straightforwardly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
straightforwardly) wrote2026-03-07 08:18 pm
straightforwardly) wrote2026-03-07 08:18 pm
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349 | post-Pokémon Brilliant Diamond thoughts!
I beat Pokémon Brilliant Diamond! (By which I mean, of course, beating the Elite Four + Cynthia.)
I liked my time with this game, but I didn’t love it the way I was expecting to, considering that this is a remake of my all-time favorite Pokémon games. I think my biggest problem with it is that it’s not actually a remake of my favorite—which is to say, that it’s remake of Diamond/Pearl instead of Platinum. And like… yes, I liked the original Diamond/Pearl! That was the version that I originally fell in love with!
But that’s because I played them before Platinum was released—Platinum added to and fleshed out so much of the story, and it’s that version of the story I remember when I think about how much I love the Sinnoh games. Playing this remake while having that version of the story in my head to compare it to made it feel emptier, and I found myself yearning to replay Platinum because of it.
Anyways. I know this game received a fair amount of criticisms for other reasons. I genuinely wasn’t bothered by the chibi thing—like, no, that wouldn’t have been the artistic direction I would have chosen, but chibi Dawn is soooo cute, and ultimately that's all I need: a Dawn I enjoy looking at. I admit that I could not take chibi Cyrus seriously, but even then, I had fun laughing at it. Though their in-battle designs all looked so good! Dawn is so pretty, Cyrus looked great, and Saturn looked amazing too—so much so that battling against him singlehandedly revitalized my inspiration for a Saturn/Dawn fic concept I’d been tossing around in my head at the beginning of the year.
The other thing I’ve been told that this game was criticized for was badly balancing the difficulty—namely, not accounting for the changes that the inclusion of Exp. Share would make to the balance—as well there being a sudden increase in the difficulty at the Elite Four. I do agree that this game was really really easy, even by the standards of Pokémon games. I actively avoided wild encounters after I finished gathering the pieces of my party, only doing trainer battles, and even so I was consistently ten levels higher than whatever challenge I was facing.
I didn’t really mind this when playing… until I got to the Elite Four, who were more challenging than anything I’d faced throughout the whole game—but in a really fun way. I’d spent the whole game arranging for type advantages defeating most of the Pokémon I was facing in one hit, so actually thinking and strategizing and getting to use some of the more tactical moves I’d chosen (like Leech Seed for my Torterra, Charge for my Luxray, Recover for my Gastrodon) and have using those moves make a difference between defeat and victory… I really really enjoyed it, and made me retroactively regret the earlier lack of difficulty in a way that I hadn’t when actually playing through it, if that makes sense.
These Pokémon made up my main party (nicknames in parentheses): Torterra (Leafy), Luxray (Vanilla), Gastrodon pink edition (Coral), Rapidash (Embers), Drapion (Jewel).
All were female, save for Torterra. I had a Torterra named Leafy, Luxray named Vanilla, and a Gastrodon named Coral in both my original playthrough of Diamond and Platinum, so including them is tradition at this point <3 (I also just really love all three of those Pokémon.) I also had a Rapidash in my original playthrough of Diamond, though I’m not 100% sure if the nickname was the same. Drapion is an all new addition! It was the lowest levelled in my party, as I didn’t use it too much during the main part of the game—mostly because it spent much of it as a Skorupi which, while very adorable, isn’t the most useful Pokémon, especially when all of the rest of my party had already hit their final stages—but it was so useful during the Elite Four, and especially against Cynthia.
For the Elite Four, I also tossed in Dialga to serve as a sacrificial lamb—i.e., I didn’t allow myself to use any of its moves in battles, but I could switch it in to buy myself time to revive/heal my other Pokémon until Dialga got taken down. I used this three times during the Elite Four challenge, including when facing Cynthia (which was also the only time it didn’t get taken out in one hit, lol—it lived through three moves, and I am very grateful for that sacrifice).
I beat Cynthia in one try, but it definitely wasn’t a cakewalk; I had help by the fact that I’d pulled up a page on her team + what movesets they had while I was battling her, so I could use that information to strategize. I started off by sending out my Drapion against her Spiritomb—I didn’t have anything in any of my Pokémon’s movesets that were super effective against it, but, critically, Spiritomb didn’t have anything that could really hurt my Drapion—all of its moves were either something she was resistant to, or had straight-up no effect on her. So all I had to do was keep Drapion healed while she bit off Spiritomb’s HP bit by bit.
I think she sent out her Gastrodon next? Not entirely sure on that; it might have been after Milotic or Roserade. I don’t remember too much about this one… I took it down with my Torterra, and remember being confused by why it kept using Rock Tomb on my Torterra (which did basically no damage) despite the fact that it did have one move in its moveset, Sludge Bomb, that my Torterra wasn’t strong against..
I know everyone talks about the horrors and trauma of Cynthia’s Garchomp, but my childhood memories of a failed Cynthia attempt + related frustrations are actually due to her Milotic! And amusingly enough, even though I went into this battle bracing for her Garchomp (due to the way people talk about it), it was once more her Milotic that gave me the most amount of trouble.
I sent out my Luxray against it—Torterra was also a consideration, but I saw the Milotic had Ice Beam in its moveset, so Luxray it was! This was such a prolonged battle, with lots of healing going on from both sides; I was never worried about Luxray fainting, since I had plenty of healing items, but I was concerned about running out of PP—my Luxray’s moveset was Spark, Crunch, Volt Switch, and Charge, meaning that I only had one damaging Electric-type move (Spark) that made sense to use in this context. So I fell into a pattern of Charge, Spark, heal, while Milotic swapped back and forth between using Scald and Recover, and I kept getting Milotic close to fainting… but never quite making it, and all the while, the PP on Spark kept getting lower and lower.
As the stalemate continued, I finally decided that I had to risk sending my Torterra out, at least briefly—because my Torterra had Leech Seed in its moveset, and I thought that the extra damage from setting up a Leech Seed could be the thing to tip the balance. So I used Volt Switch to do a hit and run switch, and while Milotic did nail my poor Torterra with a Ice Beam, he thankfully survived it with like 14 HP left, and was able to set up the Leech Seed. After that, I switched back to my Luxray, repeating my previous Charge + Spark, and Milotic went down so fast after that. Even faster than I’d intended, in fact—I’d thought it’d last one more turn, and wanted to use that turn to heal up one of the Pokémon in my party to prepare for the coming Garchomp.
Roserade gave me slightly more trouble than I expected! I sent out my Rapidash, and, assuming that it would hold out okay against Roserade, used the first turn to do the aforementioned heal on a different party member. But then it turned out that Roserade’s Sludge Bomb really tanked my Rapidash’s HP… and when I decided to risk a Fire Wheel instead of healing on the next turn, the Roserade turned out to faster, and knocked out my Rapidash. That’s when I sent out Dialga, and spent the next three moves reviving Rapidash, healing Rapidash, and then… I think healing Drapion?
In any case, when Dialga fainted, I ended up sending out Drapion against Roserade instead, and she held out so well against it! Dazzling Gleam did take out some fair-sized bites from her HP, but she was capable of weathering two hits fine (while chomping away at Roserade with some Dark-type moves) before needing a heal, and while iirc Roserade did get a Full Restore at some point,
Cynthia’s Lucario surprised me—I sent out my Torterra against it, used Earthquake, and it went down in one hit. Admittedly, that type of encounter had been the norm for most of the gym battles, but I’d gotten used to the Elite Four being different!
Finally… Garchomp time. I was so nervous about this one! I decided to keep Torterra on the field, so I could set up a Leech Seed, and figured I’d see how Torterra fared before deciding whether I’d switch him out or who I’d switch him out for.
The first round of battle: Garchomp used Dragon Claw, while I used Leech Seed. The damage Torterra sustained wasn’t nothing, but I was still handily in the green and confident that Torterra could weather another attack regardless of which move Garchomp used, so I decided to keep Torterra in, and see how much damage Earthquake would do.
The second round of battle: Garchomp used Swords Dance. I used Earthquake, and was surprised by how much damage it did.
The third round of battle: Garchomp used Dragon Claw, which did significantly more damage than the first time around (due to Swords Dance), but Torterra held out. Torterra used Earthquake again… and Garchomp fainted.
I did not see that coming. I was so prepared for a long hard encounter! I was braced for having to use so many healing items and revives! I hadn’t touched a single one of my Max Revives this whole time specifically in preparation for this Garchomp! But no—in the end, it was one of the easier encounters in this battle.
So that’s how the Cynthia battle went! Also—I’ve a post brewing in my head for weeks now on my thoughts about the Pokémon protagonists and their characterization (short version: while the protagonists are very lightly characterized, with lots of room to be fleshed out, I don’t think they’re blank slate protagonists, and can in fact be written OOC)—and after the battle Cynthia said a line that thrilled me, because I’d completely forgotten that she ever said something like this, but it lines up so well with how I’ve been characterizing Dawn.
Specifically, she says this: “You have both passion and calculating coolness.” —and a key part of how I see/characterize Dawn is her simultaneously being someone who is driven by her heart while maintaining a certain degree of levelheadedness, which. Is pretty much how Cynthis is describing her here. I feel like I just got a good grade in characterization, haha.
I liked my time with this game, but I didn’t love it the way I was expecting to, considering that this is a remake of my all-time favorite Pokémon games. I think my biggest problem with it is that it’s not actually a remake of my favorite—which is to say, that it’s remake of Diamond/Pearl instead of Platinum. And like… yes, I liked the original Diamond/Pearl! That was the version that I originally fell in love with!
But that’s because I played them before Platinum was released—Platinum added to and fleshed out so much of the story, and it’s that version of the story I remember when I think about how much I love the Sinnoh games. Playing this remake while having that version of the story in my head to compare it to made it feel emptier, and I found myself yearning to replay Platinum because of it.
Anyways. I know this game received a fair amount of criticisms for other reasons. I genuinely wasn’t bothered by the chibi thing—like, no, that wouldn’t have been the artistic direction I would have chosen, but chibi Dawn is soooo cute, and ultimately that's all I need: a Dawn I enjoy looking at. I admit that I could not take chibi Cyrus seriously, but even then, I had fun laughing at it. Though their in-battle designs all looked so good! Dawn is so pretty, Cyrus looked great, and Saturn looked amazing too—so much so that battling against him singlehandedly revitalized my inspiration for a Saturn/Dawn fic concept I’d been tossing around in my head at the beginning of the year.
The other thing I’ve been told that this game was criticized for was badly balancing the difficulty—namely, not accounting for the changes that the inclusion of Exp. Share would make to the balance—as well there being a sudden increase in the difficulty at the Elite Four. I do agree that this game was really really easy, even by the standards of Pokémon games. I actively avoided wild encounters after I finished gathering the pieces of my party, only doing trainer battles, and even so I was consistently ten levels higher than whatever challenge I was facing.
I didn’t really mind this when playing… until I got to the Elite Four, who were more challenging than anything I’d faced throughout the whole game—but in a really fun way. I’d spent the whole game arranging for type advantages defeating most of the Pokémon I was facing in one hit, so actually thinking and strategizing and getting to use some of the more tactical moves I’d chosen (like Leech Seed for my Torterra, Charge for my Luxray, Recover for my Gastrodon) and have using those moves make a difference between defeat and victory… I really really enjoyed it, and made me retroactively regret the earlier lack of difficulty in a way that I hadn’t when actually playing through it, if that makes sense.
These Pokémon made up my main party (nicknames in parentheses): Torterra (Leafy), Luxray (Vanilla), Gastrodon pink edition (Coral), Rapidash (Embers), Drapion (Jewel).
All were female, save for Torterra. I had a Torterra named Leafy, Luxray named Vanilla, and a Gastrodon named Coral in both my original playthrough of Diamond and Platinum, so including them is tradition at this point <3 (I also just really love all three of those Pokémon.) I also had a Rapidash in my original playthrough of Diamond, though I’m not 100% sure if the nickname was the same. Drapion is an all new addition! It was the lowest levelled in my party, as I didn’t use it too much during the main part of the game—mostly because it spent much of it as a Skorupi which, while very adorable, isn’t the most useful Pokémon, especially when all of the rest of my party had already hit their final stages—but it was so useful during the Elite Four, and especially against Cynthia.
For the Elite Four, I also tossed in Dialga to serve as a sacrificial lamb—i.e., I didn’t allow myself to use any of its moves in battles, but I could switch it in to buy myself time to revive/heal my other Pokémon until Dialga got taken down. I used this three times during the Elite Four challenge, including when facing Cynthia (which was also the only time it didn’t get taken out in one hit, lol—it lived through three moves, and I am very grateful for that sacrifice).
I beat Cynthia in one try, but it definitely wasn’t a cakewalk; I had help by the fact that I’d pulled up a page on her team + what movesets they had while I was battling her, so I could use that information to strategize. I started off by sending out my Drapion against her Spiritomb—I didn’t have anything in any of my Pokémon’s movesets that were super effective against it, but, critically, Spiritomb didn’t have anything that could really hurt my Drapion—all of its moves were either something she was resistant to, or had straight-up no effect on her. So all I had to do was keep Drapion healed while she bit off Spiritomb’s HP bit by bit.
I think she sent out her Gastrodon next? Not entirely sure on that; it might have been after Milotic or Roserade. I don’t remember too much about this one… I took it down with my Torterra, and remember being confused by why it kept using Rock Tomb on my Torterra (which did basically no damage) despite the fact that it did have one move in its moveset, Sludge Bomb, that my Torterra wasn’t strong against..
I know everyone talks about the horrors and trauma of Cynthia’s Garchomp, but my childhood memories of a failed Cynthia attempt + related frustrations are actually due to her Milotic! And amusingly enough, even though I went into this battle bracing for her Garchomp (due to the way people talk about it), it was once more her Milotic that gave me the most amount of trouble.
I sent out my Luxray against it—Torterra was also a consideration, but I saw the Milotic had Ice Beam in its moveset, so Luxray it was! This was such a prolonged battle, with lots of healing going on from both sides; I was never worried about Luxray fainting, since I had plenty of healing items, but I was concerned about running out of PP—my Luxray’s moveset was Spark, Crunch, Volt Switch, and Charge, meaning that I only had one damaging Electric-type move (Spark) that made sense to use in this context. So I fell into a pattern of Charge, Spark, heal, while Milotic swapped back and forth between using Scald and Recover, and I kept getting Milotic close to fainting… but never quite making it, and all the while, the PP on Spark kept getting lower and lower.
As the stalemate continued, I finally decided that I had to risk sending my Torterra out, at least briefly—because my Torterra had Leech Seed in its moveset, and I thought that the extra damage from setting up a Leech Seed could be the thing to tip the balance. So I used Volt Switch to do a hit and run switch, and while Milotic did nail my poor Torterra with a Ice Beam, he thankfully survived it with like 14 HP left, and was able to set up the Leech Seed. After that, I switched back to my Luxray, repeating my previous Charge + Spark, and Milotic went down so fast after that. Even faster than I’d intended, in fact—I’d thought it’d last one more turn, and wanted to use that turn to heal up one of the Pokémon in my party to prepare for the coming Garchomp.
Roserade gave me slightly more trouble than I expected! I sent out my Rapidash, and, assuming that it would hold out okay against Roserade, used the first turn to do the aforementioned heal on a different party member. But then it turned out that Roserade’s Sludge Bomb really tanked my Rapidash’s HP… and when I decided to risk a Fire Wheel instead of healing on the next turn, the Roserade turned out to faster, and knocked out my Rapidash. That’s when I sent out Dialga, and spent the next three moves reviving Rapidash, healing Rapidash, and then… I think healing Drapion?
In any case, when Dialga fainted, I ended up sending out Drapion against Roserade instead, and she held out so well against it! Dazzling Gleam did take out some fair-sized bites from her HP, but she was capable of weathering two hits fine (while chomping away at Roserade with some Dark-type moves) before needing a heal, and while iirc Roserade did get a Full Restore at some point,
Cynthia’s Lucario surprised me—I sent out my Torterra against it, used Earthquake, and it went down in one hit. Admittedly, that type of encounter had been the norm for most of the gym battles, but I’d gotten used to the Elite Four being different!
Finally… Garchomp time. I was so nervous about this one! I decided to keep Torterra on the field, so I could set up a Leech Seed, and figured I’d see how Torterra fared before deciding whether I’d switch him out or who I’d switch him out for.
The first round of battle: Garchomp used Dragon Claw, while I used Leech Seed. The damage Torterra sustained wasn’t nothing, but I was still handily in the green and confident that Torterra could weather another attack regardless of which move Garchomp used, so I decided to keep Torterra in, and see how much damage Earthquake would do.
The second round of battle: Garchomp used Swords Dance. I used Earthquake, and was surprised by how much damage it did.
The third round of battle: Garchomp used Dragon Claw, which did significantly more damage than the first time around (due to Swords Dance), but Torterra held out. Torterra used Earthquake again… and Garchomp fainted.
I did not see that coming. I was so prepared for a long hard encounter! I was braced for having to use so many healing items and revives! I hadn’t touched a single one of my Max Revives this whole time specifically in preparation for this Garchomp! But no—in the end, it was one of the easier encounters in this battle.
So that’s how the Cynthia battle went! Also—I’ve a post brewing in my head for weeks now on my thoughts about the Pokémon protagonists and their characterization (short version: while the protagonists are very lightly characterized, with lots of room to be fleshed out, I don’t think they’re blank slate protagonists, and can in fact be written OOC)—and after the battle Cynthia said a line that thrilled me, because I’d completely forgotten that she ever said something like this, but it lines up so well with how I’ve been characterizing Dawn.
Specifically, she says this: “You have both passion and calculating coolness.” —and a key part of how I see/characterize Dawn is her simultaneously being someone who is driven by her heart while maintaining a certain degree of levelheadedness, which. Is pretty much how Cynthis is describing her here. I feel like I just got a good grade in characterization, haha.