Pokemon Pearl has a lot to live up to. I don’t mean the massive merchandise pester power exploitation sales that rely on the Pokemon brand. I mean game-wise. When you look past the reputation as a ‘kids game’- which, if you look at the game rather than the cartoon and such, was never really true in the first place - Pokemon is one of the finest RPG series on any platform. There are very few games which can match up to the quality of the first nine Final Fantasies (though X was fantastic, I’m not entirely sold on it or XII), and Pokemon is one of them.
The new duo are already the best-selling games in the series - although given that there are more DS owners now than there were GBA owners (RSE/FRLG) or Gameboy owners (RBY/GSC) in the past, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Hour of Victory (recently the recipient of one of Gamespot’s lowest ever scores) will probably sell more than F-19 Stealth Fighter, but if you say the former is therefore a better game you will quite justifiably be sectioned.
Don’t let the mention of that abomination get you all upset - Pokemon Pearl is a very good game indeed. ‘Best in series’ it probably isn’t, but being second-best to Pokemon Crystal is a better game than many good developers ever achieve.
The story is a near carbon-copy of Ruby and Sapphire’s. Go out into the long grass to help the local Professor (who lives in some inbred backwater as opposed to a city), get attacked by some puny wild Pokemon. Instead of just skelping the thing with whatever limb is to hand, you pick one of three Pokemon - a Grass type, a Water type, or a Fire type, and fight it off that way. Incidentally, even with this concession I’m surprised that the ‘animal rights’ nutters haven’t started a terrorism campaign against a game that revolves around enslaving animals in very small cages and making them fight to the death point of passing out 
OK, back to the story. You then go on a journey with your Pokemon, catching others along the way as you fight against Gym Leaders, and try to stop a criminal gang from destroying the world with a legendary Pokemon. Replace Dialga and Palkia with Groudon and Kyogre, and the plot hasn’t changed at all. Unlike most RPGs though, the plot has never really been a big part of Pokemon games. The Gameboy/GBC-era games didn’t really have any plot to speak of, and yet Crystal is arguably one of the greatest games ever made.
The battle mechanic is familiar - your Pokemon faces off against another person’s Pokemon. Each Pokemon has four moves, and a set ot stats. Special Attacks like Fire, Electric and Water, are matched against the foe’s Special Defense (sic), while Physical Attacks like Fighting and Normal are matched against the foe’s Defense (sic). This continues, with each Pokemon attacking in turn, until all of one trainer’s Pokemon are dead. The trainer whose creatures are not pushing up daisies wins (hint: if this isn’t you then game over). Fights with wild Pokemon (which seem to be remarkably tame in staying within their allocated long grass, and not coming on to roads and paths) are identical except that there is only one opponent, and you have the option of capturing the beast (with some form of PokeBall) or running away from the battle (if for some reason your team of up to six superbeasts is unable to beat that solitary wild Machop.
The graphics vary between impressive and disappointing. The quasi-3D exploration is great - especially for the DS, which is generally seen as being equivalent in horsepower to a Super NES (remember the flat-3d strangeness of FFVI’s Chocobo riding?). Unfortunately the battle graphics aren’t up to the same standard. Sure, a Pokemon Stadium-style full 3d battle isn’t within the capabilities of the DS, but it would be nice if the battles were at least animated. Instead of ‘Tackle’ attack (the game’s most basic move) involving a hit animation appearing over the target (with a corresponding sound), why can’t the attacking Pokemon at least move? They already have (poor, and barely-noticeable) animation when a Pokemon enters a battle, so why not have at least basic animations for a Pokemon attacking? Also grating is the re-use of most of the graphics from Ruby and Sapphire. Sure, a Golbat is always going to look like a Golbat, but in many cases the exact same image is reused. Would Nintendo’s budget not stretch to redrawing a couple of hundred pictures?
The sound is similarly inconsistent. Some of the music is top-class, and some of it is dire. In this case it would have been better for them to reuse old stuff - I’ll take the music from Yellow or Crystal (suitably DS-remastered of course) over just about anything in Pearl.
In any Pokemon game, the most central aspect is the Pokemon themselves. Unlike previous ‘new generation’ games (e.g. Ruby), Pearl does not have a complete new set of Pokemon. Instead you get a set of 150 Pokemon, maybe a third or half of which are new. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing - the sheer number of Pokemon was destined to become absurd if they didn’t cut back on new additions. But the selection leaves a lot to be desired. Some essential types are in very short supply. The only Fire Pokemon (needed for killing Grass types and similar) you can get during the main game (other than the starter, which is no help to 2/3 of players) is the thoroughly useless Ponyta/Rapidash. Remember what I said earlier about Fire attacks being powered by a Pokemon’s Special Attack? Ponyta/Rapidash doesn’t really have much Special Attack to speak of. Electric types (necessary for killing Water, Flying etc.) aren’t in quite the same dire straits, but you still only have a choice of 3 species - of which only Pikachu/Raichu is of any use. Actually bothering to test the game might have shown Game Freak that it would be an idea to have fewer new, and generally useless (at least in comparison to existing ones), Grass Pokemon and put in a couple of decent Pokemon like Vulpix and Magnemite. In a game that revolves around rock-paper-scissors matching of Pokemon types, having two critical ones in such short supply is an oversight that would be confusing in an amateur game, let alone one with the budget and development time of Pokemon.
All of these faults do detract from the fun, but make no mistake. The core Pokemon gameplay is as fun as it ever was (assuming you can cope without Electric and Fire Pokemon until you beat the game for the ‘National’ Pokedex), and you will get a solid 40+ hours out of this without any great deal of grind. It doesn’t match up to its predecessors, but this is still a great game.
Scores
Gameplay:
Graphics:
Sound:
Lifespan:
Opinion:
Final Score: 8.0/10
