Handheld Wars #167 - Pokémon (Round 4) (Civil War)

Unfortunately, my interest in pokemon had really hit rock-bottom when gen IV released. I was a teenager at that time, so I guess I viewed the pokemon franchise as "kiddy fodder" or something like that. I also never owned a DS. So as a result I never played Diamond or Peral (or platinum). I think this was a mistake because, looking back, D & P were pretty good games from what I can tell.

For starters, they introduced the physical/special split for attacking moves, which meant that now moves from a certain type were no longer strictly physical based or just determined by a pokemon's special stat. This felt like a much more natural gameplay tweak than the addition of abilities in gen III.

Secondly, I really like the games' presentation, particularly the clean sprite work. This was before Game Freak botched the look of the battles by adding those horribly-pixilated animated battle sprites in V, which still look hideous to this day.

Thirdly, the new pokemon designs, while generally a step down from the previous gens, are still more colorful and refined than V's designs, which I still think had the worst lineup of new pokemon, at least in terms of just their appearance.

So overall, DP&P seem like good games and I regret that I missed out on them. If I ever come across them cheap I am going to pick them up.