Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are a little over a month away from release and we’re starting to see more information about the remakes. Pokemon Diamond and Pearl were the first mainline Pokemon games to release on the Nintendo DS back in 2006. Naturally, as the first, and arguably best mainline Pokemon games on the Nintendo DS they are incredibly popular. I would also argue that the remakes Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are set to be the first real Pokemon games to appear on the Nintendo Switch.
Yes, Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee came out back in 2018, followed by Pokemon Sword and Shield in 2019. However, Let’s Go Pikachu, while an interesting take on the first-gen games, omitted too many staples of the Pokemon series to be considered among other classic remakes like Heart Gold and Soul Silver or Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. Let’s Go Pikachu was merely a cash-in on the hype of Pokemon Go. Something to tide fans over while they waited for a real Pokemon game on Nintendo Switch.
That was supposed to be Sword and Shield the very next year. But again, the issues with Sword and Shield severely kneecapped the games from the offset. Not having a huge number of Pokemon available, shoddy performance, graphics, and, again, staple mechanics of the series not being included excludes the games from serious discussion among the other mainline franchise games.
Finally, with Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, something seems to be going right over at The Pokemon Company. Whether that’s because these are the first mainline games to ever be developed by another studio other than GameFreak, who knows. What we do know is that from the wealth of information and previews revealed so far, the Pokemon series is hopefully back on track. Hopefully, Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are the start of other studios coming in to take some of the load off of GameFreak.