So, we don't have a thread for this, the Legends: Arceus thread has absorbed some commentary on it.

I want to get one thing out of the way: I hate the tiny-body giant-head chibi-shit overworld sprites of the humans. hate it.

Otherwise, I'm pretty goddamn hyped up. Pokemon Diamond wasn't my first ever pokemon game, but it is the one I remember the best and probably the one I have the most hours in. The overworld looks beautiful (other than the goddamn chibi shit), following pokemon make a return (I'm hoping there are a few pokemon like in Let's Go Eevee and Pikachu that have unique follow animations like Charizard, Starmie, Haunter, Khangaskhan, etc). The battle backgrounds look almost identical to SwSh to my eyes. The pokeball seals seem to be overhauled, and some are nifty.

The Sinnoh Underground was pretty mediocre in the OG games, but it got a revamp here. It still has the sledgehammer/pickaxe mining for those gemstone things and fossils and the like, but it has a bunch of new exits that lead to some unique environments - the pokemon that inhabit it (and a lot of them aren't in the OG DP pokedex) depend on the statues you put in your secret bases underground which is pretty goddamn cool. And those environments are beautiful. The trailer has a snowy tundra, a lava hellscape, and a forest, and all of them have overworld wild pokemon a la Let's Go.

One final thing, this tweet is from 6 months ago, and says that two of the promotional figurines feature mega Lucario and mega Charizard X. I'm not going to get my hopes up, because GameFreak has a habit of introducing features then rending them away, but goddamn I hope mega-evolution comes back. I enjoyed dynamax. I enjoyed z-moves. But mega-evolution is my favorite.

https://twitter.com/Pokeshopper/status/1365633876689903623?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1365633876689903623|twgr^|twcon^s1_&ref_url=https://screenrant.com/pokemon-brilliant-diamond-shining-pearl-mega-evolution-changes/

Trailer:

 

I don't hate the Chibi style, but it does kinda seem like a step back. That said I'm all about throwing money at Pokemon Nostalgia Bait (I have problem), and I'm ready re-explore Sinnoh.

 

I don't need pokemon to look like red dead redemption 2 or the witcher 3. An overly abstracted art style works for it. But these chibi models are plain ugly.

3D battles with a 2.5D Octopatch Traveler style pixel art overworld full of modern lighting effects is what I would like most of all tbh.

 

Well this is kinda weird.

https://gamerant.com/pokemon-brilliant-diamond-shining-pearl-weird-price-discrepancy/amp/

 

Methinks someone got the wrong number on filling in the price.

 

Aww fuck, checked the notification from amazon and apparently I ordered the dual pack by mistake.

I only wanted one :_:

 

I mean, at the very worst it's a nice Christmas gift.

Personally I'd keep the fuck out of it.

 

Looking at all the leaks and such, I think this'll be the only Pokemon I don't immediately buy. I'll see if I can grab it used after a bit.

I was hoping for more of an ORAS remake, not something basically 1:1 with chibis instead of pixels.

 

The chibis are much less annoying than I thought they'd be.

Fighting a cave of geodude on a bidoof solo run, however...

 

That's what the Run button is for. And overlevelling for the Trainers.