Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Amazing"

Pokemon games always have a special edition remake. Platinum has many small minor changes that make the game better than Diamond and Pearl. From day one, Pokemon hasn't changed much since back in the 90s. But the formula still works and Pokemon is still highly entertaining today.

The story goes that you are a boy or girl from Twinleaf Town setting off on a journey to complete the Pokedex for Professor Rowan. For your starter Pokemon, you pick either the grass turtle Turtwig, the fiery ape Chimchar or Piplup the penguin. But somewhere, Cyrus, leader of Team Galactic aspires to create another world. A world which he considers complete and perfect. The game is more story based in this remake, but it is still not a story driven game. But the fact that it is explored more is an improvement from the start

So you should know the drill. Travel from town to town with your Pokemon on a quest to become the Pokemon League Champion. You can catch other Pokemon in the wild by weakening them and then throwing a Poke' Ball at them. You can store a large amount of Pokemon in "Boxes" at Pokemon Centres. You can have six Pokemon with you at a time. New to Platinum is an additional 60 Pokemon added to the Sinnoh Pokedex. So you now have more candidates for you team.

There are eight gyms in the many towns and cities of this Pokemon world. Each specialise in a different type of Pokemon. For example Hearthomes City's gym specialises in Ghost type Pokemon and Pastoria City's gym specialises in Water type Pokemon. The gym leaders have had their teams revamped. The gyms can be very cheap at times. When your foes Pokemon has only a tiny few pixels of a health bar left, they'll use a potion or the Pokemon will eat a berry. This can make the game more difficult and irritating, but the rest of the game is so good that this issue becomes forgivable

On your way from town to town various trainers and the Team Galactic goons will take you on. The battle system uses a turn based style. There are many Pokemon types (eg. Grass, electric ect) which have strengths and weaknesses on other Pokemon types. Pokemon will learn new attacks through levelling up or if you use TM (Technical Machines) on them. There are also HMs (Hidden Machines) to grant your Pokemon attacks, however these are compulsory for travelling through the game. For example, you will need to learn Rock Climb from a HM to scale certain cliffs. Since your Pokemon can only have four moves each, it's a good idea to research what attacks they can learn through sites such as Serebii or Bulbapedia. It can be quite easy to screw up your teams attack combinations if you don't.

When you have completed the main story, it is a lot of fun to go back and train and raise any Pokemon you missed. You will be very satisfied with this game even after completing it.

Pokemon Platinum is an amazing game, but it has one fatal flaw. Often you will need to go out of your way to level up your Pokemon. This has been an issue in ALL past Pokemon games, but in this game the battles take quite a while even on the max text speed settings. You can spend days trying to get your Pokemon up to the level they need to be at because the game plays so slow.

So what is the difference between Platinum and Diamond and Pearl? Well as mentioned before the addition of 60 pokemon you can catch in Sinnoh. The story has been improved on and explored in more detail. There is a new Distortion World which you are required to go through in the story where the legendary Giratina is waiting for you. The gym leaders have had their teams revamped. Personally my favourite addition is the fact that they lowered the levels of the Pokemon in the Elite Four. So you don't have to get your Pokemon levelled up as high to stand any chance of winning. Another cool thing is that you can get all three legendary dragons. It's just small things really, but they do improve the game from DP. If you get the choice between the three, go Platinum all the way!

Graphically it's nothing spectacular. The game is played in a top down perspective which doesn't really show off the 3D graphics very well. The battles use sprite graphics much like past games. The effects are quite fun to watch though. Some animations have been redone slightly and the game looks a bit crisper than before.

Musically, the battle themes are good, and the route music is catchy too. May not be the strongest pokemon soundtrack, but it is definitely a great listen.

So what are you waiting for? Pokemon Platinum is an absolutely amazing game and is hard not recommend. Overall the game's good points do make it's flaws forgiveable. It's extremely addictive and you can easily spend well over 100 hours on this. It's not that different from past Poke' games, but that's because the formula still works and Pokemon manages to stay entertaining to this day. The small nods here and there do make the game better than it was back for Diamond and Pearl. Great stuff!

- Milesprower2k9 Original Reviews