Not sure if its the same for other people, but in my area the walmarts are selling all physical switch games for $10 less, even if the game is new. Maybe that's contributing to the higher number of physical sales since getting a 16% discount on a newly released game is pretty damn awesome.
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Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl - Release 19th Nov 2021
- Thread starter DHR-107
- Start date
This has been a recurring thing for the entire switch generation, for whatever reason, though it doesn't apply to every walmart.
Um no, this references all games on all platforms, not just on the Switch. The games ahead of BDSP for December were CoD: Vanguard and Halo Infinite. Fsr Halo isn’t on the yearly list so maybe BDSP was only 5th but still, not bad for a remake.to be fair, it's talking of "nintendo consoles", and the Switch didn't exactly have any important release in the last couple months.
If anything I think being 3rd best seller when there's literally nothing else isn't exactly an accomplishment
Both SwSh and Let's Go were best selling on their release month iirc.
To be fair, they did say that it'd come at same time at Arceus' one beforehand.
...Obviously, they never said *when* Arceus compatibility is coming in first place
There has been no date given.
Tonight I was cleaning up some loose ends in Brilliant Diamond before the endgame and finishing up the Unown quest with my trusty Combee. I thought I was fine with a checklist and unlocking the symbol room from the maniac cave, but then I went to the capsule kid and I only ended up with 27 out of 28 capsules. It turns out I thought S was a Z. Sources show that cave unlocked based on caught count, but maybe it might be just seen count in this case because I don't have an actual Unown-Z to show, though it's in my pokedex because I probably ran from one at some point when I thought I had it already.
Maybe you encountered the Unown Z but was looking at it from the back, thought was another S and ran way, and then you saw a S and too saw it from the back, thought it was Z, and caught it:
Sure the back doesn't have an eye on it, but even then if you aren't paying attention it's all just zigzags vaguely looking like the letters (heck, S looks more angular than Z which looks more rounded which probably didn't help)
I ran into some strange bugs recently like the pink follower bug that I barely escaped from before it fully softlocked me, and another bug where the music kept pausing for a longer time after each loop until it was almost completely gone, though battle music still played. Some other minor quirks I noticed are that some move animations and effects like Bulldoze and recoil don't tick down HP and instead instantly change to the final number, and this always happens when animations are off. Also new catches are always sent to the first available box and not your active box like other games.
Among other mechanics they had to write around, I noticed that BDSP handles the sections that formerly involved the easy chat system pretty differently in each case. The Snowpoint man who taught you new words like "EARTH TONES" just has a static menu with options that don't affect anything, while the Sunyshore ribbon woman was rewritten to tell you stories with relevant pokemon puns instead, which is pretty inspired, and I wonder if they were able to do the same thing in other languages.
Almost all the reporters just ask you questions that you don't actually get to answer, except this one reporter in Jubilife TV who asks you about your favourite ball capsule user. This is the closest thing to an easy chat menu in BDSP and it didn't even exist in the originals. Speaking of which, I think the gallery room and its UI are some of the more impressive new screens.
Among other mechanics they had to write around, I noticed that BDSP handles the sections that formerly involved the easy chat system pretty differently in each case. The Snowpoint man who taught you new words like "EARTH TONES" just has a static menu with options that don't affect anything, while the Sunyshore ribbon woman was rewritten to tell you stories with relevant pokemon puns instead, which is pretty inspired, and I wonder if they were able to do the same thing in other languages.
Almost all the reporters just ask you questions that you don't actually get to answer, except this one reporter in Jubilife TV who asks you about your favourite ball capsule user. This is the closest thing to an easy chat menu in BDSP and it didn't even exist in the originals. Speaking of which, I think the gallery room and its UI are some of the more impressive new screens.
Sorry to double post but here are my impressions of the BDSP version 1.2 update that came out a few hours ago and added a bit more online functionality.
The Jubilife TV ranking room is a thing, but it doesn't seem to be all there yet from what I could tell. I could not actually see anyone else's rankings even on the global modes, so for now it just lets you see your own ranks. They could have at least used your friends list to populate it. The left machine has pokemon defeated, caught, hatched, and fished. The middle has battle tower master streaks/average wins and the right has contest star of the show count, percentage, and ribbons collected. I was confused at first because pre-patch they had one man blocking the middle machine and the others just didn't do anything, but they are all separate records. I thought I might need to interact with people to get their records since it doesn't even connect to the internet and there's an option to delete records, but nothing showed up after fighting random strangers. I feel like when this actually works it will just be covered by hackers if it is completely public. Shame that groups are still local only.
The union room definitely has more than 8 players allowed despite what the patch notes say, which will make it pretty convenient to find someone who you want to play with. I personally saw 14 and assume the maximum is 16. I tried the capsule decoration feature. It took me to a black screen with some beeping and a message of stickers being attached and that was it. I was not able to choose a capsule to send or even look at anything. When I left the room I found that I had a very basic capsule added to my collection, assuming that it came from that experience. Overall a very disappointing feature and battles remain the only way to actually show capsules. Now what I was personally expecting was being able to see a menu with a list of stickers like the ingame showcases above, and being able to choose to copy it into one of my slots.
The Colosseum is actually pretty alright for a dedicated battle mode, and it is the first classic Colosseum with full online support and random matchmaking. You can play singles, doubles, and multis. It has the same classic pre battle room where you walk on squares before the battle.
I think the person who gets onto the blue or first square decides who gets to decide the rules. They use the same UI that the contest matchmaking uses but you only see it after you get in your overworld places. I noticed that it says Team A1 and B1 as placeholders in the loading screen for a second.
The options I had were 1-6/3/6 for number of pokemon, set all to lv50/up to lv50/no restrictions, and allow/disallow various settings. Overall it gives slightly more freedom than the fixed Union Room rules but you are still bound by the invisible timer. I played 2 matches of the BSS pick 3/level 50/none x3 metagame against Japanese players and lost pretty hard.
EDIT: Here is how the battles went down, with my ingame teams. My first match was against Volt Switch/Reflect Ampharos, Substitute Lucario, and EQ Tyranitar and I actually managed to knock Tyranitar out. In the next I led Empoleon vs Qwilfish, switched to Luxray and got Aqua Tailed, then they switched to Electivire to Motor Drive and swept me with Earthquake and Thunder Punch. Also notably nicknames are still shown in these battles though there is an option in the options menu for turning them off.
A couple lows that I noticed was that the battles just start with sending out pokemon with no intro transition at all or message saying "you are challenged by TRAINER X". You cannot select battle music or any of the great arenas other than the union room aesthetic. Also it still plays the winning music when you lose and it doesn't even show how many pokemon you had left alive like the originals.
Even though this patch addressed some mentioned missing features, there's still some left to be added.
- No Global Wonder Station. I can only assume they are saving this for the HOME patch or whatever future updates there may be, but it's still a blatantly inaccessible part of the world that is specifically mentioned in the town map. I will be surprised if this is even used that much if you have to physically go to Jubilife every time unless they bundle it into the Y menu later.
Mid-post EDIT: So this isn't new 1.2.0 news but the GWS and its functionality has existed apparently. I saw some twitter replies mentioning that the GWS is accessible and I found a few videos on it, one in particular showing that the entrance exists in 1.0.0 and can be glitched past the NPC and walked into, with the GWS actually working when saving and loading on 1.1.3 and surprisingly allowing you to access the globe menu when accessed the first time even without NSO. You also can't set your birthday in BDSP currently because the NPC that does it is behind the GWS. It seems like the goal is to cover all the points in the world with each trade. Who knows when it will be unlocked, but it's a shame that it's so late when the big new thing about Gen 4 was wifi and internet connectivity around the world in the first place.
- No underground interactions. Now this was never promised and I admit it will probably never happen, but the trainer's guide implied you could talk to other players for Spiritomb, and this Eterna NPC mentions being able to "Great" Secret Bases, which is probably just a rewrite around traps or flags, but it's a reference to a new feature that doesn't even exist.
EDIT:
https://www.pokemon.co.jp/info/2022/02/220222_gm01.html
The Japanese patch notes clarify it is 8 local and 16 online players in the Union Room and that the GWS/GMStation will be added in the future.
Also the guy blocking the middle machine was actually there in the originals to stop you from looking at Battle Tower records.
The Jubilife TV ranking room is a thing, but it doesn't seem to be all there yet from what I could tell. I could not actually see anyone else's rankings even on the global modes, so for now it just lets you see your own ranks. They could have at least used your friends list to populate it. The left machine has pokemon defeated, caught, hatched, and fished. The middle has battle tower master streaks/average wins and the right has contest star of the show count, percentage, and ribbons collected. I was confused at first because pre-patch they had one man blocking the middle machine and the others just didn't do anything, but they are all separate records. I thought I might need to interact with people to get their records since it doesn't even connect to the internet and there's an option to delete records, but nothing showed up after fighting random strangers. I feel like when this actually works it will just be covered by hackers if it is completely public. Shame that groups are still local only.
The union room definitely has more than 8 players allowed despite what the patch notes say, which will make it pretty convenient to find someone who you want to play with. I personally saw 14 and assume the maximum is 16. I tried the capsule decoration feature. It took me to a black screen with some beeping and a message of stickers being attached and that was it. I was not able to choose a capsule to send or even look at anything. When I left the room I found that I had a very basic capsule added to my collection, assuming that it came from that experience. Overall a very disappointing feature and battles remain the only way to actually show capsules. Now what I was personally expecting was being able to see a menu with a list of stickers like the ingame showcases above, and being able to choose to copy it into one of my slots.
The Colosseum is actually pretty alright for a dedicated battle mode, and it is the first classic Colosseum with full online support and random matchmaking. You can play singles, doubles, and multis. It has the same classic pre battle room where you walk on squares before the battle.
I think the person who gets onto the blue or first square decides who gets to decide the rules. They use the same UI that the contest matchmaking uses but you only see it after you get in your overworld places. I noticed that it says Team A1 and B1 as placeholders in the loading screen for a second.
The options I had were 1-6/3/6 for number of pokemon, set all to lv50/up to lv50/no restrictions, and allow/disallow various settings. Overall it gives slightly more freedom than the fixed Union Room rules but you are still bound by the invisible timer. I played 2 matches of the BSS pick 3/level 50/none x3 metagame against Japanese players and lost pretty hard.
EDIT: Here is how the battles went down, with my ingame teams. My first match was against Volt Switch/Reflect Ampharos, Substitute Lucario, and EQ Tyranitar and I actually managed to knock Tyranitar out. In the next I led Empoleon vs Qwilfish, switched to Luxray and got Aqua Tailed, then they switched to Electivire to Motor Drive and swept me with Earthquake and Thunder Punch. Also notably nicknames are still shown in these battles though there is an option in the options menu for turning them off.
A couple lows that I noticed was that the battles just start with sending out pokemon with no intro transition at all or message saying "you are challenged by TRAINER X". You cannot select battle music or any of the great arenas other than the union room aesthetic. Also it still plays the winning music when you lose and it doesn't even show how many pokemon you had left alive like the originals.
Even though this patch addressed some mentioned missing features, there's still some left to be added.
- No Global Wonder Station. I can only assume they are saving this for the HOME patch or whatever future updates there may be, but it's still a blatantly inaccessible part of the world that is specifically mentioned in the town map. I will be surprised if this is even used that much if you have to physically go to Jubilife every time unless they bundle it into the Y menu later.
Mid-post EDIT: So this isn't new 1.2.0 news but the GWS and its functionality has existed apparently. I saw some twitter replies mentioning that the GWS is accessible and I found a few videos on it, one in particular showing that the entrance exists in 1.0.0 and can be glitched past the NPC and walked into, with the GWS actually working when saving and loading on 1.1.3 and surprisingly allowing you to access the globe menu when accessed the first time even without NSO. You also can't set your birthday in BDSP currently because the NPC that does it is behind the GWS. It seems like the goal is to cover all the points in the world with each trade. Who knows when it will be unlocked, but it's a shame that it's so late when the big new thing about Gen 4 was wifi and internet connectivity around the world in the first place.
- No underground interactions. Now this was never promised and I admit it will probably never happen, but the trainer's guide implied you could talk to other players for Spiritomb, and this Eterna NPC mentions being able to "Great" Secret Bases, which is probably just a rewrite around traps or flags, but it's a reference to a new feature that doesn't even exist.
EDIT:
https://www.pokemon.co.jp/info/2022/02/220222_gm01.html
The Japanese patch notes clarify it is 8 local and 16 online players in the Union Room and that the GWS/GMStation will be added in the future.
Also the guy blocking the middle machine was actually there in the originals to stop you from looking at Battle Tower records.
Last edited:
One other notable feature was added in 1.2: A clone checker.
If two or more of your Pokemon are detected as clones, which means they share the same PID/encryption constant/trainer ID/nature and all IVs (except that this check is ignored if it's trying to compare a Ninjask to a Shedinja or vice versa, which creates natural clones by this definition), all but one of them will now be flagged to prevent it from being used in online trades/battles (and probably, when the games become compatible with Home, won't let you deposit there either). Even keeping a Pokemon in the day care isn't enough to hide it from the clone check.
Pokemon with origin game earlier than BDSP are apparently exempt from being flagged, likely because some older events like the level 30 shiny Raikou and such were distributed in a way that everybody's copy of the Pokemon received the same PID.
If two or more of your Pokemon are detected as clones, which means they share the same PID/encryption constant/trainer ID/nature and all IVs (except that this check is ignored if it's trying to compare a Ninjask to a Shedinja or vice versa, which creates natural clones by this definition), all but one of them will now be flagged to prevent it from being used in online trades/battles (and probably, when the games become compatible with Home, won't let you deposit there either). Even keeping a Pokemon in the day care isn't enough to hide it from the clone check.
Pokemon with origin game earlier than BDSP are apparently exempt from being flagged, likely because some older events like the level 30 shiny Raikou and such were distributed in a way that everybody's copy of the Pokemon received the same PID.
Honestly, at this rate, I'm wondering if the HOME update will come when Scarlet and Violet are released, and will only be able to be transferred to Gen IX.
Dialga Boy
Banned deucer.
What do you think which month with Pokemon home update for bdsp come before scarlet and violet?
If it doesn't happen by April I'm just willing to bet it's the same time the Scarlet/Violet update happens.
Well that would make a lot of the stuff they've been doing with BDSP's updates pretty pointless (they finished the certificate, updated the Strange Ball, fully implemented the LA origin mark, etc), but beyond that I don't think this is something they would really do (outside of LA new moves and the new Pokemon). The pokemon in BDSP & LA are still set up like SWSH pokemon are. There's no reason for, say, a LA Dialga to not be transferable to BDSP or (SWSH, for that matter) and definitely no reason for BD to not be able to transfer over ITS Dialga to SWSH.
Kurona I'm gonna level with you I don't think Dialga is going to be in SV
Likely not at first, but then available through a DLC like Sword and Shield.
I mean I know we're on three levels of jokes here but SWSH did not launch with all the restricted legends.
it had the Gen 5 box legends, the Musketeers (for some reason...) Gen 7 box legends, Mewtwo, alola starters, the remaining kanto starters and a handful of mythics.
The rest came the following year, with the DLC. I presume something similar will happen here.