Very safe remakes of Diamond/Pearl which I can appreciate on some levels after ORAS changed a little too much to my liking but also disappointing in many other aspects.
The good includes making Sinnoh a lot more fun to navigate and explore with HMs being useable from the Poketch. The underground being expanded upon to include a large variety of wild Pokemon to find. I personally think the artstyle is really cute and the map being 1 to 1 means no dumbing down of puzzles or layouts keeping Sinnoh in tact. All the post game content is here though nothing from Platinum is included and they managed to at least make Cynthia challenging despite not balancing the rest of the game around the always on exp share. It's also very cool that nearly all of the 493 Pokemon in the Gen 4 dex are available in this game with only a few unavailable Mythical Pokemon.
The issues with this remake start to crop up when compared with previous Pokemon remakes. There's very little new content here. The Pokedex doesn't include any Pokemon past gen 4 meaning no rematches with Gym Leaders or Elite 4 members that would normally incorporate newer Pokemon into their teams (though the rematches here are cool)
While the chibi aesthetic is cute, it does undercut the events on Mt Coronet a lot. Going back to full random encounters outside of the Grand Underground kinda sucks after Sword/Shield had a neat balance of both random and overworld. Sticking with the D/P dex instead of the improved Platinum dex means Pokemon like Eevee and Rotom are unavailable until post game despite the Grand Underground allowing access to stuff like Elekid and Togepi.
At the end of the day though despite my grievances with the games, I still really really enjoy playing Pokemon games. There's a lot of aspects that they should really be improving upon (like difficulty options please) but when I'm actually playing the games I'm having too much fun to care about my issues with them and at the end of the day, fun is really why we all play videogames anyway
The good includes making Sinnoh a lot more fun to navigate and explore with HMs being useable from the Poketch. The underground being expanded upon to include a large variety of wild Pokemon to find. I personally think the artstyle is really cute and the map being 1 to 1 means no dumbing down of puzzles or layouts keeping Sinnoh in tact. All the post game content is here though nothing from Platinum is included and they managed to at least make Cynthia challenging despite not balancing the rest of the game around the always on exp share. It's also very cool that nearly all of the 493 Pokemon in the Gen 4 dex are available in this game with only a few unavailable Mythical Pokemon.
The issues with this remake start to crop up when compared with previous Pokemon remakes. There's very little new content here. The Pokedex doesn't include any Pokemon past gen 4 meaning no rematches with Gym Leaders or Elite 4 members that would normally incorporate newer Pokemon into their teams (though the rematches here are cool)
While the chibi aesthetic is cute, it does undercut the events on Mt Coronet a lot. Going back to full random encounters outside of the Grand Underground kinda sucks after Sword/Shield had a neat balance of both random and overworld. Sticking with the D/P dex instead of the improved Platinum dex means Pokemon like Eevee and Rotom are unavailable until post game despite the Grand Underground allowing access to stuff like Elekid and Togepi.
At the end of the day though despite my grievances with the games, I still really really enjoy playing Pokemon games. There's a lot of aspects that they should really be improving upon (like difficulty options please) but when I'm actually playing the games I'm having too much fun to care about my issues with them and at the end of the day, fun is really why we all play videogames anyway