With the excellent Pokemon Legends Arceus marking what looks to be the start of a whole new era for the franchise, this felt like as great a time as any to stop and take stock of the state of the franchise as it stands at the present moment in time. And so, we decided to go ahead and rank the Pokemon games. To be clear, we didn’t rank all of them – that would be insane, and also redundant, since so many games in the series are just slight variations of each other. 

Instead, what we did was take the best representative for each campaign and used it as a stand in for all other games that are also based on the same campaign. Put simply, this list doesn’t rank Pokemon Red/Blue, Yellow, FireRed/LeafGreen, and Let’s Go separately – it just takes what we think is the best one out of those, and ranks that one. (As for which one the best one is, you’re going to have to find that out for yourself now, won’t you?).

Is that clear? Great. Then let’s get started.

10. POKEMON X/Y

Pokemon X/Y was probably the first game in the series that caused wide scale disappointment among the fans – everyone had some complaint or the other with it. It makes sense – the game, which marked the series’ long awaited jump to 3D, was definitely a letdown on many fronts. The story was baffling and banal (even by Pokemon standards), the difficulty level was ramped down to such absurd levels that you could very literally finish the game without even paying attention to what was happening on screen, the region was extremely linear (and lacking in dungeons to a severe degree), there was nothing in the way of a post game, it pandered far too much to the first generation of Pokemon games, and it introduced the smallest roster of new Pokemon to date.

But there was also a lot to like about it – the Player Search System it introduced remains the single best online suite in any Pokemon game to date, and really, one the best multiplayer suites out there, player character customization was a hugely beloved feature that went on to become a series mainstay, it took the first steps towards making Pokemon training and team composition easier and more transparent by giving players direct control over the growth of their Pokemon, it added a brand new type that upended the meta game almost entirely, the Mega Evolutions battle gimmick was really fun, the design of the new Pokemon was uniformly excellent, and it looked charming as all heck with its chibi style 3D graphics. In hindsight, X/Y have become the most inessential Pokemon entries, because almost everything they did well went on to be appropriated by future games in the series, who would do it much better – and its shortcomings never got the chance to be fixed by an expansion or re-release, as would happen for so many other games in the series. But in spite of that, they’re very fun games, and probably exemplify the sentiment that even a “bad” Pokemon game remains an extremely well made, charming, and satisfying game to play through.

9. POKEMON BLACK 2/WHITE 2

The fifth generation of Pokemon was a wild time for the franchise, rife with experimentation and all sorts of new things the series had never dared attempt until then. One of those was a direct sequel – the first and only direct sequel to a game taking place in the same region the series has seen to date.

It made sense, though – the excellent Pokémon Black/White (which we’ll get to later on in the list) left a lot of sequel hooks in their story, and Unova was an amazing setting that clearly had more to offer. Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 deliver on that, but the adventure we get is decidedly inferior to the original games. While these are still excellent games, and essential for anyone who enjoyed the original Black/White, the campaign eschews a lot of the boldness and novelty that made the original games stand out so much, squandering the narrative opportunities hinted at by the originals (and in some cases it outright undermines them), and mechanically don’t really expand on the original games enough to really stand out on their own. They do offer a meaty, hefty post-game, and a frankly absurd amount of content – and all of it is absolutely great. But when you play through all Pokemon games, these ones tend to stand out less than the others – because very honestly, most of what they do was already done better by the original Black/White just one year prior, and they don’t really bring enough unique stuff of their own to the table to make up for that.

8. POKEMON ULTRA SUN/ULTRA MOON

Pokemon Sun/Moon were extremely interesting games – bold and ambitious, willing to experiment with the structure of the franchise, doubling down on a pointed narrative and storytelling focus, and giving us the most fleshed out and believable look at the world of Pokemon to date. They offered a lot of excellent stuff – Alola is a great region with a lot of personality and a distinct aesthetic, the new Pokemon designs are amazing and contextualized in extremely believable ways as part of a larger ecology and even the story and characters were interesting. But Sun/Moon were extremely flawed games, with their story falling apart towards the final act, extreme linearity and railroading making for the least player driven Pokemon game to date, an overabundance of cutscenes with trite and repetitive dialog that you could not ever skip, an online suite that was a shocking regression on the excellent X/Y, and, yet again, an acute lack of post-game content.

Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon… well, they don’t really fix Sun/Moon, but they patch them up to a level that they are no longer the worst games in the series (if Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon didn’t exist, yes, I would have absolutely placed the original Sun/Moon at the bottom of this list). They tweak the story and characters to be less bizarre towards the end, the cutscenes spacing and story pacing is improved, areas get bigger, allowing for more exploration (though overall progression remains extremely rigidly linear), the post game gets a hefty chunk of new content to sink teeth into, and they add an absurd amount of content to the original game as well. They are also among the most difficult games in the series, with a certain specific fight near the end being legendary for how brutal it is.

Sun/Moon, much like most other games in the series in the 3DS era, are flawed and a tale of missed opportunity – but Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon existing at least makes that missed potential slightly easier to swallow, if only because it hints at what might have been had developers Game Freak taken the time to properly flesh things out with their games.

7. POKEMON SWORD/SHIELD

The single most controversial entry in the franchise, Pokemon Sword/Shield became flashpoints for controversy. There were loads of reasons for this – a decade of resentment building over repeated disappointing entries, poor communication by the developers and publishers for taking away a lot of content that players expect from these games, and extremely poor graphical quality, even considering Pokemon has never been a technical showpiece, all became easy latching on points for the backlash these games generated.

I would argue that to a very large degree, the backlash was not undeserved. Pokemon Sword and Shield are not bad games at all, but they are very clearly products of a rushed and troubled development cycle. The new region they introduced was visually distinct and hints at lush beauty and interesting lore, but the games never get around to it. There was, at launch, a total paucity of post game content again. The games forced further mechanics that trivialized the difficulty even further, making for the easiest games in the series at the time of release. The Wild Area concept, a mini open world region for players to explore and catch Pokemon in, was conceptually sound, but fumbled in execution. The online functionality was a baffling step back from the 3DS era. They cut down almost half of the roster of Pokemon.

But in spite of that laundry list of complaints, the core campaign was extremely compelling and fun, and knew to get out of the players’ way to let them enjoy the adventure at their own pace (something the Alola games had categorically failed at); new mechanics such as Max Raids were excellent, and giving players full control over how their Pokemon grow was game changing. The characters are excellent. And while the Wild Area was underdeveloped, and the story never fleshed out, both managed to stumble upon some rather unforgettable moments nevertheless, with a certain late game story development still ranking as one of my favorite story moments in the series. And all of this is before we consider the excellent expansions, which actually addressed a lot of the complaints players had with the base games – they added in another couple hundred of the missing Pokemon back in, they delivered fully fleshed out open world areas that properly leveraged 3D space and delivered a believable patchwork of biomes and ecosystems that rewarded player exploration, and they offered some actual meaningfully difficult battles as well; plus, given that they are meant to be post-game content, they naturally address the absence of post-game in the base titles too.

Even with the expansions, Sword and Shield are an unfortunate tale of missed potential (I’m sure you’re picking up on this being a running theme) – but in spite of what their troubled reputation might suggest, they are very good games, and absolutely worth playing regardless of their many stumbles. What they do well, they do really well, and ultimately, their take on the core Pokemon formula, while finally beginning to strain at the seams by this point, still delivered a compelling, engaging, and fun adventure.

6. POKEMON EMERALD

This is likely to be the most controversial entry on this list, because Pokemon Emerald is beloved by a army of Pokemon fans. You can see why – Emerald, building upon the good but flawed Ruby/Sapphire, is arguably the apex of Pokemon games in almost every regard. The campaign was long and challenging; there was a ridiculous amount of side and optional content; the Hoenn region in Emerald is extremely memorable, with some standout locations, excellent dungeons, and fantastic level design; the story and characters were the best the series had seen at the time Emerald came out; the post-game was meaty and over-delivered, marking the debut of the fan favorite Battle Frontier (the absence of which in every new game in the series is lamented to this day).

Pokemon Emerald was absolutely amazing, and honestly I have nothing bad to say about it. Why, then, is it ranked so relatively low on the list? The answer is simple, we have now gotten to the part of the list where every single game is an amazing, excellent title and could justify placement at the top, depending on how you choose to classify and rank things. Basically, we’re now looking at six, amazing, excellent games, and trying to rank them is a bit like splitting hairs – no matter what you do, you’re still left with six amazing games. Emerald ranks lower than the others in this bunch because I feel the ones higher on this list than it did everything better for my liking. But that doesn’t take away from how incredible Pokemon Emerald is. It’s an amazing game, and legitimately one of the best RPGs of all time – everyone owes it to themselves to check it out.

5. POKEMON BLACK/WHITE

Pokémon Black/White marked the fourth new Pokemon entry on the DS, an at the time unprecedented volume of mainline games on a single system. Game Freak knew that to make these games stand out, they would have to work hard to give them their own identity. And they decided to do just that, in the process delivering among the best, and probably still among the most ambitious, games in the series to date.

Everything about Pokémon Black/White was so incredible – Unova as a region, basing itself on the urban aesthetic of continental United States, was a breath of fresh air after four regions based on Japan; a massive roster of new Pokemon (the single largest new batch to date, in fact) headlined these games, with Pokémon Black/White making the bold decision to only have new Pokemon in the game for the duration of the campaign – you’d be able to bring in your older pals, but they’d be limited to post-game content, meaning every new encounter was fresh and exciting in a way it hadn’t been for over a decade by the time Black/White came out.

And speaking of post-game, the post-game was fleshed out and meaty (the last time a new generation would deliver on this front). As good as that post-game was, it paled next to the campaign, a blisteringly fast story driven adventure (yes) that actually raised troubling ethical questions about the concept of catching and battling Pokemon (yes), with some legitimately well written characters and antagonists (yes), pulling in and recontextualizing the regular “win badges and beat The Pokemon League” conceit into the framework of a broader story (yes), delivering some legitimately surprising story developments and twists (yes), and culminating in an incredibly epic final act and a hell of a conclusion (yes).

All this, and I still haven’t talked about how this game marked the first time the series did away with the annoying HMs as a progression mechanic, the new experience curve mechanics that worked so much better for game balance than the EXP All that the games would force on the players in future entries, how much optional content there was, how excellent the region and dungeon design was, the new battle styles the games introduced (Rotation and Triple battles, I miss you…), how it simultaneously managed to represent the series’ first forays into 3D spaces, while delivering eye catching and attractive sprite art that remains arguably the best aesthetic the series has had to date… honestly, I can gush about these games forever, they were utterly excellent, thoroughly compelling, and so perfect, so great, so ambitious, that at the time they painted a bright picture for the future of the franchise.

The decade that would follow would not deliver on their promise – in part because Black/White remain the lowest selling mainline entries in the series to date, I assume. And that really sucks, because until very recently, Pokémon Black/White was the last time the series managed to deliver a truly great game. If you can, I urge you to track these down and play them – they are amazing, not just at being Pokemon games, just at delivering incredible RPGs.

4. POKEMON FIRERED/LEAFGREEN

Pokemon Red/Blue were borderline perfect – which is a terrible burden for games launching a series developed by a small, boutique development house that clearly was unprepared for how big their passion project would become. But let’s put aside that broader context for a second and just talk about Pokemon Red/Blue as games assessed on their own merits. To this day, those titles hold up. Oh sure, their primitive and rudimentary graphics are a bit of an adjustment, and they are so buggy that they would make a Bethesda game blush. But holy crap, did they nail the game design side of things perfectly. They took players on an amazing adventure, simultaneously breezy and challenging in just the right amounts, with a great campaign, amazing and memorable creature designs, wonderful lock and key progression, and a lot of optional content for players who went off the beaten path.

Pokemon FireRed/LeafGreen, which remade Red/Blue, are all of that but better. Modernizing the original games to bring them to the standard of the then-current third generation of Pokemon, they polish away the bugs, modernize the graphics, add even more optional content, introduce a lot of QoL and UX functionality the original titles were missing, add a ridiculously hefty chunk of post-game content (the one area the originals were, understandably, lacking in), flesh out their world and region even more, and do so all while remaining incredibly faithful to games that were played and beloved by 40 million players worldwide. They also started off the series’ now longstanding tradition of revisiting older titles via enhanced remakes, and they set the bar incredibly high, delivering the definitive take on the Kanto saga, a take so definitive that even the more modern Pokemon Let’s Go games, which are also remakes of the original generation, did not supplant them.

FireRed/LeafGreen are perfect. As I mentioned earlier, we’re splitting hairs at this point.

3. POKEMON LEGENDS: ARCEUS

Ten years of constant disappointment and unfulfilled promises, mismanagement and rushed development cycles, ten years of consistently managing to lower the bar, and still not meeting it. There’s no wonder that people had no confidence coming into Pokemon Legends: Arceus, because the last decade has been a difficult one for Pokemon fans.

But Game Freak finally threw off the shackles of 25 years of tradition and reinvented Pokemon in a bold new format – and managed to nail it, hitting the ball out of the park on their very first go. A lot like the original Pokemon Red/Blue, amusingly enough. 

Pokemon Legends is such an incredible game. The open world design lends itself beautifully well to the Pokemon franchise, The Pokemon themselves are recontextualized as dangerous, lethal wildlife, the world is harsh and unforgiving and requires the player’s wit and ingenuity to traverse, the maps beckon and invite player exploration and discovery, the Pokemon are delightfully well realized as living and breathing flesh and blood members of a larger ecosystem, the changes to the battle mechanics work well for the game, the new additions such as crafting and Pokedex research all contribute to a self perpetuating, ridiculously addictive gameplay loop, the story is surprisingly fun with some great characters, the action RPG segments actually work surprisingly well, there are several dramatic leaps forward in so many areas (from QoL to mechanics to structure) and there is a ridiculous amount of content thrown in, with, yes, a very hefty post game. It is a shockingly accomplished take on an entirely new formula, and like with Pokemon Red/Blue, Game Freak comes dangerously close to getting it perfect on their first go.

Yes, it has flaws – most notably, it is a bad looking game, with the technical aspects and art style never coming together (somehow, it is still a better performing game than something like Sword/Shield, however), and there are a fair few bugs and glitches here. But ultimately, Legends is a bold new step for the series, and one that it manages to take with a surprising amount of confidence and and dexterity, delivering one of the best games on the Switch, and one of the best games in the series in the process.

2. POKEMON PLATINUM

Sinnoh is very legitimately one of the greatest game maps of all time. It’s a masterpiece of design, with ridiculous amounts of visual and location variety (swamps, mountains, snow, beach and coastal areas, forests, small pastoral villages, big urban cities), and an incredible lock and key design that, while overly reliant on an annoying HM mechanic, leads to the best sense of adventure and discovery the player ever gets in the Pokemon franchise. It’s also backed with some amazing lore and backstory, and massive areas that beg to be explored, tucked away with dozens upon dozens of hidden dungeons and optional quests that you could miss for years without even knowing they exist.

Sinnoh, being the region that Pokemon Platinum is set in, is a huge part of why this game is so great. When you have a map this well designed, and progression through it this well designed, you end up with an unforgettable game. But even beyond that, Platinum was just mind blowingly incredible – it has an excellent campaign, a shocking amount of multiplayer modes, great post game (the Battle Frontier returned!), just the right amount of challenge (people tell horror stories about Cynthia to this day), some great and iconic player designs, major strides forward for the series (including the Physical/Special attack split, as well as the introduction of online play), as well as polishing up the considerable rough edges Diamond/Pearl had – those games suffered majorly from the transition from GBA to DS, and are borderline impossible to go back to because of their bevy of technical issues (including a frame rate so low it’s like walking through treacle). 

Platinum remains the definitive take on Sinnoh to this day (even the recent remakes Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl do not supplant it), and is honestly peak Pokemon. Or at least, it would be, were it not for…

1. POKEMON HEARTGOLD/SOULSILVER

You knew this was coming. There is one thing constant in Pokemon lists and fans – HeartGold/SoulSilver are always at the top. And with good reason – these games are literally, legitimately, perfect, absolutely flawless at every single thing they do, while managing to deliver the biggest and best Pokemon games ever. The original Gold/Silver games were already extremely notable for their massive campaign (set across two regions, 16 gym badges, and two separate Pokemon League challenges) and the introduction of several major and mind blowing mechanics for the franchise, including real time time of day and week impacting in-game events, berry farming, Pokeball crafting, shiny Pokemon, trainer rematches, roaming Legendary Pokemon, held items for Pokemon, weather effects in battles and arenas, and the introduction of Dark and Steel Type Pokemon.

HeartGold/SoulSilver have all of that, plus an additional ridiculous amount of content (mainline, post-game, and optional), gorgeous pixel art graphics that keep these games looking the best ones in the series to this day, almost a decade and a half after their original launch, the availability of every single Pokemon at the time all in one game, plus the inclusion of Platinum‘s Battle Frontier, a brand new Safari Zone, brand new mini games, major QoL and UI enhancements (these games are the only ones that can be played almost entirely via touch screen!), full featured (for the time) local and online multiplayer, and the definitive take on one of the most epic final battles in any game ever. Excellent world and dungeon design, some actual challenging battles, an emphasis on player driven exploration and discovery, a non linear campaign that allows players to break sequence multiple times, and snappy and sharp writing. These games are perfect. There is no flaw to them. They represent among the best games ever made, not just for Pokemon, but in general. 

If you are going to play one Pokemon game, make it this one. 13 years after their initial release, and they still have not been topped. They probably never will be.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

In case it’s not clear, Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are really great. Now, they owe most of this to the simple fact that they’re incredibly straightforward and faithful to a fault 1:1 translations of the originals; but those fifteen year old originals still remain near the top of this series’ outings, so simply by bringing them over almost as is to the Switch, we end up with an entry that’s far more remarkable, satisfying, and fulfilling than most of its other recent ones have been.

The elevator pitch for Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl is fairly straightforward – they are almost exact 1:1 recreations of the original games, with no attempt to try and integrate them into the modern stylistic or design sensibilities the series has adopted since. This could sound like an incredibly unambitious undertaking – and it is – but it is also precisely what helps these new releases remain so much fun and engaging. You see, rather than make unnecessary changes to the pitch perfect design of the original games, or try to recreate them in the style of Sword and Shield, ILCA Inc., led by Game Freak, have simply opted to not mess with what works. Given that trying to recreate older games in newer styles has led to some pretty divisive remakes in the series in the past – OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire are both really good modern takes on the classics they are based on, but they end up sacrificing a lot that people loved about those originals in the process – this ends up working out really well here.

"The elevator pitch for Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl is fairly straightforward – they are almost exact 1:1 recreations of the original games, with no attempt to try and integrate them into the modern stylistic or design sensibilities the series has adopted since. This could sound like an incredibly unambitious undertaking – and it is – but it is also precisely what helps these new releases remain so much fun and engaging."

So, we end up with Sinnoh, still the best map in the series, replete with an incredible amount of aesthetic and geographic variation, brought over as is. And Sinnoh is an incredible map. It has everything – underground caverns, frozen and snowy tundras, marshes and swamps, forests, grasslands, deserts, coastal settings and beaches, mountains, small villages tucked out of the way, giant urban centers that are the center of life in the region. It’s a massive map, with the trip between any two destinations being extremely long, full of dense and massive routes, which make every time you step out feel like an actual journey and an actual adventure (something that, again, the modern games in the series lack). It’s also designed to give the player a lot of agency. While Sinnoh is laid out with a lock and key design to channel player progress along an intended critical path, it also offers a lot to the player who is willing to step off the beaten path and go traipsing on their own, whether that be encounters with relatively rare wild Pokemon, to entire areas and dungeons that are optional and hidden, just waiting for the enterprising player who might be willing to step off the road and follow the trail to where it leads.

Sinnoh is an adventure, and a great map and setting, and that Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl bring it over as is without trying to, for example, recreate it in Sword and Shield‘s 3D style or as a Wild Area, works to these games’ benefit. As of right now, it is very clear that Game Freak does not properly understand how to design compelling 3D spaces – but they mastered the art of great design in 2D. So sticking to their best 2D map to date as is rather than trying to rebuild it in 3D was definitely a smart decision. 

In general, this means that Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl end up with almost all of the same merits that the original games had. They’ve got that great map, as I mentioned, and the great sense of progression and adventure it brings; they also are ridiculously full of content. The fourth generation Pokemon games were frankly absurd with just how much they had to offer to players – you had an extremely long mainline campaign, you had online trading and battles, you had an extremely fleshed out Contests tournament you could lose dozens of hours to, you had massive minigames and meta-progression frameworks, from the Underground (which hosted Fossil hunting, secret bases, and spelunking for treasures) to poffin cooking, you had a fairly expansive post-game with an entire new island that opened up once you beat the Elite Four, and as mentioned, you had entire dungeons and areas that were totally optional, just lying there out of the way, for players who bothered to go explore them getting some pretty incredible rewards (such as a wicked encounter with a Legendary). All of that is here, almost as is.

There have been a few changes made, some for the better. The Underground is hugely expanded now (and it knows it, because it’s called the Grand Underground now) and plays host to everything it did in the originals, while also including caverns for encounters with higher leveled Pokemon, which can usually end up being stronger than ones you find in the wild, and also end up including some rare Pokemon you can’t find elsewhere. In a way, this helps address the issues of Pokemon availability in Sinnoh – famously, for example, the Sinnoh Dex did not offer any Fire type Pokemon until you beat the Pokemon League, unless you really liked Ponyta and Rapidash. That sort of gets addressed with the Grand Underground.

"In general, this means that Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl end up with almost all of the same merits that the original games had. They’ve got that great map, and the great sense of progression and adventure it brings; they also are ridiculously full of content."

Other changes are decidedly for the worse – for instance, contests in Diamond and Pearl were a step down from how perfect they had been in Ruby and Sapphire (which introduced them), but they were still really compelling – they’ve been totally ruined in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl to just being a rhythm minigame. I’m sure a lot of people may still enjoy them, but I personally definitely found them to be a step down from the originals.

Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl also make the curious decision to eschew the content and improvements Pokemon Platinum (the much improved third version for Diamond and Pearl) made. This means that progression, mechanics, and the story all revert to how it was in the original pair of games. Which is extremely disappointing, to be clear, because so much of what Platinum brought to the table, from the improved story climax towards the end to the excellent post-game in the Battle Frontier, has needlessly been ignored. But to these games’ credit, they actually end up bringing a lot of their own alternate set of improvements to the table to compensate. Some of these are very basic QoL changes that can nonetheless have far reaching repercussions on how the games play moment to moment – such as the decision to not tie HMs (the hidden field moves you need to use to progress past obstacles) to the Pokemon you are carrying in your party, or the ability to customize your character (with some really great customization options offered to boot). Others bring back long requested features to the series – such as allowing the ability to have your Pokemon follow you in the overworld. They add an extremely substantial post-game, including allowing the ability to legally catch most Legendary Pokemon (but after completing some quests to get them first), as well as the ability to rebattle Gym Leaders, and the Elite 4 in extremely challenging encounters, where they have perfect team compositions, and AI dialled up to very difficult.

Actually, that’s another great area of improvement in these games. The original Gen 4 Pokemon games were fairly challenging. Like, they would never get mistaken for Dark Souls, but they did push back on the player a little, and some fights, such as Cynthia, were legendarily relentless if you went in unprepared. Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl actually retain that aspect. Enemy AI, team compositions, and move pools are some of the best the series has seen, and fights can end up being fairly challenging as a result. Now, these buffs to the enemies are almost necessary, because the game retains the controversial EXP Share from Sword and Shield, which will give every Pokemon in your party EXP points after you finish a battle, regardless of whether or not they actually participated. There is, frustratingly enough, no way to turn it off either.

"The game retains the controversial EXP Share from Sword and Shield, which will give every Pokemon in your party EXP points after you finish a battle, regardless of whether or not they actually participated. There is, frustratingly enough, no way to turn it off either."

To the game’s credit, the EXP Share here feels better balanced than it has been in other games, but it can still be really easy to get really overleveled and trivialize a lot of the encounters in the game. Which is almost a shame, because as I mentioned, some of them are really well designed. It’s easy enough to circumvent the EXP Share gains – you can keep a rotating team of more than six Pokemon at a time, and keep swapping them in and out to basically have a bigger roster you are working from. And to be fair, I ended up enjoying using a lot of Pokemon I have never used before because of this. But again, I would much rather have made that choice for myself, rather than being forced into it because the game was handing out so much EXP that the only way to maintain challenge for a lot of it was to resort to workarounds like these. Game Freak already had the perfect solution to this problems through to Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, which let you turn off the EXP Share if you didn’t want it (but left it on by default) – why not just offer players that option again?

Even with a lot of the encounters in the game being trivialized, however, the late game ones hit hard, with the Elite Four and Champion battles in particular being extremely challenging, and the post-game battles being the best NPC battles the series has seen. It’s just really a shame that so much of the good work that must have surely gone into designing these encounters has been unnecessarily compromised by this insistence on not offering players options.

There are some other problems. Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are actually the buggiest Pokemon releases we have had in a while. They aren’t anything game breakingly bad, but you’ll often see random stuff like textures not loading, or characters getting stuck in the geometry (a consequence of adding full analog movement to a grid based map without properly accounting for it, I guess), sound randomly cutting out, or even just outright crashes. The good news is, the game has a really aggressive autosave, so you never really lose a lot of progress when this does happen – it’s just a shame it happens at all. A day one patch has already made things better, but there’s still a long way to go, and hopefully ILCA and Game Freak continue patching the game, because while Pokemon games have never been paragons of good programming, they at least don’t let their messy coding get in the way of the player’s experience too much. Right now, that’s decidedly not the case, and while none of these glitches and bugs are too frustrating, that doesn’t really absolve their existence to begin with.

There are three other points I want to discuss, one extremely positive, one bafflingly negative, and one mixed. So let’s start with the negative one, because to be fair it’s also the most minor one. Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl have frustratingly patchy touch screen support. Which is almost hilarious because the original games pioneered touch input for Pokemon to begin with, but that’s where we are. Touch input is supported for the Poketch smartwatch, and in some random and arbitrary areas such as for polishing up your gym badges, or minigames such as digging out treasure in the Grand Underground. But it’s not supported for input in battles or menus, and that’s almost the whole game. 

This isn’t a major problem, but it’s baffling – why is touch screen support so inconsistent and patchy? For example, I mentioned above that minigames like digging for treasures in the Underground support touch input. But poffin cooking, on the other hand, does not. Why? Why not at least be consistent within the limited scope of touch input implementation you did decide on? It’s just so unnecessarily confusing. Again, none of this is a major issue, because touch input is at best a convenience, and you get used to its absence in like three seconds. It’s just a curious and bemusing point of interest.

"The soundtrack for Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl remixes one of the best, most atmospheric set of tunes this series has ever had expertly. Almost every remix is a slam dunk."

Far more positive, and this one is for something substantially more important, are my impressions of the soundtrack. Patched in with the massive 8GB day 1 update, the soundtrack for Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl remixes one of the best, most atmospheric set of tunes this series has ever had expertly. Almost every remix is a slam dunk. I am sure there will be some changes that some don’t like, variously; I myself am disappointed with at least two songs’ remixes – but on the whole, the music here is a resounding triumph. Plus, much like HeartGold and SoulSilver (the beloved remakes of the equally beloved Gold and Silver), these games unlock the ability to play the original soundtrack later in the game as well – for those who simply prefer the sound of the DS games over the remixes.

As positive as I am on the soundtrack, I am more mixed on how the game looks. Now to be clear, I don’t think it necessarily looks bad – it definitely looks better than it did pre-launch, and I am a fan of the chibi style aesthetic for Pokemon, particularly when done well. In Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, it can help create a real sense of place for Sinnoh as well (particularly when paired with some gorgeous and extremely detailed battle backgrounds, which always include Mount Coronet towering in the background). But at the same time, I’m not sure I’m the biggest fan of how this game has done the chibi thing. I think something like the Pokemon Let’s Go look would have been the way to go for these games. By retaining super deformed character models that are decidedly not to scale, these games end up looking weird a lot of the time – particularly when the camera makes the misguidedly confident decision to zoom in on characters for close ups in an unfounded burst of cinematic confidence. This doesn’t happen often enough, but whenever it happens, it highlights how ugly the characters look – which is perplexing because the environments look cozy and great, and the battle backgrounds are gorgeous. It’s a mixed bag, as far as the visuals go.

In spite of a lot of missteps and unforced, unnecessary errors, however, Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are excellent outings. By eschewing a lot of the modern design sensibilities the series imbibes, and hewing so faithfully and closely to the fifteen year old game often regarded to be as one of the series’ high points, they end up delivering an uncontroversial, safe, but incredibly fulfilling and compelling Pokemon adventure, the best one we’ve had in years. Perhaps there is something to be said about what it means for the Pokemon games that their best game in almost a decade is essentially an almost totally faithful 1:1 port of a fifteen year old DS game, and that’s definitely a discussion that needs to be and should be had. But this isn’t a review of the Pokemon series, it’s a review of just this one game. And this one game, by choosing to be unambitious and sticking with what has been known to work, delivers undoubtedly one of the best outings Pokemon has had in years – warts and all. May it remind Game Freak and The Pokemon Company why players fell in love with this series to begin with.

This game was reviewed on Nintendo Switch.