Yeah, no shocker. That **** died fast as ****. Gen 4 remakes were some if the most hyped up Pokemon games since last decade, with Gen 4 having a dedicated as hell fanbase. And it came... and went just like that? And now it's dead in the water, active players are dwindling and core features of the game are just absent. So what went wrong?
First, let's talk abiut prerelease, more specifically the mixed reception when it was first revealed. The first trailer for BDSP was shown in a Pokemon Presents and by God did that **** look
UGLY, and this isn't talking about the Chibi style. The overall graphics making it look like a cheap $5 phone game with **** that was jagged, bad color choices, some horrible character models it was clear that was this game was not polished for the presents. And "game footage not final"was kinda daunting in the fanbase; SwSh boasted the same message and the graphical fidelity did not really improve at all. Fans were rightfully worried: this is what they're getting, and nothing was gonna change. It looked significantly better with the 2nd trailer (imo, it looks damn good now), but the overall chibi artstyle wasn't everyone's cup of tea.
Next, there's the advertising. Or rather, lack of. There was uh... NOTHING advertised about this game that was actually worthwhile aside from the removal of HMs. Again, SwSh did that, but this time fans were even more worried about what's in the game, or rather what's NOT in the game. Are Megas in? Z-Moves? Dynamax? There was one universal major concern, however...
Let's fast forward ahead to before the game released: it got leaked after months of radio silence in the adventising, and jeez were first impressions BAD. Incomplete content, the midi music was ****ing awful, glitches galore, hell there wasn't even an opening movie. The game was NOT finished at a time it should've gone gold. Essentially
Now, we got it, and it added everything the fans wanted. Except one major issue which I feel was the true nail in the coffin. One PLATINUM issue...
It was a faithful remake. Too faithful for it's own good. It fixed all the pacing issues D&P had and made the game much smoother. However, there was another game that fixed D&P's everything else: Pokemon Platinum. It fixed gym teams, had a more involved story, fixed the godawful dex, and was a nicer game to look at aside from the Pokemon sprites idk how they ****ed that up. And BDSP had some of that... in the optional post game. Plat Dex? Better hope it's in the Underground before the you hit Cynthia. Gym Leader teams? Post game. Giratina and the Distortion World? Post game. Looker? Lmao. Charon? Lmao. Cynthia actually doing something (and I use something lightly because let's be real, she doesn't do much in Plat). Lmao. Instead it was back to basics, but maybe it was... too basic? Turns out, it's not D&P people loved, it was Platinum for all the improvements it made, but BDSP just imoroved the other issues with Gen 4 but ignored everything else that Plat had fixed.
And finally, the longetivity, or rather, lack of. This game died fast. No competitive meant comp players went back to SwSh, no trading nor Home as of typing this (Every other Pokemon game on Switch has this btw), Gen 4 stans didn't like it and were planning to move on to PLA, casual fans liked it but were ready to move on to PLA, TPC just dumped it and was ready to move on to PLA, yeah, PLA killed any chance this game had, and SWSH killed the competitive scene. Truth is, there is no reason to revisit BDSP. Not even for random battling, the online in BDSP is dead as hell.
To conclude, BDSP was a fine game, but on that was just not hitting the right notes for many people. In the end, being too faithful with nothing much in return just ended any fighting chance it may have had. Could've, should've, would've, but at the end of the day, BDSP will probably go down as one of the least talked about and shortest living Pokemon game.
jk, the real issue was no redesigns. That's why BDSP didn't so do hot/s