#9. Pokemon Platinum (NDS)
Pokemon Platinum was pretty damn good, and also much needed. It took upon the very flawed foundation of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, and fixed it- it brought a new aesthetic to those games, it fixed the games’ silly writing and storytelling the best it could (though some vestiges of Diamond and Pearl remained- the Honey plot, much to my chagrin, is still a thing), attempted to solve the issue of the distribution of wild Pokemon in the game pre Elite 4, fixed the UI, sped up movement and battles, and even added to the already pretty good post game content of Diamond and Pearl by bringing back the much vaunted Battle Frontier from Pokemon Emerald. It even added a brand new area to the game, and also became the first game in the franchise to experiment with camera angles, again a feature that would return in future installments, and be used to great effect.
In every way possible, Pokemon Platinum was an improvement, and a really damn good game. The fourth generation got a second stab at things with Pokemon Platinum, and it seized it- if you wanted to play the fourth generation of Pokemon, Platinum was, in every possible way, the way to do it. Playing Diamond and Pearl at this point is redundant because Platinum exists, and it’s great. It almost feels like Diamond and Pearl were like a beta test for the release of the final product, and that final product was Pokemon Platinum.
