Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl seem to exist as a teaser for Legends Arceus

It’s been less than a week since Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl have released. Since that time, reviews have rolled in with a massive “meh.” Playing through the game myself, I can’t even say I’m particularly enjoying it. Instead, I find myself playing it specifically to see if there’s anything newsworthy to discover in it.

The games were produced by ILCA, the “I Love Computer Arts” company that made Pokemon Home, not to be confused with the International Lactation Consultant Association who is the first thing that pops up in Google. Though, that ILCA would probably love Miltank.

ILCA already hit me as a weird choice because they’re specifically a support company. Outside Pokemon Home — an app, not a game, that serves as a storage device allowing people to transfer Pokemon from one game to a different one — they’re not known for being put in charge of a game by themselves. Honestly, the first time I ever heard of them was when I found out about the Domino Pizza app they worked on that had Hatsune Miku in it.

So when Nintendo gave them a go at doing a remake of one of the stranger old-school Pokemon games my tin foil hat went on immediately.

When the original Pokemon Diamond and Pearl came out, Nintendo went all in on merch and promotion. Heavy TV spots, higher quality signage than normal, and my personal favorite, a pre-order bonus that’s actually a blue plastic Mt. Coronet that holds two styluses. A blue one with Dialga on top and a pink one with Palkia. And even though I’ve long since lost the base and the Palkia stylus, the Dialga one is still holding up and has always been one of my go to styluses because it was really well made. Long story short, Nintendo put a lot of money in this launch which they felt when the sales were fairly lackluster compared to previous titles.

In fact, they only sold slightly better than Ruby and Sapphire which was a disastrous launch for Nintendo. Despite being the first Pokemon game for the Game Boy Advance (a magnificent system) promising higher quality graphics and full color at a time when Pokemon hype was high, Ruby and Sapphire sold over $400 million LESS than Gold and Silver. Diamond and Pearl barely did better.

So why take such a low performer and give it a company that, with the exception of Pokemon Home, has never worked on a game in a coding capacity? Most of ICLA’s work on other games was mostly to help other companies with visual elements.

Honestly, I think it boils down to this. ILCA is, no offense to them, affordable. I think that Nintendo knows they’re taking a big risk with Pokemon Legends Arceus, so they wanted to give the younger generation a taste of Sinnoh so that Legends Arceus has a more personal connection.

Why do I think that?

Well, first, the games feel shot out. The animated title screen didn’t even get added to the game until the first patch which…what? Not only that but the game features a slew of bugs and graphical failings. For example, when I fought Dialga, his powers over time were so strong they must have completely destroyed the background because look at this mess.

You can even see in the thumbnail and two seconds in that one of the rings behind Dialga (to the left of the video) doesn’t even connect end to end as the image file loops. There is NO way it’s supposed to look like that.

The other reason I think this is because of the embargo. An embargo is usually a set of rules and requirements that accompanies a game before launch. It’s typically a list of “do nots.” Most embargoes usually tell us not to post coverage or reviews before a certain date. Sometimes they tell us not to spoil things in a game. One of the weird things that people pointed out with this embargo was that there were weirdly specific things like, “Do not mention the Canalave Library in your article before said date.”

This one was wacky so I went out in search of the Canalave Library to figure out why. And just for fun I went there in the original Diamond game as well just so I could check for differences. What I found was on the second floor.

There’s a book there that was not in the original. I recorded it here for you. Feel free to pause to read if you want.

In it, the story mentions events that never happened in a Pokemon game and culminates with a prince heading off towards a place called Seaside Hollow. A place that, thus far, has not appeared in a Pokemon game.

So not only do I think this game is out to remind people of the Sinnoh region but to also further establish the lore so that people will have more reason to want to check out the Hisui region when Pokemon Legends Arceus comes out next year.

All in all, playing through the game and trying to explore what was done here, it genuinely just feels like this game was put together to just further build hype for their big gamble come January.