Pokemon Shining Pearl – Memories of Sinnoh

Ah Sinnoh, my favourite place to be! I look back at it fondly and recall it being one of the most challenging Pokemon games that I have played.

I often don’t publish reviews for RPG/simulation games like this because their endless play can make it tricky to narrow down what to talk about, but with Pokemon games, it’s surprisingly easy. The last time I reviewed a Pokemon game was Moon in 2017.

I recently became champion at the Pokemon League and am now left with many post-game things to do, fight in the Battle Zone, hunt for legendary Pokemon, and show off the many I’ve caught in contests!

Other than that, you know what that means! It’s time for a review! I rarely review my Nintendo games because it’s harder for me to retrieve any image content I may have posted to use, but with this game, I’ve been keeping track of where they’ve all gone.

Anyone reading this should know the story of how we are living in Twinleaf town and set out on our adventure as a Trainer after an encounter at Lake Verity. Same old, defeat all the Gym Leaders to qualify for the Pokemon League and then in comes Team Galactic who want to remake the world because they see this one be too flawed for their liking. You guys know what I’m talking about.

These remasters are completely faithful to their originals and they were definitely a success! To all of you who judged a book by its cover on the chibi design of characters, are you still mad? I must have been one of the only people who was stoked as hell for these remasters, regardless of what the graphics looked like. The soundtrack was tweaked a little but it still brought me nostalgia. Nevertheless, I fail to understand how people get bent out of shape over the graphics before the game is out, and then it is and they play it and love it.

Some former friends of mine think I just “blindly” like everything I see as a fangirl, well maybe I choose to do that because life is too short to get worked up over small negative things in a video game. I don’t like to pre-judge before something is even out. I make myself aware of the flaws when it is released, but don’t spend too much time overly criticizing because I have enough stress in my life working twelve-hour shifts day-in and day-out. I was excited for this remaster and super happy to finally play it last November and that is final.

Battles look great and some things in gameplay have remained the same while other things have been simplified. For instance, we no longer need to choose which Pokemon on our teams learn specific HM moves to traverse Sinnoh, instead, it’s all on a Poketch app with each being unlocked when a new badge is earned.

I wrote earlier about the things I wanted to see in this remaster and I have to say I got most of them. But since I’ve just started exploring post-game content, there are still some things that remain to be seen. Once I discover those things, I’ll either share an update here or put it on my social media.

Poffin cooking is much easier and I love how I can walk with my Pokemon anywhere outside the Amity Square, that’s even better than Amie/Refresh from later generations.

For my starter, I chose Piplup and built my party gradually and changed it a few times. Now all Pokemon receive XP from battles, even if they didn’t participate and there’s no Exp. Share and without HMs, I can change my party more freely.

I also got a Manaphy from an egg from preordering which I haven’t used much since I already picked a water type for a starter. To be honest, I was hoping Manaphy would be a Fairy-type but oh well, it’s still a nice bonus.

Maylene was the only Gym Leader I really struggled with for some reason, it’s like her Lucario was far more buffed than in the original game and I couldn’t stand it until I finally won.

In terms of characters, I still to this day, detest my rival in this game. He just rushes off without a PokeDex and I cannot fathom how the hell he got his first badge so quickly while I was forced to find Roark in the mine in order to get one of my own. He constantly talks down on me like he will always be the strongest until that is, he has to fight alongside me to stop Team Galactic.

Speaking of them, what’s wrong with this world anyway? Cyrus and his followers are crazy, but then again, all these evil teams have a strange motive. If there’s one thing Cynthia and I have in common, it’s that we both like Sinnoh’s mythology!

I still love arriving in Hearthome the most, even if I cannot challenge Fantina right away. It’s nice to see that I’m entry no. 1 in the contests for a change. I’m still learning the ropes with the new method, but I wish I could wear that outfit anytime like with the other outfits I can change.

When it came time to finally go to the Spear Pillar, I felt all the memories flooding back to me as I sat down on a December evening to play.

When Palkia appeared, I was so excited it was like I had become 14 again on that summer day of 2007 when I first caught them in the original game. I easily crushed Jupiter and Mars with my rival, but Cyrus, Jesus Christ he was a lot harder in this remaster. His fucking Weavile kept digging and digging, I think it was only luck that managed to defeat it.

It always makes my heart race with excitement when Palkia appears and the moment when the trio breaks the chain, and when Rowan tells me to approach Palkia. Listen to its heart, he said. Oh, I definitely will!

I took a lot of different approaches in this remaster, and one of them was trying to catch Palkia with something other than my master ball for a change, just to see if I could do it. It took two tries, the rule of thumb is always save before you attempt to catch a legendary Pokemon. I didn’t expect Palkia to have Aqua Ring but I wore it down to almost 1 HP and surprisingly, the first ultra ball I threw was a success!

I walk with my dear Palkia as much as I can! I’m glad there’s no limit to this based on the size of a Pokemon!

After that, things were a breeze with Volkner and the Victory Road wasn’t so tough. But I knew the League itself wasn’t going to be a simple walk in the park. On my first attempt, I stockpiled on items and made it to Cynthia but it was her Milotic that gave me so much trouble with it barely taking damage and constantly recovering. By the time I finally took it down, I didn’t have much left to defeat her Garchomp.

Luckily, my powers doubled on my second run and once I faced her again, I took down her Milotic quickly and used whatever strategy I could conjure on the rest of her team. My Roserade was super helpful in weakening her Garchomp. Funny enough, I never had an issue with Garchomp in the original game! Then it defeated my Roserade but contracted poison from its Poison Point ability. With my Luxray, I tried to take down Garchomp assuming it was my last Pokemon since it had taken out the rest of my party, even Palkia, unfortunately, but Garchomp fainted Luxray too. I had almost lost hope, but Garchomp’s remaining HP was depleted from the poison.

At first, I thought that meant it was a tie but then I realized I won when I still had my Empoleon with just a little HP left. Victory was mine.

And with that, I am now champion once more!

There’s not much I can say about Cyrus as an antagonist, but I can see that his motives are from the feeling of rejection, but there’s no need to take it to the extreme to destroy this world because of injustice. Anyway, I am so happy with the way this remaster turned out, even if I didn’t get everything I was hoping to see in it.

So many memories, happy to relive them once again.

👽Emily