Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl - Release 19th Nov 2021

Gonna be real most discussion I see about this is from the "The frontier isn't here, fuck gamefreak" or "the frontier isnt here, this sucks" wheel houses so making a whole post tut-tutting that audience, leading with "PSA", "writing this for YOUR sake" and going on about ~coping~, sure comes off as both smug & weirdly misplaced
 

Zetalz

Expect nothing, deliver less
is a Pre-Contributor
I'm not writing all this to act smug about foreseeing the obvious
Sure could've fooled me. What was the goal here? Do you think the people upset by the lack of the frontier are going to feel better about it or stop posting about it when you make such passive-aggressive comments at them like this post does? Honestly reads like you think you've pulled a gotcha moment with the Battle Tower thing and can't help but rub if in the face of people who are upset about it. You've done this regularly with people who have been upset at GF's decisions ever since the dexit situation, regardless of how civil the complaints have been, and honestly it's getting pretty tiring hearing this "Get owned nerds your feelings don't matter" shit over and over again.
 

Yung Dramps

awesome gaming
I completely stand by my post's message but if I came off as overly smug or condescending my apologies. The inspiration for making it was an online hangout largely unrelated to Smogon, which I should've gathered didn't apply to this forum. Truth be told I myself am rather disappointed the Frontier isn't back although it's not as severe for me as it is others, and if you're one of them I fully understand.

In short, this is why you don't post at 1 AM
 
The frontier battles are funny as hell to me, as someone who forgot it existed until I read the manga, went back to emerald, tried one dome and decided it was shit, and never touched it again.

Still feel for yall because gen 4 post-game is non existent so the battle frontier is the only thing that even makes the games passable
 
The frontier battles are funny as hell to me, as someone who forgot it existed until I read the manga, went back to emerald, tried one dome and decided it was shit, and never touched it again.

Still feel for yall because gen 4 post-game is non existent so the battle frontier is the only thing that even makes the games passable
Gen 4's post game is fine, honestly. Got a couple new routes, a few new dungeons, bunch of avenues for catching new (old (but also new, for DP)) Pokemon...decent enough imo.
 
The frontier battles are funny as hell to me, as someone who forgot it existed until I read the manga, went back to emerald, tried one dome and decided it was shit, and never touched it again.

Still feel for yall because gen 4 post-game is non existent so the battle frontier is the only thing that even makes the games passable
Yeah, I disagree with both of these. Even without the Frontier, Sinnoh has the unexplored area of Victory Road as well as the entire Battle Zone which is like the equivalent of FRLG's Sevii Islands. The Battle Zone is also gorgeous leaving quite an aesthetic impression.

And the Battle Dome is amazing in my opinion. My second favorite Frontier facility after Factory. In many ways it was like the precursor for the PWT in B2W2.
 
the diamond we got was the one we expected but not the one i was hoping for

But seriously, I wonder how Battle Zone DLC is going to work, assuming it is not in the base game.
 
Yeah, I disagree with both of these. Even without the Frontier, Sinnoh has the unexplored area of Victory Road as well as the entire Battle Zone which is like the equivalent of FRLG's Sevii Islands. The Battle Zone is also gorgeous leaving quite an aesthetic impression.

And the Battle Dome is amazing in my opinion. My second favorite Frontier facility after Factory. In many ways it was like the precursor for the PWT in B2W2.
The unexplored area of Victory Road + Battle Zone (which is empty in DP, only in Platinum does it have notorious aditions, one of them being the Battle Frontier which is like 99% of what makes the Battle Zone the Battle Zone) is about 1, 2 hours of extended gameplay.

I've in my old Diamond game 779 hours of gameplay, a lot considering i also had some serious time put into Pearl and Platinum, but those hours are from enjoying with my friends back in the day doing underground shit and above everything breeding, lots of hours put into breeding. I wouldn't it's because of it's postgame.

Post-Game, without a Frontier, is BW2. That is Post-Game.
 
The unexplored area of Victory Road + Battle Zone (which is empty in DP, only in Platinum does it have notorious aditions, one of them being the Battle Frontier which is like 99% of what makes the Battle Zone the Battle Zone) is about 1, 2 hours of extended gameplay.

I've in my old Diamond game 779 hours of gameplay, a lot considering i also had some serious time put into Pearl and Platinum, but those hours are from enjoying with my friends back in the day doing underground shit and above everything breeding, lots of hours put into breeding. I wouldn't it's because of it's postgame.

Post-Game, without a Frontier, is BW2. That is Post-Game.
I disagree. B2W2 might have the most expansive post game in the series but it's not like it's that or bust. I wouldn't expect BDSP to reach B2W2 levels of post game because frankly there is no other game in the series that does aside from maybe HGSS if you consider Kanto post game. Still, even without the Frontier there's enough substance there to be adequate.

Furthermore the Platinum changes to the post game like Battleground Gym Leader rematches or Elite Four rematch haven't been ruled out yet as far as I know. These would also be pretty solid additions to BDSP's potential post game.
 
I disagree. B2W2 might have the most expansive post game in the series but it's not like it's that or bust. I wouldn't expect BDSP to reach B2W2 levels of post game because frankly there is no other game in the series that does aside from maybe HGSS if you consider Kanto post game. Still, even without the Frontier there's enough substance there to be adequate.

Furthermore the Platinum changes to the post game like Battleground Gym Leader rematches or Elite Four rematch haven't been ruled out yet as far as I know. These would also be pretty solid additions to BDSP's potential post game.
I mean, I think it won't harm anyone to -as fans- desire for at least equal content than that of HG/SS, BW2. So I'm always expecting it, even if I have also assumed it'll never be.
 
Gen 4's post game is fine, honestly. Got a couple new routes, a few new dungeons, bunch of avenues for catching new (old (but also new, for DP)) Pokemon...decent enough imo.
Even without the Frontier, Sinnoh has the unexplored area of Victory Road as well as the entire Battle Zone which is like the equivalent of FRLG's Sevii Islands. The Battle Zone is also gorgeous leaving quite an aesthetic impression.
I agree. Even without the Platinum additions, I think D/P have an excellent post-game. Large new areas to explore, filled with strong wild Pokémon, new wild Pokémon compared to the main game, and strong trainers. I have said this many times before, but if we look purely at the first pairs and the quality of their post-games, I think D/P and B/W are tied as the two best ones in the series.

Saw some discussions about other players' plans for their in-game teams on the previous page, might as well add some of my thoughts regarding my plans for a potential team.

:Chimchar: :Monferno: :Infernape:
If I end up getting SP, I will definitely pick Chimchar as my starter and use it on my team. It is my favorite Sinnoh starter, one of my favorite Fire-type starters (lately, it has been facing heavy competition from Cinderace) and it was the one I picked when I first played Pearl in 2007. So Infernape is a guaranteed member of my team, no contest.

As for the others, I have been thinking about only using Sinnoh Pokémon for my team. First, I had thought about using the Pokémon which were members of my original in-game teams in D/P/P. The ones from Sinnoh were the following: :Staraptor: :Garchomp: :Roserade: :Drifblim: :Luxray: :Rotom: :Tangrowth:

:Torterra: :Empoleon:
I would love to use the other two starters as well, but since I'm only going to get one, I'll have to skip these two.

There are several other Sinnoh Pokémon I am considering as well, most notably the following: :Mismagius: :Ambipom: :Lucario: :Gastrodon-east: :Togekiss: :Gallade: :Weavile: :Magnezone: :Leafeon: :Glaceon: :Yanmega: :Mamoswine: :Froslass: :Gliscor:

Sadly, I will have to skip out on trade evos, otherwise those three would also have been alternatives: :Magmortar: :Electivire: :Porygon-Z:

Either way, if I do end up getting SP, there are a lot of Pokémon I am considering for my team. Throwing together two teams of 12 Pokémon shouldn't be too hard... if anything, it will be hard to decide on which 12 I should be using!

One other thing I have been thinking about (which is somewhat unrelated to the games) is this: Will there be a Pokémon Adventures chapter for BD/SP (and for L:A, for that matter)? If there is one for BD/SP, what will it be about? The previous remake chapters have mostly focused on new things that were added in the remakes. FR/LG focused on the Sevii Islands, HG/SS on the Pokéathlon and the Sinjoh Ruins event, and OR/AS focused on the Delta Episode. I wonder if BD/SP will have something new that the manga chapter can focus on.

I think the original D/P/P chapters managed to feature almost everything from the original Sinnoh games, so I am unsure about what the manga chapter could focus on if there's nothing new that's major enough to get the focus. One thought I had was if it could focus on some of the Sinnoh legendaries/mythicals since I think many of them weren't showcased very well in the manga. Notably Shaymin, Manaphy, Phione and Cresselia. They could also have given more focus to Darkrai, Regigigas, and even Heatran to an extent. They could do something with Arceus as well (since it only appeared in the HG/SS chapter in the manga), maybe as a tie-in to L:A? Another thing they could focus on is the Underground since it only got a very minor appearance in the manga now that I look back at it.

Sorry of that got into too much speculation/wishlisting and was off-topic, but I wanted to get this said before the thread gets locked again.
 
I agree that DP by itself has a decent post-game. What I often see is that people judge the post-game exclusively on the repeatable activities. Sure, a Battle Frontier or a whole new region (or both for HGSS) might be fun for some, but that doesn't mean an extra map or two (DP), half a region (BW, BW2), or an extra story chapter (XY onwards) is bad.
 
I agree that DP by itself has a decent post-game. What I often see is that people judge the post-game exclusively on the repeatable activities. Sure, a Battle Frontier or a whole new region (or both for HGSS) might be fun for some, but that doesn't mean an extra map or two (DP), half a region (BW, BW2), or an extra story chapter (XY onwards) is bad.
Basically (Though I wasn't too hot on XY's post game) this, so long as I have a little extra, fun content to play with for a couple more hours I'm generally okay with it. Like BW2's post game is fantastic but still I enjoyed, say, SM's post game well enough. Got a few extra areas out of it, a few side activities, the looker quest was neat.

e: Also likewise I really enjoyed DP's post game as stated earlier.
 
Honestly Looker should just be in every game. I was quite disappointed he didn’t make an appearance in SwSh, I will be even more disappointed if he doesn’t show up in BDSP.
My theory is that these games are in the same place on the timeline as SwSh if Looker is in these games, and that will explain why he isn't in SwSh.
 
I've recently finished both a nuzlocke in Renegade Platinum and a normal run in Platinum (in a 2 days marathon, back to back), and having this gen more fresh than ever, I've to say that the original DPPl is by far the hardest official generation in all of Pokémon (only founds competition in BW2 C. Mode). The levels on Pokémon trainers are high af, and if you are training a full team with no grinding on wild mons, you'll always, always be underleveled against special trainers. I even wiped 1 time against Gardenia Roserade because I didn't expects its damage, I opt to not full heal Staravia and it did like 35% of my remaining health with a non effective Mega Drain. After that I couldn't do anything at all. But anyway, mixing my past experiences in both normal runs and DPPl competitive with my recent runs and inspired by Suspicious I'd like to also share some opinions on certain mons i think i will use on bp.

Here's the thing. When I first played Pokémon Diamond, I choosed Turtwig. Surprisingly, Torterra is the only Grass/Ground Pokémon in existence. It learns some powerful moves like Crunch, EQ, Wood Hammer, Stone Edge, can setup with Curse, has Synthesis, access to SR (altho all starters share this), and enough defenses to take anything and relatiate. Empoleon is also a good mon, water spam is like fairy or ghost spam, rekts everything, water/steel is a solid typing, it's slow but not slow enough to get outspeed by common mons -and can run agility, flashbacks of lg agility sub petaya empoleons- and we all just know how good water + ice is by itself. But...



Design wise, Infernape is the one I like the least, but it's probably the most fun to use. A fast mixed attacker with everything in its movepool, the ape can act as a lead with Fake Out + SR plus 2 stab moves, it learns CC, Flare Blitz, Fire Punch, U-turn, Stone Edge, tpunch, SD, Bulk Up AND Nasty Plot (???), access to both Vaccuum Wave and Match Punch, Focus Miss, Grass Knot... No, seriously, the only reason why this mon fell after IV Gen, amongst other gods like Cune etc, is because of the insane powercreep, because this thing is a fkn monster. It also rocks very respectable attack and spa and a great speed tier. Oh, I forgot about Taunt, this guy can shut down other mons who attempt to set hazards or boost, it even gets obscur shit like Endeavor, cmon... and you can run it with cb, specs, lo, sash, it doesn't matter.



Now, there's something that always happens to me when I play DPPl, and that's that Starly becomes my starter. Take quick access to stab tackle/quick attack + wing attack and add some fast Intimidate when it evolves into Staravia, meaning it becomes an utility mon, a high base attack, decent speed, you get return at the start of the game... I also cant get over the fact that it lears Close Combat. Today it may sound like something normal for young players who have grown with BW/XY, but for a Flying/Normal mon to get this coverage was absurd, in my mind, it was like a Pidgeot or Fearow who could destroy Rock and Steel types should they swich into Brave Bird. Wtf was that. It has decent enough attack paired with extremely high bp-perfect accuracy moves (brave bird, return, double edge), gets u-turn, defog, and if it happens to be Reckless instead of Intimidate then he is claiming some souls before dying.

Luxray is not a bad mon by any means and I usually get it for double intimidate, but i think i'll pass this time. While it's not a bad mon at all, I feel like in the long run it doesn't add much to the team, and whatever it does can be done even better with an offensive grass type (/ gyarados, if the games were more difficult gyara could be a problem in a team with no electric attacks, but that's unfortunately not the case...). It's learnset isn't the best also, it basically gets electric stab + crunch while leveling up, and you only get a noticeable spammable move (Discharge) at 56/64. It just doesn't have much options since the elemental fangs are obtainable via egg moves and not lvl 1 relearner.



... I forbade myself to use Gyarados ever again in a normal playthrough of Pokémon (even some lockes). I don't think there's a more OP mon in the history of the series since generation IV. Water/Flying in an extremely, extreeeeemely difficult type combination to deal with. x4 electric weakness means nothing when they'll be realisticaly facing a +1/+1 Gyara all the time, because Water/Flying with intimidate can set up in the face of a lot of things. Bulky as fck, fighting resist, DD at lvl 44/36, Ice Fang to outspeed and kill any dragon (fe: garchomp), STAB waterfall (which can flinchax you), after +1 attack it becomes a pseudo dark type offensive mon with Crunch, stab Bounce (paired with waterfall for possible paraflinch scenarios), gets taunt, have very good synergy with u-turn ape (i play on set switch ins) since it's inmune to ground and resists water, it also is one of my favourite mons evers design wise. But seriously, Gyara ingame makes every other mon pale. You'd think Garchomp is broken in gen 4 -ingame- and it is, but at least it's still susceptible to getting outspeeded by Weavile, fast dragons (latitwins), and ice shard mamos etc; gyara rocks leftys + intimidate and after a boost no living thing can seriously threat it in DPPl (again, ingame).



I love Hippowdon (female version is even better). Instant recovery option in slack off, stab eq, toxic user, gives me a hard rock resist in a team that is specially weak to rock spam otherwise, sand stream to chip away mons, yawn, gets the fangs by move relearner, switch ins in everything and tears it down slowly.

Another option would be



A somewhat mixed defensive variant with roost. It's esentially a worse version of Garchomp, but I don't like Garchomp in my team, that thing is too much. Flygon also provides me with rock resist and another u-turn user, and can put a bit more pressure offensively without losing all the momentum.




Bronzong is criminally underrated in DPPl runs. Hard resist to psychic and inmunity to poison (there's no corrosion here)/groudon, only 1 weakness (altho it's been nerfed due to steel resists change, still solid), hits hard enough, can annoy whatever you sent to it with confuse ray + hypnosis (i don't like it competitively but i value this a lot ingame because it helps you with catching wild mons), learns psychic, extransensory, eq, iron head (which is now more valuable thanks to the introduction of the fairy type), explosion, can set up screens, gyro ball, learns trick room... Also another rock resist + a fairy resist won't hurt.


https://www.smogon.com/forums//media/minisprites/porygon_2.png

I value a lot hard counters to ghost spam. Porygon2 happens to be one of my favourite mons too and you get both it and upgrade relatively quickly in Platinum (i hope it is the same in DP remakes). /fire, it learns everything. Gets bolt beam coverage, gives me an inmunity to ghost, a way to shut down quickly opposing gyara thanks to trace, pseudo resist to dark spam (team is so weak to weavile, only ape resists it and its not reliable since it lacks proper bulk + slack off ingame), recover, and can get with a lot of things and even end up sweeping with charge beam.

So i think the team could be something like that. A good team by ingame standards, without abussing too much broken mons. I dont care about waters that much because ingame there they are just fodder for dd gyara to set up. I can always change Bronzong for Zone, which gives me an inmediate offense against waters, preserves most of it traits and has more offensive pressure on the ofense.
 
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Yung Dramps

awesome gaming
Im not sure how close the thread is to being locked again, but just in case I wanna create one more discussion.

With the info we now have and your thoughts on the game's current state considered, what is your biggest lingering question about it, the one thing you'd like more info on the most? Personally I'm super curious to see what's happening to Amity Square and Pal Park as the BDSP map and other information that puts both their purposes firmly in the realm of redundancy are strongly suggesting they're both getting a makeover.
 
Im not sure how close the thread is to being locked again, but just in case I wanna create one more discussion.

With the info we now have and your thoughts on the game's current state considered, what is your biggest lingering question about it, the one thing you'd like more info on the most? Personally I'm super curious to see what's happening to Amity Square and Pal Park as the BDSP map and other information that puts both their purposes firmly in the realm of redundancy are strongly suggesting they're both getting a makeover.
Please tell me the Distortion world will be in lmao
 
First off, I take extreme offense to this. But to each their own haha. Also interesting I’ve never seen DPPt referred to as Pl before. Great overall post about the ingame though, quality analysis.
Pt is the periodic table symbol for Platinum so I guess that's why it stuck and Pl didn't.

Im not sure how close the thread is to being locked again, but just in case I wanna create one more discussion.

With the info we now have and your thoughts on the game's current state considered, what is your biggest lingering question about it, the one thing you'd like more info on the most? Personally I'm super curious to see what's happening to Amity Square and Pal Park as the BDSP map and other information that puts both their purposes firmly in the realm of redundancy are strongly suggesting they're both getting a makeover.
I'm just looking for any new features, and what Amity Square/Pal Park will do.
 
Still on the fence about buying BDSM due to lack of BF but if I were to buy it, this would be my team purrr
Nice.

With the info we now have and your thoughts on the game's current state considered, what is your biggest lingering question about it, the one thing you'd like more info on the most?
Mandatory Exp. All will essentially decide if this game is playable for me or not. Might seem trivial to others but it's a huge deal for me.
 
With the info we now have and your thoughts on the game's current state considered, what is your biggest lingering question about it, the one thing you'd like more info on the most?
As I said multiple times, PC on the fly. It's THE best feature to have been recently added to the games, as it opens a massive world of fun team compositions. It's what will make me choose between using 6 Pokémon or using around 44.
 
With the info we now have and your thoughts on the game's current state considered, what is your biggest lingering question about it, the one thing you'd like more info on the most?
My biggest remaining concerns/questions are the following:
Will they feature any Pokémon from Gen 5-8?
Will they even feature all the Pokémon from Gen 1-4? (I assume they will, but who knows?)
Will they have any brand new Pokémon/forms/regional variants? (As someone said earlier, every single main series game since R/S have had at least something new, even if is it just a minor form)
Will they feature things that have been introduced past the original Gen 4 games, like infinite TMs, the Fairy-type, new moves/abilities/items, and more?
How will the following Pokémon work, and will it be possible to turn it off?
Will they have HMs or something else? If they have HMs, will they work the same as in the original games or differently?
Will the Battle Tower be nerfed like the one in S/S, or will it function like the classic facilities from Gen 2-7?
If the latter, will it have upgrades which have been added to the facilities since then, like the split in normal and super lines, and the ability to battle for how long you want instead of being forced to battle in sets of 7?

None of these are deal-breakers for me though, there's still a chance I might get SP independent of the answers to these questions.

Other than that, I am very curious about how Pal Park and Amity Square will work, just like you.
Like Wukong, I would also like to know whether the Exp. Share can be turned off or not. It is not a deal-breaker for me as I can just do a rotating team if it can't be turned off, but it would be good to know about it nonetheless.
And like Siggu above, I also want to know if they will have a PC that can be used from anywhere, just like in S/S.
 
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Yung Dramps

awesome gaming
Will they feature things that have been introduced past the original Gen 4 games, like infinite TMs, the Fairy-type, new moves/abilities/items, and more?
How will the following Pokémon work, and will it be possible to turn it off?
Fairy type clearly exists, we see Fairy moves in contests lol. Can't believe this was ever in doubt

How will the following Pokémon work, and will it be possible to turn it off?
Nothing concrete, but the clothes store footage seems to imply a toggle by showing the player running around in later areas without a Pokemon following them? Maybe?
 
Mandatory Exp. All will essentially decide if this game is playable for me or not. Might seem trivial to others but it's a huge deal for me.
Yeah this is probably my biggest question.
Just tie it to an item and make it an option ya'll it is not that hard and I know this because you've already done that before

Will they even feature all the Pokémon from Gen 1-4? (I assume they will, but who knows?)
I think the only ones up in the air will be the Starters and Legends. We do have statues of the gen 1 starters but that doesn't necessarily mean much (remember Torchic being on Amity Square in Platinum? That was weird). Less incentive to have the legends show up here since they're all in the tundra....and aren't Deoxys' meteors gone?
But the Grand Underground will likely incorporate the dongle pokemon and so on and the only ones missing from the Sinnoh games as a trio were various legends and starters.

Will they feature things that have been introduced past the original Gen 4 games, like infinite TMs, the Fairy-type, new moves/abilities/items, and more?
As Dramps said we know the Fairy type is in and we know newer moves are in. That seems like a weird thing to think would happen at all, even Let's Go incorporated that stuff.

I think TMs are definitely going to be infinite. Again there's no reason not to. Will TRs be in the game is probabyl the real question.
How will the following Pokémon work, and will it be possible to turn it off?
We do have variou footage of not having Pokemon following behind us and while that could jsut be development trickery I could see it being turn on/off. The SWSH DLC lets you turn it on/off, although it's something you have to go to a NPC for.
 

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