YMMV / Pokémon Diamond and Pearl

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Generation IV: Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • In Platinum, you get a villa. You can buy furniture for it. When you mix records, sometimes your friends will find a TV program that is examining furniture you have. Sometimes they say that you have a "nice rack".
  • Regigigas' ability cuts its attack and speed stats in half for the first five turns it is sent out, which the game announces by stating that "Regigigas can't get it going because of its Slow Start".
• Adorkable:
  • As an NPC, Lucas has shades of this. For all his brains, he's a very laid-back character.
  • Barry, with how energetic he is.
  • Maylene's not actually certain how or why she's a Gym Leader, but she'll do her best! Between her earnest attempts to share the results of her not-always-on-topic training and her flustered responses to the companionship and kindness of others, she fits quite nicely into this trope.
  • Aaron's losing dialogue gives this impression.
• Awesome Music: A good chunk of Sinnoh's soundtrack consists of relaxing piano and smooth jazz to contrast Hoenn's majestic trumpets and horns, and many of the songs will change up a bit if you're playing at night. Special mention goes to Route 216/217, which remains a fan favorite.
• Base-Breaking Character: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Breather Boss: Though how easy they are varies slightly depending on which version you're playing, due to the drastically different teams of some Gym Leaders.
  • Byron. Pretty much all of the starters have an easy time against him, considering how they're very likely to be in their fully evolved forms by then. Torterra gets Earthquake upon evolving, Infernape just spams Close Combat/Flamethrower/Fire Blast, and while Empoleon may struggle with the Magneton that he's packing in Platinum, Surf (which you need to get to Canalave in the first place) can still KO his other Pokémon easily.
  • Candice, due to being the Ice-type Gym Leader, especially in Diamond and Pearl (even if she has a Medicham for some reason, but it's extremely frail, so it'll only be a problem if whatever you're trying to beat her with only Fighting attacks). In Platinum, she's a little bit harder however, due to her very fragile Snover being replaced by a bulkier mon (at least physically), Piloswine, who can hit you hard with Earthquake if you don't KO it in one hit. Her Abomasnow has her moveset reworked so she can hit Steel types reliably with Focus Blast (she also gets Water Pulse to hit Fire types, though a Fire type still won't have any trouble KO it) and her Medicham is removed in favor of her new ace Froslass : if Abomasnow came before her (which is probable), Froslass will be very hard to hit due to her ability Snow Cloak and it will only get worse after she stacks up Double Team.
  • Nothing on Volkner's team is really threatening in any of the games, though he's slightly harder in Diamond and Pearl by virtue of having 2 Pokémon that aren't Electric-types. This is especially easy with a Torterra who can just spam Earthquake to win, provided it's fast enough to outspeed his Luxray that knows Ice Fang.
  • Elite Four Member Aaron has 2 Crutch Characters on his team and is pretty much an auto-win for the player. He's slightly less so in Platinum since they've been replaced with 2 legitimately threatening Mons that can also take a hit, though he's definitely still the easiest Elite 4 member since Bug has so many common weaknesses.
  • Elite Four Member Flint was this in Diamond and Pearl. He has only two fire Pokémon - and while people often praise this good design in that you can't knock him out with just one Pokémon, a good Ground type or even a Rock/Ground type can easily take out 4/5 of his Pokémon without super-effective damage multipliers, with only Drifblim or Infernape standing as possible obstacles. Even though Rapidash has Solarbeam, it takes two turns to set up (Even with the Sunny Day combo) which gives one plenty of time to knock it out, and Flint ordinarily tries to make it use Bounce.
• Broken Base: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Who could have possibly predicted that the strange man who talks about how conflict has ruined the world and how they find this deplorable, is the leader of the local criminal organization that wants to replace the current universe with their ideal vision? To be fair, this is somewhat mitigated by it not being treated as a dramatic plot twist, and Platinum averts it by his very first appearance making it clear that he has plans for the Lake Trio.
• Casual-Competitive Conflict: The release of Diamond and Pearl caused this to go into full swing, as TPCI started doing the VGC (Video Game Championship) Tournaments on a consistent basis from then on. This indirectly also caused Smogon's ruleset to get more exposure, as more people started getting into the competitive scene and were directed there.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • These games are the ones that introduced the move Stealth Rock into the metagame. In competitive battling, it's almost required that you have both a Pokémon who can set up Stealth Rock and a Pokémon who can remove it with Rapid Spin (when your opponent inevitably does get it up).
  • These games have garnered a reputation for several design decisions leading to many fans using near-identical playthrough teams. The most infamous example being choosing Chimchar as the starter since there are a severe lack of Fire-types in Diamond and Pearl, Bronzor are incredibly common Stone Walls used by NPCs that are only weak to Fire, and Chimchar is arguably one of the best Pokémon in the game anyway. Other popular choices include Staraptor, Luxray, Roserade, and Floatzel (all evolved from Com Mons and who remain useful throughout the game), Lucario (a very versatile gift Pokémon), and Garchomp (a pseudo-legendary that averts its brethren's Late Character Syndrome by being found relatively early in Platinum and evolving at comparatively low levels). The rest of the roster were occupied with legendaries, mythicals, evolutions of Pokémon not catchable in the region, staples that appeared in every regional dex since Generation I, and Junk Rare species.
• Contested Sequel:
  • While Gen III was the most neglected generation (and has become quite popular over time), Gen IV is the most controversial. It is frequently labelled as the best generation, and nearly just as often, labelled the absolute worst. Some fans love the improvements to competitive battling, the many powerful evolutions to oft-forgotten older Pokémon, and deep lore. Others hate the overabundance of the aforementioned evolutions and legendaries (with many of such detractors lambasting the former group of Pokémon as unnecessary and even ruining the design of the pre-evolution), and view the adventure as slow, formulaic, tedious, and needlessly restrictive in Pokémon selection (though they might have a higher opinion of Platinum).
  • Gen IV is where competitive gaming really started to hit its stride, with the massive number of TMs and tutor moves, several items that would be impractical in casual play (ex. Choice Specs and Scarf, EV-gain enhancing Power items), the Physical/Special split, and evolutions for many neglected Pokémon. The more casual players, however, weren't so pleased with the lack of innovation to regular gameplay, the aforementioned evolutions to old Pokémon (though they've been received much more positively as time passed), the large number of legendaries viewed as dulling the concept (though Sinnoh's theme was mythology), and (more so in Diamond and Pearl than in Platinum) the poor frame rate slowing down the adventure.
• Crack Pairing: Dawn/Thorton has a small but very dedicated following, at least within the Japanese fanbase.
  • Likewise, internationally Dawn/Cynthia has a small but dedicated fanbase.
• Creepy Awesome: Giratina in Platinum only appears near the end of the game, but boy does it make its scene count, by dragging Cyrus in a nightmarish-shadowy fashion into the Distortion World, its incredibly serene yet unsettling home. On top of a deafening scream of a cry, it is agreed that Giratina is one of the most amazingly-unsettling Pokémon ever.
• Critical Dissonance: They are the highest-selling Pokémon DS games and have received glowing reviews from critics, yet a sizable portion of the fandom views them the worst games in the franchise (though Platinum tends to get better reception).
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Ace Trainers. In these games, the National Dex requirements make their teams unpredictable without a guide since they will have powerful Pokémon in order to allow you to see every one in the Sinnoh Dex.
  • Wild Graveler, especially in the already-tough Victory Road. If they decide to use Explosion, chances are they'll OHKO your Pokémon, which is very bad if you're doing a Nuzlocke.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: A large portion of the fandom sees Barry as having ADHD, due him being impulsive, easily distracted, incredibly impatient, and hyperactive, among other things.
• Difficulty Spike: The Elite Four and Champion are much harder compared to the eight Sinnoh Gym Leaders, due to a sizable level difference between them and the trainers in Victory Road which may leave your team under-leveled if you didn't do any Level Grinding. Platinum fixes this somewhat by lowering their levels.
• Disappointing Last Level: After the interesting battles with Team Galactic, Cyrus, and the version legendary, you go back to the same old Pokémon Excuse Plot of collecting badges (well, one badge) and fighting the Elite Four. Along with Forced Level-Grinding, one of the worst Victory Roads in the series, and the hardest Champion battle.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: See here.
• Epileptic Trees: Following the debut of the Ultra Beasts in Pokémon Sun and Moon, many fans have theorized that the similarly extradimensional and eldritch-looking Dialga, Palkia, Giratina, and Arceus are connected in some way to them and/or Ultra Space. In Pokémon Legends: Arceus, the player character and Ingo are displaced in time by Arceus's powers, not unlike the Fallers such as Looker and Anabel (albeit across time rather than across dimensions), though the connection remains unclear.
• Evil Is Cool: Cyrus may be a complete lunatic, but some still find him to be badass, especially in Platinum.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Abomasnow is sometimes called Obamasnow due to the similar sounding names.
  • The Rotom forms all have their own names pertaining to their appliances: Rotom-H for Heat Rotom, Rotom-W for Wash Rotom, Rotom-F for Frost Rotom, Rotom-S (for Spin, the form's name in Japan) for Fan Rotom, and finally Rotom-C (for Cut, the Japanese name again) for Mow Rotom. Mow Rotom also gets called "Mowtom" occasionally.
  • "Eruptran" is used to refer to the special Heatran that came with the move Eruption, which it cannot otherwise learn.
  • Giratina's forms are known as Giratina-A for the Altered Forme that first appears in Diamond and Pearl and Giratina-O for the Origin Forme that debuts in Platinum.
  • Shaymin's Sky Forme is called Skymin or Shaymin-S.
  • An Arceus not holding any of the Elemental Plates (thus making it Normal-type) and using the move Extreme Speed (usually with Swords Dance) is known as "Extreme Killer" or "E-Killer" Arceus. The name comes from how powerful STAB-boosted Extreme Speed is coming of of Arceus' high Attack stat, especially if it's boosted. Some Arceus forms get names that are portmanteaus of their type + Arceus, such as Eleceus, Darkceus, Grasseus, and Ghostceus.
• Fandom Rivalry: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Fandom-Specific Plot: These games introduced a number of Cosmic Horror motifs, with Eldritch Abominations^note Giratina, Darkrai, and according to their spooky legends the Lake Trio and Eldritch Locations^note Turnback Cave and the Distortion World alike. A good portion of the fans toy with the horror tropes to create Darker and Edgier fan works—it's not uncommon to see Lucas or Dawn in A Darker Me phase.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Team Galactic has this weird Atom Punk theme with their costumes and hair that looks so out place because no one else in the game dresses like that. Not helping Team Galactic's case is the fact that they frequently get called out on their fashion sense in-game. Several NPCs call them "space men", and a particularly humorous example occurs when Rowan includes it in his "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
• Franchise Original Sin: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Fridge Brilliance: Has own page here.
• Genius Bonus: Empoleon ("Emperte" in Japan) is not merely named after Napoléon Bonaparte, it's the same height, too.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • The wild Pelipper on Route 223 can waste quite a bit of your time if you're unlucky (and/or not carrying any Rock- or Electric-type moves), as they come equipped with Roost and Protect to stall out the encounter, as well as Stockpile to buff their defense.
  • Houndour can be a pain in the rear to catch in Platinum. They know Roar, which when used on you by a wild Pokémon, immediately ends the battle.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • If a Pokémon attacks with a move that has had its accuracy increased to 100% via No Guard or weather (for Thunder and Blizzard), there is a chance about equal to the amount accuracy has been boosted that Protect will be bypassed (exact percentages are unknown, but moves that are already Always Accurate Attacks like Aerial Ace will never bypass). Fixed in Platinum.
  • If you avoid the game-breaking part of it, the Acid Rain glitch. It makes every weather active at once, causing everything to take damage four times per turn from the Sandstorm + Hail combination even if they are immune to one of them, makes Pokémon with weather-dependent healing abilities like Ice Body heal four times per turn instead, allows for 100% Thunders and Blizzards, and ignores SolarBeam's charge turn while also cutting its power in half.
  • The Mimic Glitch in the Japanese versions of Diamond and Pearl lets you get any move on any Pokémon capable of learning Mimic.
  • If a Pokémon with a Choice item uses Pursuit on a target that's switching out in the Japanese version of Diamond and Pearl, the Pursuit user is allowed to switch their move.
  • The Surf Glitch in the Japanese version allows you to Surf in Elite Four Aaron's room due to an oversight. While Surfing on solid ground is hilarious on its own, this glitch has a practical purpose; it lets you get Darkrai and Shaymin without needing their special distribution item. You do this by surfing through the void to reach their overworld locations of Newmoon Island or the Flower Paradise and keeping track of your location via the pedometer app on the Pokétch.
    • The Tweaking Glitch also allows for void travel. The game world is made up of 32x32-step chunks, bisected by loading lines that load chunks ahead of you and unload ones behind you when crossed. However, crossing load lines too quickly (using, say, the bicycle) can cause the game to load chunks incorrectly, allowing you to "enter" a door from the wrong direction and walk into the void.
  • You can fight a normal trainer instead of Tower Tycoon Palmer for the first streak of 20 in the Battle Tower, though the trainer will still use Palmer's party of Mons and they'll only give 1 BP instead of 20. This can be done by selecting the "Rest" option, then "No" instead of "Keep Going" just before the fight.
  • It's possible to ignore the "6 Mons every 24 hours" restriction of the Pal Park by tricking the game with another Gen III cart.
  • Fire Fang hits through Wonder Guard due to an oversight. There is no legal way to abuse this though, as only Shedinja has Wonder Guard without hacks and it's already weak to fire attacks.
  • Every use of the move Facade will cause the user's sprite to move up one pixel, eventually causing it to disconnect from the lower part of the screen.
  • You could use the GTS to force evolution of trade-evolving Pokémon. After placing the Mon (and any item required for the evolution) in the GTS for trade, you trade for something else and retrieve the first one. They will have evolved when you get them back. The shut down of all the Gen IV and V online servers makes this impossible nowadays.
  • The Rage glitch can get Ditto to permanently learn any move that an opponent's Mon has long as they've used Rage, which lets it pass down any eligible Egg move when breeding with a female of any species and lets it get Super Ribbons.
  • Generation IV in general has an exploit where, if the player has a certain Trainer ID and Secret ID, they can run a Pokémon with the Cute Charm Ability up front, and encounter a Shiny Pokémon 21.34% of the time. For comparison, the nominal random encounter Shiny odds are 1 in every 8,192 encounters!
• Growing the Beard:
  • This is the Generation that introduced the Physical/Special split, which is considered one of, if not the, most important additions in the franchise's history and allowed a ton of Pokémon to become more useful since they could use STAB attacks that worked off their better attacking stat. This is most notable for Dark-types, since almost all of them were physical attackers, but their STAB attacks were all special before the split, gimping their ability to deal with the Psychic-types they were meant to handle.
  • In general, Gen IV is when the metagame began to present much more diverse strategies. The Physical/Special split gave many Pokémon more options to choose from, as Smogon, during the previous three generations, would generally give most Pokémon one or two suggestions for a movepool, while most now have several. The selection of moves was greatly expanded because of the TM list increasing from 50 to 92 and the number of moves that a Move Tutor could teach was much higher than before (look at a Pokémon's moveset from Gens I-III, then compare it to the Gen IV moveset). Types noted for a lack of good moves received redemption during this generation, like Bullet Punch and Iron Head for Steel-types, Wood Hammer, Energy Ball, and Leaf Storm for Grass-types, or X-Scissor and U-Turn for Bug-types. Lastly, there were more competitively viable hold items; the stall-oriented Gen II metagame only used Leftovers, and Gen III saw some use with the Choice Band and stat-increasing Berries consumed at low HP. Gen IV introduced the Choice Specs, Choice Scarf, Expert Belt, Focus Sash, Toxic/Flame Orb (to take advantage of Facade and abilities that activate from Status Effects), and Berries that weaken types (ex. giving Garchomp a Yache Berry to weaken Ice-type attacks or Gyarados a Wacan Berry to weaken Electric-type attacks).
  • This Generation was the first in the series to have real online support, a huge game changer in how other players can interact with each other. Rather then having to know people who also played the games to help you collect and battle (or buying several systems and games for yourself), you now can trade and battle with others through the internet (provided that you had access to decent Wifi).
• Harsher in Hindsight: Considering Cyllene and Volo's roles in Pokémon Legends: Arceus, history would repeat itself with their modern look-alikes, and they would play opposite roles come a century or so later.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Giratina banishing Cyrus to the Distortion World in Platinum can be seen more altruistically after events in Pokémon Legends: Arceus where it turned over a new leaf to protect the world after the trainer stopped its plans to get revenge on Arceus, showing that even centuries later, it still honors its promise and memories to the trainer that humbled it. Given that Volo and Cyrus share similar motives, it can even be seen as soundly rejecting the plan it previously fell for. In addition, its behavior towards the player makes more sense when you find out Dawn or Lucas bore similarities to their previous trainer, and even accepts the player's decision should you capture, defeat, or run from it.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Check the main page.
• Ho Yay: Lucas/Barry, due to Jasmine's comments on how close the player and rival are remaining unchanged regardless of gender.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • Fans are disappointed that the Sinnoh Victory Road is too similar to Hoenn's, from the layout down to the absurd number of HM requirement despite how far away the regions are from each other.^ExplanationHoenn is supposed to be more tropical (or at least temperate) while Sinnoh is a lot colder. Do note that Hoenn and Sinnoh are supposed to contrast each other in many ways. It doesn't help that the VS Seeker does not work in caves, so grinding levels are made more difficult due to the underleveled Pokémon and having to waste a slot in your team just to smash some rocks.
  • Gen IV in general has gotten this reaction. While competitive battling greatly diversified (detailed above in Growing the Beard), regular gameplay isn't much different from before. One of the main reasons that future generations haven't been as polarizing is the amount of innovation.
  • It was already visible in Gens II and III, but Gen IV was when some players were finally growing tired of the same select group of Pokémon returning each generation. If you're in a cave, you're once again running into Geodude, Zubat, and Onix. If you're fishing, you'll be fishing up Magikarp and Goldeen again. If you're surfing, its Tentacool that infests the water again. The following Black and White games only using Gen V Pokémon finally broke these traditions.
• It Was His Sled: In the original games, the player isn't outright told that Cynthia is the Champion before you fight her. However, as she has since become one of the franchise's most iconic human characters, most new players will already know this going in.
• Junk Rare: See the series' sub-page here.
• Just Here for Godzilla: The Legendaries of this generation, particularly the Creation trio and Darkrai, are well-loved by the fanbase, even Regigigas to a degree. However, most of the new non-Legendary Pokémon suffered from poor stats, except for a few such as Lucario, Garchomp, and the previous-gen evolutions.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Dawn has more ships in her navy than any other female player character in the franchise.
• Memetic Badass:
  • For some reason, Bidoof. It's weak, doesn't have anything that has it stand out from the Rattata clones like Zigzagoon does, and its evolution is hideous. Despite this, it's treated as being on par with things like Arceus, Primal Groudon, Mega Rayquaza, and Necrozma Dusk Mane in terms of power. This is likely due in part to Bidoof getting Moody as its hidden ability from Generation V onward, which proved to be so hideously busted that Smogon seriously entertained the idea of banning Bidoof because of it ultimately banning the ability altogether instead as no matter the Pokemon it was always broken.
  • Cynthia was already quite a powerful trainer and a tough boss battle, but fans like to hype up her skill even further, spawning jokes about how her iconic encounter theme alone is enough to send seasoned players into fits of terror (especially her later surprise encounter in Undella Town) or how it's impossible to find a version of her theme without the low-health jingle because of her Garchomp effortlessly demolishing everything.
    "That thing was made by Satan himself, and I'm sure even HE fears what he has created!"
  • Purugly is this mainly because no one is able to understand why a Pokémon based on a fat cat was given a blazing 112 speed stat. This plays a huge part as to why Mars' Purugly makes for a really tough early fight at the Valley Windworks.
• Memetic Loser:
  • The male player character Lucas has been hit with this reputation by the few fans who actually remember he exists. Due to his Distaff Counterpart Dawn becoming a Breakout Character, fans have relegated Lucas to be Rowan's assistant, whose role isn't that large and often requires the player to bail them out of trouble, by default. His conspicuous absence in most Sinnoh-related media after Generation IV, most notoriously in Pokémon Generations which has otherwise featured only male player protagonists, has caused Lucas to be depicted by fans as the Sinnoh outcast, forgotten by Game Freak and stuck in Dawn's shadow forever. This perception only grew stronger when he failed to appear alongside Barry and Dawn for the first two years of Pokémon Masters, only becoming a playable character with a Dialga by January 2022... and still being depicted as Rowan's assistant.
  • Finneon and Lumineon have become the poster children for overshadowed or otherwise forgettable Pokémon. Ironically, this reputation has given them some degree of notability.
  • While Rotom and most of its forms are respected by players, its Fan form is seen as a complete joke. It already wasn't great in these games, due to its Air Slash attack being much weaker than the other forms' exclusive moves, but when future generations and the remakes gave the forms new typings, Rotom-Fan became Electric/Flying, giving it an immunity to Ground moves... while keeping its Levitate ability, which makes it immune to Ground moves. Fans like to joke about giving it an Air Balloon to hold for three layers of Ground immunity.
  • Regigigas is infamous for being one of the weakest Legendaries in the entire series, if not the absolute weakest. On paper, it seems like an imposing Pokémon, with its gargantuan Attack stat and good defenses and speed... and then you notice its Slow Start ability, which halves its attack and speed for the first 5 turns it's on the field. It may become a legitimate threat if it's able to stay on the field for 5 turns, but no opponent with an IQ above room temperature will let Regigigas get that opportunity, so it's essentially stuck with those awful stats for the entire battle. Fans like to make fun of Regigigas for the huge power discrepancy between its lore and its in-game performance, as this behemoth which towed the continents will struggle to knock out foes faster than Bibarel. Even Game Freak themselves seem to be in on the joke — in Platinum, Regigigas is encountered at level 1, and in Pokémon Legends: Arceus, where abilities aren't a game mechanic, it's still stuck with Slow Start. Fortunately, Pokémon GO threw it a bone by not implementing Slow Start and giving it the powerful Giga Impact, making it usable for the first time in its existence.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • In some areas of the internet, especially in Japan, many people have joked about Flint's resemblance to Ronald McDonald.
  • Some fans noted how Volkner looked like Minato and made jokes about it.
  • Bibarel and Justin Bieber have such similar names that jokes have abounded.
  • "Delelelele-whooooop!"^ExplanationA fan onomatopoeia for Kricketune's cry, which became popular to quote among fans due to said cry's memorably silly nature.
  • Spiritomb's "Onmiooon" cry in the Japanese fandom, for how it meshes with the beginning of Cynthia's battle theme (as she'll likely be the first time the average player sees it).
  • Blissey dying^ExplanationDiamond and Pearl runs at half the framerate of its predecessors, HP is raised and lowered in increments of one point per frame, and Blissey has the highest base HP state of any Pokémon in the game. The combination of all this resulted in the sight of KO-ing a Blissey at full health (especially at level 100 and with a maxed-out HP stat) becoming jokingly held up as The Dreaded among fans for how slow the process is.
  • The Route 209 music often gets people to start singing (or writing) the lyrics to Green Day's 21 Guns, because the opening notes have a motif similar to the latter's chorus, and because the lyrics are the opposite of what you'd expect from a Pokémon song.
• Memetic Troll: Mindy is an NPC who'll trade Pokémon with you: your Medicham for her Haunter. Considering that Haunter needs to be traded to evolve, and that its final form Gengar is a powerful Pokémon, this seems like a good trade... until you perform it, and discover that the Haunter is holding an Everstone, which prevents it from evolving. Because Mindy's dialogue after the trade sounds like she's taunting you over falling for this trick, the fans like to depict her as a troll.
• Moral Event Horizon: Cyrus' entire plan and the measures he takes to accomplish it, all Jerkass Woobie traits aside. Charon's plan for Heatran would've also qualified had it actually gotten off the ground.
• Most Wonderful Sound
  • Kricketune's violin-esque cry.
  • Staraptor's jet-like cry.
  • Bronzor's cry.
  • Giratina's cry.
  • Lumineon's cry.
• Narm: The Galactic Grunt in Celestic Town who plans to blow up the town because, in his opinion, there is nothing important there. When the player intervenes, he "threatens" them by saying, "If you try to mess with me, I'll shut you down with a Pokémon battle". If the Grunt in question was trying to sound scary, he failed miserably.
• Not Badass Enough for Fans: Barry is often percieved as not as badass as Blue or Silver... despite having his highest leveled Pokémon being Level 85, and having temporarily dethroned Red for the strongest trainer in the games, something of which Blue and Silver never even came close to doing the last time they were seen in Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen and Pokémon Gold and Silver respectively. Blue's highest leveled mon is 75 in the former, and Silver's highest leveled mon is 50 in the latter. Even taking into account Pokemon Heart Gold And Soul Silver, Silver is still a good 20 levels lower than Barry by virtue of all of his mons capping at Level 60. Even to this very day, after 4 generations more worth of games and rivals, Barry's team is still the strongest leveled rival team in the entire core series games. This could be attributed to the reputation of Friendly Rival characters being perceived as "weaklings" and completely ignores the actual power of Barry's teams in comparison to the allegedly badass Blue or Silver or that Barry does not make much contribution to the main plot, losing a fight against Team Galactic offscreen.
• Obvious Judas: In Diamond and Pearl, Cyrus' status as the leader of Team Galactic is revealed some time after getting the seventh Gym Badge. However, his two prior appearances make it pretty easy to predict that he is connected to Team Galactic before The Reveal, as his nihilistic beliefs align with the local criminal organization's plan to create a new, better world. Averted in Platinum, where he's introduced near the beginning of the game and monologues about how he plans to make time and space his.
• Older Than They Think:
  • The Physical/Special split was actually introduced in Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness for Shadow-type moves.
  • While GTS made it far much easier, the ability to trade between Japanese and Western games was added in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire.
• Player Punch: Idol Grace, one of the trainers who hangs out at the Pokémon Centers, invites you to join her fan club if you win. Sounds innocuous enough, but after she is defeated, she laments that she is singing her heart out in Snowpoint City... to a crowd of none. This in a series where "I wanna be the very best / Like no one ever was" is a de facto catchphrase.
• Popularity Polynomial:
  • As a whole, Generation IV has long been considered a polarizing generation, with one exception: competitive battling. Competitive battling prior to Generation IV was fairly linear, often with dominant strategies emerging and becoming standard, but Gen IV introduced a bevy of hold items (the type-weakness Berries, Choice Specs and Choice Scarf, Life Orb, etc.) that opened up entire new playstyles, while also finally addressing the archaic division of Special and Physical based on types rather than moves, which immediately made Pokémon like Dragonite and Sneasel more useful, as well as other changes, such as making EV training simpler and online battling. While Gen IV also introduced the infamous Scrappy Weapon Stealth Rock and blatant Game-Breaker Garchomp^note this complaint usually arises because most Gen IV players weren't around for the Gen II metagame, where Snorlax was even more of a Game-Breaker to the point that it was a mandatory inclusion on every serious team, it marked a key shift that allowed for competitive battling to blossom into its own. It also lacked the infamous weather wars that made the Gen 5 meta so hated, making it look good compared not only to what was before it, but to what came immediately afterwards.
  • As time went on, people began to consider Platinum one of the best games in the series just like its immediate successors HeartGold and SoulSilver due to its amount of content and features, along with its improved storyline from Diamond and Pearl that nonetheless wouldn't obstruct the gameplay like with later games in the series. It helps that Sinnoh is one of the most non-linear regions in the series, a concept very popular with Western gamers in particular.
  • Before Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl were officially announced in February 2021, predictably, many people started asking for Gen IV remakes after Gen III got its own, especially since there is a notable rivalry between fanbases of those two generations, and Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire actually rescued the Hoenn games from being neglected as a whole (something that struck Gen IV as of late) with the improved visuals and game mechanics of Gen VI.
  • Flint was something of a meme, being seen as somewhat of a joke character during Gen IV. Primarily because his shtick is fire type Pokémon, and he only uses two on his team - the only two you can obtain in Sinnoh (Before the postgame). He was given somewhat of an Author's Saving Throw, changing his team to be all Fire type. During The New '20s, however, people started praising Flint's Diamond and Pearl team design because he only uses two Fire-types and this supposedly gives him some coverage, even though his Platinum team was designed around using Sunny Day and Solarbeam combo (Far more than his Diamond and Pearl team, in which only Rapidash knows Solar Beam) as well as covering some other weaknesses.
  • The cross-generational evolutions were so divisive when they first came out that, aside from Sylveon, it turned off Game Freak from doing anymore for four generations which even detractors believed was excessive. When they returned in Pokémon Legends: Arceus (the Sinnoh prequels nonetheless), they were highly acclaimed. Nowadays the majority opinion is that most were very good and a few are still divisive, but worth the ones that were well received.
• Remade and Improved: Platinum makes a conscious effort to alleviate issues fans had with the original games:
  • One of the biggest criticisms of Diamond and Pearl was the fact that there were only two available Fire-types in the main Regional Dex: Chimchar, one of the starters, and Ponyta. Platinum fixes this by adding the Eevee, Magmar and Houndour lines to the main Dex.
  • Platinum lowers the unexpectedly high levels of the Elite Four, so that players wouldn't have to submit to a lot of Forced Level-Grinding. At the same time, Platinum also increases the overall leveling curve, in addition to changing up trainer locations, teams, and which gym leaders to go to first.^note For example, in Platinum, Fantina is the third gym leader as she can be fought the moment you reach Hearthome City. Whereas in Diamond and Pearl, Fantina is the fifth gym leader, as she won't fight you until after you beat Wake. This served as such to fans who felt Diamond and Pearl were too easy up until said Difficulty Spike.
  • Diamond and Pearl are somewhat notorious for having slow in-game animations, especially during battles and surfing. Platinum doesn't exactly escape this problem, but the speed of both battles and surfing were still noticeably increased.
  • Despite Diamond and Pearl introducing new evolutions and pre-evolutions for no less than two dozen previous gen Pokémon^note specifically the Lickitung, Tangela, Porygon, Eevee, Magmar, Electabuzz, Mr. Mime, Rhydon, Magnemite, Snorlax, Sudowoodo, Togepi, Murkrow, Misdreavus, Gligar, Yanma, Swinub, Sneasel, Mantine, Ralts, Nosepass, Roselia, Duskull, Chimecho, and Snorunt lines, a large number of them are unavailable until post-game and exclusive to the National Dex. Platinum fixes this by adding all the expanded families to the Regional Dex, making it so that they can be obtained during the main game.
  • Due to the limited number of Pokémon available in Diamond and Pearl, many of the Gym Leaders and Elite Four members have teams that don't really fit what their preferred types are supposed to be - even if they at least gave their Pokémon moves that fit the theme. Flint of the Elite Four, for example, is a Fire specialist, yet only two of his five Pokémon are Fire-types. This can also more often than not make them difficult to battle, since you're very likely to be unprepared for how random their Pokémon can be. Platinum, with the updated Pokédex, changes their teams to make them more appropriate and less annoying.
  • The postgame Battle Zone is given much more content, expanding the Fight Area's Battle Tower to a full-on Battle Frontier, adding daily rematches with Gym Leaders in the Survival Area, and providing a Villa to decorate and talk with NPCs in the Resort Area.
  • Some parts of the region were redesigned to look more appealing, such as the redesigning Galactic's Eterna Building from a generic interior to space-themed, or giving the Elite Four rooms based around their Type instead of the same room in a different color.
  • A minor case, but the Pokétch in Platinum now has two buttons instead of just one, making it easier to go through each app rather than having to cycle through every app like in Diamond and Pearl.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Waterfall. Prior to this generation, it was hated for being less powerful compared to Surf and being a redundant HM on a Pokémon's limited moveslots, as they're both the same type with near-identical power, and one cannot use Waterfall in the overworld without Surf, but not vice-versa. This changed when it was classified as a Physical move and has a chance to flinch, giving it a chance to diverge from Surf. While the stronger Aqua Tail exists, Waterfall is generally considered the better option for Physical Water-types due to its perfect accuracy.
  • While many of the Gen I evolutions became Base Breaking Characters and the Gen III evolutions were mostly just casually accepted, the Gen II evolutions certainly fall under this trope because most of them evolve from Junk Rares from said generation.
  • Cyrus and Team Galactic in Platinum, for many who disliked them in the initial games, have more depth to them and their storyline was added so that they come off as a lot less generic.
• Ron the Death Eater: The assistant's father is by and large a decent chap who, like his child, gives you useful items and upgrades like the EXP. Share and the Pokédex upgrade that shows sex dimorphism in Pokémon. During the postgame, however, perhaps because he's dazzled by your feats, he makes an unfavorable and unfair comment about his own child being less accomplished than the wunderkind player character, which has resulted in harsh depictions in some fanworks.
• Salvaged Story: Cyrus, and Team Galactic as a whole by extension, were criticized as being too generic and not very smart when they debuted in Diamond and Pearl. Platinum gives them more character depth and expands their role in the main storyline.
• The Scrappy: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The Pal Park only lets you migrate once per day. You can get around this by changing the DS's clock, but one should ask why Game Freak implemented the limitation in first place. They learned from that mistake in HGSS, though. Also, you must have the National Dex before you can start using it.
  • While Gen III and future games simply require you to beat the Champion to get the National Dex, these games require you to have seen every Pokémon in the Regional Dex. While it's not very difficult if you haven't been avoiding trainers and constantly spraying Repels, it still seems unnecessary, especially considering that seeing Manaphy in Platinum requires you to look in a book in the Pokémon Mansion that the game doesn't tell you about, the possibility of having to use a honey tree (a disliked mechanic in and of itself) to see something you missed like a Combee, and the inconsistent requirements between Diamond and Pearl and Platinum due to the former's iteration of the regional Dex not including every Pokémon introduced in Generation IV.
  • Marsh and Snow tiles. Every step you take in the former traps you in a tile, forcing you to tap the Control Pad every which way to free yourself. Some have tall grass, so each of these movements can trigger a wild Pokémon battle. Platinum at least distinguishes the marsh tiles that are safe to walk through, so the deep tiles are easier to avoid. Snow, unfortunately, is a mandatory obstacle that sinks you in and out of a snail's pace at random intervals, making the trek to Snowpoint quite annoying (if the nonstop hail on Routes 216 and 217 wasn't enough for you).
  • Fog. At best, it forces you to waste a move slot on your Pokémon in a game already infamous for requiring too many HMs to traverse (and since it is an HM, getting rid of it once you have no more need for it is a hassle). At worst, it is an absolutely infuriating mechanic that makes routes difficult to traverse and battles won or lost by sheer dumb luck, as Fog reduces the accuracy of all moves by 50% (and seemingly never affects the enemy AI). This is especially bad for speedrunners, where entire runs are won or lost by whether they hit enough moves through Fog or die to the cheating AI trainers.
  • Honey Trees. You slather one with honey, wait six hours (And that's six real time hours. Changing the clock on your game system won't have any effect), and a wild Pokémon appears for you to catch. It's often a Wurmple, which you don't need Honey Trees to find, unlike every other Pokémon that can appear. If you're not satisfied with what you get, Save Scumming will only change the level, nature, gender, and IVs (though this is helpful with Burmy and Combee, as the former evolves into different Pokémon depending on gender and the latter won't evolve at all unless it's the uncommon female). There's a 10% chance that nothing will appear.
  • Poffin Cooking is needlessly complicated by the fact that you can't just stir in one direction. No, you have to go back and forth between stirring clockwise AND counter-clockwise. If that wasn't hard enough, you're not allowed to stir too fast or the mix will spill, nor can you let it settle for more than one second, or it will burn. Contrast this with Gen III Berry Blending, where all you had to do was press the A Button at the right time to increase blending speed. One more note is that Poffins made alone are vastly inferior to Pokéblocks that were made alone, indicating a forced emphasis on having friends to help you make Poffins.
  • The game's speed is overall a very disliked part of Diamond and Pearl, the most noteworthy offenders being Surfing (which is as slow as walking), saving, and health changes during battle. Platinum fixed many of them, but the games wouldn't become fast again until the following generation.
  • Trying to win the Master Rank in the Sinnoh Pokémon Contests is completely unfair and annoying because you will lose if you don't get a near perfect score. And the reason why it's so hard to get a near perfect score is because of the mandatory use of accessories for the dress-up round: You can still lose despite raising a Pokémon to maximum condition and doing well in both the dance round and the talent round because you didn't make a good ensemble for your Pokémon by using the correct type of accessories for the specified theme. One last sticking point is that the theme for the dress-up round is picked at random, meaning that the accessories that were good for one theme may end up being useless for a different theme.
• Scrappy Weapon: In both gameplay and competitive battles, the HM move Defog. In-game, it's used to remove fog (a field effect that lowers the accuracy of nearly every move used in battle) in the field in addition to lowering the opponent's evasion by one stage. The fog itself is viewed as a totally unnecessary and frustrating weather effect designed to waste a valuable move space on your Flying-type or Pokémon with wing-like appendages for the sake of having an even number of HMs. Besides, most Flying-type Pokémon can learn Aerial Ace to bypass the fog's effect. It can remove the target's Light Screen/Reflect, but it will also remove entry hazards that you placed, making it counterproductive in competitive singles (where entry hazards are extremely important). It was eventually salvaged in X and Y when it was made so that it removes entry hazards on the user's side as well, making it a competitive staple since it can't be blocked like Rapid Spin.
• Self-Fanservice: Cynthia really isn't all that curvy, even in the remakes, due to the games' general art style. Fan artists would really want you to believe otherwise.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: The post-game battle facilities. Previously, you had to make sure that all your Pokémon were at the same level (the NPCs' levels would be the same as the strongest Pokémon in your team, similar to the Stadium games), and this level had to be above the base level for all NPCs, 60. Now, you simply have to get them to at least Lv. 50, and the game will bring down any higher leveled Pokémon. The Frontier has been reduced from 7 facilities to 5, none of which have gimmicks anywhere near as frustrating as in Emerald, like the Battle Palace shunning player input so the Pokémon can attack based on their Natures, or the Battle Pyramid's Blackout Basement.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: This is the point when NPCs really started taking advantage of TMs, Tutor moves, and Egg moves. Combined with the highest level curve since Gen I (which had poor AI and generally restricted move pools to naturally learned moves), Gen IV proved to be quite the challenge.
  • While the postgame Battle Frontier is overall easier than in Emerald, the Battle Factory is harder, requiring 49 straight victories for the Gold Print instead of 42. The power creep since Generation III also means it's more likely for your ragtag team of rentals to get steamrolled by the wrong opponent.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer:
  • As with every other pre-Gen V game in the series, there's a casino. And whenever that happens, you end up spending hours on end trying to get the grand prize.
  • The elusive Feebas, a major cause of people getting sidetracked, is in the basement of Mt. Coronet, which also happens to be where Cyrus plans to unleash Palkia and/or Dialga on Sinnoh. Don't worry, Team Galactic will wait until after you're done hunting down a rare fish before they try to destroy the world.
  • The Underground is a minor version of this compared to the casino. This place provides several useful items such as Evolutionary Stones, Fossils, the occasional Shard or Heart Scale, along with Shop Fodder you can sell for easy money. You tend to forget you were supposed to be level grinding for the badges when you were having a lucky streak of harvesting the rarer items.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Byron/Palmer is surprisingly popular despite the two having no interaction, possibly because they're both fathers and appear to be a similar age.
• Signature Scene: The Distortion World, where the player meets Giratina in Platinum. Between the Nightmare Fuel of Giratina soaring around with its screeching cry, the absolute lack of any life whatsoever in the area besides yourself, Cynthia, Cyrus, the Lake Guardians, and Giratina, surfing up a waterfall only for gravity to shift and have you going down again, and finally the very disturbing implications of what the place truly is, it's the single most memorable confrontation with a version mascot in Pokémon history.
• Surprise Difficulty:
  • Because the original Sinnoh Regional Pokédex, well... sucked, Candice, Volkner (the last two Gym Leaders) and Flint (one of the Elite Four) didn't have enough of their preferred types (Ice, Electric, and Fire respectively) to use so they substituted other types, making them harder to sweep with a single Pokémon that knows a super-effective move. This is most notable with Volkner and Flint; for each one, half of the Pokémon on their teams don't follow their preferred typing. The electric trainer Volkner has an Octillery and an Ambipom, while Flint's got a Steelix, Drifblim, and Lopunny. Some of these Pokémon are put there to combat the common killers of their favorite types (Octillery beats Ground Pokémon and Steelix beats Rock Pokémon).
  • Combined a bit with Sequel Difficulty Spike, there are a few prevailing complaints about how the Sinnoh region's layout necessitating quite a bit of region-hopping and backtracking throughout Diamond and Pearl's adventure caused some serious frustrations in young, first-time Pokémon players.^{To elaborate}Right off the bat, the game goes from sending you east of Jubilife to Oreburgh, through the interconnecting tunnel, for the first Gym Badge, only to then make you backtrack to Jubilife, essentially going out of your way, to go to the next Gym, since you can't get to Eterna City the direct route north of Oreburgh without a bicycle, which you can only get in Eterna City. And this is a more tame example. The Hearthome-Solaceon-Veilstone-Pastoria loop is another. Then there's trying to find your way to Snowpoint through Mt. Coronet, assuming you know to go there in the first place to do so. The mandatory Strength HM being in the Lost Tower, a location you are expected to go to simply out of the adventurous spirit of a Trainer that you possess, but that you are otherwise not railroaded into doing so, was another cause of frustration for these young newcomers. That it is mandatory likely wouldn't become apparent until after you found yourself stuck in front of a big rock with seemingly nowhere else to go, at which point most newcomers likely wouldn't even know that Strength is required to bypass the obstacle, let alone where to find the HM. Complaints from these frustrations are sometimes attributed to Platinum and beyond's linearity boost of their main adventures.^{For Example}Though the Jubilife-to-Oreburgh-back to Jubilife-to Eterna portion remained, the game becomes more streamlined at Hearthome. You are made to face Fantina right when you arrive as opposed to when you return, and are then railroaded to Veilstone then Pastoria, through Solaceon and the now completely optional Lost Tower in between, in that order, with the side effect of making the Pastoria to Hearthome route redundant and optional. Furthermore, not only is the way to Snowpoint pointed out more clearly than before, but the once optional Iron Island sub-quest was made mandatory, with you gifted the Strength HM at its beginning. Similarly, the general Surprise Difficulty in Cynthia's team, Region Champion or no, may be considered a possible contributing factor for anyone who finds later games' regions' end-game foes to be easier than they would prefer.^{In relation to Platinum}The expanded Pokédex that allowed the Gym Leaders and Elite Four to have more type-appropriate teams also generally made them weaker, though they improvised better counters to Pokémon they are weak against. Also, Cynthia, while still a challenge, had her team's levels lowered, which made her a bit more manageable.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The music that plays when you encounter sailor-class trainers sounds quite like Misoji Misaki.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Barry's Heroic BSoD after failing to save Uxie from being kidnapped. "I have to get tougher. It's not just about being the strongest trainer anymore..."
  • Hearing Cyrus' past from his grandfather in Platinum. Especially considering what it's shaped him into.
  • In the Lost Tower, you may encounter Roughneck Kirby. His only Pokémon is a Cleffa, a definite change from what Roughnecks are known to use (and an initial source of amusement). Then Kirby states before the battle that the rest of his Pokémon were killed by Team Galactic. That Cleffa he has? It's the only one he has left.
• That One Attack:
  • Stealth Rock creates a permanent stage hazard that can only be removed with Rapid Spin. It reduces a Pokémon's health upon entry, dealing 25% of damage if it happens to be weak to Rock, or 50% if it has a double weakness.
  • Outrage was buffed in these games from base 90 power to base 120, and it was also made physical, giving physically-attacking monsters like Dragonite, Salamence, and Garchomp a ludricrously powerful attack to use to flatten anything that isn't a Steel-type. It may lock the user into it for 2-3 turns and inflict confusion on them at the end, but that's a small price to pay for such destructive power. This attack was arguably one of the main reasons for the Fairy-type being introduced two generations down the road.
• That One Boss:
  • Your first encounters with Mars at Valley Windworks and Jupiter at the Eterna Galactic Building. For being two of the first Team Galactic commanders you'll face early on your journey, they're a pain to deal with due to the fact that they both have strong Pokémon at levels they shouldn't even have evolved at yet:
    • Mars' signature Mon is a Purugly with pretty good offenses and surprisingly high Speed, and being a Normal-type, its only weakness is the Fighting-type that will have weak attacks at the time. ^note Machop can be captured on Route 207, just before the first gym, but the only Fighting-type move it'll have then is the middling Karate Chop. Alternatively, if you picked Chimchar as your starter, it can learn Rock Smash via HM and Mach Punch via evolving into Monferno at level 14, but both moves are weak on their own (though the latter move is slightly more reliable since it always goes first, which helps bypass Purugly's high Speed).
    • Meanwhile, Jupiter's signature is the Poison/Dark-type Skuntank; it has Screech to harshly lower Defense, Poison Gas to afflict Poison, Smokescreen to lower accuracy, and Night Slash which works off its high Attack. Its typing also means that its only weakness are Ground-types which will be too unreliable at that point. ^note The only Ground-type Pokémon that can even remotely stand a chance against Skuntank at the time is Geodude, who learns Magnitude at level 19. However, its power level is unpredictable, making the battle rather luck-based.
  • Fantina's Pokémon know a variety of Psychic-type moves and plenty of STAB Ghost-type moves to take advantage of. What makes her difficult is the lack of reliable Ghost and/or Dark-type Mons that will be available at that point in the game. It's worse in Platinum since she's fought much sooner.
  • The battle with Cyrus at either Spear Pillar (Diamond/Pearl) or the Distortion World (Platinum) is MUCH harder than the previous battles against him. His Gyarados has high attack and knows the move Earthquake to deal with Electric-types, the only Pokémon type that it has a true advantage against. His Crobat is fast, knows Confuse Ray, its Air Slash can cause flinching, and can poison your team via Toxic. Honchkrow has a wide movepool, which is changed in Platinum to cause some Damn You, Muscle Memory!. Weavile is his strongest Mon, having high attack and speed and a strong offensive movepool. Platinum ups it by giving Cyrus a Houndoom, who exploits its high Special Attack with moves like Flamethrower and Dark Pulse. Houndoom also has Thunder Fang should you decide to use a Water-type against it. Lastly, should you lose, you'll have to trek all the way through Mt. Coronet again.
  • Cynthia is the most difficult boss in the game, and one of the most difficult bosses in the whole series. The first Mon she releases is a Spiritomb, which didn't have any weaknesses until Gen 6 introduced the Fairy-type. Her Roserade has a movepool that consists entirely of Special moves that take advantage of its high Special Attack, in addition to having Shadow Ball should you use a Psychic-type Mon against it. Lucario knows Earthquake to take out Fire-types and Psychic to take out Fighting-types. Milotic has Ice Beam to counter Grass-types and knows Mirror Coat to counter Special moves. Lastly, she has Garchomp, a Lightning Bruiser which has a wide movepool to combat its potential weaknesses. Also, depending on which version you have, Cynthia will have a Gastrodon (Diamond/Pearl) or a Togekiss (Platinum). Gastrodon is probably the least of your worries, though being a Water/Ground-type, its only weakness are Grass-types and it knows Sludge Bomb to counter them. Meanwhile, Togekiss has fairly high Special Attack and knows Water Pulse to combat Rock-types. And all of this in addition to the fact that examining the game data reveals that her Pokémon have maximum IVs and good EVs, making them even more powerful than most by default.
• That One Level: The trek to Snowpoint City requires going through Routes 216 and 217, a tedious set of routes covered in snow. They are constantly bombarded by perpetual hail that gradually whittles down the HP of any non-Ice Pokémon, and the snow sinks you in and out of a snail's pace at sporadic intervals. At least the music's nice.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: In the European Platinum versions, you can't play the slot machines in the game corner and have to gather some coins from them once a day. This also means the only way to get the Explosion TM without trading or cheating is to hope the attendant randomly decides to give you one.
• Tough Act to Follow:
  • Not the games themselves, but a specific Pokémon example in Lucario. It is regarded as a really well-handled, well-promoted Pokémon. Game Freak have tried a few times to promote certain Pokémon (usually anthropomorphic Pokémon with gimmicky abilities such as Zoroark, Greninja, Decidueye, Lycanroc and Toxtricity) the same way as Lucario, but while some of them have been popular Pokémon in their own rights, none of them have been able to reach Lucario's popularity status aside from Greninja, with their promotions usually fading away after a few months.
  • Like Steven Stone from Generation III, Cynthia sets the standard for the regional Champions for the subsequent games due to her sheer amount of popularity among fans. Cynthia has become one of the most, if not the most popular Champion in the series for having a diverse and well-balanced team that is widely regarded as one of the hardest boss fights in the entire series, a likeable personality, being the first female NPC Champion in the series, and having an active role in the story in Platinum. Due to Cynthia's reputation as one of the most challenging bosses in the entire series, players who find the Champion battles in later games easier than they would prefer often compare them unfavorably to Cynthia.
• Trolling Creator: Someone on the development team definitely thought it was a funny joke to hype up players with an in-game trade for a Haunter that could potentially evolve into Gengar only for it to turn out that the Haunter can't evolve due to it holding an Everstone. The NPC's dialogue after the trade even comes off like she's taunting the player for pulling off such a stunt. Even worse is that players have found out that it's impossible for players to troll other players with Everstone trades keeping trade-evolution Pokémon from evolving as they will evolve anyway even if they're holding an Everstone.
• Unfortunate Character Design:
  • Palkia's head and shoulder pads heavily resemble male genitalia. Its Shiny version is even worse, since it's entirely pink.
  • Registeel's Diamond and Pearl sprite looks like it's giving the Nazi salute. This was fixed in Platinum as well as the non-English European Diamond and Pearl.
  • Bidoof's Platinum sprite has it looking like it broke its neck.
  • Flint's giant red afro and bright yellow shirt have drawn more than a few comparisons to Ronald McDonald.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The game's translator was a member of Something Awful, and the English version of the game contains chatspeak terms such as "noob" and "getting owned" that were commonplace in 2007. It's somewhat amusing that this dated dialogue was retained in the remake.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • On the male side of things, both Saturn and Lucian have been confused for girls due of their fairly feminine faces. Not helped that the former's team has all but one of his Pokémon being female.
  • On the female side, Fantina's mannish face has made some people think that she's a crossdressing man like Emerald's Tucker.
• Wangst: Some of the things that Cyrus says during his Villainous Breakdown in Platinum can border on this.
• Win Back the Crowd: Generation IV as a whole with Platinum. When Diamond/Pearl came out, they were the worst-regarded games in the series so far and were full of criticisms unique to the Generation (most notably the extremely slow pacing and the poor regional Pokédex). Platinum completely overhauled the game, to the point that it's considered one of the best games in the franchise now, and HeartGold / SoulSilver only cemented the newfound popularity of Generation IV. Still, if those games hadn't been made, this Generation would have been seen as a universal low point for the series.
• The Woobie: Roughneck Kirby, the guy whose Pokémon were killed by Team Galactic.
• Woolseyism:
  • Looker is named Handsome in the Japanese release. Not only is it another way of saying handsome (i.e., one way to say someone is pretty is to say they're "quite a looker"), but it also ties in with his profession (he's a cop, as in, he looks for clues).
  • In Japan, Fantina speaks in Gratuitous English and is named "Melissa". The English translation makes her French and has her speak in Gratuitous French. Fans usually believe she works better as a French character because she better fits French stereotypes.

Generation VIII: Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • Many fans have noticed that the abbreviation for the remakes Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, sounds awfully close to something else...
  • One of the female Swimmers says "Th-this is so hard..." upon defeat, combined with her doing a motion with her hand that slightly resembles a handjob.
  • Lucario charges its special attack moves. It actually works pretty well... unless you have it use Flash Cannon, then the light appears in its crotch.
• Contested Sequel: Fans of Platinum often fight with fans of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl over which one is the better Sinnoh experience. Fans of Platinum love the Extended Gameplay, the much-beloved Battle Frontier, and mock BDSP for having neither of them or simply for being a 1:1 remake with little to differentiate themselves from the originals. Meanwhile, BDSP fans cite the many quality of life improvements, the well-received Grand Underground, the fully 3D graphics, and the fact that it was made in Unity (which makes it much easier to mod compared to older games); in their minds, though Platinum has aged far better than most of the series' older games, it is locked to an outdated version of the gameplay system and is still agonizingly slow.
• Critical Dissonance: Review scores are just as good as one would expect from a main series Pokemon game, and they even won the Global Category of the 2022 Tokyo Game Awards. Meanwhile, fans have been split ever since they saw the first trailer, and the aforementioned award was met with considerable backlash.
• Gameplay Derailment: While the affection bonuses are meant to encourage the player to form bonds with their Pokémon, the mechanic is controversial for making the game too easy, ruining certain strategies, and/or simply being annoying. These bonuses have been optional since their introduction; even though Pokémon Sword and Shield combined affection with the older friendship system, the friendship level required to activate the bonuses is impossible to get if you don't engage with an optional side mode, giving players control over the mechanic. These games have no such restriction on friendship, which has resulted in players that dislike the mechanic effectively abusing their Pokémon by using bitter herbs and/or intentionally making them faint to lower friendship and prevent the unwanted effects.
• Goddamned Boss:
  • Post-National Dex Fantina rematch. She has Pokémon that are fast (Mismagius, Gengar), annoying (bulky Dusknoir with Confuse Ray, Banette with Cursed Body), and the textbook definition of an absolute menace (speedy Cursed Body Froslass with Focus Sash, Will-o-Wisp and Destiny Bond). You will end up spending quite a lot of time swapping around Pokémon to outspeed her or cure your Pokémon of ailment or whatever else that will leave you fuming.
  • Post-National Dex Byron. Every gym leader rematch in this game has one Pokémon who has Focus Sash to waste your time or trip up your sweeping strategy, but Byron takes the annoyance factor up a notch by also having two Pokémon with Sturdy: A Sturdy Skarmory with Leftovers who can thus survive a burn and set up Stealth Rock (and he has multiple Pokémon with Roar to abuse it), a Magnezone with Focus Sash and Light Screen to offset Steel-types' notoriously low special defense, and a Sturdy Bastiodon who will murder your Pokémon with Metal Burst. Expect a lot of time lost just trying to farm him every day.
• Good Bad Bugs: Players have discovered a wide variety of glitches and bugs in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. Some of the most popular and notable glitches include:
  • Surf on land, returning with a vengeance from the original Diamond and Pearl. This time, you can perform it much easier by simply getting into a Trainer battle while mashing A next to a body of water; when the battle ends, it is possible to make the game open the Surf prompt while facing the Trainer, allowing the player to board Bibarel while on solid ground. Also just like the originals, you can use this to Surf into the void and get to places you're not supposed to, up to and including getting Shaymin, which is otherwise not available through normal gameplay.
  • "Menu storage". Long story short, by going into a Pokémon's summary and then rapidly mashing ZL and ZR alternately, it's possible to trick the game into a state where you can control your character while the menu is still open. This lends itself into all manners of derivative glitches that can be used to break the game wide open, such as being able to use a Poké Doll during a Trainer battle to immediately win a vast majority of fights or save and reload the game during screen transitions to break scripted scenes. This, combined with the Surf glitch, makes it possible to pull shenanigans such as glitching to get to the Pokémon League early and skipping every fight (including Cynthia) and (with the power of a single Repel) trick the game into activating the elevator that goes to the Hall of Fame and beat the game. This got patched in the 1.1.2 update, much to the dismay of most of the game's fans.
  • Ever wanted to have multiples of Master Balls or Legendary/Mythical Pokémon without getting them from another game? It is possible to duplicate items and Pokémon infinitely (as long as you have space) with at least three different glitches: using menu storage to move Pokémon to the Box and/or held items to the bag during the start of a wild encounter, exploiting an oversight with the Box and the Day Care to generate a glitch Pokémon that enables cloning a Pokémon and its held item, or using "double" menu storage and the Box oversight to outright clone entire Boxes of Pokémon at the same time.
  • As seen here, you can skip the puzzle in Snowpoint Gym and reach Candice without fighting any of the other trainers thanks to diagonal movement, which was not taken into account for the original DP map.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: The remakes stick to the relatively low leveling curve of the original games and there are little-to-no changes in the teams of opposing trainers. When combined with things like the permanent Exp. Share, friendship giving the same perks in battle as affection used to, and the reintroduction of mechanics like Hyper Training, this makes the remakes much easier than the originals. That said, the remakes do attempt to compensate this by improving enemy AI; trainers, primarily bosses like the Elite Four, take better advantage of their Mons' held items, abilities, and competitive stats.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: The Battle Tower is unforgiving to anyone who was more familiar with the nature of Battle Facilities in virtually every game after Gen IV, in which Battle Points are only earned once completing a full streak of battles entirely, with losing to anyone ending the streak and giving no compensation. Even then, they are only given in very small increments early on that make grinding for them a very daunting task unless you have a good team already prepared. This is especially irksome to those who want to use specific items rewarded from the Battle Tower on their Starter Pokémon or even their other main party members, especially the Nature Mints and Ability Patch, with the Nature Mints requiring 50 BP each just like in Sword and Shield, and the Ability Patch costing 200 BP. ILCA may not have included the Battle Frontier at all in this game, but clearly somebody in the development team wanted the fandom to suffer for past complaints of the Battle Tower being viewed as "too easy".
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: A frequent criticism of the remakes is that they try a little too hard to be faithful to the original games, especially after Platinum was praised for expanding on their content. Here are a handful of examples:
  • The remakes and trainers (before the National Dex) use the pre-Platinum Dex, including the infamous teams of Candice (who uses a Medicham), Volkner (who uses an Ambipom and Octillery) and Flint (who only has 2 Fire types on his Elite Four team). However, somewhat alleviated with the fact that the Grand Underground allows you to encounter a couple of Pokémon outside of the Diamond/Pearl dex. ^note This includes Absol, Elekid, Magby, Gligar (but unfortunately no Razor Fang to evolve it), Houndoom, Lickitung, Magnemite, Ralts, Rhyhorn, Scyther, Swablu, Togepi, Snorunt, Duskull, Pinsir, Smoochum and Teddiursa, the latter three which weren't even in the Platinum expansion to begin with. However, Eevee isn't part of that package, which led to disappointment, but some were still content that their pre-postgame teams (outside of trading) could still be extended a bit outside of the Diamond/Pearl ones.
  • The characters and (most of) the region look exactly the same as in Diamond and Pearl, which disappointed those who were eager to see redesigns common in other remakes or at least implementing more of Platinum's cosmetic changes. The near 1:1 rendition of the region also doesn't always translate well into 3D movement, with Hitbox Dissonance a frequent issue.
  • The remakes don't have much additional content to the story, lore, or characterization, which was seen as a letdown by many who praised remakes like Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire for expanding on their respective stories, characters and lore.
  • Returning to the single button Pokétch, forcing you to cycle through every app if you simply want the one right before that which you're currently using, even though Platinum featured two buttons to switch back and forth.
  • The lack of Platinum's move tutors makes shard collecting near pointless, as they're only used to buy weather TMs that are preferably set up by Abilities.
  • Unlike the preceding remakes, no Pokémon or formes introduced from generations after Gen IV are included in the game- not the cross generational evolutions introduced in Generation VI and VIII, not the regional forms (which even the Let's Go games included), and no super forms such as Mega Evolutions or Gigantamax. This causes the game to feel even more redundant among previous players of the original source games.
  • Despite Generations VI and beyond being more lenient with giving Battle Points earned in facilities, these remakes revert back to the stingier 3 Battle Points every 7 battles.
  • The level curve is roughly the same as the originals, which wasn't designed with the Exp. Share giving experience to multiple Pokemon at once in mind. This means that if you stick to one team, you'll likely outlevel everything until you hit the Pokemon League at the end of the game.
  • Several evolution items, such as the Razor Fang, are still locked behind the postgame, preventing players who wanted to use Pokémon like Gliscor on their teams from doing so.
  • The berry growing mechanic also returns. Some of the reasons why growing and caring for berries was dropped after Generation IV is because the scattered and inconvenient locations of the soil plots resulted in a highly decentralized and needlessly complicated routine for getting more berries which puts too much demand on the player's personal time in having to keep track of every plot that's being used to grow berries. Another factor is the implementation of a soil moisture mechanic which penalizes a player for letting the soil dry out completely by reducing the final yield of a berry plant if it transitions to its next growth stage without any soil moisture.
  • The 999,999 currency limit is back; Generation V increased the cap by an order of magnitude to just under 10 million.
  • In spite of how it was a glitch in the original games and has otherwise been functional in every other game with overworld ability effects from Emerald onwards (including Platinum), the remakes retained how Sticky Hold and Suction Cups do not boost the chance of getting a bite while fishing in Diamond and Pearl.
  • Poffin Cooking remains the same as before: An optional minigame that is needlessly complicated, unfair, and not fun but is necessary for improving your chances at winning the Pokémon Contests.
  • Following Pokémon are back for the third game in a row, but despite the return of the stat trainers who keep up with your every movement one tile behind and at whatever speed you go at, the Pokémon are just as fast (or slow) as they were in Sword and Shield and the majority of them cannot keep up with a running player - so once again, you're likely going to wind up in an endless loop of watching your Pokémon fall off-screen and warp back. Additionally, Pokémon can't follow you in caves or indoors like in the Let's Go games.
  • Unlike how Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire simplified it, Feebas still must be found in four random tiles of Mt. Coronet's underground lake. Making things even more aggravating is that unlike Munchlax or Gible, Feebas and Milotic are the few Sinnoh Dex Pokémon not found in the Grand Underground.
  • The Safari Zone mechanics that not have not been seen since HeartGold and SoulSilver return, and the whole "daily Pokémon" mechanic of the original was not changed or made easier at all. While Croagunk and Skorupi can be found in the Grand Underground, Carnivine cannot, so you must get it this way. Same for Exeggcute, Kangaskhan, Shroomish, Gulpin, and Yanma after obtaining the National Dex (Paras can be found in the Grand Underground).
  • Unsurprisingly, the remakes' competitive scene was hit hard with this as well. Some players were looking forward to playing a scene free of the severe Power Creep that plagued later gens. Unfortunately, the remakes ended up being too accurate to the original in this regard - aside from some movepool changes, many of which nerfed the recipients, everything else was already done in Gen IV. Not even any post-Gen IV items are in the game, nor are Megas or even many new moves. Combine this with a poor multiplayer battle format, players pondered the point of having tiers and battles that play out mostly the same as the originals and quickly lost interest.
• Junk Rare: See the series' sub-page here.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Dialga and Palkia looking as though they're screaming on the box art of the remakes has been subject to mockery. The amount of detail of the box art models, showing things like Dialga's taste buds and Palkia's feathers, also got a large amount of attention as well.
  • When the games' titles were revealed, fans were quick to swap around Diamond and Pearl's epithets in order to produce Pokémon Shining Diamond, the localized name for the main character's Fighting Spirit in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable.
  • Because of how long each soft reset takes, fans who decided to soft-reset for a Shiny Starter—the selection of which involves picking a Pokémon from Professor Rowan's briefcase—have taken to referring to the process as the "Briefcase Simulator".
• Memetic Psychopath: Following the first reveal of Dawn's overworld model, it became a trend to depict this version of her as a maniac, sometimes wielding a gun or knife. After a certain video, the concept of her being a Humanoid Abomination who turns other characters into chibis has also been joked about.
• Mis-blamed: Detractors blame Game Freak for the questionable quality of the remakes. However, the remakes were developed by ILCA (the same studio behind the divisive Pokémon HOME cloud storage), due to Game Freak being busy with Pokémon Legends: Arceus at the time.
• Narm:
  • The Super-Deformed, waddling character designs can have this effect in some of the game's more serious moments, due to how overly cutesy they look. It doesn't help that the facial expressions on the designs sometimes tend to be plagued with Dull Surprise. This is especially true for scenes involving Cyrus.
  • Unlike in Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!, following Pokémon here are significantly scaled down, meaning that bigger Pokémon like Dialga and Palkia look tiny. So when you have large Pokémon such as said legendaries following you in the overworld, it's rather difficult to take seriously.
  • Dialga and Palkia are normally played up for all the Creepy Awesome they're worth, but they're subject to the same Affection mechanic as all of your other Pokémon. Meaning that if you have them in your party long enough, your reality-warping dimensional legendary with power over space or time will start giving you constant messages about how "it looks like it's about to cry" or how it healed a status ailment "so you wouldn't worry."
  • Buizel and Floatzel's special attack animation has them spin around and launch it from their butts with tails spinning. It can take something out of high stakes battles when they launch an attack out of their backside...
• Older Than They Think: The aforementioned special attack animation was something the Buizel line had in every game since Pokémon X and Y. It just became more infamous due to Complacent Gaming Syndrome surrounding Sinnoh meaning more people would've used them in this game.
• Only the Creator Does It Right: Many fans who are strongly dissatisfied with BDSP also adopt an unfavorable view towards ILCA, essentially claiming that ILCA ruined what could have been a good remake. One palpable example of this critical mindset can be seen in February 2024 Pokémon Presents, where several Pokétubers expressed trepidation that the next game in the franchise, thought to be Pokémon Black and White remake or a Johto-based game but eventually revealed to be Pokémon Legends ZA, would be (co-)developed by ILCA, and they more-or-less calmed down when ILCA wasn't mentioned.
• Periphery Demographic: Due to the egregious amount of game-breaking bugs, these games have attracted attention from speedrunners who love to exploit the bugs to finish the game in under 20 minutes. Naturally, these fans didn't take it too well when one of the main glitches, "menu storage", was patched out.
• Remade and Improved: Despite complaints about the game being obsessively "faithful", there are still several improvements compared to the originals and even Platinum.
  • Many of the quality-of-life improvements regarding Nature Mints, Hyper Training, Ability Capsules, and even the Ability Patch all make it into this game even in spite of these remakes not being part of the VGC where these items would've had the most importance. Not only does it make Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl open to the possibilities of a full competitive scene in its own right, but the Ability Patch now only costs Battle Points whereas previously it was purchased using the hard to acquire Dynite Ore in The Crown Tundra. In addition, those who hate the fact that TMs are back to being one use will now have this fact mitigated by the fact every single TM is available in both the Grand Underground and the Battle Point shop, as opposed to having to rely on multiple save files to acquire these TMs like you would have done in the original Diamond and Pearl.
  • Returning to the originals' infamously restrictive Regional Dex for both the player and the NPCs caught flak, but the Grand Underground provides most of Platinum's additions^note Excluding the following lines: Rotom, Nosepass, Eevee, Tangela, Yanma, Tropius, Porygon, and Giratina. Gligar, Rhyhorn/Rhydon and Duskull/Dusclops can be obtained, but their evolutionary items are locked until post-game. (plus a few non-Sinnoh mons) in a pseudo-Wild Area (also giving the player a much more diverse selection of Pokémon early in the game), and the postgame rematches feature NPC teams that incorporate Pokémon outside the Regional Dex, spiced up with surprisingly competitive sets.
  • Mew and Jirachi are no longer Temporary Online Content and can be obtained if you have save files from the previous two games finally giving people who missed all previous events (and didn't want to have to buy a separate controller) a permanent opportunity to get these two Pokémon.
  • Sinnoh was particularly notorious for excessive HM usage, forcing players to waste valuable movepool space or carry an "HM slave" (usually the Bidoof line), but a Pokétch app can now call a wild Pokémon (amusingly the Bidoof line if not for a Flying-type HM) to do the task for you, relegating the HMs to completely optional TMs.
  • The Move Relearner once again takes Heart Scales but with a catch; after you give 10 Heart Scales to the Move Relearner, he'll stop charging you for Heart Scales and will reteach moves to your Pokémon for free from that point onward. In addition, Egg Moves and Event Moves are also covered by what moves can be retaught.
  • With the Game Corner gone, all of the TM moves that were sold there are now sold at the Veilstone Department Store (alongside Dazzling Gleam, Bulldoze, and Low Sweep), making it much easier to buy those moves than it was in DPPt, even if they're reverted to one-time use items. The held items Metronome, Silk Scarf, Wide Lens, and Zoom Lens, which were also Game Corner prizes in the originals, can all be obtained for free throughout Veilstone City.
  • One particular criticism of Pokémon games was in regards to held items. While a mild criticism in the original, the seventh and eighth generations were criticized for how little the AI actually takes advantage of held items. In the remakes, the gym leaders (sans Roark, until the rematch) all take advantage of held items, as do a few other major trainers like Cyrus. The Elite four in particular uses held items to trigger the bonus from certain abilities (i.e. Wonder Scale or Guts), weaken incoming super-effective damage, and prevent OHKOs to allow certain Glass Cannon Pokémon to fight.
  • Fans were pleased that the Champion battle is still challenging and a worthy final boss. Many feared that the introduction of the Fairy-Type would make Cynthia's Garchomp less of a threat, but if anything, the inclusion of Poison Jab in its moveset, its Hidden Ability, and a held Yache Berry to reduce its 4x ice weakness only made it more difficult to beat. Her team is also given better abilities and/or a held item that compliments it as well as better movesets in order to create a more difficult but equally enjoyable Champion battle that many fans were pleased with.
  • Various Pokémon that could only be found using the notorious Honey Tree mechanic in the original can now be found in the Grand Underground, such as Combee and Munchlax (though Munchlax doesn't start showing up until after obtaining Defog, which is mid-way through the game).
  • For those that found the "Elite Four" theme in the original Diamond and Pearl a poor remix of the gym leader theme, the remake makes it sound more energetic.
  • The online-exclusive Rotom Key has been made into a fixed item that's automatically picked up after defeating Rotom in the Old Chateau, allowing all players to obtain its forms. Additionally, you can register them into the Rotom Catalog to switch forms wherever you want.
  • Obtaining Regigigas has been made much easier, since prior, you had to transfer the Regi Trio from the Hoenn GBA games or ironically use a special-event Regigigas in Platinum to obtain them on-cart. Here, the ones you can catch in Ramanas Park work just as well, who also happen to be present in both versions.
  • Just like Mew and Jirachi, Arceus is also no longer Temporary Online Content, with an Azure Flute being distributed to everybody who has save data from Pokémon Legends: Arceus. This also marks the first time that the Azure Flute has officially been released to the public after it was infamously Dummied Out in the original release of Gen IV.
  • While still a bit of a hassle, catching Spiritomb has become much more feasible. It's no longer necessary to talk to 32 other players; instead, you have to interact with 32 different NPCs that spawn in the Grand Underground.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Having to alternate the directions you stir the mix in while making Poffins returns, but there are other changes to the process that make it needlessly frustating. Poffin-making now has a time limit that determines how effective the Poffins will be. Additionally, the game doesn't tell you that you're not supposed to mix in more than one of the same berries each time you cook, lest you end up with a Foul Poffin instead whatever Poffin you intended to make.
  • The Affection mechanic returns, but without the Pokémon Refresh or Camp features of the last two games that had it, it's now exclusively tied to Happiness, the hidden stat that rises every time you walk with Pokémon or use items on them; making it nearly impossible to avoid unless you actively abuse your Pokémon. The free bonuses the mechanic gives are so game-breaking that it obliterates any semblance of challenge in the game, and even those who don't care about the difficulty will find it extremely annoying to have every single turn interrupted with constant Flavor Text. Not only that, but some strategies such as Poison Heal Gliscor or Destiny Bond are harder to use with the mechanic, as your Pokémon will now randomly heal or prevent the status or KO needed for it to work, pushing it straight into Annoying Video Game Helper territory.
• So Okay, It's Average: While almost all other Pokémon games are either universally acclaimed or divisive, Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl are the first games to near-universally get a mediocre reception from both fans and critics. While they're faithful remakes of Diamond and Pearl that are fun at their core, they also showcase a complete lack of creativity or innovation; they do improve on the flaws of the originals, but Platinum had already done that thirteen years earlier, and many still feel Platinum did it better.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • Whenever you battle Swimmers, it looks like they and your Pokémon are standing on water. While the background shows a small platform for the Pokémon to stand on, the swimmers and your Pokémon are not on it - the swimmers are right behind it while your Pokémon are standing on water.
  • Some of the following Pokémon don't have actual movement animations, so they just slide around on the ground in their default idle pose. Even the ones that do walk have the same habit of walking too slowly or getting caught on scenery and then having to teleport back to you. Some larger Pokémon have also been shrunken down, presumably to fit the Super-Deformed character designs - but their actual proportions are the same, just smaller, which can look even more jarring. Making this worse is the fact that Super-Deformed models for every Pokémon in the game already exist from the Pokémon Rumble series, which could've fit in a lot better.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • In a very similar case to what occurred with Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!, the announcement of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl have had pushback due to the dated visuals and attempt to replicate the chibi, grid-based structure of the overworld, especially when compared to Pokémon Legends: Arceus's Monster Hunter-esque free exploration, which was announced at the same time. It didn't help that the initial trailer didn't showcase anything resembling the new content and refinements fans have come to expect with remakes. (As it turned out, this was largely because there weren't many to show off.)
  • As a result of his reputation in recent years and his widely derided explanation of why the Battle Frontier wasn't in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, Junichi Masuda being announced as the (co)director for Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl has left quite a number of fans feeling pessimistic about the game's quality — more specifically whether or not it will contain Platinum's changes or at the very least build upon the base game, and sparking fear as to what features or locations to expect to be removed or simplified. Later on down the road, the situation worsened when the official Sinnoh region map art showed only the Battle Tower rather than the entire Frontier, further suggesting that it had been axed. And sure enough- the final game lacks the Battle Frontier as a whole and only features the Battle Tower as its post-game facility. Other Platinum additions like the player's Villa in the Resort Area and battling the stat trainers in the Battleground aren't included either.
  • Just like other recent games, it was revealed that the new Exp. Share does return and it cannot be turned off. This got a lot of people upset, accusing the games of handholding.
  • The reveal that TMs would be returning to being single-use angered many fans, who enjoyed being able to teach many Pokémon the same TM and said that it was a feature that should have been left in the past, especially since both Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire and Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! kept TMs unlimited despite also being remakes based on games where they were single-use while Sword and Shield offered a middle ground with the introduction of single-use TRs that could be repeatedly obtained to accompany the reusable TMs.
  • A number of battle tracks heard in the previews, such as the Trainer Battle and Team Galactic Grunt Battle themes, were just the originals overlaid with General MIDI presets. A number of fans were put off by it, saying that it actually managed to sound worse than the DS originals and were extremely jarring when placed next to properly remixed tracks like the Wild Pokémon battle theme, the Gym Leader theme, Sandgem Town, and Eterna Forest. Some suspected these renders were placeholders, and sure enough, not only did a Japanese showcase for the games reveal the real Trainer theme is much closer to the other remixes quality-wise, but the game's day-1 patch actually replaces all of the GM sounding battle tracks in the base game with proper renders. However, the initial impression stuck for some and left them underwhelmed by the final product.
• That One Boss:
  • Cynthia returns in this game with a vengeance, packing an actual competitive team, with held items, improved movesets, hidden abilities, perfect IVs and proper EV investments. Her Spiritomb is a Mighty Glacier with Sucker Punch, Roserade is boasting an Expert Belt to boost the supereffective moves of which it has some good coverage, Lucario is a speedy special attacker with Nasty Plot to set up meaning Intimidate won't save you here; and Gastrodon is a Stone Wall with Leftovers healing and Rock Tomb to drop your speed (and she's clever enough to predict Flying type switches). But Milotic and Garchomp are the worst of the two.
    • Milotic has full investment into HP and Defense, on top of its high natural Special Defense. Her Marvel Scale is now activated at the end of her first turn out thanks to her Flame Orb, making her shrug off damage. If that wasn't bad enough, she packs Recover to offset her own burn damage and your damage, plus Cynthia likes to reserve her Full Restores for Milotic just to completely eradicate your efforts. She also carries Scald, itself considered That One Attack in competitive battling, and Ice Beam for coverage. And if you're thinking of using Thunderbolt or a special Grass-type attack to dance around it, it's got a little something called Mirror Coat to throw it right back at you. Arceus help you if you do a hardcore nuzlocke with no healing of your own because if your team can't outlast her, you're dead.
    • Garchomp's Achilles' Heel is now offset by her held Yache Berry, which weakens Ice-type damage. Already a Lightning Bruiser in the past, the remake enhances those traits with a Jolly (increased speed) nature and Swords Dance to sharply boost attack, on top of her attack and speed EVs. If your Weavile's speed stats are lacking, Garchomp can outspeed in spite of having a lower base speed. The former ability Sand Veil is also now replaced with Garchomp's much better Hidden Ability in Rough Skin. Her STAB Earthquake hits like a truck and the inaccurate Dragon Rush is now replaced by a 100% accurate Dragon Claw. Did you think you could stop Garchomp with Fairy Types? Good luck since now she has Poison Jab.
  • Flint has also gotten much more brutal in this game, even though he still retains his original Diamond and Pearl issue of only having two Fire-types despite being a Fire trainer. The main issue is his Drifblim, which packs an outright cruel moveset of Strength Sap and Will O' Wisp to neuter your offense and heal itself, Minimize to make the thing harder to hit, and, most horrifically, Baton Pass, meaning it can start stacking Minimize boosts and pass the evasion off to other members of his team like Infernape and Steelix. Competitive players may recognize this strategy as being such a Game-Breaker that it's been banned from use on Smogon for several generations, and it's just as annoying here. Thankfully, a fast Taunt user can completely shut off Drifblim and force it to use Struggle before it can start spamming its annoying moves, but if you fail to bring such Pokémon, expected a lot of pain trying to break through it.
  • Several of the Gym Leader rematches have more competitive teams that will give your team trouble, but Crasher Wake is among the most dangerous. The first mon he will summon is Politoed, which despite not being incredibly dangerous itself, will immediately set up rain thanks to its Drizzle ability and holds a Damp Rock that will extend it to 8 turns. Every other Pokémon Crasher Wake comes packing, however, will proceed to make short work of your team thanks to four of them boasting the Swift Swim ability, doubling their Speed in rain and thus turning each of them into a Lightning Bruiser. His Gyarados, despite not having such ability, comes with Dragon Dance and a Wacan Berry to negate Electric-type attacks. And on top of all this, all of Crasher Wake's mons also have varied coverage to circumvent their Grass- and Electric-type weaknesses, or miscellaneous utility options, on top of their powerful Water-type moves. Overall, you're in for a very, very tough time.
• That One Sidequest: Finding Mysterious Shards for Ramanas park in the Grand Underground is not only a Luck-Based Mission, they also cannot be duplicated via glitches unlike most items.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The Grand Underground's secret bases no longer have a purpose but to serve as your personal collection of statues to alter the hideaway spawns - capturing flags, setting up traps in the main areas and all those beloved decorations are completely gone. The statues themselves are also much reviled, as they are incredibly common but cannot be sold (whether for Pokédollars or spheres) unlike pretty much everything else you can dig up, plus the rare variants of these statues are colored monochromatic jade which may be unattractive to some fans when compared to the normal colorful statues, although at least they don't take up any precious bag space.
  • Contests have been reduced from a competition focused on using moves for style to a fairly simplistic rhythm game, with Accessories and Backdrops removed entirely.
  • While Sword and Shield combined friendship and affection into a single stat, it was at least impossible to raise it high enough to start triggering the affection boosts without playing with your Pokémon in Camp. That cap has been removed in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, which means that the benefits such as increased experience and the chance to auto-heal from status effects and survive fatal attacks are now inevitable for any Pokémon that stays in your party long enough. Depending on who you ask, this is a bigger problem than the permanent Exp. Share, as it can ruin moves and Abilities that rely on being inflicted with a status effect since your Pokémon will cure itself at every opportunity. Even those who don't mind the benefits may still get annoyed when their Pokémon "seeks praise" by landing a critical hit on a wild Pokémon intended to be caught, or simply how much extra time is consumed by text boxes about the Pokémon's feelings.
  • While the inclusion of held items and more competitive stats in the Elite Four and Cynthia were praised by many, there were some that had this reaction. Because the leveling curve is identical to the original, this causes a Difficulty Spike even greater than the original games; Barry's Pokémon are all between 49-55, whereas the Elite Four and Cynthia vary from 53-66, and all of them take advantage of strategies and tactics that the player never had to adapt to before since you could just simply overwhelm all your opponents with sheer numbers. So even if your Pokémon outlevel the teams of the Elite Four, they're still a force to be reckoned with as the trainer never actually had to adapt to items or Pokémon abilities before.
  • Some fans were not keen on changes made to the Shiny hunting mechanic, the Poké Radar; in particular, the likelihood of the chain breaking despite otherwise doing everything else right.^note If you walk into the furthest patch away, there's still a 7% chance the chain will break if you catch that Pokémon, and 17% chance if you faint it instead. In Generations IV and VI, as long as the patch had the Pokémon you were chaining, the chain would continue without fail if you caught or fainted it. That being said, there are differences that mitigate this. Once a Pokémon is chosen, as long as the Radar chain is active, all patches now have that particular Pokémon. In addition, all revealed patches shake continuously until either one of them is walked into, or the Radar is reset again (or the chain is broken some other way, like walking into a building, straying too far away from the reset point, or getting on the bicycle). This includes the sparkles in Shiny patches.
  • Toxic was originally available as a TM move for every single Pokémon (with exceptions to Pokémon that couldn't learn them at all) until this game, where now only most Poison-type Pokémon, Mew, Shuckle, and Quagsire could learn it. Strangely, Umbreon was changed to not be able to learn Toxic (which was one of its best moves), so it wasn't technically able to use its poisonous sweat in battle anymore.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Only Pokémon and held items up to Generation IV are available in this game, unlike past remakes which incorporated Pokémon and held items introduced in generations later than the originals, usually into the post-game. While Let's Go also limited the player to Kanto Pokémon and Meltan and Melmetal, it also included Alolan regional forms and Mega Evolutions, and neither are included in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. This unfortunately leaves the player quite deficient in Fairy types, even though Togekiss and Gardevoir are available.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley:
  • Some fans have expressed distaste for how the game's chibi-style humans have visible fingers and perceive it as clashing with the aesthetic.
  • The infamous Glowing Eyes Painting in the Old Chateau is now an edited version of a real-life Ludwig van Beethoven portrait, whose realistic style heavily clashes against the chibi-style and becomes much creepier.
• Unexpected Character: In the Grand Underground, there's a handful of Pokémon that can be caught outside of the Diamond/Pearl Regional Dex before beating the game. However, there are some Pokémon families that weren't even in the Platinum Dex expansion to begin with that led to some surprise:
  • In the Grand Underground, you can find Smoochum in both versions, as well as Teddiursa and Pinsir in Shining Pearl.
  • Omanyte/Omastar, Kabuto/Kabutops, Lileep/Cradily, and Anorith/Armaldo's respective fossils become available in the Grand Underground just after you beat the mascot legendary.
  • If the player has save data from Let's Go and Sword and Shield, respecitvely, Mew and Jirachi can be obtained very early in the game, which marks the first time Mythical Pokémon can be freely used in a main playthrough.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Some of the water effects are quite nice - such as the lakes having darker water or ripples appearing when you walk up to the water from a beach. Additionally, some of the trainers have nice animations such as Fishermen casting their Pokéballs like lures, swimmers rolling the Pokéballs off of their shoulders, or Fantina doing a pirouette. Volkner's gym is also quite beautiful looking with gears in the background that move.

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