A Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl player recently warned others to turn off autosaves prior to entering the game's Snowpoint City Gym after its puzzle trapped them inside, with no escape. The Snowpoint City Gym - lead by seventh gym leader Candice - is notoriously difficult to navigate in both the original and rereleased Pokémon installments, thanks to an indoor terrain of slippery ice, several excitable rival trainers, and various snowballs riddled throughout.
The Snowpoint City Gym, as its name suggests, tasks players with confronting Candice's team of Ice-type Pokémon. Although a Pokémon Ice-type roster has a variety of strengths - including but not limited to being effective against Dragon-, Flying-, Grass- and Ground-types while immune to other Ice-types - Ice-type Pokémon are vulnerable to Fire-, Rock-, Fighting- and Steel-types. In Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl, opponent Candice has a four-Pokémon party that can be hard to handle if without any Pokémon who are, or possess moves, of the latter four types. That said, some players might say that the Snowpoint City Gym's real challenge lies in its pre-battle puzzle.
Reddit user JoeHeroOfArdania recently posted a warning to Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl players, explaining they might want to turn off the autosave feature before attempting the Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl Snowpoint City Gym pre-battle puzzle. In a surprising turn of events, JoeHeroOfArdania found their playable character trapped inside a cluster of the gym's snowballs, with seemingly no escape. Due to the game's autosave feature, exiting Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl wouldn't solve the entrapment issue - if spending a certain amount of time in the gym, it is possible autosave would send a player right back to their "soft lock" position if reloading the game.
Please turn off autosaves when you enter Snowpoint cities gym, I got soft locked while trying to solve the gym puzzle. from pokemon
Players can access their backup saves with the Brilliant Diamond or Shining Pearl title screens pulled up, but turning off autosaves is likely a slightly more manageable solution to this encounterable issue. Other Reddit users commented on JoeHeroOfArdania's post with stories detailing when the autosave feature in other, non-Pokémon-related games caused irreparable issues with their progress. One user commented, "Games that use autosave should include this option. [Assassin's Creed:] Black Flag (on PC) glitched during the non-skippable cutscene and the autosave started. When I reload, my character is glitched out of the screen with no way of bypassing it. And my progress was like 75% and I was trying to 100% it. Without any way of going back to previous checkpoint/autosave, I started it new and stopped the game within 15 minutes. I couldn't handle to do it again."
Encountering entrapment in the Snowpoint City Gym is not an outcome players would likely expect. That said, turning off autosave is probably a good idea, regardless of whether or not a player is about to take on the Ice-type gym at all. The majority of previous Pokémon games do not have autosave, thus motivating some longtime players to obsessively save when anticipating in-game checkpoints (like battles with gym leaders or other notable trials). As a result, it is arguable autosave in Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl is even necessary.
Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Pokémon Shining Pearl are now available for the Nintendo Switch.
Source: JoeHeroOfArdania/Reddit