Why do so many people dislike D/P/Pt?

[Change is good]

These were great games for me and can't see why so many people seem to hate them. They are very underrated because of all the hate.

[Raiin]

I don't really understand the hate either. I thought they were pretty good games.

[Street Comedy]

Because "ALL DA POKEMANS AFTUR GEN 1 SUCK IT ISNT POKEMANG ANYMOAR!!11!".

[Arcos]

I dont understand y people hat D/P/Pt. People says it ruined Pokemon with the new pokes but it didnt. i like 4th gen

[Paladin of Arceus]

I like DPt because of the villains. They're so deliciously evil, so I love to stomp them into the dirt that much more. The new Pokémon rock, too, and anyone still stuck on gen 1 being the only true Pokémon games loses my respect, and invokes the wrath of the ignore button.

[Brownie]

Im guessing slow speed (DP)

[nightsmith97]

^ I agree.

Sinnoh is and always will be my favorite Pokemon region, but the battle speeds were sooo slow.

[Cloud_Arcanine]

I'd appreciate more fire types in the games, but otherwise I have no problem with them.

[Master Leo]

It was very slow, the Pokedex pre national was pretty bad imo, and it just wasnt as good as the previous games before it or Unova. I like Platinum, but 4th Gen was my least favorite Gen by far.

[vespiqueen]

I don't understand the hate either.
I LOVE Platinum! I'm currently replaying it and I think it has a great story line, plus Sinnoh has some good towns and Pokemon.
I agree that the speed of the game is kind of a detriment, but it's honestly not that big of a deal and it's not a good reason to hate these games.

[ShinyUmbreon189]

I too hated the Gen until I played the game, when I played I grew to like it. Same goes for B/W. I just don't like the designs that's all, I think that's the biggest issue. It may also be because of the slower speed. I personally hate that it's hard to find any good electric or water Pokemon in Pt. If you don't choose Luxray or Empoleon your pretty much scrwed unless you can wait for Jolteon to learn Discharge at level 78 or wait until you get Electabuzz. There's a lot of factors to "why" people hate it. I don't hate it and I personally think Pt has an awesome storyline, but I do think it's a little too slow.

[Winter02]

I have always wondered why so many people dislike the Sinnoh games. Personally, I love them, and while they are not perfect, they are definitely great games. But as for why other people dislike them, there might be many reasons. Here are a few minor ones I can think about, some which I have seen people complain about while others are things that I can imagine people would dislike:

First off, if we compare D/P/P to previous games in the series:

- D/P/P does in general have longer save times than any other games in the series.
- Important trainers have dialogue in the battles. A very minor thing, but I have seen people complain about it.
- The contests changed from R/S/E, and the Pokeblocks were replaced with Poffins.
- The bag had unlimited storage, which meant you no longer could deposit items to the PC, but had to scroll through a lot if you had many items.
- The games had very many legendaries. I have seen this complaint once (but then it was about R/S/E), although some people might say the same about D/P/P.
- The story might have been a bit strange and hard to understand at times (like what the actual motives of Team Galactic were). But this was somewhat fixed in Platinum and a very strange complaint seeing as the stories in the Pokemon games never have been anything special anyway.
- The Poketch only had one button in D/P, which could make it annoying to scroll through all of the apps just to find the one you were looking for. Platinum fixed this by adding a second button.
- The surfing speed in Diamond & Pearl was very slow, but this was fixed in Platinum, where it was faster.
- It wasn’t possible to ride the bike through gates in D/P, something that had been possible in most older games. But this was also fixed in Platinum.
- No Battle Froniter. People who had previously had fun with this in Emerald might have been disappointed when it didn’t reappear in D/P. But it was back in Platinum.
- Being unable to rebattle Gym Leaders. After playing Emerald, I guess a lot of players expected this to return in D/P. But it was brought back in Platinum.
- For the PAL Platinum only: The slot-playing in the Game Corner was removed. It might have made some people angry.

One thing mentioned in this thread is the slowness of the games. The 4th gen games run in 30 FPS compared to the 3rd gen games which run in 60 FPS. This makes them slower to play (I guess that is the main reason, although there might be other factors as well). But, according to Bulbapedia, Platinum is a bit faster than D/P despite having the same framerate (I have personally not noticed any noticeable differences, but I guess others have).

Another thing mentioned in this thread is the Pokedex issues. Certain types are definitely underrepresented, especially Fire-types in D/P where the only choices were Infernape and Rapidash. Not being able to use all of the new Pokemon before the E4 is another thing that players might have found annoying. But this was another thing that was mostly fixed in Platinum.

If we instead compare D/P/P to the newer games (HG/SS & B/W+2), this could be for the people who played these before D/P/P or went back to the Sinnoh games after playing the newer games, here are some things people might dislike:

- Not very good use of the Touch Screen. Compared to the newer games, D/P/P didn’t use the Touch Screen much, mostly only for scrolling in the items menu and for the Poketch. And for battles, but all of the DS games have done that.
- They had no Pokemon following you (outside of Amity Square). I will never be able to understand why, but a majority of players like this feature in HG/SS. For those who liked this feature, not having it in D/P/P might have been a disappointment for those who played HG/SS before D/P/P and those who returned to D/P/P after playing HG/SS.
- D/P/P lacked something to connect to outside of the games, HG/SS has the Pokewalker and B/W/B2/W2 has the Dream World.

Even with all of this, the main complaint I have seen is that people don’t like the designs of the 4th generation Pokemon. What Pokemon you like and dislike is of course something very subjective, there is nothing right or wrong with liking or disliking certain Pokemon. But I have never seen anyone go into a deeper explanation about why they dislike the Sinnoh Pokemon.

[^Cutty^]

D/P/Plat were best seller games. There are many ppl who like too.
I personally love it. Gen 4th gives me more n new pokemon game experiences than before even more than 5th gen.
Of course it's slower, B/W are more advanced.

[Frost Mage]

I love my Pearl version, but I have to admit, with all of the 3rd and 2nd Gen Pokemon that are really difficult to find, they sort of force you to like JUST the 4th Gen Pokemon, essentially killing some of the nostalgia that the older Pokemon bring to the games, and what HG/SS restores for the 4th Generation of games.

[IrisAndDawn]

i dont know why they dont like D/P/P i like pearl and platinum sinooh is the best reigion i think its a really cool game

[Bolt the Cat]

DP I can understand because of the terrible regional dex. But Platinum fixed that and added a ton of other stuff, so I don't understand why anyone would hate on Platinum.

[Jaguartail]

I actually liked these games.

[armaldo ex]

Diamond and Pearl are the most update pokemon games i have -.-

[Apharia]

I liked Platinum too, it's one of my favorite games
but i think i understand why people hate it...
It's the 4th generation itself...
it had some great pokemons, but it was the worst
generation in my opinion, the reasons are...
First, too many evolutions for previous gen's pokemons
not enough new lines... i personally didn't like most of
them, for example Tangella, Magneton, Electabuzz,
Rhydon and Lickitung's evolutions.
The second reason is the starters, they're fine in my
opinion, but they weren't that good compared to the
previous gen's starters, i was disappointed when i saw
them!
It's my personal opinion, but i can't think of any other
reasons.

[Arlo]

I didn't even realize that so many people hated DPPT until I started hanging around here again. I was here when I was playing through RSE (which was actually while the 4th gen was out - late to the party), but by the time I got a DS and started playing through the 4th gen, I wasn't spending much time here, so I didn't see the feedback. I've only started posting here again recently, while playing White (still late to the party), and so only discovered recently that people hate DPPT.

I quite liked them myself. I expected some issues, since they were the first games after the physical/special split. The dex is a bit limited and skewed, but it's playable enough, and the region is great. And Dawn is awesome. I liked most of the new pokemon, and some of them are among my all time favorites. And Dawn is awesome. Yeah - the combat is a bit slow, particularly waiting for the weather condition to display, then for the game to tell you what the weather condition that's displaying is, and some of the caves in particular are a bit too long and tortuous, but they're still pretty good games. And Dawn is awesome. To their credit, the starters are among the best ever - they all have solid multi-type evolutions and they each fill a particular niche well, so they make for quite a bit of variety and they're actually mostly viable late in the game, which is something that can't be said about many of the starters from other gens. And Dawn is awesome.

I dunno... As with so many such things, I presume that much of the hate for DPPt springs from the same source as much internet hate in general - people just desperately trying to compensate for their own insecurities and maybe manage to fit in with a peer group by hating the same things the peer group hates, whether that's DPPT or Naruto or Call of Duty or Republicans or...

And Dawn is awesome.

[Necro101]

Firstly, I think that people did not like it because of how slow past it was. Personally I loved gen IV . It was my favourite generation after generation III. Back to topic. Secondly, I have read complaints about how the motive of team Galactic was unclear. I agreed with the people at first but when I played Platinum it all made sense (and when I replayed Diamond and read the text...). Thirdly, people also disliked the fact that allot of the good Pokemon where not available after you had beaten the league and that there was lack of fire type, electric type and water type before the League. (I don't know if that is true and if it was just some 7 years old kid who had written a complain about that) Fourthly, the caves in DPP where torture... Too much Zubat's!!! The caves where long, and they had millions of Zubat's. Enough said! Theres are the only reasons I know of why people hated DPP.
In conclusion, I only wrote what I have seen people complain about in the past and I really like the DPP so I don't know why so much people hated it. (I will read other post after this to read other reasons.)

RAWK ON

Edit: The end of the post is weird, but I don't know how to write to make it make sense.)

[Bolt the Cat]

Firstly, I think that people did not like it because of how slow past it was.

WTF does this even mean?

Thirdly, people also disliked the fact that allot of the good Pokemon where not available after you had beaten the league

Maybe for DP, but definitely not for Platinum, you had plenty of good Pokemon to play around with. The only games where I would even dare make this claim would be RSE, and even then, it could still possibly be refuted.

and that there was lack of fire type, electric type and water type before the League. (I don't know if that is true and if it was just some 7 years old kid who had written a complain about that)

Again, that's true of DP, which only had 2 Fire types (one of which was the starter), 3 Electric types, and 2 Ice types (Water types were fine, it was Ice that was lacking), but Platinum also corrected this by giving those types better variety. Fire type got 3 new Pokemon, Electric got 2, and Ice got 3.

Fourthly, the caves in DPP where torture... Too much Zubat's!!! The caves where long, and they had millions of Zubat's. Enough said!

Now this sounds like a nitpick if I ever heard one. None of the dungeons in this game were unreasonably long at all. Zubat spam is a bit more understandable, but this isn't the only game you could make that complaint for.

[ansem the wise]

maybe cuz they wanted a dark type gym? (we still dont have one).
maybe too many legendarys? maybe they liked the original pokemon contests?

and all of those are just crappy reasons anyways.

[Bolt the Cat]

maybe too many legendarys?

I can kind of see the problem with the legendaries in this game, but that's not enough to completely hate the game.

[Champion Cynthia108]

It's just how slow it i for me. Saving takes ages, plus the story starts off kind of slow