(Originally published to Glitchwave on 9/5/2025)
[Image from glitchwave.com]
Pokémon Diamond/Pearl
Developer: Game Freak
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre(s): JRPG
Platforms: DS
Release Date: September 28, 2006
During the time of my ambivalent absence, I evidently did not miss out on Pokémon shaking up the formula in any substantial way. A Pokémon adventure still begins with a boy (or girl, since Pokémon Crystal) waking up in their comfortable little burg that coincidentally also shares the same zip code as a pokemon professor’s research facility. The scientist will continue to grant the player one of three rare pokemon to lead them on the path of Poke-glory, which includes defeating eight elite Pokemon trainers scattered across the region and then the Elite Four that are housed in a prodigious building located at the apex of a lofty mountain range. Pokemon Diamond/Pearl introduces the player to the trio of exclusives the same way that Ruby/Sapphire did, choosing one in a hectic flash when forced to defend oneself from wild pokemon that lurk in the nearby tall grasses. Truthfully, it doesn’t distract from the fact that the game is still setting up the same call for adventure that will lead on the same eight gym trajectory with a meaty gauntlet as the final step of the player’s ascension to the top.
However, one consistent alteration to this staunch narrative formula that persists here is the selection of starter pokemon, even if they still maintain the same contrasting elemental dynamic. Is it obvious to anyone else that Piplup was engineered to be the definitive fan favorite of the three? I don’t need a census taker to tell me that people absolutely love penguins more than God loves irony, so the turquoise ice bird is bound to be bought up by aspiring trainers in record time. Admittedly, I can’t deny that Piplup would be a solid decision outside of its superficial appeal. He’s a speedy little guy whose adult emperor penguin evolution form, Empoleon, persists as THE only water and steel hybrid known in the Pokedex to this day, which also comes with several resistances and an immunity to poison matching that of the Dread Pirate Roberts. I think that I share a commonality with the face-painted kid who was virally interviewed for the local news all those years ago because I have a fondness for Turtwig that almost matches my adoration for Blastoise. Even if the leafy little turtle is obviously slower than his peers, he’s a defensive powerhouse whose durability only strengthens when he fully evolves into the Ankylosauria-esque Torterra and grows a ground typing on top of the preexisting grass one (and an entire tree on its back as well). So far, the beguiling designs and commitment to dual-typing their evolutions make this selection of starter pokemon as exemplary as the previous batch. The fire-type representative that rounds out this trio doesn’t buck this trend, but the evolutionary line of Chimchar, Monferno, and Infernape marks the first time where a starter pokemon has bothered me. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with this flaming simian or his advanced forms, but I can’t help but see him as the reheated nachos of my beloved Blaziken, with its fire and fighting physical mix only one generation after his marvelous time in the spotlight. After being treated to the delicious, nuanced taste of Coca-Cola, Pepsi is not a suitable substitute in its absence. To compound on that, Chimchar is irritatingly the sole obtainable fire pokemon in the game, so Game Freak is seemingly working with the obstinate stance that the player can drink Pepsi or go to Hell. I, for one, refuse to submit to their watered-down version of a superior product they’re trying to shell out onto us.
Okay, I’ll admit that my last statement on Chimchar was incorrect. Chimchar is the only NEW fire pokemon to appear in the grand land of Sinnoh, but the only alternative is Kanto’s incandescent horse Ponyta and its majestic, evolved stallion form of Rapidash. The scant selection aside, another pattern I can detect from Diamond/Pearl’s example here is that every even-numbered Pokemon generation will add around one-hundred of the beasts instead of 150 just as Gold/Silver did in the franchise’s sophomore era. When the total of new breeds is comparatively subtracted, the game allows enough room for familiar faces to flourish once again. Besides Ponyta, long-tongued ghost Gastly, and the doofy yellow mallard Psyduck are some of the representatives from Pokemon’s original roster that return after their gap year. The beta version of Swampert in Wooper/Quagsire, plus the kick-ass stag beetle, Heracross, have also migrated here from Johto. As for Pokémon #252-#386 that were front and center in their native Hoenn, only a handful of the archipelago’s pokémon have persisted in the limelight (Wingull, Medicham, and Barboach, to name a few). While padding the region’s Pokedex with returnees would’ve appeased my younger self, the focal point of any Pokemon game’s roster should ideally be the ones currently crafted in the developer’s creative kiln.
Firstly, I appreciate that the player can find the notoriously sparse electric type pokemon in Shinx before fighting the first gym leader, and the fact that it evolves twice into Luxray makes it a viable competitor for the long run. Queen bee Vespiquen provides more proof that bug-type pokemon aren’t just low-level obstacles to contend with out of the gate, but the player can only confirm this statement for themselves if they manage to encounter the highly elusive female form of Combee in the wild–hence the gendered connotations of Vespiquen’s status. The ghost balloons of Drifloon and Drifblim amuse me on the implication that a balloon can become deceased, and the grins of the bipedal poison frogs Croagunk and Toxicroak exude a great deal of personality, even if they are of the irksome, shit-eating variety. Above all else, no other fourth-generation pokemon debutant exudes more charisma and star power than Lucario, who is so physically personable that it seems like you could have an intelligent conversation with him. Considering that he was deemed worthy of Super Smash Bros stardom, I’d confidently call him the breakout pokemon of this era. Maybe he would even temporarily eclipse Pikachu’s mascot status in a timeline where the yellow rat wasn’t guarding his throne like an electric fence around a storage facility. The line-up also isn’t rife with unevolvable defectives like the ones that ran amok throughout Johto, although the electric rodent Pachirisu sees an unfortunate trend continuing that Plusle and Minun started. I’d comment that Diamond/Pearl’s overall selection was lacking in options despite the variety on display, but then I realized that the veteran pokemon here can sufficiently cover any elemental blind spots in one’s pokemon team. Really, the biggest bone I have to pick regarding Sinnoh’s selection of beasts is that the developers used the design template of my favorite animal, the beaver, and turned it into an absolute joke with Bidoof and Bibarel–the supreme HM bitch so submissive that I’m surprised they can’t lick the player’s running shoes. A pox on both your houses! (Nintendo and Game Freak)
If anything, the biggest commonality that Diamond/Pearl share with Gold/Silver regarding their original lineups is how they augment and innovate on the already-existing pokemon of previous generations. For instance, the developers thought it keen to continue literally infantilizing popular pokemon like Warner Bros. with Looney Tunes characters. Mr. Mime continues his detestable family surname with his son, “Mime Jr.,” Happiny is Chansey’s poke-nurse in training, and Budew is a Roselia sproutling. The player can still facilitate the birth of these babies via the awkward and outwardly inappropriate act of pokemon fornication in the daycare center, but I’m sure they’ll find it more convenient and comfortable to find these prepubescents in the wild with the rest of the bunch. This way, the player can also catch multiple Bonslys and Munchlaxes and train an assortment of their once-exclusive adult forms of Sudowoodo and Snorlax. Lord knows what kind of king’s feast it’ll take to feed that army, though. Personally, I find the idea of evolving these helpless, juvenile creatures through battle experience to be unethically cruel, so I’d rather focus on the evolved forms of pokemon that are already formidable enough. Gold/Silver’s impetus for adding an evolved form to an established pokemon was to make them contenders in one’s pokemon posse rather than a slot on a catching checklist, for even the least experienced Pokemon trainer should recognize that evolution involves making a creature stronger. For instance, Murkrow was the epitome of forgettable in Gold/Silver, even among a profusion of losers, but his new evolved form in Honchkrow tacks on mass to make this skinny, pathetic crow mediocre no more. Yanmega adds some buzzing bug ferocity to Yanma, Tangela turns from an unkempt grass nymph into fucking Swamp Thing with Tangrowth, and Sneasel’s crowned superior, Weaville, is quicker than Japanese public transportation. Piloswine probably didn’t need to evolve again to survive the steep conditions of Pokémon battles, but who am I to argue against its capacity to adapt when it can now transform into the whompus woolly mammoth Mamoswine? Designating new evolutionary branches based on gender with Gallade and Froslass also provides a nifty new method of players to weigh their options when catching either a Ralts or a Snorunt. All of the ones mentioned are what I’d consider to be the standouts among this new wave of enhanced Pokemon but unfortunately, there exist plenty of unappealing examples in this category of pokemon either due to their designs or excessiveness. Unless you find jokes involving oral sex to be especially funny, Lickitung might be the one original pokemon even a staunch gen-wunner might have trouble recalling. Still, its evolved form, Lickilicky, will be memorable for all the wrong reasons, as it resembles something upsetting one would see during a drug-induced hallucination. Why does Probopass look like Nosepass had a Bar Mitzvah in between generations? We needed another “Jynx” predicament on our hands, Nintendo? Why did Magmar need a shlubby beer gut and a Mega Man arm cannon, and was it really necessary to bulk up Rhyhorn with an entire shield of stone? I would think that being a hulking rock rhinoceros was formidable enough. Every evolution here technically improves the stats of these established pokemon, but their gaudiness ultimately still makes them unwelcome.
In the case of Magnezone and the two new Eeveelutions, the rationale behind these previously undiscovered iterations is that the other regions didn’t have the particular environmental factors that would enable these physical changes. The environment in question, of course, is Diamond/Pearl’s central region of Sinnoh. Geographically, the fourth Pokenation is the antithesis of Hoenn in a more literal sense than just its design, climate, and general atmosphere. Whereas Hoenn was inspired by Japan's southern chain of islands, Sinnoh is the entirety of the country’s northernmost prominent island, Hokkaido. Geography experts/weeaboos can even see that the developers practically slapped Hokkaido onto the game’s world map and infested it with pokemon. Given that this island is situated slightly further away from the equator, one can expect Sinnoh to exhibit the characteristics of a temperate climate rather than a subtropical one. Rain and fog are common weather conditions that may factor into battle as opposed to the rampant blustering of desert sand. Oreburgh is a humble mining town with much of its territory sunken below the ground due to the constant excavation of coal and other nearby natural resources. Floroma Town is a city that shares Hoenn’s forte for flowers, but the atmosphere here conveys a reserved, remote environment where the player can listen to the wind blowing on the wide span of pretty plants without some well-meaning florist rambling on about the environmental and personal benefits of growing them. The most notable attraction in Canalave City is its multistoried library, and Celestic Town preserves the traditional, unsophisticated lifestyles and attitudes of centuries ago, like several of Johto’s settlements. The vibrancy of modern times seen in Sinnoh seems to be condensed to Hearthome and Jubilife City. Either of these districts has to be based on Hokkaido’s central city of Sapporo, but I can’t tell which one on account of neither having a brewery or beer garden. In terms of comparing the nation’s weather conditions to that of the last region, nothing is more evident of how different Sinnoh is than the frigid Snowpoint City, where it perennially precipitates the city’s namesake. The sentient evergreen tree Snover and his yeti-sized evolved form Abomasnow could never have sensibly existed in a region like Hoenn, where the apex of elevation resembles the area of northern California where the redwoods reside. In addition to the potential for perpetual snow, Sinnoh’s notable natural bodies are three massive lakes located all across the land, which might remind every North American resident of the Great Lakes that surround the boreal upper midwest of the USA and parts of Canada. Certainly, Hoenn shares little to no commonality with our white neighbor to the north. Like Johto’s relationship to Kanto, Sinnoh sort of presents a direct contrast to Hoenn that illustrates its polar differences in all of the aforementioned essences. While I prefer the laid-back, oceanic atmosphere permeating throughout Hoenn as I do with places of a real-life parallel, I appreciate the modest, chillier expanse that Sinnoh establishes to accentuate its distinctiveness.
I suppose that the advancements of the DS hardware also play a hand in Sinnoh’s perceptible differences compared to the previous generations. An understated aspect of the double-screened handheld is that it could competently render three-dimensional shapes in the graphics, albeit rudimentary ones that recall when Mario and Link looked like satirical action figures made by Seth Green for Adult Swim. With the approximate 64-bit visuals at hand, the foregrounds of each metropolitan area are rather cubical, further immersing us into the illusion of interacting in a bustling cityscape. Evidently, the extra-dimensional range at their disposal is also being utilized in the interior puzzle of gyms that prevent the player from darting to the leader’s domain. We can determine the change in water level while trying to navigate around Crasher Wake’s Olympic-sized pool, and it might have been difficult to obscure the junior trainers playing hide and seek in Gardenia’s grass gym from a pixelated, top-down perspective. Solving the math problems that lock the doors behind the fabulous Fantina’s domain could’ve been achievable without the perks of an advanced spatial plane, but probably not the series of elevators between them. One would think that injecting this graphical flair into the Pokemon world would be a cinch, considering the capabilities of the system, but something about the game’s sluggishness suggests that rounding out the visuals may have still been too ambitious. For some reason or other, Diamond/Pearl runs as slowly as a sloth sinking in a tar pit during any battle sequence. Every action is plagued with a hesitation reminiscent of children stuttering their lines during a school play. In a game where the turn-based gameplay can become rather repetitive, chugging through the grind with jagged pauses at every waking moment can make the process grating. This kink in Diamond/Pearl’s foundation is the first instance of blatant regression in the Pokemon series, and there’s no excuse for it.
Judging by how Sinnoh shares a similar atmosphere and disposition to Johto, this would lead the player to believe that its general progression is equally as lethargic and somewhat adrift. Fortunately, there is a prominent overarching subplot in tandem with the player’s path to fame and fortune, but it’s quite absurd. Filling in the requisite organization of rabblerousers is Team Galactic, whose group uniformity is defined by their eccentric hairstyles. Another point of eccentricity regarding this antagonistic team is their highfalutin mission. Instead of using pokemon as tools in conducting schemes for financial gain and influencing one’s opinion on the land and sea divide, Team Galactic wishes to change the world…by channeling the cosmic power of the region’s legendary pokemon to erase the current one and craft a new existence as the primary architects. Something about team leader Cyrus’s intense and misanthropic disposition tells me that his goals are not based in philanthropy. Between the seventh and eighth Sinnoh gyms, the player will climb the perilous Mt. Coronet and arrive at the mythical ruins of Spear Pillar. At its peak, Team Galactic’s rude awakening will summon the sacred Pokemon arbiters of space and time in either Dialga or Palkia–depending on the version. This encounter is certainly a memorable moment in the player’s journey through Sinnoh for its epic scale and biting tension, as it seems like Team Galactic will have their nefarious wish fulfilled. Still, the underlying issue that sullies Team Galactic’s impact is that their villainous operations are barely relevant to the greater Pokemon world in the grand scheme of the franchise’s thematic foundation. Team Rocket tainted our perception of treating these creatures as reciprocal friends or pets when they utilize their offensive properties like gangsters use sawed-offs and Tommy guns. At least the player can assume that the radical desires of either Team Aqua or Magma stem from their affinities for the category of pokemon that their elemental association coincides with. Team Galactic, on the other hand, seem like they’ve stumbled upon the Pokemon world and have researched an avenue to achieve their disquieting goals in the environment they circumstantially find themselves in. I’ve seen the villain trope of a radical cult several times across many video games, and injecting Pokémon into the equation doesn’t seem to broaden the scope in any significant way. As far as the series’s less diabolical adversaries are concerned, the opposite gender equivalent of the player is a non-entity who follows around Professor Rowan like a border collie, and spastic neighbor Barry is in the feckless category of “rival” that Wally unremarkably introduced. Barry’s aspiration to conquer the player and place himself as the hottest contender in the Sinnoh league is still as fruitless and one-sided, even with a longer screen presence. Maybe he’d be a formidable Pokémon trainer if he invested in decaf and could focus?
Because all of the auxiliary narrative components that comprise a Pokémon adventure are rather ineffective this time around, the developers thought ahead of this predicament by raising the difficulty ceiling for the Elite Four and the league champion. If that douche Lance has taught me anything (besides that Dragonite is like the Ford F-450 of Pokémon), a particularly flashy and haughty champion will feel inclined to assist the player in trouncing the game’s criminal organization threat. When the blonde, elegant trainer Cynthia suddenly lent a hand in forcing Team Galactic out of Sinnoh’s great lakes, I knew she’d be my final opponent and wouldn’t relinquish her crown so easily. The range of pokemon levels amongst Sinnoh’s Elite Four is a steep 53 at the lowest and a staggering 63 at their highest, with some of Cynthia’s pokemon reaching social security eligibility numbers. Cynthia’s eclectic mix, consisting of her bulky, self-healing Milotic and exclusively invulnerable Spiritomb, still gave me the business. A sense of fear should especially strike the players when faced against Cynthia’s Garchomp trump card. The mighty upright sand hammerhead shark with dragon blood in its veins is so goddamn powerful that I hear Lance is thinking about trading one of his Dragonites for one, like an insecure "alpha male" influencer swapping his Bugatti for a Ferrari. We get it, Cynthia, women are just as capable of topping the league towers as their Y-chromosomed equivalents, but did you have to make your strides for womankind our problem? The grinding regime I had to undergo to defeat you spanned the length of a flight to Europe, and the slowing hiccups in the game’s system made the process all the more tedious and excruciating.
Pokemania has officially bitten the dust, and now the franchise is in a state where the developers have to keep huffing and puffing to keep the flame from being totally extinguished. With Pokémon’s fourth-generation outing in Diamond/Pearl, their attempt to maintain relevance is rather limp. Sinnoh is an inspired region only because it acts as Hoenn’s clear-cut opposite, and there are still plenty of commendable extensions to the international Pokedex that should still rouse a sense of curiosity in returning players amongst those whose brassy designs smack of overcompensation. Other than that, the narrative does not bode well when the fatigued Pokémon champion arc takes a backseat to deal with an enemy syndicate whose principles put them one degree from Dahlia Gillespie from Silent fucking Hill. Above all else, the delayed clunkiness of the gameplay is the straw that broke the camel’s back, or at least the straw that caused some serious burning inflammation. I feel as if I just played a middle-aged Pokémon game, one that attempts to capture its prime by repeating the same feats but is ultimately now bogged down by the hitches that come with the passing of time. Adding on to this analogy, I also feel like the game’s teenage son, who is a bit embarrassed by its lameness. I might be too old for this shit afterall.
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