D modeled.

They could realistically have the exact same unlock method for spiritomb.

About the art style, the original Diamond and Pearl were notoriously plain looking, even back then. They improved upon that style with every new DS game.

Yeah they kept the overall style and look fairly similar. With the upgraded lighting and color palette it looks even closer.

Links Awakening was a bit of a complete overhaul of the original’s style though. I’d say it’s more similar to Story of Seasons Friends of Mineral Town.

I think they should bring back the Battle Frontier as well, but with new facilities. The Tower and Factory are good staples, but beyond that they should have new facilities that weren't in the originals. Bringing back Inverse Battles as a Frontier facility would be a good one, other than that they probably have to come up with new ones.

@DarthNocturnal Kind of. Keeps the same feel, but everything is 3D now.

“The Battle Pool”

Your Pokémon get added to a pool of Pokémon that get distributed at random among the trainers, then a tournament ensues. You might end up facing your own Pokémon in battle.

Add an online mode for a frustrating experience.

Ugh. Don't remind me. I don't think I ever bothered to unlock Spiritomb the way that it was intended. I just found one via the GTS and bred it repeatedly.

It should be a lot easier if you can just find random players online like on the Wild Area of SwSh

I am totally unaware of how to get Spiritomb.

You had to interact with other players a certain number of times in the underground to “charge” the odd keystone and make it appear.

It could be multiple interactions with one single person, but you did need to have access to another game and console at the very least.

@Eel Ah, so it's impossible now in platinum then. Bummer. Wish they would've future-proofed the method. It's probably why Gamefreak shies away from giving pokemon unique evolution methods now, or unique ways of obtaining new pokemon.

@VoidofLight it’s local communication, so it’s not impossible, just expensive.

Personally, I like the 2.5D style introduced in Diamond/Pearl/Platinum, and they improved it in HG/SS and BW 1/2. That said, looking back, D/P had the least content out of the lot in more ways than one.

I also miss double battles being more common. When it comes to other battle formats, I wasn't a huge fan of triple or inverse battles but really enjoyed rotation battles.

Oh oh, didn't DP come out when they still used the optional double battle system? (where if two trainers looked at you at the same time you'd battle both in a double battle)

I hope they keep that in! I've missed those encounters.