Pokemon BDSP Playthrough Discussion

[R_N]

Here's a fun thing: every pokemon in ramanas park uses their levle up movepool except for Shadow Giratina (since it's basically a boss battle you cant catch) and....Latios. At first blush you'd probably not notice since its Dragon Dance (level 1 move), Dragon Pulse, Luster Purge, Zen headbutt
And if you think that's weird then it's becauuse the level 70 moveset would beeeeee
Simple Beam
Psychic
Power Split
aaaaaaand MEMENTO

Guessing that came up quick during play testing!

If you were curious DD is a level 1 move and the other 3 are the moves it learns levels 35-45

e: Incidentally, and people prorbably noticed it by now but for those who aren't there yet: serebii is wrong you dont need to capture Latias & Latios to get access to the "big "legendary pokemon, just the regi & the birds/beasts

 

[AmbientDinosaur]

Has anyone here gotten an alternate battle intro with Honey Tree encounters? I have soft resetted well over 150 times for a Burmy, but none of them have had the alternate battle intro.

Am I just unlucky? Or is not possible for Honey Tree encounters to have the alternate intro. Note: the Burmy has been different every time, so it is not a case of encountering the same pokémon each time (which can happen with the pokémon in the grand underground).

 

[Fluke]

Yeah, link codes in this game kinda suck. I remember trying to join a room with a friend so we could trade to evolve my Electabuzz and despite us both using the same link code multiple times, we just didn't get matched with each other for about 10 minutes. I dunno if this is a result of the online being unfinished or if the netcode is really just gonna be this bad forever, but that's certainly how it is right now.

I figured it out. You have to make the lobby first, and then the other person specifically has to wait a few seconds before joining. If they join while you're making it, they're also making a lobby themselves, causing two lobbies with the same code to be created, essentially. Create the lobby and let the other person wait until the lobby is stable before they join.

 

[Ze Diglett]

Yanma getting trapped as a post game encounter while a lot of other Platinum mons were put in the underground is...sick and twisted. Who else got screwed over? Nosepass and Tangela I think?

Porygon, too. Which I guess isn't too surprising since they usually don't let you catch him normally, but still, at least let us have the gift Porygon in Veilstone or something.

 

[R_N]

Did all the leader rematches

Pretty neat stuff! Maylene was probably the hardest for me because of my giant Infernape weakness, and fighting in general. After that, Fantina; very rough stuff there.
Wake was also a little rough for me.
Roark, Byron, Volkner all about the same level for me: lots of swapping around, some rough spots, some easy spots.

Gardenia & Candice were Rapidash sweeps; felt great! Horse redemption.

Shout out to Cherrim who got an absurd amount of play throwing out a bunch of Sunny Day

Still need to beat Dawn, the e4, probably stop by Barry this weekend and catch Heatran.
I probably won't do the final round of e4 or bother finishing what parts of the pokedex I can get; too much trading right now.

 

[Rapti]

Hey, just to be sure, pokemon marks aren't in this game right?
that's gonna mess up transfers from S&S once HOME is out

 

[Fluke]

Hey, just to be sure, pokemon marks aren't in this game right?
that's gonna mess up transfers from S&S once HOME is out

Marks, as in markings? They are in the game.

Also, is it possible to just do a random online Wi-Fi battle in this game? All I can seem to do is join a random global lobby every time, but all people want to do there is trade... I just want to battle some random people Battle Spot style.

 

[Rapti]

I meant marks as in these kind of marks

like these ones:

Hide

 

[R_N]

You can't get markings, but I would be surprised if the game doesn't still track them as part of the Pokemon.

After all contest stats were (& still are, I think) tracked in gen 5 & XY despite being literally impossible to make use of. Marked transfers to BDSP will likely just not show them, but they'll still "be there".

 

[Siggu]

I may have posted it in the wrong thread before lol

What I intended and promised to do was achieved: I've beaten Brilliant Diamond with a ridiculous 42 Pokémon.

Team 1

Team 1 was not only meant to just beat the League, but also scout it and find what were the key areas to focus on, and what to be worried about.

As a result, it was the one that took the most to beat (three full runs + a bunch of restarts on Cynthia Attempt 3) and the one that ended up at the highest level (with Chatot at Level 70 thanks to the fact it was traded).

At the end, what beat Cynthia was Jirachi at +5 Attack (3 Meteor Mash Boost plus one X Attack), +1 Speed (from my only Salac Berry; in retrospective this was a poor idea) and an accuracy boost from X Accuracy, OHKOing Garchomp with Meteor Mash as the relevant benchmark

Team 2

After treating the league with respect and caution with Team 1, that started to be thrown out of the window with Team 2.

Cynthia was defeated on the first try, starting with Specs Noctowl (no joke) 2HKOing Spiritomb with Moonblast. Cynthia then decides to send Milotic, who is a terrific setup bait for a Dry Skin Toxicroak. My initial plan was "set up 3 Swords Dances to Sucker Punch Garchomp for an OHKO"... which turns out to not be possible.

I did set up the three Swords Dances, but added up an X Speed (and an X Defense, an X Special Defense, and a Dire Hit for good measure, though they proved to be unnecessary) to ensure Garchomp would not move first. And it went just as planned (and in fact better than planned, because Milotic started to spam Mirror Coat instead of using Ice Beam when she found out Toxicroak was immune to Scald). 6-0.

As a fun fact, Noctowl and Toxicroak were the only ones that had NOT been involved in any of the four previous battles.

Team 3

Team 3 also defeated Cynthia on the first try, and could have been a perfect run. Could have.

This run showed me something I hadn't noticed: Spiritomb is setup bait for anything that is not weak to Psychic, Ghost or Dark (although you might need some Hyper or Max Potions for the frailer ones). So what do I do? Have Mothim set up six Quiver Dances to one-shot everything with Bug Buzz, Air Slash or Giga Drain...

... until Milotic tanked a +6 Giga Drain and KOed back with Mirror Coat. Who would have thought that a -SpA Nature was bad for a Quiver Dancer?

I was annoyed. So annoyed I Revived Mothim, Baton Passed three Minimizes from Drifblim, set up all six Quiver Dances again, and completed the job.

Team 4

Who would have thought that a Timid Nature was good for a Quiver Dancer? Beautifly did everything Mothim didn't, and then some.

Alone, he demolished Lucian AND Cynthia with the same strategy of six Quiver Dances. Seriously, this made me feel bad for a moment. It was such a blowout I still have a feeling of guilt, one day later.

(I did ensure the other five had some action in the previous battles, do not worry. This applies for all seven teams.)

Team 5

The streak is broken, as this Team took two takes to defeat Cynthia. If you pay attention, you can notice why: a generally slow team, with four Pokémon weak to Dark, three to Fighting, and nothing with a Special Attack boost to break through Milotic. Easily the weakest team alongside Team 1.

The result of this is that... well, X Items saved the day again. The initial plan was to give Golem a Rock Polish and an X Attack to sweep everything bar Gastrodon, Milotic and Garchomp... but Roserade outsped. And when I tried to set up with Empoleon, a crit dragged that to the trash.

The second take outright skipped the Golem step, and was a clean sweep from Empoleon. I guess it was deserved, being the starter Pokémon.

Team 6

Pound by pound, name by name, this was the best of the seven teams, and they surely didn't disappoint, defeating Cynthia on the first try...

... but it was ME who disappointed instead. When I was ready to Baton Pass +6 Special Attack and +1 Speed from Mew to Dialga, while I was checking Dialga's Speed stat... I ended up manually switching. So who had to save my skin again? An X Speed, yet again Baton Passing from Mew.

Weavile and Bibarel had their sort of action against Cynthia, with Weavile one-shotting Spiritomb with a +4 Beat Up, and Bibarel KOing Milotic and softening Garchomp with a +6 Double-Edge and Aqua Jet, respectively.

Team 7

The final team took three takes on Cynthia to get the strategy right for the win. Well, okay, it's not getting the strategy right but getting the right rolls. The idea was getting a Rock Polish and two Swords Dances on Rampardos to one-shot everything with Earthquake and Rock Slide, but Milotic didn't need Marvel Scale at all...

+4 Lvl 61 84 Atk Hard Stone Mold Breaker Rampardos Rock Slide vs. Lvl 63 252 HP / 252+ Def Milotic: 238-282 (94.8 - 112.3%) -- 68.8% chance to OHKO

She KOed back with Scald, so I decided to retry by switching to getting three Nasty Plots with Honchkrow. Bad idea, for Milotic, Lucario and Roserade could outspeed, and Gastrodon could survive a +4 Earthquake.

In take three I went back to Rampardos and... surprise! Spiritomb decided to spam Sucker Punch after the first Swords Dance, so I could get Rampardos to +6 Attack and +2 Speed and it was game over for Cynthia.

Also, some of the Teams might have had an easier time if the damned Grand Underground Good Traders offered Nasty Plot or Earthquake TMs.

I'd like to give some general considerations from all the situations I faced against the Sinnoh Elite Four on the first try.

Tips

- Aaron: Heracross can outspeed practically everything you can bring at him, but it has Brick Break and no Bug STAB so you can get a bulky flier, Psychic or Ghost to take him down. Drapion can be annoying if it gets multiple Night Slash crits, but overall his team is passable.
- Bertha: Golem likes to Rock Polish on Turn 1, and Hippowdon likes to Rest the moment his health drops to under half (the AI seems to treat ChestoRest like any other recovery move).
- Flint: Give a Chesto Berry to your lead to avoid an Hypnosis from Rapidash. Also, Drifblim is exceptionally annoying but it has no attacking moves. If you have Taunt, it's neutralized. Lopunny has a fully physical moveset but no Attack EVs, so it's setup bait. Steelix loves Sheer Force to a fault, so it does not have any Ground moves.
- Lucian: Alakazam is WAY less threatening than he seems at first. It has Nasty Plot and Psychic, but he favors using Future Sight, and Shock Wave is rarely a problem. Use Knock Off or Taunt, or stall out the screen turns from Mr. Mime and he's very easy.
- Cynthia: Physical attackers have a lot of problems against her: Gastrodon and Milotic are physically defensive and the latter has Marvel Scale + Flame Orb to make matters harder, but if you find a setup opportunity in Spiritomb (or Milotic itself if your mon is immune to Water), they can succeed. Your defensive concerns are Lucario and Garchomp, but they like to use Nasty Plot and Swords Dance respectively first, unless your Pokémon is weakened or they deem it a threat. Oh, and Garchomp does NOT have a Rock-type move, so an airborne Steel-type practically counters her.

I don't think I'm going to do the rematches with the 42 Pokémon. Or whether I'm going to do the rematches at all. For now, with this done... I can rest. Phew.

 

[R_N]

Out of curiosity, has anyone done a lot of Super Contests?
Do Johanna (your mom, used Kangaskhan) and Jasmine (Steelix) show up?

My first thought was "probably not", since they'd need full 3D models & I couldn't see them making new models for 2 characters you would literally only see in a side mode's highest content, but I did notice they gave Jasmine a brand new design for this game so maybe...?

 

[Yung Dramps]

Out of curiosity, has anyone done a lot of Super Contests?
Do Johanna (your mom, used Kangaskhan) and Jasmine (Steelix) show up?

My first thought was "probably not", since they'd need full 3D models & I couldn't see them making new models for 2 characters you would literally only see in a side mode's highest content, but I did notice they gave Jasmine a brand new design for this game so maybe...?

Jasmine and Johanna have new "battle" models, I've seen 'em. They're in

 

[R_N]

Jasmine and Johanna have new "battle" models, I've seen 'em. They're in

Ohh that's very cool, do you have images of them?

 

[Yung Dramps]

Ohh that's very cool, do you have images of them?

Dunno where to look sorry :c

 

[Jinrou]

Johanna and Jasmine show up pretty frequently in Master Rank contests, yes. I've faced both at the same time before too.

 

[MrHands]

So now that the game has been out for a few weeks where would you rank this game among the others? Is it up there with HGSS / BW2 / OG Platinum in S tier or is it mindlessly easy garbage not worth a second playthrough?

Seems like the better boss battle moveset is a massive improvement over... well, literally every other Pokemon game. However forced XP share and the bad "affection" attributes really hurt BDSP.

 

[R_N]

So now that the game has been out for a few weeks where would you rank this game among the others? Is it up there with HGSS / BW2 / OG Platinum in S tier or is it mindlessly easy garbage not worth a second playthrough?

Seems like the better boss battle moveset is a massive improvement over... well, literally every other Pokemon game. However forced XP share and the bad "affection" attributes really hurt BDSP.

It's diamond & pearl with gen 8 mechanics but with interesting boss sets and an underground that can get you various Pokemon you couldn't get before/can get easier. 80% of issues with DP are still present, with all that entails.

The exp share is annoying since you either just have to take it or start skipping swaths of the game (which, as I noted earlier, is actually something you can do relatively easy if you're so inclined, so there's that) or juggled like 30 pokemon, though I'll note that sometimes a boss Pokemon is just not great to begin with and level advantage or no you're almost certainly killing screens meditite.

Affection shouldn't be on but honestly it was kind of whatever in the grandscheme. Depending how you play the game it'll probably be a while until you start seeing the first effects but it takes a while for the other stuff to start snowballing and personally i twasnt until i beat the game and everyone started maxing out their happiness that affection started happening more.
FWIW as I went through the leader rematches, which had some decent back & forth despite me being a few levels higher, I didn't find affection really impacted my enjoyment of the matches


I enjoyed my time with the game, for the most part, but it was definitely more as comfort food and a pleasant surprise when something didn't go my way. Honestly probably something more interested for replays as "selfimposed challenge" type things, like mono types or nuzlockes or solos or whatever sutis your fancy

 

[Siggu]

So now that the game has been out for a few weeks where would you rank this game among the others? Is it up there with HGSS / BW2 / OG Platinum in S tier or is it mindlessly easy garbage not worth a second playthrough?

Seems like the better boss battle moveset is a massive improvement over... well, literally every other Pokemon game. However forced XP share and the bad "affection" attributes really hurt BDSP.

I'd put it on the same level as Platinum (as in, good). It has worse content, yes, but the dramatically better speed and other gameplay improvements inherited from later games compensate.

It's not able to compete with USUM or the Gen V games, though.

 

[R_N]

God wait yes I changed my mind its great actually going back to gen 4 briefly to check stuff was absolute torture how did we put up with that

 

[Siggu]

God wait yes I changed my mind its great actually going back to gen 4 briefly to check stuff was absolute torture how did we put up with that

Because we did not have Gen V to show how bad it actually was.

Going from Diamond/Pearl to Platinum will make Platinum look fast. But going from BW or BW2 to Platinum will make Platinum look horribly sluggish.

 

[R_N]

The past 3 days i've bothered to check the great marsh and every single time all 6 pokemon shown are ones yo ucan just catch normally

thanks, game, love 2 collect pokemon

 

[Ze Diglett]

So now that the game has been out for a few weeks where would you rank this game among the others? Is it up there with HGSS / BW2 / OG Platinum in S tier or is it mindlessly easy garbage not worth a second playthrough?

Seems like the better boss battle moveset is a massive improvement over... well, literally every other Pokemon game. However forced XP share and the bad "affection" attributes really hurt BDSP.

I'll be honest, as a pretty die-hard Gen 4 fan, all I really wanted out of this game was a Sinnoh game with updated mechanics (mainly no HMs, because being able to run through Sinnoh without loading my team up with useless moves and/or carrying around a useless team member to carry said moves is a blessing), improved pacing, and an expanded Underground, and in the end, that's pretty much what I got. Stuff like the permanent EXP Share and compulsory affection bonuses kinda suck and I really wish I had the option to just not deal with them like in past games, but those only somewhat get in the way of my enjoyment. Some of the QoL improvements and story beats from Platinum are missed (I swear Barry and Cyrus feel like such non-entities in DP now that I've actually played their story), but if nothing else, it gives me a reason to go back to Platinum bar the odd nostalgia trip. Overall, I'd say these games are pretty great, but I can also see why someone might disagree with that assessment.

 

[dd777]

I'll be honest, as a pretty die-hard Gen 4 fan, all I really wanted out of this game was a Sinnoh game with updated mechanics (mainly no HMs, because being able to run through Sinnoh without loading my team up with useless moves and/or carrying around a useless team member to carry said moves is a blessing), improved pacing, and an expanded Underground, and in the end, that's pretty much what I got. Stuff like the permanent EXP Share and compulsory affection bonuses kinda suck and I really wish I had the option to just not deal with them like in past games, but those only somewhat get in the way of my enjoyment. Some of the QoL improvements and story beats from Platinum are missed (I swear Barry and Cyrus feel like such non-entities in DP now that I've actually played their story), but if nothing else, it gives me a reason to go back to Platinum bar the odd nostalgia trip. Overall, I'd say these games are pretty great, but I can also see why someone might disagree with that assessment.

I think the nostalgia factor play a big part in whether you love a remake or not. I have been playing since Gen 1 and I loved the LGPE games because it took me back to playing Pokemon Blue on my game boy colour. Seeing Kanto bought to life on the switch with improved graphics was very exciting for me even with the crappy pokemon go catching system.

I never finished my first gen 4 play through. I played it on an emulator and got stuck at one point and never bothered going back to it. It is the only gen I never finished the main game of. So I was very excited to play the remake and complete it.

I have to say I was left a little disappointed. I think the biggest disappointment for me was the lack of diverse monsters. I just kept running into the same old stuff and the encounter rate was unbearable, to the point where I started using repels to get through caves (this is the first time I have ever used repels). I took three or four steps to encounter Golbats and Gravelers in Mt Coronet at the peak of my frustration with the game. I also found the underground to be boring as well. I am sure I haven't figured out the statue stuff to change the encounters, but I was not excited going room to room seeing the same mons on repeat.

I found my Shield playthrough to be boring as well. So it just could be that I played so many pokemon games that the same old formula is boring for me therefore not an issue with the game itself. So I am very happy to see something different for pokemon like Arceus. The difference with Shield is the online ranked has kept me interested in the game, the lack of online ranked is big negative for me.

Don't want to be completely negative because the EVed trainer battles was actually amazing. There were some tough battles in this game, which I enjoyed the challenge of.

 

[Bog Monster]

The past 3 days i've bothered to check the great marsh and every single time all 6 pokemon shown are ones yo ucan just catch normally

thanks, game, love 2 collect pokemon

You have to check the binoculars multiple times. It picks any one possible encounter per area, not just the rare ones. Learned that yesterday

 

[R_N]

You have to check the binoculars multiple times. It picks any one possible encounter per area, not just the rare ones. Learned that yesterday

I hate this marsh more and more every time i learn about it, because the first day I actually did do this and saw the same Pokemon (though i guess it was probably in different areas because of course).