Pokémon Diamond Version (2006)

You know what? It still works. Somehow, the team behind the Pokemon series crafted a simple but engaging formula 20 plus years ago, and it still works on me every single time. Is it perfect? Not at all. Is it balanced? Not even remotely. Does it provide the best story? Nowhere near.

Did I still enjoy this game? Absolutely. Do I worry about diminishing returns? Oddly enough, not really.

I was deeply skeptical of this game before it came out. I remember playing the first Diamond, but also remember not finishing it. At the time I was bouncing off of the series for whatever reason - and something about the generation of DS games never really landed with me. I only picked up this one because my boyfriend wanted to play it together, and I thought it would be cute and fun and engaging. It was all of that, and I suspect it will be for quite some time yet.

So what happened to help me realize the strengths of the game that is here?

Honestly, I'm not sure about that either. The game is effectively broken in this generation, and even moreso in this iteration. There is a clear winner for best starter (who I will never play as a main because I find them incredibly boring), and every single route seems to have almost all the same Pokemon to catch and gather, and none of the cities or locales really pop with a bright and colourful sense of place that feels unique or distinct. The new additions of the Fairy type and the Grand Underground do help a good deal, but it isn't like the game is still anything more than just-good-enough.

But just good enough to put 50 hours of my life into it, and be confident that I'll still probably put in 10 to 15 more in the post game? Just good enough to make me want to purchase the expansions for Pokemon Sword and play through those for the first time? Just good enough to make me really think about finally playing my copy of Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, or go back to Ultra Sun and grab all of the legendaries that I've missed, and then buy Pokemon Bank and Pokemon Home so that I can get all of my favourite little pocket monsters into the same digital location and actually know which games I have and which ones I don't?

That's pretty damned awesome. Clearly this 20 year old formula is still working on 30-something me.

I liked the game a lot, I think it became perfect once Platnium came out and expanded on it. I loved the new generation of pokemon and I really loved the side characters and story. The environments and region remain amazing. Sometimes it was hard to know where to go next or how to access certain areas and the leveling grind was quite harsh. However, overall it was a solid game that holds a lot of nostalgia for me since it was the first Pokemon game I played. So many happy memories.

After hitting three straight generations out of the park, I guess the good folks at Game Freak got a little bit stale. First of all, going back to an older Pokemon game after playing Moon and Ultra Moon made me realize just how much I liked some of the changes they made in those games.

For example. So. Many. HMs. And since I hate having to transfer my pokemon every five minutes, I gave all 8 HMs to my active team, preventing them from having useful movesets until I made it to the Elite Four.

The Wonder Trade and Global Trade systems also fixed the fact that in the older games, there are only so many different teams you can make for the first few hours of the game. In Red it was Rattata and Pidgey. In Diamond it's Bidoof and Starly.

Which leads me to the next point: it's the same darn game! I mean, it's still fun making tiny monsters beat the crap out of each other, but as far as Pokemon games go, this one's definitely the least best.

A few other things: it felt like I was running into the same darn pokemon the whole darn game. I mean, this is generation four, and every cave still only had Zubats, Geodudes, and Onixes (and their evolutions). And there weren't very many places with grass pokemon, strangely, so it was hard to raise my Ponyta. Finally, Max Repels don't work at all. What's the point of them if they don't work at all.

Anyway, here's the team with which I beat the Elite Four:

Blissey - Level 48

Crobat - Level 45

Empoleon - Level 48

Golduck - Level 45

Luxray - Level 51

Rapidash - Level 46