Pokémon Black came out 14 years ago. This is the last Pokémon game that I ever played at release. I remember thinking it was not that great. I think I was over the Pokémon games at that point. Now, don’t get me wrong, I still thought about how much a younger Gage loved Pokémon and played the ever-loving hell out of those games. But Black… something changed for me. I felt too old for Pokémon.

I never looked back.

But for some reason, around Christmas of 2023, I just had a major urge to play a Pokémon game again. I remembered really enjoying the original Diamond on my DS. So, I decided to play the remake on the Switch. I scraped the inch of dust off my Switch and fired up the Nintendo eShop. With my full-price purchase of a two-year-old game, I was ready to play Pokémon once more.

And it fucking ruled.

I had a bit of a habit when I was younger playing Pokémon. I would get my starter, fall in love, and essentially grind the hell out of them. I would hardly use any other Pokémon and just one-man tank everything. This is how I always played Pokémon as a child. I told myself that I was not going to do that this time. I’m older now, more mature… that means I play with my entire party now. As a 31-year-old should. I also wanted to play with the other types that I never used. As a child, I would always get the grass type starters (I know… Grass is ALWAYS the worst starters; I just like the aesthetics) and would only ever use ghost types for the rest of my party… not the best team composition.

Well, I still picked the Grass starter (my beloved Turtwig). BUT my mission was successful! I used a ton of different types throughout the game and actually had my front party member as a Psychic type… something I never even caught when I was a kid. Chimecho and me set out to be the champion of the Sinnoh region.

Which we did… After a ton of grinding. Because as it turns out, not knowing anything about which Pokémon the Final Four in this game use was a horrible thing for me. I somehow built the worst team comp for that fight. I got DESTROYED. Even though My team was 10 levels higher than any of the Pokémon in the Final Four. I grinded and grinded and grinded. After finally making it through the Final Four, I got to Cynthia and her Garchomp… Now let me tell you that I was not ready for the absolute beatdown that I received. I thought I was set… This is a child’s game, right? No… no it is not. Cynthia shows you that you have to prepare for this shit. You have to strategize… Which I honestly super enjoyed. I had effortlessly thrown myself at everything in the game without any strategy at this point. But I had no choice but to think of how to beat her. After hours of grinding a different team comp and strategizing, I was able to take Cynthia down. It felt amazing.

So, was it worth it to hop back into Pokémon?

Hell yeah!

I had so much fun playing this game again and honestly learned so much about Pokémon on this playthrough. I can safely say that I was wrong; Pokémon did not “get bad” at Black, I am just dumb. I am so happy that I played this game and re-opened a love for Pokémon. In fact, I immediately decided to play Pokémon Sword right after.

Pokémon Brilliant Diamond gets a 3 out of 4. I loved the Pokémon selection in this game, I loved the region in this game, I loved the challenge in the final hour of this game, I loved this game. The only thing that sort of slowed the game down for me was the numerous times you had to backtrack across the world. I did not find fly until I already had seven gym badges and that made the game rather tedious to walk back and forth. Now I know this is my own fault for not finding fly, but it honestly showed how back-tracky this game is. You constantly go from one corner of the map to the next, only to go back again. But that really wasn’t that much of a setback.

Now I am trying to play every Pokémon again and see if I, once again, fall out of love with the franchise or realize that I was wrong to write it off.