Yes, this is continuing. I went to look at the first couple pages, and it seems like I never actually finished this part of my journal, which I wanted to do. So, let's continue on to the next game in the series:
I'm also aware of the existence of Pokemon Platinum, but I never actually got around to playing it due to my disappointment of Diamond and Pearl, so I won't be doing much talking about that one. However, i'll put the image of the game box art here.
With Ruby and Sapphire being a huge success for the Pokemon video game franchise, the fourth generation of the series was said to be even bigger, and it was. Pokemon Diamond and Pearl were both released in 2006 to be the mascots for the fourth generation of games. With this came a lot of firsts for the series. They were the first generation that had ever been released / played on the Nintendo DS, and it's the first generation that took advantage of the Nintendo DS capabilities. Graphically everything was better about these games than what the series had ever seen before. With that did come some flaws though, and i'll explain those briefly.
In terms of what I think about these two games, I can only really put it into one word: "disappointing". Yes, we got a great looking game and supposedly the story is really good, although I don't think I've ever actually finished the story for this one. Unfortunately, a lot of the new things overlooked the old mechanics which made the games feel "new and fresh" which isn't always a good thing when you are playing a game you've been used to for years and years prior. I found myself getting overwhelmed with the way the character moved and the design of pokemon as well. A lot of people complain about the design of the new generation of Pokemon which I both agree and disagree with. When it goes to the later series's in the games, like with X and Y and all those, the designs start to get back on track, but for me, I always felt like Diamond and Pearl had some of the worst designs for Pokemon, maybe that's just me. I also found that the amount of new evolutions and legendaries in this game alone really made the game feel like it was more revolved around catching legendary pokemon over anything else. I remember playing through the story, and I felt like I kept running from place to place, just to catch more legendary pokemon that really had no place other than sitting in my PC, and that's not what I like to do with my legendaries. I like to feel like I can use them in my team and enjoy their presence as being a strong part of my team, other than just being an extra number in my PC.
Now that the negatives are out of the way, the game does have it's positivies. Some of the new evolutions for pre-existing pokemon are fantastic. We've got pokemon like Roserade, Leafeon, Glaceon, Magmortar, Electivire, and all those. Very good move on the developers stand point because those evolutions really helped make some of the 1st and 2nd generation pokemon with no evolutions become much more useful and fun to use. The graphics like I said were pretty amazing for it being introduced on a new platform, and it did run as smoothly as it could, although I found that it did lag in some cases especially in Pokemon battles. But that's not really a big deal when you really think about it. I also really liked some of the music that was introduced in this game, and I feel as though the music is something that always gets better throughout each release. I've never really seen myself get disappointed with a soundtrack for a Pokemon game. For example:
^Fantastic song. Really packs a punch and makes you feel like you're doing something life changing.
Overall, Diamond and Pearl will always hold a special place in my heart for introducing what may have been a revolutionary call for the Pokemon franchise, because everything just got better as time went on with the other games. But, in terms of it being my favorite? It's not even close to being my favorite. I do plan to go back and playthrough it at least once, but everything just felt so scrambled and thrown into one big pile that it just gets confusing so quickly. For those of you that do enjoy this game, I don't want you to feel like i'm being too negative towards you. I just know that from my own personal experience, it's never been a great game for me to play.