I have to compare this one with the original red and blue because it i not so long ago i picked it up again. Then the remake came out and of course i had to play it.
You can see, that this is a remake. They did not change the story. But they did change the mechanics, which is awesome. I never thought that I would like the fact, that every Pokemon (even not with you) gets XP but heeeeeell yeah this is the way to go. It is so great that you don't have to train every freakin' Pokemon. You can just take it with you. I also like the level-system of he moves, and the gummis are gone, hooorray (mostly)
So yes I enjoyed the new mechanics and I loved the graphics (Dunno why everyone was hating it, The artstyle is soo charming) I only finished the game and did not yet touch the post-game (which is huge) because I was playing it parallel to animal crossing. And then I had to play Pokemon Shield, and now i have to play... aaah whatever, maybe I'll pick it up again to do the post-game maybe not.
You can see, that this is a remake. They did not change the story. But they did change the mechanics, which is awesome. I never thought that I would like the fact, that every Pokemon (even not with you) gets XP but heeeeeell yeah this is the way to go. It is so great that you don't have to train every freakin' Pokemon. You can just take it with you. I also like the level-system of he moves, and the gummis are gone, hooorray (mostly)
So yes I enjoyed the new mechanics and I loved the graphics (Dunno why everyone was hating it, The artstyle is soo charming) I only finished the game and did not yet touch the post-game (which is huge) because I was playing it parallel to animal crossing. And then I had to play Pokemon Shield, and now i have to play... aaah whatever, maybe I'll pick it up again to do the post-game maybe not.
Overall, Mystery Dungeon DX is a pleasant remake. However, a lot of complaints and issues with gameplay from the original are still present and unrefined. Despite the improved visuals, it definitely does not feel like a Switch title, and is more in comparison to the original Gameboy Advance title.
With little-to-no new features or improvements from the original titles. If you enjoy dungeon crawlers with hundreds of hours of gameplay, you will like this game. As an avid Pokemon fan, you will more than likely enjoy this game. But if you are neither of these things, I can almost guarantee you will have a boring and tedious experience.
With little-to-no new features or improvements from the original titles. If you enjoy dungeon crawlers with hundreds of hours of gameplay, you will like this game. As an avid Pokemon fan, you will more than likely enjoy this game. But if you are neither of these things, I can almost guarantee you will have a boring and tedious experience.
when i played the first one as a young child i got a skitty and then again at 24 i was assigned skitty at birth, which is the most consistent assessment of my personality I've ever received. great game but i looked at the amount of post game content, got overwhelmed, and haven't opened it since
Great remake of a great game i finally got to experience and now please please PLEASE do explorers dx i played that game growing up and it meant quite alot to me, i would cry at that annoucement like i did when i was 9 at the ending.
I remember playing the original as a little kid and playing this was a lot of fun and took me back. I love the story and the designs of the Pokémon, the combat feels more unique than typical Pokémon games and it added some cool mechanics to it that made it feel improved. It’s a simple but great game, the entire Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series is a lot of fun
As someone who played 75% of this game countless times as a kid without finishing it, it was awesome to see this game remade into a title that holds up much better today.
This is seemingly the only Pokemon series where the pokemon themselves have actual character, where you can actually be emotionally invested without seeing them as just a statistic that you create your own backstory for.
The music in this game is incredible and the general sound is a blast to the past in the best way possible.
My main problem with this game is that, while the gameplay is fun, it is waaaaaaaaay too easy. No boss fight lasted longer than 1 minute and I was never in any real danger.
It's a shame that this is a repeated theme for Pokemon in the modern day; that no matter the genre / playstyle, these games are way too easy and don't offer any harder difficulties.
Also I got treecko so that was a massive bonus
This is seemingly the only Pokemon series where the pokemon themselves have actual character, where you can actually be emotionally invested without seeing them as just a statistic that you create your own backstory for.
The music in this game is incredible and the general sound is a blast to the past in the best way possible.
My main problem with this game is that, while the gameplay is fun, it is waaaaaaaaay too easy. No boss fight lasted longer than 1 minute and I was never in any real danger.
It's a shame that this is a repeated theme for Pokemon in the modern day; that no matter the genre / playstyle, these games are way too easy and don't offer any harder difficulties.
Also I got treecko so that was a massive bonus
This review contains spoilers
"Against all odds, you must run. Run. Run...and survive. You must run till you uncover the truth."
The original Blue Rescue Team game (never had Red Rescue Team) is one that I have very fond memories of. I have some strong childhood memories of my many times playing it, from bawling my head off during the ending to more personal amusing moments such as how I had a bad habit of erasing my save file thinking I could beat the game by myself after having just had one of my older brothers beat the game for me (I would inevitably ask one of them to beat it for me again). I still have a save file from around 2012 or so when I beat the game with an Action Replay to make all my Pokémon Level 100 and have all items in the storage. When I heard this game was getting a remake in 2020, I was cautiously optimistic. I was not really a fan of the art style at the time and I just felt like nothing could replace the original for me. For a long time, I kinda just forgot this remake even happened until I got it as a Christmas present in 2022. After having finally played this game I hadn't beaten since I was a preteen, I came out just a little disappointed. It isn't the deep emotional rollercoaster I remember it as, although it was still a tearjerker at times from me. It isn't anywhere near as difficult as I remember it being, although I imagine a large part of that is probably because of either remake differences or because I am an adult playing this game. Nonetheless, I did still enjoy my time with this one and I would recommend it to anyone. Its just a bit unfortunate to have my rose-tinted nostalgia goggles taken off like this.
I'll start with the story, since its always what stood out in my mind whenever I think of any of the Mystery Dungeon games. I used to think this was really gripping, deep, and immersive as a kid, but I can see beyond the childlike amazement now and I see a story that has a lot of heart to it but doesn't have much substance. As far as I can tell, Rescue Team DX's story is exactly the same as the games its remaking, since I don't recall a single plot point here not being present in the original. Basically, the big hook of this one (and pretty much all the other Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games) is that you're a human who got transformed into a Pokémon and you're trying to figure out why. From the very beginning, you stumble upon your soon-to-be best friend, who's the partner you choose at the beginning of the game. I like goofy names in games, so I named my character Dude and my partner Bro. I'm just going to use those names here so I'm not constantly saying "the partner" or "you". Dude and Bro go into their first dungeon - Tiny Woods - to save a Butterfree's child and they inevitably succeed. From here, they decide to form a Rescue Team (hence the name of the game), which is...well, a team of Pokémon that make it their job to rescue those unfortunate souls that got lost in dungeons. I am very unfunny and uncreative, so I named mine Team Gigachads. As a newly formed team, the only members are Dude and Bro, although it gets bigger later. From here, the story mostly consists of a good amount of rescue missions with their own motivations behind it, like how you go to Silent Chasm to save a Jumpluff because another greedy Rescue Team got persuaded into doing it and nearly died trying. Sometimes you also just go through dungeons for your own sake, like how Dude goes to Great Canyon to talk to the mystical Xatu in hopes of seeing if Xatu knows why he became a Pokémon. You also have these dream sequences where, slowly but surely, Dude starts to piece together why he was placed into the world of Pokémon. In my opinion, the story doesn't really start getting interesting until the part where Gengar - the leader of Team Meanies (yea that's genuinely what they're called) that has a bone to pick with you - finds out you're a human through spying on your conversation with Xatu. He immediately tries to sabotage the goodwill you've been building up with the townsfolk and other Rescue Teams. Dude has been telling them that he's a human since he first got here, but they either never take him seriously or don't know what a human even is. Alakazam's team - the big team that everyone loves but was never given an official name - are the only ones with suspicions about Dude being evil, with Alakazam specifically being the one to suspect it. Gengar takes advantage of everyone's lack of knowledge about humans to spin a narrative that the reason why all the natural disasters happening in the world lately (you get hints of this through conversation with the legendaries you fight since they talk about the balance of the specific part of the world they govern being out of wack) is tied to Dude becoming a Pokémon. There's a legend that a Ninetales tried to curse a human for pulling its tail, but a Gardevoir with a deep bond protected that human, and the human selfishly ran away. This tale is used as "evidence" by Gengar to convince others to join the mob. They kinda just immediately believe him, even the big hotshot Rescue Team that Dude and Bro admire so much. Said Rescue Team breaks the news by threatening to kill you if you don't turn back, and even then they are going to send a bunch of the best Rescue Teams to hunt you down tomorrow so you better start running real fast. I remember something like this was genuinely really shocking to see in a Pokémon game for me as a kid and you start to really care for the characters after seeing how far these two little unevolved Pokémon have to push themselves to escape the elite Rescue Teams that want them dead. In my opinion, its the real emotional core of the game, and it does last a good while. For a while, you're just going through a bunch of dungeons with the goal of getting as far away from your pursuers as you can. It only ends once Gengar gets proven wrong, I thought it was a little anticlimactic that you're kinda just accepted back at the drop of a hat but Gengar being chased out of town was pretty satisfying. There's a decent chunk of the game still left, where you go to take down a group of Mankey to help Wobbuffet and Wynaut, Groudon to save Alakazam's team, and finally Rayquaza once you find out that there's a huge meteor that will destroy the world if you can't convince Rayquaza to stop it. As it turns out, Dude was not the human in the Ninetales legend, but instead he was sent to the Pokémon world with the specific goal of saving it from disaster. This leads to the pretty touching ending, where, when the day's finally saved, Dude disappears to return back to the human world, making Bro and the townsfolk break down into tears. I honestly felt this would have been more impactful if they actually committed to it, but Dude soon returns because he wished hard enough. Congrats, you're in the post game; enjoy the good chunk of extra content after the main story. This whole story took a long time to summarize, but, despite how text heavy this game is and how it seems cool on paper, the execution felt a bit off to me. I appreciate what it was going for but I don't think it leans enough into it, if that makes sense.
Gameplay's next to bat. I have to agree with the consensus here that it is pretty basic, but it is fun and feels very different from mainline Pokémon games despite having all the same creatures and a lot of the same moves (though there's also a lot that are different from the main series). The Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games are turn-based grid-based dungeon crawlers where you explore a bunch of floors with randomly generated layouts to find goodies or fight enemies. There's also some invisible traps that can bamboozle you. The goal is to find the stairs on each floor to keep going up until you reach the top floor. Of course, the top floor is different for each dungeon: for example, Tiny Woods ends at 4F and Sky Tower ends at 33F. Either the dungeon just ends entirely once you reach the top floor or you have a boss to fight. There's also requests that you take where you must fill certain criteria in the dungeons, which is almost always going to be finding a special Pokémon on a specific floor. You're either rescuing it, giving it a specific item, or having a Pokémon you've been escorting throughout the whole dungeon reunite with it. This sort of ties into one of the main complaints I've seen about these games; you're going to need to go through the same dungeons at least once since you need to grind for levels to catch up with the harder dungeons or to stock up on important items (although I found this game was very generous with items if you're doing a decent amount of requests), especially if you're trying to have a varied team that isn't just you and your partner. I didn't mind it, though; the fact that you also often have requests to do while you're in that dungeon makes it feel like you're at least accomplishing something rather than just going through the same thing again. Sometimes a dungeon you're revisiting will temporarily become full of loot and boost any gains from finding money, which was pretty satisfying to go through whenever it happened. The dungeons aren't super difficult, but I did die to the last dungeon once and once to the penultimate dungeon. Something relatively frustrating is that your experience can be completely different based at least partly on luck because of the way the floors are generated. Sometimes you come across a Monster House, which is when a whole cavalcade of Pokémon come out of nowhere and you're pretty much guaranteed to die at least once in my experience. Sometimes a Pokémon has a move that can shoot you from across the map or smack an entire room with massive damage (like how Bubble travels a long way and Earthquake destroys anything unfortunate enough to be in the same room), which can leave you feeling rather helpless if you don't also have one of those kinds of moves. Multi-hit moves are absolutely broken in this game and can easily melt you or your enemies if so much as two hits are achieved. Each hit of a multi-hit move does pretty much the same damage as a regular attack and I don't know who decided this was okay. I guess it's supposed to be balanced by the accuracy rate, but I found that, more often than not, you'll get at least two hits from the multi-hit moves, and its not that much of a problem when the game gives you items to raise your stats which includes accuracy of specific moves. Its ridiculous, but at least you can also take advantage of this too. It was hilarious seeing how Rock Blast is a move I never use in the main series games, but, as soon as I had it on my Geodude, I made the Rayquaza fight a complete joke. Another odd quirk about the Mystery Dungeon combat in comparison to mainline is that type coverage really isn't that important. It's always smart to have moves that are Super Effective just in case and there are types that are immune to the moves of another type, but, for some reason, moves that are not very effective can still hit like a truck. Also helps that moves get upgraded to hit harder the more you use them, and, if they're upgraded enough, you have the chance to attack twice in the same turn without using up any extra PP. This makes multi-hit attacks even more insane because you could potentially hit a Pokémon four times - which is already crazy enough - and then smack them around FOUR MORE TIMES for absolutely massive damage.
As a remake, I think this was pretty much a direct improvement over the original as far as quality of life and mechanics goes. There are some very nice QoL changes, like how you can now swap over control to any Pokémon in your party from the very beginning whereas it used to be that you could only control the main character until you beat the game (unfortunately this came at the cost of no longer letting you use any Pokémon to wander around town with but that was such a minor thing anyway). When you first start the game, you do a personality quiz that determines what Pokémon you get; it used to be mandatory that you accept whichever Pokémon you got from the quiz, but this remake lets you pick who you want if you're not satisfied with the quiz result, which was a great change imo. Personally I just stuck with what the quiz gave me, I feel that was really charming in the original but there's nothing wrong with giving people more options and I'll always commend that. It also removes the gender restrictions that were in place in the original, so boys can now pick Skitty and girls can pick Machop for example. A very specific nuisance that got fixed is how, if you wanted to go to Sky Tower again after beating the game, you needed to have the Fly TM in the original. This got removed in the remake and for good reason. I wouldn't be surprised if this also happened to the dungeons that you needed the Dive TM to enter in the original games, but those are in the post game and I only just beat the main story so I can't confirm for sure. Unfortunately, I do feel the changes in presentation resulted in a loss of personality from the original. Maybe its just my rose tinted glasses still being there but I think the sprites were just more expressive and charming. The Friend Areas (the places the Pokémon you recruit into your team go to) are also just a bunch of menus now when they used to be full-on...well, areas. You could walk around the areas - which I often did just to admire the neat DS sprite visuals - and each Pokémon had a certain spot they would often hang out at. Was just a cool touch that got removed. On the plus side, I found myself really loving the watercolor-like art style and I'd be happy to see more games that look like this.
Overall, I think playing through this game again has sort of ruined that childhood magic its always had for me, but I'm also glad I did it so I could form a more concrete opinion. Its still a lot of fun imo and had plenty of heart to it. If you're into dungeon crawlers and Pokémon, I would definitely recommend this one to you. It gets a solid 3.5 stars from me.
The original Blue Rescue Team game (never had Red Rescue Team) is one that I have very fond memories of. I have some strong childhood memories of my many times playing it, from bawling my head off during the ending to more personal amusing moments such as how I had a bad habit of erasing my save file thinking I could beat the game by myself after having just had one of my older brothers beat the game for me (I would inevitably ask one of them to beat it for me again). I still have a save file from around 2012 or so when I beat the game with an Action Replay to make all my Pokémon Level 100 and have all items in the storage. When I heard this game was getting a remake in 2020, I was cautiously optimistic. I was not really a fan of the art style at the time and I just felt like nothing could replace the original for me. For a long time, I kinda just forgot this remake even happened until I got it as a Christmas present in 2022. After having finally played this game I hadn't beaten since I was a preteen, I came out just a little disappointed. It isn't the deep emotional rollercoaster I remember it as, although it was still a tearjerker at times from me. It isn't anywhere near as difficult as I remember it being, although I imagine a large part of that is probably because of either remake differences or because I am an adult playing this game. Nonetheless, I did still enjoy my time with this one and I would recommend it to anyone. Its just a bit unfortunate to have my rose-tinted nostalgia goggles taken off like this.
I'll start with the story, since its always what stood out in my mind whenever I think of any of the Mystery Dungeon games. I used to think this was really gripping, deep, and immersive as a kid, but I can see beyond the childlike amazement now and I see a story that has a lot of heart to it but doesn't have much substance. As far as I can tell, Rescue Team DX's story is exactly the same as the games its remaking, since I don't recall a single plot point here not being present in the original. Basically, the big hook of this one (and pretty much all the other Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games) is that you're a human who got transformed into a Pokémon and you're trying to figure out why. From the very beginning, you stumble upon your soon-to-be best friend, who's the partner you choose at the beginning of the game. I like goofy names in games, so I named my character Dude and my partner Bro. I'm just going to use those names here so I'm not constantly saying "the partner" or "you". Dude and Bro go into their first dungeon - Tiny Woods - to save a Butterfree's child and they inevitably succeed. From here, they decide to form a Rescue Team (hence the name of the game), which is...well, a team of Pokémon that make it their job to rescue those unfortunate souls that got lost in dungeons. I am very unfunny and uncreative, so I named mine Team Gigachads. As a newly formed team, the only members are Dude and Bro, although it gets bigger later. From here, the story mostly consists of a good amount of rescue missions with their own motivations behind it, like how you go to Silent Chasm to save a Jumpluff because another greedy Rescue Team got persuaded into doing it and nearly died trying. Sometimes you also just go through dungeons for your own sake, like how Dude goes to Great Canyon to talk to the mystical Xatu in hopes of seeing if Xatu knows why he became a Pokémon. You also have these dream sequences where, slowly but surely, Dude starts to piece together why he was placed into the world of Pokémon. In my opinion, the story doesn't really start getting interesting until the part where Gengar - the leader of Team Meanies (yea that's genuinely what they're called) that has a bone to pick with you - finds out you're a human through spying on your conversation with Xatu. He immediately tries to sabotage the goodwill you've been building up with the townsfolk and other Rescue Teams. Dude has been telling them that he's a human since he first got here, but they either never take him seriously or don't know what a human even is. Alakazam's team - the big team that everyone loves but was never given an official name - are the only ones with suspicions about Dude being evil, with Alakazam specifically being the one to suspect it. Gengar takes advantage of everyone's lack of knowledge about humans to spin a narrative that the reason why all the natural disasters happening in the world lately (you get hints of this through conversation with the legendaries you fight since they talk about the balance of the specific part of the world they govern being out of wack) is tied to Dude becoming a Pokémon. There's a legend that a Ninetales tried to curse a human for pulling its tail, but a Gardevoir with a deep bond protected that human, and the human selfishly ran away. This tale is used as "evidence" by Gengar to convince others to join the mob. They kinda just immediately believe him, even the big hotshot Rescue Team that Dude and Bro admire so much. Said Rescue Team breaks the news by threatening to kill you if you don't turn back, and even then they are going to send a bunch of the best Rescue Teams to hunt you down tomorrow so you better start running real fast. I remember something like this was genuinely really shocking to see in a Pokémon game for me as a kid and you start to really care for the characters after seeing how far these two little unevolved Pokémon have to push themselves to escape the elite Rescue Teams that want them dead. In my opinion, its the real emotional core of the game, and it does last a good while. For a while, you're just going through a bunch of dungeons with the goal of getting as far away from your pursuers as you can. It only ends once Gengar gets proven wrong, I thought it was a little anticlimactic that you're kinda just accepted back at the drop of a hat but Gengar being chased out of town was pretty satisfying. There's a decent chunk of the game still left, where you go to take down a group of Mankey to help Wobbuffet and Wynaut, Groudon to save Alakazam's team, and finally Rayquaza once you find out that there's a huge meteor that will destroy the world if you can't convince Rayquaza to stop it. As it turns out, Dude was not the human in the Ninetales legend, but instead he was sent to the Pokémon world with the specific goal of saving it from disaster. This leads to the pretty touching ending, where, when the day's finally saved, Dude disappears to return back to the human world, making Bro and the townsfolk break down into tears. I honestly felt this would have been more impactful if they actually committed to it, but Dude soon returns because he wished hard enough. Congrats, you're in the post game; enjoy the good chunk of extra content after the main story. This whole story took a long time to summarize, but, despite how text heavy this game is and how it seems cool on paper, the execution felt a bit off to me. I appreciate what it was going for but I don't think it leans enough into it, if that makes sense.
Gameplay's next to bat. I have to agree with the consensus here that it is pretty basic, but it is fun and feels very different from mainline Pokémon games despite having all the same creatures and a lot of the same moves (though there's also a lot that are different from the main series). The Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games are turn-based grid-based dungeon crawlers where you explore a bunch of floors with randomly generated layouts to find goodies or fight enemies. There's also some invisible traps that can bamboozle you. The goal is to find the stairs on each floor to keep going up until you reach the top floor. Of course, the top floor is different for each dungeon: for example, Tiny Woods ends at 4F and Sky Tower ends at 33F. Either the dungeon just ends entirely once you reach the top floor or you have a boss to fight. There's also requests that you take where you must fill certain criteria in the dungeons, which is almost always going to be finding a special Pokémon on a specific floor. You're either rescuing it, giving it a specific item, or having a Pokémon you've been escorting throughout the whole dungeon reunite with it. This sort of ties into one of the main complaints I've seen about these games; you're going to need to go through the same dungeons at least once since you need to grind for levels to catch up with the harder dungeons or to stock up on important items (although I found this game was very generous with items if you're doing a decent amount of requests), especially if you're trying to have a varied team that isn't just you and your partner. I didn't mind it, though; the fact that you also often have requests to do while you're in that dungeon makes it feel like you're at least accomplishing something rather than just going through the same thing again. Sometimes a dungeon you're revisiting will temporarily become full of loot and boost any gains from finding money, which was pretty satisfying to go through whenever it happened. The dungeons aren't super difficult, but I did die to the last dungeon once and once to the penultimate dungeon. Something relatively frustrating is that your experience can be completely different based at least partly on luck because of the way the floors are generated. Sometimes you come across a Monster House, which is when a whole cavalcade of Pokémon come out of nowhere and you're pretty much guaranteed to die at least once in my experience. Sometimes a Pokémon has a move that can shoot you from across the map or smack an entire room with massive damage (like how Bubble travels a long way and Earthquake destroys anything unfortunate enough to be in the same room), which can leave you feeling rather helpless if you don't also have one of those kinds of moves. Multi-hit moves are absolutely broken in this game and can easily melt you or your enemies if so much as two hits are achieved. Each hit of a multi-hit move does pretty much the same damage as a regular attack and I don't know who decided this was okay. I guess it's supposed to be balanced by the accuracy rate, but I found that, more often than not, you'll get at least two hits from the multi-hit moves, and its not that much of a problem when the game gives you items to raise your stats which includes accuracy of specific moves. Its ridiculous, but at least you can also take advantage of this too. It was hilarious seeing how Rock Blast is a move I never use in the main series games, but, as soon as I had it on my Geodude, I made the Rayquaza fight a complete joke. Another odd quirk about the Mystery Dungeon combat in comparison to mainline is that type coverage really isn't that important. It's always smart to have moves that are Super Effective just in case and there are types that are immune to the moves of another type, but, for some reason, moves that are not very effective can still hit like a truck. Also helps that moves get upgraded to hit harder the more you use them, and, if they're upgraded enough, you have the chance to attack twice in the same turn without using up any extra PP. This makes multi-hit attacks even more insane because you could potentially hit a Pokémon four times - which is already crazy enough - and then smack them around FOUR MORE TIMES for absolutely massive damage.
As a remake, I think this was pretty much a direct improvement over the original as far as quality of life and mechanics goes. There are some very nice QoL changes, like how you can now swap over control to any Pokémon in your party from the very beginning whereas it used to be that you could only control the main character until you beat the game (unfortunately this came at the cost of no longer letting you use any Pokémon to wander around town with but that was such a minor thing anyway). When you first start the game, you do a personality quiz that determines what Pokémon you get; it used to be mandatory that you accept whichever Pokémon you got from the quiz, but this remake lets you pick who you want if you're not satisfied with the quiz result, which was a great change imo. Personally I just stuck with what the quiz gave me, I feel that was really charming in the original but there's nothing wrong with giving people more options and I'll always commend that. It also removes the gender restrictions that were in place in the original, so boys can now pick Skitty and girls can pick Machop for example. A very specific nuisance that got fixed is how, if you wanted to go to Sky Tower again after beating the game, you needed to have the Fly TM in the original. This got removed in the remake and for good reason. I wouldn't be surprised if this also happened to the dungeons that you needed the Dive TM to enter in the original games, but those are in the post game and I only just beat the main story so I can't confirm for sure. Unfortunately, I do feel the changes in presentation resulted in a loss of personality from the original. Maybe its just my rose tinted glasses still being there but I think the sprites were just more expressive and charming. The Friend Areas (the places the Pokémon you recruit into your team go to) are also just a bunch of menus now when they used to be full-on...well, areas. You could walk around the areas - which I often did just to admire the neat DS sprite visuals - and each Pokémon had a certain spot they would often hang out at. Was just a cool touch that got removed. On the plus side, I found myself really loving the watercolor-like art style and I'd be happy to see more games that look like this.
Overall, I think playing through this game again has sort of ruined that childhood magic its always had for me, but I'm also glad I did it so I could form a more concrete opinion. Its still a lot of fun imo and had plenty of heart to it. If you're into dungeon crawlers and Pokémon, I would definitely recommend this one to you. It gets a solid 3.5 stars from me.
forgot i had this
boring and awful
such a bittersweet game. Mystery dungeon is aways better than the mainline in terms of history. always makes me cry at the end.
It has some flaws like the best content in the game is after the ending, it lacks difficulty beeing one of the easiest games i have ever played, "auto mode" does everything for you i recommend not using it. This was my bedside game, it's relaxing and lighthearted. But is not the best in the series.
It has some flaws like the best content in the game is after the ending, it lacks difficulty beeing one of the easiest games i have ever played, "auto mode" does everything for you i recommend not using it. This was my bedside game, it's relaxing and lighthearted. But is not the best in the series.
just a solid little charming game. i think the art style is very eh but it has a lot of content even if some of the dungeons in the post game are way too long (99 floors) better than sword and shield.... i gotta play explorers of sky at some point
i love it when cubone is my best friend.
Gamer Tip: Really plan out when you decide to get a game after watching somebody's let's play of it
not that fun, I wish I picked another game to play, it's still somewhat enjoyable, and kinda cute, it's just not really for me I guess
Mystery Dungeon? More like HERstery Dungeon. UP TOP!
While a faithful remake to the old games, it did cut out the visitable friend camps where you can walk around and interact with your recruited team members, washing it down to a PNG. However, that music do be slappin doe. oh yeah woo yeah oh yeah woo yeah woo yeah oh yeah oh woo woo yeah woo yeah woo yeah woo time yeah yeah woo yeah
Fantastic reimagining of a classic from when I was a kid. The new graphical style they went with is great and the quality of life improvements made to match up with modern games really breathe new life to the first of the series. The main story is short but there's a wealth of postgame stuff to dive into with some really tough dungeons. Also, this game just made me extremely happy because it gave me hope that the PMD series isn't dead. Explorers DX next!
Played the main story and some of the post game, but got bored during the post game
The story of this game has always been great, and I like all the updates to the battle system, QoL features, changes, and etc that they've made to this compared to the original game
Mystery Dungeon is honestly more fun than I remembered it being. Ultimately tho it does get kinda repetitive and progression gets really slow. Also there are just random difficulty spikes at certain points in the game that have no reliable way to overcome them
The story of this game has always been great, and I like all the updates to the battle system, QoL features, changes, and etc that they've made to this compared to the original game
Mystery Dungeon is honestly more fun than I remembered it being. Ultimately tho it does get kinda repetitive and progression gets really slow. Also there are just random difficulty spikes at certain points in the game that have no reliable way to overcome them
Nice remake of a childhood classic. I'd like to say that the quality of life changes make up for the worse art direction, but some of the QoL changes are frustrating... Auto movement is super cool, but the (minimal) tweaks for it being buried deep within the options is annoying.
Still very enjoyable! It's Pokemon Mystery Dungeon after all. The story - while cheesy - is very heartfelt, the music is great, and the gameplay is a great balance of accessible and polished.
Still very enjoyable! It's Pokemon Mystery Dungeon after all. The story - while cheesy - is very heartfelt, the music is great, and the gameplay is a great balance of accessible and polished.
A welcome surprise on the Switch. The stylistic visuals compliment the more simplistic Mystery Dungeon story. It's a bit easier than the original version, but the streamlined controls and core improvements make this the most approachable game in the series.
Very charming if basic dungeon crawler that is great to play while watching or listening to something else on the side.
+ bright and colorful presentation befitting the series
+ reasonable main story length (12-15h) bolstered by substantial post-game content
+ many quality of life improvements over the original (far from perfection, however)
+ enjoyable albeit luck-based Pokémon collecting
+ manageable difficulty with divisive but purposeful auto saves
- immediately repetitive, cheerful soundtrack
- superficial story that plays out in a formulaic manner
- cheap animations with noticeable clipping
- often frustrating AI that ruins runs and disincentives the otherwise comfortable auto movement
- terrible input lag
+ bright and colorful presentation befitting the series
+ reasonable main story length (12-15h) bolstered by substantial post-game content
+ many quality of life improvements over the original (far from perfection, however)
+ enjoyable albeit luck-based Pokémon collecting
+ manageable difficulty with divisive but purposeful auto saves
- immediately repetitive, cheerful soundtrack
- superficial story that plays out in a formulaic manner
- cheap animations with noticeable clipping
- often frustrating AI that ruins runs and disincentives the otherwise comfortable auto movement
- terrible input lag
Gameplay: Simple
Music: Great
Replayable? No
Streamed? Yes
Extra Notes? I played more of the original GBA, but this ver is also good. Definitely fun to play the main story. GBA extra stories was SUPER fun, i'm excited to also see them on this ver. (if they are there)
Music: Great
Replayable? No
Streamed? Yes
Extra Notes? I played more of the original GBA, but this ver is also good. Definitely fun to play the main story. GBA extra stories was SUPER fun, i'm excited to also see them on this ver. (if they are there)
I'm a bit conflicted on if I actually like this game or not, because on the one hand, it's a very faithful and fun remake, but in the other hand, whatever the gargantuan amount of nostalgia I have for the original, I don't think that it was actually that good.
The main thing this remake has to sell is a graphical improvement from the GBA and DS titles, since there's barely any added content aside from some balance tweaks. A great effort was put into making the game have something of a "picture book" look, which I guess was made to improve the souless 3D Pokémon models from the main series and give some flair to the 3D environments that looked good previously because of the amazing pixel art. I apprecciate the intent, but sadly it just doesn't look very good at all. You end up getting used to the backgrounds, but the Pokémon look muddy and weird, and the character portraits don't hold a candle to the original pixel art ones. The original didn't look perfect all the time either, but I'll take it any day of the week before this one.
Having this game on a modern console, with 3D spaces and after 3 more entries in the series that evolved the series in every way, really makes it show its age. The story and character interactions are very simplistic, setting aside the runaway portion of it, and there's only like around 10 dungeons in the main story, making it very short. Also, for some reason, the postgame is like x4 times bigger than the main story and I may be falling short. I know they tried their best to respect the original but I think more could have been done to balance it a bit.
Although these last 2 points are just my opinion (and I'm very biased towards this) about graphics and length, the worst thing for me was the infuriating amount of input lag that's in this game. Why? This game is a very simplistic remake of a GBA game! It has no business making me even fail inputs, specially in menus, from how big the lag is. I read somewhere that there's something wrong with the engine they use since the 3DS titles, but if that's the case they definetly should have fixed it for this entry because it makes the experience really frustrating.
However, I also think there's plenty to love about the game as well. The difficulty is still high even when you're given a lot more options and resources than in the original, and playing through the dungeons is as fun as ever. A lot of care was put in the boss fights too. In the DS games, the presentation is a little bit lackluster, but in DX there are a good amount of cutscenes that add a lot of personality to the individual bosses (and the finale of the game too). There's also individual gimmicks that mix up the gameplay and make boss fights harder to counter the fact that your items are stronger, making you try to stack up on them and save them for bosses.
The soundtrack really makes a great effort to preserve the feeling of the original songs, which I really liked. Even though my brain is wired to enjoy the old ones more, I think DX has an incredible soundtrack anyways.
I leave this game with mixed feelings, especially since I played the original so much when I was a kid. I hope that if Explorers of Sky DX is ever made it fixes the rough edges this one had, which I'm sure would then make for something really special. For this one though, I think I'll just play the original if I want to get back to it any time soon. I know nostalgia is a big part of that, but I'm perfectly fine with embracing my hypocrisy for this one.
The main thing this remake has to sell is a graphical improvement from the GBA and DS titles, since there's barely any added content aside from some balance tweaks. A great effort was put into making the game have something of a "picture book" look, which I guess was made to improve the souless 3D Pokémon models from the main series and give some flair to the 3D environments that looked good previously because of the amazing pixel art. I apprecciate the intent, but sadly it just doesn't look very good at all. You end up getting used to the backgrounds, but the Pokémon look muddy and weird, and the character portraits don't hold a candle to the original pixel art ones. The original didn't look perfect all the time either, but I'll take it any day of the week before this one.
Having this game on a modern console, with 3D spaces and after 3 more entries in the series that evolved the series in every way, really makes it show its age. The story and character interactions are very simplistic, setting aside the runaway portion of it, and there's only like around 10 dungeons in the main story, making it very short. Also, for some reason, the postgame is like x4 times bigger than the main story and I may be falling short. I know they tried their best to respect the original but I think more could have been done to balance it a bit.
Although these last 2 points are just my opinion (and I'm very biased towards this) about graphics and length, the worst thing for me was the infuriating amount of input lag that's in this game. Why? This game is a very simplistic remake of a GBA game! It has no business making me even fail inputs, specially in menus, from how big the lag is. I read somewhere that there's something wrong with the engine they use since the 3DS titles, but if that's the case they definetly should have fixed it for this entry because it makes the experience really frustrating.
However, I also think there's plenty to love about the game as well. The difficulty is still high even when you're given a lot more options and resources than in the original, and playing through the dungeons is as fun as ever. A lot of care was put in the boss fights too. In the DS games, the presentation is a little bit lackluster, but in DX there are a good amount of cutscenes that add a lot of personality to the individual bosses (and the finale of the game too). There's also individual gimmicks that mix up the gameplay and make boss fights harder to counter the fact that your items are stronger, making you try to stack up on them and save them for bosses.
The soundtrack really makes a great effort to preserve the feeling of the original songs, which I really liked. Even though my brain is wired to enjoy the old ones more, I think DX has an incredible soundtrack anyways.
I leave this game with mixed feelings, especially since I played the original so much when I was a kid. I hope that if Explorers of Sky DX is ever made it fixes the rough edges this one had, which I'm sure would then make for something really special. For this one though, I think I'll just play the original if I want to get back to it any time soon. I know nostalgia is a big part of that, but I'm perfectly fine with embracing my hypocrisy for this one.
Main and Post story complete, Rescue Rank: Grand Master, 418/418 Living Pokédex
Mystery Dungeon was one of my favourite Pokémon games growing up so yes, this was purchased and played purely on nostalgia bait.
I loved every minute of it and was pretty much smiling to myself the whole time I was playing it.
Shelved because I didn't finish all the post-game content and I'm sure to come back to it at some point - to either start a new adventure or to mop up my current one.
I loved every minute of it and was pretty much smiling to myself the whole time I was playing it.
Shelved because I didn't finish all the post-game content and I'm sure to come back to it at some point - to either start a new adventure or to mop up my current one.
This review contains spoilers
Ngl, that part where your hunted down by other Rescue teams was kinda annoying, still a great game tho, Treecko my beloved
I feel like ive always gotten Torchic when I play these games
76/100
Mejora muchísimas cosas respecto al original y encima visualmente es precioso
Another game I played on and off. I found a lot of the changes to the UI and game mechanics(like the removal of a basic attack using the A button that doesn’t consume PP) to be really jarring but I eventually got used to them. I actually really did like the art style, it had its own charm but also paid homage to the spirit of the original games which was a nice touch. If I’m being honest though I would probably rather play the original Red/Blue Rescue Team on most days if given a choice, or especially Explorers of Sky since that’s the best of them all.