I had a bit of an epiphany while playing through my review copy of Pokémon Brilliant Diamond recently.

For a silly story about pondering orbs I had dedicated several hours of my life to mindlessly running back and forth in an imaginary mine to change the colour of a piece of digital stone.

Earlier in my playthrough I also spent way too long grinding out encounters with Combee.

For those who don’t know only female Combee evolve into the Pokémon Vespiquen. That’s fine, but the encounter rate for female Combee is only 12.5 percent. This, combined with Combee not being the most populous Pokémon, meant that an entire afternoon got sucked into flipping a boolean value.

Oh and the best part is that the female Combee that I finally managed to catch had a nature that reduced its attack stat, so I didn’t even end up using it since it was too weak. Another piece of RNG.

This, combined with my copy of the game not showing up on time, is why this review is late, but that’s secondary to the profound dejected feeling I had playing this game.

I love the Pokémon series. Truly. Crystal is my favourite game of all time, not because it’s even close to modern games in design, art, music, or anything else, but because of the fantastic adventure my friend from up the road and I experienced playing it back when we were kids.

Now playing another entry in the series in late 2021 and I’m still doing the same thing. Wasting time to change imaginary numbers, fighting systems that are opaque and unintuitive, seeing the same Pokémon I’ve been seeing for decades, fighting the same battles over and over again.

Did I waste my life on this multi-billion Dollar series that is so happy recycling content?

Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are remakes of Diamond and Pearl, the originals released back in 2006. Now in 2021 developer ILCA has taken the old work of Game Freak and tried to bring it into modern times, even though this 2021 game feels outdated.

Those with a microscope and some time on their hands can find countless articles and videos out there about the minutia of what’s new with these remakes compared to the originals.

For the sake of simplicity: if you have seen or played any of the modern Pokémon games on the Nintendo Switch then things will be familiar here. The skeleton of Diamond and Pearl has been brought over with a new skin over it and the overworld has a chibi look to it which some people hate but most people will get used to after a few minutes.

What else is there to say here? It’s a Pokémon game. I don’t think there was a single aspect of this game, or a single moment of time where it managed to surprise me or make me smile with something thoughtful or cleverly designed.

In terms of game design Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl feel bankrupt.

Catch Pokémon, raise them, teach them new moves, use those moves to beat gym leaders and eventually the Elite 4. Roll credits. Play the scant post-game stuff which includes the Battle Tower. Yippee.

Once again I have to protest the lack of the Battle Frontier. I’m not alone in my thinking that the Battle Frontier is the best post-game segment that has ever been part of this series and every game that is released without it is a missed opportunity.

Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl could have been elevated into one of the best games of modern times by simply re-introducing the Battle Frontier but, nope, just standard single and double battles against increasingly unfair and unfun NPCs in the Battle Tower.

After a bit of messing around in the Battle Tower I uninstalled the game and will likely completely forget about it in a week, so unassuming and samey these games are.

When you look at the score below you may find it a bit high for how this review started or a bit low compared to other reviews out there.

Despite my jaded “decades-old fan” thoughts on this game and the stale offerings here, I’m sure many kids and newcomers to this franchise will have a perfect amount of fun with Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, and maybe they will pour countless hours and irrational amounts of money into it until they’re writing something equally jaded 15 years from now.

These games are good. They’re just not special, or exciting, or enticing. It’s just yesterday’s supper reheated in the microwave with nothing new to offer.