Pokemon Diamond Impressions

Picked it up today. There was a short line of people waiting outside of the Asobit store in Akihabara when I got there at about 9:45, by the time they opened at 10 the line was pretty long. I was watching TV earlier before I left, and apparently people in Shinjuku and somewhere else had been waiting in really long lines since earlier in the morning.

Anyway. In Pokemon tradition (and there's a lot of it so far in the game), the game card itself is different than most other games. The label is shiny and somewhat holographic, and the Nintendo DS Identification bars are black. Most other games ID bars are white, with Ouendan being the only game I own (and that I know of) that has black bars as well.
I've only played it for about 2 hours, because I left Dragon Quest in sleep mode all day yesterday and didn't charge it, so the battery ran out when I was on a 2 hour train ride.

I seem to have gotten past the basic tutorial. My starter (the fire monkey Hikozaru) is lv 10, a little electric lion (looks like Kimba) called Korinku is lv 9, and the new 'Pidgey' called Mukkuru is lvl 8. I just caught the new 'Rattata' called Bipper and some plantlike thing (looks to be a grass/dark type) called Subomi, both level 4. So I'm really not very far. I picked a girl character and called her 'Haruhi' (in katakana), named after 2 of my new favourite anime characters who have the same name.
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Things I've noticed:
--The professor's name is weird: Nanacamodo or something like that.
--There's a Wii in your room.
--There seem to be 3 active characters from the start: You, the other 'Hero' from the opposite gender, and the Rival. You bump into the rival several times as normal, and the opposite gender Hero so far has been in charge of the tutorial stuff. The opposite hero chooses the monster that you're strong against, and while I haven't seen the Rival's 'mon yet, there's only the other one left.
--The opening animation is pretty long, and hints at something pretty sinister.
--The way the touch screens are used seems to be pretty optional in the more important functions, like in menus and battle. You can still use the face buttons/dpad to do the actions, but the touch screen is definitely faster.
--Bag has 8 pockets. I think that's more than it's been before.
--Day/Night feature is back
-The pokedex thing. On the screen that shows you where the 'mon are located, you can drag the icon of the sun/moon around to demonstrate ''morning, day, night'. Some pokemon only appear at certain times, others actually move around during the day. On the 'battle cry' screen, you can play around with a few things. You can use the stylus to pan the sound around, slow it down, add a bit of echo... just novelty stuff i suppose.
--The only 'old' pokemon i've encountered are Abra and Magikarp. Everyone else so far has been using brand new monsters.
--You get a fishing rod pretty early, but i've fished about 10 times in different places and nothing has happened yet. Perhaps i need to use bait or something, i don't know. My japanese is pretty limited.
--The graphics look like one of those pop-up books. It's a little odd at first, but it's pretty cool at the same time.

In all, so far it's prety familiar Pokemon. Like I mentioned, my japanese isn't so hot (especially reading), so I know I'm missing some of the little intricacies here and there. I saw some interesting things while skimming through the instruction book, but i've no clue what they are. I'm gonna play it some tonight, see if i can evolve my main guy at least, and go out and see if I can battle some people before I go back to my english speaking country.

The games scored 35/40 in Famitsu.

Abra? Oh thank GOD! That means Alakzam is in it, and that's one of the best creatures in the game.

About your Subomi, it is (SPOILER)actually a Grass/Poison type and is the pre-evolved form of Roselia. All of the creatures from the previous generation can be transferred to D/P, meaning you can have all of ones ever created in one game.

What starter did you pick?

I'm picking Pochama or Naetoru.

OMG ! i cant wait to play when it comes out in english yay!!!!,im gona get pearl

I picked Hikozaru, the fire monkey. He's at his 2nd evolution stage now.

Updates:
I have the bike now, and it's pretty cool. It doesn't seem to do tricks (like in the last game), but it has 'gears'. The normal gear rides around at run speed, then you press 'B' to change gear and go even faster. Press B again to go back to run speed. Definitely spiffy for moving around.

I received a while ago what I believe is the new 'Itemfinder' for the Pokechi device. Your bottom screen turns into a sort of radar, and you touch a point on it to send out a sonar ping. When I first got it, I thought it was something to find out if trainers were nearby, but it wasn't. I haven't actually used it to find any hidden items yet though.

Another new thing is something that allows you to dig into the ground. I haven't gotten to use this much, because when I did it I was on the airplane. It seems to trigger the WiFi when you do this...and you're not supposed to use that kinda stuff on the plane. I turned the DS off after I noticed this, but I think i have an idea of what it is. It seems to be a sort of underground maze, judging from a map that appears. You land next to the 1st gym leader, and he starts to tell you stuff. I'm assuming this is a multiplayer thing (hence the wifi), so it should be interesting to see what this is.

Contests! I tried a contest on the plane, and it was pretty darn cool. I came in last place, but they've added more stuff to make it more worth your time/effort as a mini game. There are different stages of the contest: Dress, Dance, and Battle. The Dress stage has you dragging items that come up on the left side of the touch screen and putting them on your Pokemon: hats, feathers, cloud puffs... random stuff like that. You can also change the bacground. You may have seen videos of this. After you do that, you get rated on how your pokemon looks. It seems as if you can unlock more and more things to add to the list of items to put on there.
The Dance stage plays out like a cross between Dance Dance Revolution and H-O-R-S-E. Of the 4 pokemon involved in the round, they take turns doing a particular rhythm, then the other 3 have to follow it. Pretty interesting. When it's your turn, you have to create a rhythm too, but you have to do it in time with the music or you get points deducted.
The Battle stage is what we know from the last games: do attacks to please the judges. As you please a judge, they get 'stars' above their head. If you happen to be the one who fills up their 'star gauge', you get a huge point bonus. The Zubat that was in the contest was in my got this bonus and was in last place at the time, and eventually went on to win the entire contest.

Pretty cool so far, I'd say this is the ultimate Pokemon version. Until they come out with the 'Yellow/Crystal/Emerald' version of this game.

Damnit. You made me think that the game was already out in English... i love the pokemon games. I hate the show.

Anyway, so are there a lot of new pokemon or are they all just dissevlolved pokemon from other games?

i think that penguin one is the cutest i think i'll choose that one.

there are a lot of new pokemon. There are more entirely new pokemon than there are baby forms or new evolutions of old Pokemon, so no worries there.
Apparently the Shin'ou Pokedex goes up to 151, but it *doesn't* include all of the new Pokemon in the game. After you view the 151 Pokemon in the Shin'ou Pokedex, you get access to the National Pokedex that will access all 500 Pokemon. I think we're up to 500 now, or something close.

I can't wait to play this.

Apparently there's now 493 Pokemon, unless you get the three event Pokemon (why do they keep doing that?!).

I have a question. Did they change any of the attack animations like they usually do?

Some of the animations I've seen so far are mostly similar. The Pokemon themselves are still mostly static during battle, though they all have a special little animation when they enter the battle--Mukkuru flaps its wings, for example. I suppose the attacks will have a little more flair in them now with the improved hardware. The attacks I remember most from the last games are sort of the 'end game' techniques, which I haven't seen yet, so I can't quite accurately compare.