I have finally defeated the Elite Four and all I have to do now is complete my Pokedex and go through the Battle Frontier. And since I'm pretty sure no one wants another 6 blogs just of me ranting about how freakin' hard Cressalia is to catch or that it is cruel to only have one Masterball when you have to catch Palkia and Dialga, I'll just do my final summary.

Follow up:

Graphics

The graphics are definitely the best I've seen for any of the hand-held pokemon games, but after playing Kingdom Hearts and seeing the potential of what the DS can do, I have to say I'm greatly underwhelmed. In reality the graphics are about the same quality of the GBA, and they don't take as many advantages of the new buttons and touch screen as they could have.

Storyline

Pokemon isn't really known for storytelling, even for a roleplaying game, but I have to say I was actually pretty impressed with their efforts in the storyline. There is a considerable chunk after defeating the Elite Four, with lots of areas to explore and more to do with Team Galactic after the team is disbanded. There is also a lot more philosophy and mythology behind pokemon creatures as this version further explores the relationship between pokemon and people, even to a point where basically the universe was created by a pokemon. At times it was almost a little overkill, but it was still fun to listen to what all the characters had to say.

Characters

Cyrus, while definitely no where as cool as Giovanni, is still one of the best Pokemon villains of the series. Team Galactic and its main officers were definitely the most complex of the teams, with some even becoming redeemable characters. I also liked the addition of a second rival and more interaction with the Gym Leaders and the Elite Four

Gameplay

The game play for the most part is awesome. The pokemon levels were better balanced out, so it was a lot easier to level up to match whatever boss you had to face in the next piece of storyline, and I was never stuck more than a week to try to level up enough to beat the next boss. The Underground is a ton of fun, and even the contests are a bit better--thought I still hate them. I love, love, love that it's backwards compatible with the earlier GBA games. There is a lot to do in each town and area, and I had reasons to keep coming back over and over. The VS seeker works way better in this game and most of the new pokemon are really cool, and we didn't get bombarded with a billion more water types. The Legendaries are a lot better than the R/S/E generation even if there are a ton of them.

Conclusion

While I still think Pokemon Crystal was the best game of the series, Platinum is a good second, with huge improvements from the spectacularly disappointing Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald. There are still issues with post-Elite Four game play, but they make an honest effort to keep the storyline going. The huge pokedex is overwhelming, but not entirely impossible to accomplish. The underground is a lot of fun to play in, the character designs are pretty good and the graphics are better than previous versions. While I don't want the formula to change too much with the format of badges and facing the elite four, I would like to see more post-Elite Four gameplay stuck into the next generation. Also, the graphics seriously need to start catching up with the systems. The battles need to be better animated and have better visuals.

But I can easily say that Platinum has renewed my faith obsession in the franchise. Now if you'll excuse me I have 360 more pokemon to get

Gotta Catch'em All.