So, I’ve started Pokémon Shining Diamond. I went in completely blind, as in “did not know anything about it before” blind.
I just checked what version had which exclusive Mons, and went with Diamond, because of ma boi Dialga. Well, actually, no. Because of Larvitar.
This little shit right there – look at it. Look how it looks determined to fuck your shit up.
It’s a Dragon in disguise, so it gains bonus points. Dragons are cool. Fun fact, its french name (translated by that one guy who did all the Pokémon names for Gen1&2 in french) is wildly different from its English one. It’s a portmanteau of Embryo(n) and Silex – Embrylex.
Overall my main regret is the absence of Lugia (best legendary bird ofc) and thus I’m stuck with Ho-Oh from Gold. And everyone knows that Silver was the best version.
Mawile (Diamond-exclusive) is also a cutie – in a, you know, aggressive kind of way. Gnaw gnaw. It bothered me so much in Pokémon Shield, since it was resistant or immune to my whole team at the time. This little cheater (his original name in japanese is クチート, “Kucheat”) is immune to Dragon, resistant to Flying, Psychic, Dark, Fairy, and many more. Problem was, it is a Sword-exclusive so I had a lot of trouble to get one at the time.
Now you’re mine, hehe.
Anyway-
Overall, I had a ton of fun with game, even if it has its flaws. I’m not gonna write a game review here, but it’s too bad that they did not add that much to a remake.
There’s several times in the game where you may feel lost regarding where to go, or what to do, in order to progress. And by progress, I mean both “go to the next step of the story” and “overcome the current challenge you’re facing”. The overall narration is way better than SwSh (obviously) and the pace is also way more interesting. The quite high challenge was a welcome addition to my Pokémon experience, since all generation that I’ve played (1+2+8) were very easy. It also pushed me towards systems & loops that I did not touch at all in Shield, or were not fully there in Blue & Silver.
Meaning that I also fell into the EV-training rabbit hole, but that’s a story for another blogpost.
Blind-playing video games
Coming back to the main topic, it also felt refreshing to do & finish a game that I knew (almost) nothing about this time. The drawback of working in the video games industry (especially in a company that ships so many games) is, obviously, that you know inside out the game you’re working on, but also all of the ones from the whole company, and the competitors’ as well. It’s a very small world.
On top of that, it’s kinda a requirement to keep yourself up-to-date with the industry news & releases. I’m also not working in video games just because I saw some light in a studio- I’m genuinely interested in the whole medium and it has been one of my only consistent hobby over the years. However, there’s little requirement to follow closely Pokémon games, since they pretty much do their own thing that not a lot of other studios do in parallel. A notable exception being the Shin Megami Tensei series and its spin-off series Persona (and in recent years, Temtem). Yes, I know the Yo-Kai Watch series exist, but eh.
All that to say, I ingest a lot of information about games I plan to play (or not), but this one was an exception.
And it’s really a different feeling. I even refrained from using a guide or looking for info on the Internet for the most part of the main game’s walkthrough. Which was really fun to do in a Pokémon game, where there’s a lot of secrets to discover and overall a lot of knowledge to get – the main big thing being how the different mons you encounter and capture will evolve (if they do). Even if I saw some familiar faces from Gen 1 & 2, others that were in Gen 8, and others that I encountered in Go, I knew almost nothing about most of the Gen 3 & 4 pokémons.
Felt like a little kid opening its new video game on Christmas and exploring its virtual world with a smile on its face for most of my time with Shining Diamond.
I also picked back up Pokémon Go when I went to see my family away in the coutryside over the holidays, so that makes a lot of Pokémon in my life. I may borrow my wife’s 3Ds to play some older generations…
All images in this post are taken from Encyclopædiæ Pokémonis –
all the contributors to this family of websites are heroes.