Another glitch has been found in Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, this time involving the player’s rival, Barry. Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are Nintendo Switch remakes of the classic Nintendo DS Pokémon games, Diamond and Pearl, and were developed with a focus on keeping the games as close as possible to their original counterparts. Despite this, new features have brought about unexpected exploits and glitches to the games.
Some exploits are rather harmless, such as taking advantage of Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl's new diagonal movement to skip certain Gym puzzles. Other exploits and glitches have resulted in players getting stuck behind BDSP's NPCs, or becoming soft locked. While many of these seem avoidable with careful play, there are some that happen seemingly at random.
One such random glitch has been discovered involving the rival character, Barry. Reddit user nilewater approached their rival for the second battle together, which takes place in Hearthome City. The player’s starter Pokémon, Piplup, had evolved to Prinplup by this point. Barry, who should have had a Grotle evolved from Turtwig for this fight, instead sent out a Prinplup of his own. Barry is one of the Pokémon series rivals whose starter Pokémon has a type advantage over the player’s, meaning he should have kept a member of the Turtwig evolutionary line in his team against a player who started off with Piplup. This glitch removes Pokémon rival Barry’s team consistency in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl and doesn’t have a clear way to be avoided.
The Grand Underground Could Cause BDSP's Barry Glitch
Thankfully, the glitch seems really rare thus far, but other Reddit users have claimed to experience the same thing as nilewater. Because no one has provided any updates on the situation, it’s unknown if the glitch remains after the second battle with Barry. It’s unclear what causes the glitch, although it’s been speculated to have to do with the Grand Underground. It’s possible that parts of players’ save data gets “swapped” in the Grand Underground, which could have altered how these players’ copies of Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl determined what Pokémon team to give Barry.
This data “swapping” in Pokémon BDSP's Grand Underground has also been cited as the potential cause for players’ Pokémon’s nicknames randomly changing during evolution. Although this Barry-related glitch may trip up some players during their playthrough by throwing a wrench in their battle strategies, a Pokémon’s nickname changing temporarily while evolving is ultimately harmless. Still, it’s concerning that players may experience glitches in Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl simply by trying to take advantage of all the fun new features the games bring to the table.