It's been nearly a year since my initial video essay tackling the modern era of Pokémon on the Switch, during which I said a lot of things about Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl at the then recent announcements. So when the day came it released, I strapped on my helmet to dive in and deliver this full review. It's been two months, and what an insane journey this has been...

For anybody curious about the story of the production of this video
My script/notes document is 52 pages long at 11 point font, at 1.5 times spacing. I did a 68 part playthrough series, made up of 8 streams. The total footage of BDSP I downloaded from my Twitch series to use in this review is 60.67GB of footage, along with 11.9GB of footage I used from my Platinum series. Combined with all the other game footage, and footage I needed to use from other channels, I have no doubt this project easily passed 100GB of material I gathered for use, and it certainly took a toll on my computer. My video editing software crashed several times, my computer as a whole even crashed once after everything went red and it was like "oops your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart". It was a miracle my computer could handle this project at all, and I had to break it into four separate projects to diminish lag and crashes.
I worked on the earlier Chapters during my playthrough, as those didn't need the game beaten to create, and worked on the script for the other chapters as the playthrough went on. I would complete the video of a chapter, finish the script for the next one, make it into a complete video, finish the script of the next one, and so on, that was my work loop. Sometimes I'd work on script on the side while listening to online lectures, or some nights if I couldn't sleep I'd pull up my phone and type up more script. Chapters 12 I had completed before the holidays, but between the holidays and new year I'd be away. So I recorded the completed script for Chapter 3, and left my desktop on to remote in. Dec 26 31 was just a fulltime week completing the gameplay chapter off of my old laptop remoting into my desktop at home, even recorded the Platinum TM footage I needed remotely if anybody caught that clip with an empty chair as I was on the other side of the province at the time. Then January 2022 was about committing to completing the script and video for Chapters 47. And so, here we are today. I was honestly REALLY worried about being able to finish this video essay before Legends Arceus released, thank goodness it worked out...
(Also yes I stole the Dawn art I drew on this thumbnail from my Opinions on Video Games thumbnail and changed the thumbnail of that video to something else)
I think I need to take a break from video essays for a while now, or maybe start doing some more short form essays...

Legend
_____________________
0:00 Introduction
1:39 Chapter 1 Pokémon's Remake History, Before Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl's Release
23:23 Chapter 2 The Hidden Scheme
36:46 Chapter 3 Gameplay
1:24:47 Chapter 4 Visuals & Aesthetics
1:39:38 Chapter 5 Soundtrack
1:54:07 Chapter 6 Story
2:06:24 Chapter 7 Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl
_____________________

⛰Pokémon Legends Arceus Essay    • A Good Game Made Badly  A Long Criti...  
How Pokémon Lost Its Magic Essay    • How Pokémon Lost Its Magic  The Stor...  
Video Essays    • Video Essays  

Pokémon Brilliant Diamond Playthrough    • Pokémon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl  
⛰Pokémon Legends Arceus Playthrough    • ⛰Pokémon Legends Arceus  
Pokémon Platinum Playthrough    • Pokémon Platinum  
All Playthroughs    / @acousticharmonia  

Music & Footage Credit
This will be in the pinned comment as the music credit alone and footage credit alone are each close to the YouTube description character limit, be sure to check out some of those talented remixers who make incredible music!

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Game: Pokémon Brilliant Diamond
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Released: November 19, 2021
Developer: ILCA
Publishers: The Pokémon Company, Nintendo