BDSP have been out for just over a month, so I thought a thread would be nice for everyone to collect and post their opinions.
Right off the bat - I dislike the chibi used in the overworld. While it would manage to be merely uninteresting, the frequent shifts from the top-down perspective look terrible. Chibi isn't incapable of being used in more cinematic fashion like this (even if I'll never call myself a fan of the aesthetic), but the BDSP models are far too inexpressive to make these attempts anything less than terrible. Thankfully, the battles use a more normally proportioned style, though I can't say it's too impressive. The transitions to battle have this frame where the old DP intros are emulated, but honestly they just look weird, an overly forced bit of nostalgia. The new animations for the various trainers are pretty nice, though. It's just a shame that none of these new animations are used for the bosses' last stands, instead opting for a lifeless pan to their face for whatever bizarre reason. After all the effort Sword and Shield put in to really making the mid-battle dialogue pop, BDSP lags by comparison.
Pokemon games don't tend to be lookers anyway though, so how does BDSP play? For starters, the movement of all things is pretty awful. It seems weird to even complain about this in a Pokemon game where movement is so simple, but somehow BDSP messes it up. So many things, Pokemon and objects alike, seem to have way too big of hitboxes (though to be fair, the underground Pokemon were fixed in the latest patch), and combined with how there seems to be no way to slide along objects, bumping into anything is a massive annoyance. On a more positive note, the removal of HMs as an incredible burden on your team is appreciated, though the implementation is a bit simple. Still, I'm not going to spend too much time decrying any alternative to what was previously there. The underground is also massively improved, though now a bit jarring with its wildly different biomes connected with an identical mine look throughout. But the items strewn about and the change of scenery, however jarring, does at least make it a fun place to explore for a bit. Obviously though, the star attractions are the new Pokemon. These are where Platinum's additions are placed...mostly? Some are missing, and some additions aren't from Platinum's dex at all. It's bizarre, but not bad. Just different, I suppose. What is clearly bad is that these additions exist solely for the player, and not your opponents. Indeed, BDSP is a DP remake to an absolutely painful extent. This particular frustration with remakes certainly isn't new with ORAS and its lack of Emerald content, but ORAS at least had more of its own new identity. Let's go back to the first paragraph for a second - notice how I didn't discuss any redesigns whatsoever? That's because there aren't any! Combined with how the art style purposefully mimics the original, this game just straight-up looks like DP in so many respects. Some may find that charming, but frankly I just think it's boring. ORAS also pretty significantly overhauled level-up movepools for the available Pokemon, which BDSP only did very slightly. And while it certainly doesn't get as much attention as boss team overhauls, one thing that ORAS did that I appreciated was bumping up the levels on the weak lategame trainers a lot (random example - around 4-5 levels higher all around), which was a recurring problem in the first few generations. BDSP doesn't do this at all, and boy does it make normal trainers feel like a waste of time after a while. This isn't to say normal trainers have ever been particularly interesting, but in many games they're at least enough to make you interact with the type chart. ORAS also introduced new forms, and Pokemon introduced after Gen 3, while BDSP excises absolutely anything that was introduced after Gen 4. No new forms, Pokemon, nothing. It's just yet another of the myriad ways that beg the question, "why would I play this over the originals?"
I knew all this before the game even released, and honestly I was thoroughly unimpressed and was going to pass on this. So what changed my mind?
Those goddamn boss trainers.
BDSP doesn't really have much of its own identity, but here they went buck wild, especially in the postgame which was what really caught my interest. Even the campaign looked potentially interesting, though. However, the campaign using DP's poor rosters really limited how threatening anything could be. Like, it's cool that Byron uses Trick Room, but 1 of his 3 Pokemon is Bronzor. Dual screen lead on Maylene sounds cool, but it's Meditite. Candice has an Aurora Veil Abomasnow! But it's forced to be the last thing she sends out. In general, the designers just felt like they were brimming with ideas, but had to fit them in these teams that just weren't going to be challenging, ever. Perhaps the silliest example of this was a trainer I found in Wake's gym. I led with my Carnivine versus their Azurill. To my surprise, my Bullet Seed was stymied by Sap Sipper, a hidden ability, and then it used Light Screen of all things. I beat it, and out came a Marill, which did not have Sap Sipper, and presumably Huge Power. So a Grass counter lead that sets up for the "big" one in the back. But I mean, most charitably, this is cute. Less charitably: who the fuck cares? This is such an involved strategy for a trainer with Azurill. You're wasting your time on this, designers!
The other thing that really dampened my experience with the campaign, and again nullified whatever cool ideas they cooked up for the boss fights: the ever-contentious EXP Share. I don't generally like complaining that this is "forced", any more so than any other game mechanic is, anyways. The way exp distribution has simply changed. Sword and Shield had it implemented just fine in their level curve, and I even took a decent amount of time compiling an image showing this and that it's not some boogeyman that makes your team frightfully overleveled. I was actually preparing a similar image during my SP playthrough, ready to once again annihilate my posting enemies. Sadly, it blew up in my face, as I did end up frightfully overleveled for a significant portion of the game. Fantina was around where it started - my Level 36 team versus her 32-36 team - then it only got worse from there. ~42 versus Byron's 36-39, ~49 versus Candice's 40-42, and ~55 versus Volkner's 46-49. Things only finally started normalizing on the tail end of the Elite Four, at least culminating in a cool battle versus Cynthia. There's some cute ideas buried in those gym leader teams, but with such a massive level lead, that's all they ever were: cute.
The postgame was a bit of fresh air, though. Obviously the postgame tends to be harder in most games anyways, but here especially without the need to be tethered to DP's awful rosters did it really blossom. The gym leader and E4 rematches are uniformly pretty cool, with little in the way of prerequisites to do them, too. Admittedly, there are some issues with these too. Having all 8 leaders be at roughly the same level doesn't really work, since you'll get a ton of EXP doing them that will largely make them easier as you go on. They're also in kind of a weird place structure-wise, since you have the postgame island to do, but if you do all of it first you'll be overleveled for the leaders. I ended up doing them halfway through the island, and despite starting ~4 levels below I ended up ~4 levels above by the end. The second E4 rematch at least works beautifully, since it has a clear position - you do this last. Despite some issues, ILCA definitely knocked it out of the park in this respect.
Overall though, I'm pretty disappointed in BDSP. They're largely just DP, again. This would be frustrating on its own, but when they already received a much better revamp with Platinum, it's really just pathetic. I may prefer Emerald over ORAS, and Yellow over FRLG/LG, but at least those remakes don't feel inferior, just arguably worse as an overall package. But I truly don't think BDSP offers anything significant over Platinum. It seems to have no real vision behind it past "let's re-release DP". I'm really not even a doomer about modern Pokemon - there's been some bumps, but I've still consistently bought the games because I consistently enjoy them - but for me this is easily the worst mainline Pokemon release, and boy do I hope it stays that way.
Right off the bat - I dislike the chibi used in the overworld. While it would manage to be merely uninteresting, the frequent shifts from the top-down perspective look terrible. Chibi isn't incapable of being used in more cinematic fashion like this (even if I'll never call myself a fan of the aesthetic), but the BDSP models are far too inexpressive to make these attempts anything less than terrible. Thankfully, the battles use a more normally proportioned style, though I can't say it's too impressive. The transitions to battle have this frame where the old DP intros are emulated, but honestly they just look weird, an overly forced bit of nostalgia. The new animations for the various trainers are pretty nice, though. It's just a shame that none of these new animations are used for the bosses' last stands, instead opting for a lifeless pan to their face for whatever bizarre reason. After all the effort Sword and Shield put in to really making the mid-battle dialogue pop, BDSP lags by comparison.
Pokemon games don't tend to be lookers anyway though, so how does BDSP play? For starters, the movement of all things is pretty awful. It seems weird to even complain about this in a Pokemon game where movement is so simple, but somehow BDSP messes it up. So many things, Pokemon and objects alike, seem to have way too big of hitboxes (though to be fair, the underground Pokemon were fixed in the latest patch), and combined with how there seems to be no way to slide along objects, bumping into anything is a massive annoyance. On a more positive note, the removal of HMs as an incredible burden on your team is appreciated, though the implementation is a bit simple. Still, I'm not going to spend too much time decrying any alternative to what was previously there. The underground is also massively improved, though now a bit jarring with its wildly different biomes connected with an identical mine look throughout. But the items strewn about and the change of scenery, however jarring, does at least make it a fun place to explore for a bit. Obviously though, the star attractions are the new Pokemon. These are where Platinum's additions are placed...mostly? Some are missing, and some additions aren't from Platinum's dex at all. It's bizarre, but not bad. Just different, I suppose. What is clearly bad is that these additions exist solely for the player, and not your opponents. Indeed, BDSP is a DP remake to an absolutely painful extent. This particular frustration with remakes certainly isn't new with ORAS and its lack of Emerald content, but ORAS at least had more of its own new identity. Let's go back to the first paragraph for a second - notice how I didn't discuss any redesigns whatsoever? That's because there aren't any! Combined with how the art style purposefully mimics the original, this game just straight-up looks like DP in so many respects. Some may find that charming, but frankly I just think it's boring. ORAS also pretty significantly overhauled level-up movepools for the available Pokemon, which BDSP only did very slightly. And while it certainly doesn't get as much attention as boss team overhauls, one thing that ORAS did that I appreciated was bumping up the levels on the weak lategame trainers a lot (random example - around 4-5 levels higher all around), which was a recurring problem in the first few generations. BDSP doesn't do this at all, and boy does it make normal trainers feel like a waste of time after a while. This isn't to say normal trainers have ever been particularly interesting, but in many games they're at least enough to make you interact with the type chart. ORAS also introduced new forms, and Pokemon introduced after Gen 3, while BDSP excises absolutely anything that was introduced after Gen 4. No new forms, Pokemon, nothing. It's just yet another of the myriad ways that beg the question, "why would I play this over the originals?"
I knew all this before the game even released, and honestly I was thoroughly unimpressed and was going to pass on this. So what changed my mind?
Those goddamn boss trainers.
BDSP doesn't really have much of its own identity, but here they went buck wild, especially in the postgame which was what really caught my interest. Even the campaign looked potentially interesting, though. However, the campaign using DP's poor rosters really limited how threatening anything could be. Like, it's cool that Byron uses Trick Room, but 1 of his 3 Pokemon is Bronzor. Dual screen lead on Maylene sounds cool, but it's Meditite. Candice has an Aurora Veil Abomasnow! But it's forced to be the last thing she sends out. In general, the designers just felt like they were brimming with ideas, but had to fit them in these teams that just weren't going to be challenging, ever. Perhaps the silliest example of this was a trainer I found in Wake's gym. I led with my Carnivine versus their Azurill. To my surprise, my Bullet Seed was stymied by Sap Sipper, a hidden ability, and then it used Light Screen of all things. I beat it, and out came a Marill, which did not have Sap Sipper, and presumably Huge Power. So a Grass counter lead that sets up for the "big" one in the back. But I mean, most charitably, this is cute. Less charitably: who the fuck cares? This is such an involved strategy for a trainer with Azurill. You're wasting your time on this, designers!
The other thing that really dampened my experience with the campaign, and again nullified whatever cool ideas they cooked up for the boss fights: the ever-contentious EXP Share. I don't generally like complaining that this is "forced", any more so than any other game mechanic is, anyways. The way exp distribution has simply changed. Sword and Shield had it implemented just fine in their level curve, and I even took a decent amount of time compiling an image showing this and that it's not some boogeyman that makes your team frightfully overleveled. I was actually preparing a similar image during my SP playthrough, ready to once again annihilate my posting enemies. Sadly, it blew up in my face, as I did end up frightfully overleveled for a significant portion of the game. Fantina was around where it started - my Level 36 team versus her 32-36 team - then it only got worse from there. ~42 versus Byron's 36-39, ~49 versus Candice's 40-42, and ~55 versus Volkner's 46-49. Things only finally started normalizing on the tail end of the Elite Four, at least culminating in a cool battle versus Cynthia. There's some cute ideas buried in those gym leader teams, but with such a massive level lead, that's all they ever were: cute.
The postgame was a bit of fresh air, though. Obviously the postgame tends to be harder in most games anyways, but here especially without the need to be tethered to DP's awful rosters did it really blossom. The gym leader and E4 rematches are uniformly pretty cool, with little in the way of prerequisites to do them, too. Admittedly, there are some issues with these too. Having all 8 leaders be at roughly the same level doesn't really work, since you'll get a ton of EXP doing them that will largely make them easier as you go on. They're also in kind of a weird place structure-wise, since you have the postgame island to do, but if you do all of it first you'll be overleveled for the leaders. I ended up doing them halfway through the island, and despite starting ~4 levels below I ended up ~4 levels above by the end. The second E4 rematch at least works beautifully, since it has a clear position - you do this last. Despite some issues, ILCA definitely knocked it out of the park in this respect.
Overall though, I'm pretty disappointed in BDSP. They're largely just DP, again. This would be frustrating on its own, but when they already received a much better revamp with Platinum, it's really just pathetic. I may prefer Emerald over ORAS, and Yellow over FRLG/LG, but at least those remakes don't feel inferior, just arguably worse as an overall package. But I truly don't think BDSP offers anything significant over Platinum. It seems to have no real vision behind it past "let's re-release DP". I'm really not even a doomer about modern Pokemon - there's been some bumps, but I've still consistently bought the games because I consistently enjoy them - but for me this is easily the worst mainline Pokemon release, and boy do I hope it stays that way.
