I don't want to catch all the pokemon

Nintendo DS Pokemon Diamond

Gripe #1 - How do kids have the attention span to play it? The text drags on forever and I'm hitting the a/b button over and over again to get past all the slow text. I even put it to fast but they need a skip feature.

Gripe #2 - Random battles up the wazoo + people keep trying to challenge me. I got 6 crappy pokemon and all the challengers have at most 2. Of course I won't lose. But to keep the game challenging they make you fight other trainers who are waiting for you to walk in their path. So you got to either stock up on capture balls, potions, or back track back to the hospital.

Let’s start back to the basics. You are a kid that that wants to be the best pokemon trainer. Blah Blah Blah. No one plays this game for the story so I’m going to skip right over that and head into the gameplay.

Getting around
So you walk around and there is generally a direct path you have to take to get from town A to town B. There aren’t random encounters like in most rpg games until you start walking into the tall grass. For whatever reason, the wild pokemon will only attack you in the grass. I like to think of it as piranhas in the water as your safe on land (safe outside of tall grass). So when you first start out you can only walk at a slow pace but soon enough you get some shoes which let you run. The running helps a bit to cover some ground but still way to slow for my taste. Movement is handled in square blocks as you can’t move diagonal and can only go North, South, East, West. This will help you determine if you can fit in between trees or if there is a path you can take. Basically if you have played any old style rpg, you know it’s like driving a tank.

Battle
The meat of the game is battling. If you don’t like the battle system, there is no way you will stick with this game. Basically you get these random wild pokemon encounters in tall grass and it’s going to be some type of animal generally. Each pokemon has some type of attribute like “fire, water, grass, rock……” that pretty much determines the strategy of battling. So it’s like rock paper scissors in that you want to get the best match up possible. So for example a water based attack will deal additional damage to a fire based pokemon. If you use an ineffective attack, the pokemon will receive little damage and a message will tell you that it’s ineffective. There are a total of 17 elements ranging from the basics of water to the weird stuff like rock. Not all attacks are special attacks and most will start of with “normal” attacks like scratch. As the pokemon level up you get different skills they learn and you also get the ability to teach them one time skills also. Further on the game you start evolving pokemon and getting hybrid types but I didn’t get that far as I was fed up with the game before that point.

Since this is a kid friendly game, no pokemon dies. They just faint and you get to heal them later. If all your pokemon get knocked out you get sent home as you faint or something. So how exactly do you get more pokemon? Well you buy these red balls and when the pokemon is damaged enough you can throw one at him and capture them. If you are battling another trainer, I’ve tried to capture one of theirs and was accused of stealing and wasn’t allowed to capture theirs. Hey, I had to try it.

Sound/Graphics
Not much to write about on this one. I heard the sound effects and the music and I immediately muted my game. The graphics are basic Nintendo rpg stuff. Just from looking at the graphics you would think I’m playing the 1995 Nintendo Earthbound rpg. You would think after 10+ years even on a hand held system the graphics would be better. At least the colors are smooth and you can tell the artwork for each pokemon isn’t too bad even though they don’t animate very well.

With all those games sold and how this series is Nintendo's cash cow, I honestly say this game is awful. I play the occasional rpg and tend to lean towards turn based strategy games like advance wars, tactics ogre, final fantasy tactics but this game just sucks. Each move looks the same, stat growth is of standard stuff and the only strategy is "oh fire beats water" business. so freaking what. When you fight some pokemon all you see is a symbol next to their name which looks like a male/female icon plus color. I'm assuming color is the element. Not being able to click it to let me know what it really means on the fly is lazy. Take for example puzzle quest, if you don't know what the weapon does, you just click it and it tells you exactly what bonuses are.

I didn't want to read up on it, but I got 6 pokemon, captured another 2-3 and for the life of me I can't figure out how to "bench" a pokemon so I can start another one. I give up. I've played enough games to get a feel for the control and mechanics and this game is just tedious. The final straw was when I saved right before going after the first main trainer (rock guy at the gym) and when I turned back on the DS to play I lost about 30min of game time. The save I guess got corrupted and I had to replay the random spawns and awful dialogue.

Maybe I'm just showing my age, but there was a time where I would play everything and I would much rather play Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, Phantasy Star over this game. Glad I didn't buy into the hype and didn't waste my money on this. I tried to give this game a chance since so many "adults" love this game but I just can't get into it. So after 4+hrs of playing and being laughed at for even playing this game, I can truly say it's not worth it.

Online
I didn’t get to play online since every person I know laughs at me when I tried to play this. From what I gathered, there are standard features like online battle, trading, and even voice chat. Of course Nintendo loves our online community by also requiring friend codes, yuck.

* Gameplay 6/10 (there is online WFC but not accessible from the main menu, weak touch screen usage, standard rpg)
* Graphics 5/10 (looks like a gba game)
* Sound 5/10 (annoying, I don’t play with it)
* Overall 6/10 (only Pokemon fans need apply)

Recommendation: Rent/borrow/pass up. If you have never played the pokemon series, your not missing much.