Although they're pretty faithful remakes of the original Nintendo DS games, fans have been combing through Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl for any slight changes to the original Gen 4 titles. One fan ran across a major change in that their rival had chosen the same starter as they had, before beginning to think that they had run into a bizarre glitch.
Posted to the sub-Reddit r/Pokemon, Reddit user u/nilewater claimed that they had chosen Piplup as their starter only to run into their rival in Hearthome city for their second fight for them to be using Prinplup instead of Grotle. While it isn't unheard of for a Pokemon game to change things up with the way that the player's rival chooses their starter, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl aren't meant to be messing with the classic formula.
What makes the situation even weirder is that, according to u/nilewater in the comments of the original post, their rival had chosen Turtwig as their starter for the first fight at the very beginning of the game. This makes it clear that the poster simply ran into a weird glitch causing their rival's starter to switch, but that doesn't make it any less odd.
Depending on how they were playing the game, a surprise Prinplup when the player was expecting a Grotle could be quite problematic, especially if they were playing using a Nuzlocke ruleset. The original poster doesn't specify that they were, however, plenty of fans are jumping into the game with many different playstyles meaning that surprise encounters with the wrong Pokemon could be devastating if they don't know what's causing the bug.
One commenter said that they had a similar experience with two different save files as their rival similarly had the wrong Pokemon for the second fight despite having downloaded the day one update which was meant to iron out some bugs regarding the rival and their team. Whatever is causing the issue, it seems like it isn't entirely common, but Pokemon fans should still be keeping an eye out for it as, according to the post and its comments, it isn't a simple one-off glitch.
Fans have encountered another glitch in Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, however, this one is more useful than the rotating cast of the rival's team. This glitch causes Pokemon and item duplication and is pretty simple to do, but anyone looking to use it should act fast as that's the sort of thing that is quickly patched out of Pokemon titles as it can be exploited in the competitive scene.
Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are available now for Nintendo Switch.
