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Happiest I've ever been in a pokemon game is the stretch between gym 1 and 4 in DP. I played through that part over the course of what felt like 50 in game hours, spent exploring, playing in the underground with all my friends, making poffins with friends, doing the contests (Yea I did those), catching pokemon to trade between friends, doing regular rematches with all the trainers I met, and doing pvp against my friends. All this while watching the sinnoh anime and movies gave a very difficult to describe feeling of flavor that just hasn't been even remotely matched, I felt truly and uncompromisingly happy during those times, DP at the time felt like the best games I ever played.
I acknowledge now that gen 3 and 5 or both better imo, and platinum is a direct improvement, but there's something about DP that feels, more relaxed, more free to explore than even platinum. It's autistic but that shit was the peak of peaks for my whole life it feels, playing Diamond again over the past few weeks after several years of ignoring sinnoh and I've simply never felt more nostalgic despite gen 2 (late gen 2, probably more accurate to say 3) being my first generation.
