On the surface, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX appears to be a pretty faithful remake of the original Blue and Red Rescue Team. It’s the same turn-based dungeon-crawler roguelike Pokemon battling translation that I had grew up with almost two decades ago, coupled with the same storyline and a rearranged orchestral version of the original’s DS soundtrack. Minus the lack of walkable Friend Areas, DX’s atmosphere and core gameplay mechanics seemed accurate to my previous experience of the original games at first, and thus it seemed like a forgone conclusion that I’d naturally enjoy the remake. However, the more I played through the game, the more things felt off.
Further investigation into DX’s inner workings revealed that while DX preserves the core formula of Blue Rescue Team’s structure and basic combat mechanics, much of the surrounding survival mechanics have actually been pulled from the latest iteration of PMD via Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon on the 3DS to “modernize” the mechanics as opposed to adapting mechanics from the original games in Red/Blue Rescue Team or the DS successors in Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky. I started noticing that in DX, the hunger mechanic felt much more prevalent; my Pokemon’s belly appeared to empty much more quickly than in the originals, and I found myself consuming an Apple every few minutes or so. There’s a variety of changes that contribute to this: the belly decreases by 1/7 of a point every action (instead of 1/10 for Blue and EoS), Max Ethers/Elixirs no longer restore BP, consuming berries & seeds only restore 2 BP as opposed to 5 in the originals, and so on. Similarly, Power Point (PP) management regarding move usage limits became far more grating in DX as opposed to the original. The obvious culprit is removing the standard attack that could be used at any time for a weaker strike that preserved PP (meaning players now have to utilize moves far more often), but to compensate for this, Spike Chunsoft had to supply the player with far more PP restoration items. However, instead of supplying them with Max Elixirs that fully restore PP for all moves used, the most common PP restoration item is now the Max Ether, which only restores PP for a single move. The optimal strategy then, is to spam the same move over and over again so you get the most bang for your buck out of using Max Ethers. Finally, weather feels much more intrusive in the remake as opposed to the originals, because DX removes the ability to naturally heal HP over time during sandstorms/hail if you’re not of a resistant type, meaning that you have to either pack a lot more Oran Berries or waste more time outside of damaging weather to heal up.
None of these changes would feel too problematic in isolation, but together, this results in DX overemphasizing its resource management in comparison to Blue Rescue Team or Explorers of Sky, meaning that overloading your toolbox with the necessary buffers or grinding in easier dungeons to stock up on said buffers is pretty much a given to succeed (especially when Apple/Sticky Traps in dungeons can further spoil your resources). I unfortunately find this shift in focus somewhat ill-fitting to a remake of Blue Rescue Team; while the structure and core gameplay remained the same, the circumstances dictating how the player had to interact with the structure changed, and thus it feels to me like the remake struggled to serve its intended purpose. Needless to say, I’m far more interested in the turn-based combat than the resource management of PMD, and DX felt far more imbalanced to where I felt like I was spending most of my time watching my health/PP/belly and menuing rather than focusing on the play-by-play.
In a broader sense, I’ve said before that Pokemon’s greatest weakness is the presence of excessive RNG and grinding. That’s not to say that these weaknesses were absent from PMD, but rather, PMD often prevailed in the face of bullshit RNG and grinding because of how the game’s structure and gameplay mechanics leaned into them. Once again though, for a remake that seemed faithful on the outside, DX regrettably makes changes that worsen the RNG and grinding to extents that were not necessarily present in the originals.
I’ll come right out and say that I’m not a fan of DX’s changes regarding team size and recruitment. Blue Rescue Team and EoS kept the max party size to four Pokemon at a time (with Blue only letting you bring in three Pokemon at a time while EoS let you bring four; if you wanted a fourth in Blue, it had to be recruited in the dungeon), but DX has a max party size of up to eight Pokemon despite only letting you bring in three recruited members. The short and thick of it is that these recruits are a necessary liability for successful runs. They’re a liability because you have to bring them back through the end of the dungeon run to permanently recruit them on your team (unlike the originals, which let you send them back immediately to base), but keeping them alive will naturally eat into your resources, and letting them faint once they’ve been temporarily recruited as a guest will cause enemy Pokemon to become “awakened” and pose an immediate threat via significant stat increases. It’s also extremely unwieldy to try and micromanage five guests at the same time, especially when you can’t give guest Pokemon exact move commands or control their tactics, and you’ll often find them getting attacked at the end of a single-file line in corridors, unable to lend a helping hand to fend off enemy ambushes. At the same time, these guests can be absolute godsends to runs: they often come with Rare Qualities that affect the entire team, such as Small Stomach (which lets you consume any seed/berry/apple and immediately fills the belly to max capacity) or Strike Back (which lowers the Attack and Special Attack stats of an enemy Pokemon, including bosses, that deals damage to your team). You can’t see what rare qualities an enemy Pokemon may have while fighting them, so it’s in your best interest to recruit as many guests as possible in hopes of getting more Rare Qualities to bolster your team. Essentially, this is yet another resource grind that’s present only in the remake. At best, getting the Rare Quality recruits you need is extremely time-consuming and luck-based, but at least lets you steamroll boss fights. At worst, not getting the Rare Quality recruits you need feels like an active detriment when you’re running low on supplies and the dungeon isn’t giving you the item drops you need to survive.
Perhaps this resource grind would be more forgivable if the level scaling were up to par, but as it stands, I find enemy XP drops during the main game to be rather lacking. You’ll have to stick around and roam entire floors to sufficiently scale up with the enemy Pokemon level increases as the story progresses, and that’s often not the best idea when you’ve only got limited resources in your toolbox to manage HP/PP/BP and you’ll likely end up spotting the stairs before mapping out the entire floor. The best way then, is to train in Makuhita Dojo. This too, has been drastically altered from the original. Instead of challenge-room type and boss mazes, the dojo has been repurposed into a straight XP grindfest. You now have to spend limited tickets to defeat as many enemy Pokemon as you can in a real-time limit (i.e. a Bronze Dojo Ticket gives you 50 seconds of real time), and because experience is significantly multiplied both by the ticket itself (3x for Bronze, 5x for Silver, 7x for Gold) and by using super effective attacks, it’s simply too good to pass up considering the meager XP earnings from story dungeons. Unfortunately, this is also extremely tedious due to the time limits, as excess animations from randomly doubling attacks or outright missing attacks/failing to OHKO from random enemy buffs feels particularly punishing when Dojo tickets are a limited commodity that have to be scored as job rewards or randomly from dungeon treasure chests/mail. It also doesn’t help that the ticket allocation itself is not scaled: you’ll still be receiving Bronze tickets far into the post-game when you’ll likely need to use up 3 or more tickets to level-up, and you can only use one ticket at a time instead of stacking time limits. The result then, is that Makuhita’s dojo outright breaks the difficulty curve of the game: I found myself significantly overleveled during the main story using it, but after the significant difficulty spike during the post-game, it failed to provide much benefit for my main team since I was inundated with Bronze/Silver tickets and thus led to even more time spent grinding both in and outside of dungeons.
Gummis have also been reworked in DX, and are a slight improvement over the original, yet aren't completely rectified. Gummi grinding was likely the weakest aspect of the original games: you needed them to level up the IQ of each individual Pokemon for basic skills such as not stepping on visible traps and not using status moves on Pokemon that have already been statused. Fortunately, these IQ skills have been entirely removed and as a result the AI has been improved significantly: you no longer have to micromanage every single member of your team to avoid making silly mistakes, and in fact teammates can aid you subtly like positioning themselves to target ranged enemies or deviating slightly from the path to pick up floor objects so the leader doesn’t have to pick up every object themselves. That said, gummies still serve a purpose, because they provide random permanent stat boosts (invaluable when level-ups are often just a simple +1 to all stats) and they’re the only way to add/change Rare Qualities attached to your team members. Obtaining gummis is actually more obnoxious than even the original games, because just like Dojo Tickets, they can only be obtained via job rewards or found randomly in treasure chests, and you’ll often need to run through a few just to get the right Rare Quality for a specific team member (or a Rare Quality at all, because Rainbow Gummis are not guaranteed to give a Rare Quality). At least in the original games, you could obtain Gummis as random item drops on dungeon floors.
The above three changes basically represent a trend of changing aspects from the original in a way that left something to be desired, and lead me to believe that the remake is somewhat misguided. It’s quite confusing: sometimes there are obvious improvements, like expanding the toolbox capacity from 20 to 48 (carrying this from Explorers of Time/Darkness forward) and adding in all evolution lines for Pokemon from Generations 1-3 + bringing in new moves that have been added since Gen 8, but then sometimes the game feels far more punishing than difficult in a way that the original never did, like how fainting in dungeons now makes you lose all of your money and items (whereas you’d only lose half of your items in the DS originals and at least in EoS, only lose half of your money), so you really better hope you’ve got the resources to rescue yourself with a second team or someone online spots your request promptly.
What is more damning though, is that for as many things as they did change, there’s a lot of not great things about the original that I’d argue they should have changed/improved upon but didn’t (or at the very least, didn't improve upon enough), such as the aforementioned issue of gummi grinding Ironically, the qualities left in from the original are what led me to realize that Blue/Red Rescue Team are more flawed than I had originally remembered. For example, the original wasn’t great at pacing either (I found myself equally bored in the main-game at times, forced to grind during one particular story-heavy section where I was limited to my protagonist + partner), but I think it was more forgivable at the time given that it was the debut of the series and was greatly improved upon in Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky. DX feels far more egregious in context now that I have several points of comparison, for not fixing a lot of the grinding/RNG issues of the original (and in fact exacerbating a few of them) and transitioning the at-least involved main-story into an underwhelming post-game narrative, of which 80% can be summed up as “fight this powerful Pokemon because you can.” Take this with a grain of salt since my point of view is colored from extensively playing the original (albeit, almost a decade and a half ago), but I unfortunately found my time spent during the main story to be quite forgettable (as I breezed through the dungeons with little difficulty) and a good chunk of the post-game to be aggravatingly tedious while I scaled up my team to better deal with the far more competent foes and spongier bosses.
I suppose I did eventually come around on the post-game nevertheless, considering that at the time of writing I’ve now logged just over sixty hours on my save file. It’s a pity that it took hours of forgettable missions and grinding (instead of the game adequately scaling my gains throughout the story’s runtime) to get to that point and that my satisfaction was in spite of rather than as a result of the altered resource management (since these elements become minimal once you have the right Rare Qualities and a stockpile of Perfect Apples/Max Elixirs to throw at the problem), but a few of the game’s climatic dungeons really do bring out the best qualities of PMD’s gameplay. One dungeon that stands out is Meteor Cave: in it, you are constantly assaulted by infinite waves of different Deoxys forms that force you to consider the totality of your actions, considering each form has significantly stratified stats/moves that must be dealt with promptly before you run out of resources due to Pressure doubling your PP usage. In just twenty floors, this dungeon where you cannot be rescued challenged me in ways that Silver Trench couldn’t do in ninety-nine. This isn’t even my favorite dungeon in the game though: surprisingly, that title goes to Purity Forest. Considered by many to be the toughest dungeon in the game, Purity Forest drops you in with no items, no Poke, and only one team member, resetting your level to five and forcing you to fight and earn your way out to even hope to survive against fully evolved Pokemon by the end of your run. The caveat to my final hours savored in the game was that I had to slog through multiple other ninety-nine floor dungeons around the same time as tackling Purity Forest (and it doesn’t help that two of them, Wish Cave and Joyous Tower, are basically Purity Forest Jr since the only differences are that Wish Cave lets you bring items + teammates and Joyous Tower only lets you bring teammates), but ultimately, I can at least say I finished my run on a high note, even if I felt like my run was diluted somewhat by the lackluster pacing and never quite hit the perfect difficulty until the very end.
So the big question remains: do I recommend Rescue Team DX? While I ultimately got some enjoyment out of the game, I'm conflicted regarding its overall quality and lean towards no. All things considered, I don’t really know what audience this game appeals to or if it even excels in any particular category. Newbies will likely find this game too hard and too grindy during the main story, while veterans will likely find this game initially too easy and too grindy during the post-game. DX introduces enough quality-of-life changes, but it also doesn’t change certain exasperating elements from the original (or in some cases, outright fumbles the bag) and makes me question if the remake was necessary in the first place. The climactic gameplay, once the player gets past any resource and leveling barriers, is fantastic, but as I’ve mentioned earlier, is dragged down by a layer of RNG and grinding that often feels more tedious than challenging. Finally, I'd say that the story’s adequate given its time, but it can’t hold a candle to the emotional peaks reached by Explorers of Sky (due in part to Sky’s side stories).
If anything, my time with DX has confirmed that I see modern Pokemon games far differently than I once did as a kid. Obvious statements aside, I find that I tend to view the newer Pokemon games (of the ones I’ve played anyways, as I only have a few hours in Sword/Shield and haven’t touched Scarlet/Violet) more as sandboxes than well-rounded experiences. Granted, it might be a little unfair to assign this to a remake of a 2005 DS/GBA game, and it doesn’t even sound like a significant issue at first given that I’m usually able to dig deep and find the player motivation to thoroughly approach games on their own terms. That said, I would also say that there was once a time where Pokemon games excelled in both world-building/atmosphere and gameplay (Explorers of Sky being the obvious candidate), and as such it’s hard to see DX as anything but a personal disappointment at best. Even so, it might not be my ideal experience, but I’m still glad that others were able to fully savor what DX brings to the table even if I’m stuck in the past reminiscing about the glory days of PMD, and that’s okay too.
Further investigation into DX’s inner workings revealed that while DX preserves the core formula of Blue Rescue Team’s structure and basic combat mechanics, much of the surrounding survival mechanics have actually been pulled from the latest iteration of PMD via Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon on the 3DS to “modernize” the mechanics as opposed to adapting mechanics from the original games in Red/Blue Rescue Team or the DS successors in Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky. I started noticing that in DX, the hunger mechanic felt much more prevalent; my Pokemon’s belly appeared to empty much more quickly than in the originals, and I found myself consuming an Apple every few minutes or so. There’s a variety of changes that contribute to this: the belly decreases by 1/7 of a point every action (instead of 1/10 for Blue and EoS), Max Ethers/Elixirs no longer restore BP, consuming berries & seeds only restore 2 BP as opposed to 5 in the originals, and so on. Similarly, Power Point (PP) management regarding move usage limits became far more grating in DX as opposed to the original. The obvious culprit is removing the standard attack that could be used at any time for a weaker strike that preserved PP (meaning players now have to utilize moves far more often), but to compensate for this, Spike Chunsoft had to supply the player with far more PP restoration items. However, instead of supplying them with Max Elixirs that fully restore PP for all moves used, the most common PP restoration item is now the Max Ether, which only restores PP for a single move. The optimal strategy then, is to spam the same move over and over again so you get the most bang for your buck out of using Max Ethers. Finally, weather feels much more intrusive in the remake as opposed to the originals, because DX removes the ability to naturally heal HP over time during sandstorms/hail if you’re not of a resistant type, meaning that you have to either pack a lot more Oran Berries or waste more time outside of damaging weather to heal up.
None of these changes would feel too problematic in isolation, but together, this results in DX overemphasizing its resource management in comparison to Blue Rescue Team or Explorers of Sky, meaning that overloading your toolbox with the necessary buffers or grinding in easier dungeons to stock up on said buffers is pretty much a given to succeed (especially when Apple/Sticky Traps in dungeons can further spoil your resources). I unfortunately find this shift in focus somewhat ill-fitting to a remake of Blue Rescue Team; while the structure and core gameplay remained the same, the circumstances dictating how the player had to interact with the structure changed, and thus it feels to me like the remake struggled to serve its intended purpose. Needless to say, I’m far more interested in the turn-based combat than the resource management of PMD, and DX felt far more imbalanced to where I felt like I was spending most of my time watching my health/PP/belly and menuing rather than focusing on the play-by-play.
In a broader sense, I’ve said before that Pokemon’s greatest weakness is the presence of excessive RNG and grinding. That’s not to say that these weaknesses were absent from PMD, but rather, PMD often prevailed in the face of bullshit RNG and grinding because of how the game’s structure and gameplay mechanics leaned into them. Once again though, for a remake that seemed faithful on the outside, DX regrettably makes changes that worsen the RNG and grinding to extents that were not necessarily present in the originals.
I’ll come right out and say that I’m not a fan of DX’s changes regarding team size and recruitment. Blue Rescue Team and EoS kept the max party size to four Pokemon at a time (with Blue only letting you bring in three Pokemon at a time while EoS let you bring four; if you wanted a fourth in Blue, it had to be recruited in the dungeon), but DX has a max party size of up to eight Pokemon despite only letting you bring in three recruited members. The short and thick of it is that these recruits are a necessary liability for successful runs. They’re a liability because you have to bring them back through the end of the dungeon run to permanently recruit them on your team (unlike the originals, which let you send them back immediately to base), but keeping them alive will naturally eat into your resources, and letting them faint once they’ve been temporarily recruited as a guest will cause enemy Pokemon to become “awakened” and pose an immediate threat via significant stat increases. It’s also extremely unwieldy to try and micromanage five guests at the same time, especially when you can’t give guest Pokemon exact move commands or control their tactics, and you’ll often find them getting attacked at the end of a single-file line in corridors, unable to lend a helping hand to fend off enemy ambushes. At the same time, these guests can be absolute godsends to runs: they often come with Rare Qualities that affect the entire team, such as Small Stomach (which lets you consume any seed/berry/apple and immediately fills the belly to max capacity) or Strike Back (which lowers the Attack and Special Attack stats of an enemy Pokemon, including bosses, that deals damage to your team). You can’t see what rare qualities an enemy Pokemon may have while fighting them, so it’s in your best interest to recruit as many guests as possible in hopes of getting more Rare Qualities to bolster your team. Essentially, this is yet another resource grind that’s present only in the remake. At best, getting the Rare Quality recruits you need is extremely time-consuming and luck-based, but at least lets you steamroll boss fights. At worst, not getting the Rare Quality recruits you need feels like an active detriment when you’re running low on supplies and the dungeon isn’t giving you the item drops you need to survive.
Perhaps this resource grind would be more forgivable if the level scaling were up to par, but as it stands, I find enemy XP drops during the main game to be rather lacking. You’ll have to stick around and roam entire floors to sufficiently scale up with the enemy Pokemon level increases as the story progresses, and that’s often not the best idea when you’ve only got limited resources in your toolbox to manage HP/PP/BP and you’ll likely end up spotting the stairs before mapping out the entire floor. The best way then, is to train in Makuhita Dojo. This too, has been drastically altered from the original. Instead of challenge-room type and boss mazes, the dojo has been repurposed into a straight XP grindfest. You now have to spend limited tickets to defeat as many enemy Pokemon as you can in a real-time limit (i.e. a Bronze Dojo Ticket gives you 50 seconds of real time), and because experience is significantly multiplied both by the ticket itself (3x for Bronze, 5x for Silver, 7x for Gold) and by using super effective attacks, it’s simply too good to pass up considering the meager XP earnings from story dungeons. Unfortunately, this is also extremely tedious due to the time limits, as excess animations from randomly doubling attacks or outright missing attacks/failing to OHKO from random enemy buffs feels particularly punishing when Dojo tickets are a limited commodity that have to be scored as job rewards or randomly from dungeon treasure chests/mail. It also doesn’t help that the ticket allocation itself is not scaled: you’ll still be receiving Bronze tickets far into the post-game when you’ll likely need to use up 3 or more tickets to level-up, and you can only use one ticket at a time instead of stacking time limits. The result then, is that Makuhita’s dojo outright breaks the difficulty curve of the game: I found myself significantly overleveled during the main story using it, but after the significant difficulty spike during the post-game, it failed to provide much benefit for my main team since I was inundated with Bronze/Silver tickets and thus led to even more time spent grinding both in and outside of dungeons.
Gummis have also been reworked in DX, and are a slight improvement over the original, yet aren't completely rectified. Gummi grinding was likely the weakest aspect of the original games: you needed them to level up the IQ of each individual Pokemon for basic skills such as not stepping on visible traps and not using status moves on Pokemon that have already been statused. Fortunately, these IQ skills have been entirely removed and as a result the AI has been improved significantly: you no longer have to micromanage every single member of your team to avoid making silly mistakes, and in fact teammates can aid you subtly like positioning themselves to target ranged enemies or deviating slightly from the path to pick up floor objects so the leader doesn’t have to pick up every object themselves. That said, gummies still serve a purpose, because they provide random permanent stat boosts (invaluable when level-ups are often just a simple +1 to all stats) and they’re the only way to add/change Rare Qualities attached to your team members. Obtaining gummis is actually more obnoxious than even the original games, because just like Dojo Tickets, they can only be obtained via job rewards or found randomly in treasure chests, and you’ll often need to run through a few just to get the right Rare Quality for a specific team member (or a Rare Quality at all, because Rainbow Gummis are not guaranteed to give a Rare Quality). At least in the original games, you could obtain Gummis as random item drops on dungeon floors.
The above three changes basically represent a trend of changing aspects from the original in a way that left something to be desired, and lead me to believe that the remake is somewhat misguided. It’s quite confusing: sometimes there are obvious improvements, like expanding the toolbox capacity from 20 to 48 (carrying this from Explorers of Time/Darkness forward) and adding in all evolution lines for Pokemon from Generations 1-3 + bringing in new moves that have been added since Gen 8, but then sometimes the game feels far more punishing than difficult in a way that the original never did, like how fainting in dungeons now makes you lose all of your money and items (whereas you’d only lose half of your items in the DS originals and at least in EoS, only lose half of your money), so you really better hope you’ve got the resources to rescue yourself with a second team or someone online spots your request promptly.
What is more damning though, is that for as many things as they did change, there’s a lot of not great things about the original that I’d argue they should have changed/improved upon but didn’t (or at the very least, didn't improve upon enough), such as the aforementioned issue of gummi grinding Ironically, the qualities left in from the original are what led me to realize that Blue/Red Rescue Team are more flawed than I had originally remembered. For example, the original wasn’t great at pacing either (I found myself equally bored in the main-game at times, forced to grind during one particular story-heavy section where I was limited to my protagonist + partner), but I think it was more forgivable at the time given that it was the debut of the series and was greatly improved upon in Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky. DX feels far more egregious in context now that I have several points of comparison, for not fixing a lot of the grinding/RNG issues of the original (and in fact exacerbating a few of them) and transitioning the at-least involved main-story into an underwhelming post-game narrative, of which 80% can be summed up as “fight this powerful Pokemon because you can.” Take this with a grain of salt since my point of view is colored from extensively playing the original (albeit, almost a decade and a half ago), but I unfortunately found my time spent during the main story to be quite forgettable (as I breezed through the dungeons with little difficulty) and a good chunk of the post-game to be aggravatingly tedious while I scaled up my team to better deal with the far more competent foes and spongier bosses.
I suppose I did eventually come around on the post-game nevertheless, considering that at the time of writing I’ve now logged just over sixty hours on my save file. It’s a pity that it took hours of forgettable missions and grinding (instead of the game adequately scaling my gains throughout the story’s runtime) to get to that point and that my satisfaction was in spite of rather than as a result of the altered resource management (since these elements become minimal once you have the right Rare Qualities and a stockpile of Perfect Apples/Max Elixirs to throw at the problem), but a few of the game’s climatic dungeons really do bring out the best qualities of PMD’s gameplay. One dungeon that stands out is Meteor Cave: in it, you are constantly assaulted by infinite waves of different Deoxys forms that force you to consider the totality of your actions, considering each form has significantly stratified stats/moves that must be dealt with promptly before you run out of resources due to Pressure doubling your PP usage. In just twenty floors, this dungeon where you cannot be rescued challenged me in ways that Silver Trench couldn’t do in ninety-nine. This isn’t even my favorite dungeon in the game though: surprisingly, that title goes to Purity Forest. Considered by many to be the toughest dungeon in the game, Purity Forest drops you in with no items, no Poke, and only one team member, resetting your level to five and forcing you to fight and earn your way out to even hope to survive against fully evolved Pokemon by the end of your run. The caveat to my final hours savored in the game was that I had to slog through multiple other ninety-nine floor dungeons around the same time as tackling Purity Forest (and it doesn’t help that two of them, Wish Cave and Joyous Tower, are basically Purity Forest Jr since the only differences are that Wish Cave lets you bring items + teammates and Joyous Tower only lets you bring teammates), but ultimately, I can at least say I finished my run on a high note, even if I felt like my run was diluted somewhat by the lackluster pacing and never quite hit the perfect difficulty until the very end.
So the big question remains: do I recommend Rescue Team DX? While I ultimately got some enjoyment out of the game, I'm conflicted regarding its overall quality and lean towards no. All things considered, I don’t really know what audience this game appeals to or if it even excels in any particular category. Newbies will likely find this game too hard and too grindy during the main story, while veterans will likely find this game initially too easy and too grindy during the post-game. DX introduces enough quality-of-life changes, but it also doesn’t change certain exasperating elements from the original (or in some cases, outright fumbles the bag) and makes me question if the remake was necessary in the first place. The climactic gameplay, once the player gets past any resource and leveling barriers, is fantastic, but as I’ve mentioned earlier, is dragged down by a layer of RNG and grinding that often feels more tedious than challenging. Finally, I'd say that the story’s adequate given its time, but it can’t hold a candle to the emotional peaks reached by Explorers of Sky (due in part to Sky’s side stories).
If anything, my time with DX has confirmed that I see modern Pokemon games far differently than I once did as a kid. Obvious statements aside, I find that I tend to view the newer Pokemon games (of the ones I’ve played anyways, as I only have a few hours in Sword/Shield and haven’t touched Scarlet/Violet) more as sandboxes than well-rounded experiences. Granted, it might be a little unfair to assign this to a remake of a 2005 DS/GBA game, and it doesn’t even sound like a significant issue at first given that I’m usually able to dig deep and find the player motivation to thoroughly approach games on their own terms. That said, I would also say that there was once a time where Pokemon games excelled in both world-building/atmosphere and gameplay (Explorers of Sky being the obvious candidate), and as such it’s hard to see DX as anything but a personal disappointment at best. Even so, it might not be my ideal experience, but I’m still glad that others were able to fully savor what DX brings to the table even if I’m stuck in the past reminiscing about the glory days of PMD, and that’s okay too.
This review contains spoilers
Great remake! But dropped after the first post game boss fight ): didn't really wanna train up an entirely new team just for the Kyogre fight
:(
:(
Fun remake with a lot of good changes from the original. The post game is cool but it feels really grindy to gain levels and gummis so I gave up.
Ver como saben hacer un juego con una historia bonita, con buenos gráficos y gameplay de calidad. Pero que sigan haciendo mierdas como espada/escudo o escarlata/púrpura es lo que me da rabia, porque saben como hacerlo bien pero solo se rigen por la ley del mínimo esfuerzo
This game was a shot of nostalgia straight into my veins.
I feel like ive always gotten Torchic when I play these games
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.
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
Mejora muchísimas cosas respecto al original y encima visualmente es precioso
Mystery Dungeon? More like HERstery Dungeon. UP TOP!
An amazing remake of the GBA/DS classic, while a little slow with gameplay at times its still a blast to play in the current day!
A wholesome story and an AMAZING soundtrack, this is a certified classic for me!
A wholesome story and an AMAZING soundtrack, this is a certified classic for me!
YES such style
its touching story, beautiful music, fun characters and cute art style just barely made the unbelievably boring gameplay worth it haha. i do not regret playing this, but i think i may have liked it better as a youtube video :p
This review contains spoilers
I absolutely loved this game's story and I got really invested in it. I would love to see more games like this where all of the characters are talking Pokémon. I love the characters, the art style, and the music. I've also always liked games where you get to rescue people and/or animals.
The gameplay is addictive, but I wouldn't really call it fun. The combat is repetitive and annoying, especially when you have a big team of Pokémon going through a corridor and the ones at the back keep getting into fights. The moments I enjoyed most were the dopamine hits of finding a bunch of items and spawning right next to the stairs.
My favorite thing to do in Pokémon games is collect Pokémon, but you don't have many opportunities to utilize the Pokémon you recruit in this game. Your team can only have three Pokémon, and if you want to always keep the protagonist and deuteragonist around, you're only left with one more spot for another Pokémon. This turns to none if you want to include the Absol who joins you during the story. I wish you could send additional teams out on their own rescue missions, like how you can send additional teams of monsters to find treasure in Dragon Quest Treasures.
As much as I enjoyed my time with this game, I lost interest once I reached the post-game. The story is what carried the experience for me, and the post-game has less story and much more dungeon crawling. I'm not interested in grinding, fighting a bunch of legendaries, and doing 99 floor dungeons. I also evolved my main character (Charmander) into a Charizard so I would be stronger, but I really regret it and I miss her cute little face and bandanna.
The gameplay is addictive, but I wouldn't really call it fun. The combat is repetitive and annoying, especially when you have a big team of Pokémon going through a corridor and the ones at the back keep getting into fights. The moments I enjoyed most were the dopamine hits of finding a bunch of items and spawning right next to the stairs.
My favorite thing to do in Pokémon games is collect Pokémon, but you don't have many opportunities to utilize the Pokémon you recruit in this game. Your team can only have three Pokémon, and if you want to always keep the protagonist and deuteragonist around, you're only left with one more spot for another Pokémon. This turns to none if you want to include the Absol who joins you during the story. I wish you could send additional teams out on their own rescue missions, like how you can send additional teams of monsters to find treasure in Dragon Quest Treasures.
As much as I enjoyed my time with this game, I lost interest once I reached the post-game. The story is what carried the experience for me, and the post-game has less story and much more dungeon crawling. I'm not interested in grinding, fighting a bunch of legendaries, and doing 99 floor dungeons. I also evolved my main character (Charmander) into a Charizard so I would be stronger, but I really regret it and I miss her cute little face and bandanna.
I really tried playing this, but without the charming sprites of the original game, the removal of friend zones, and the fact that you can recruit like... 7 Pokemon AT THE SAME TIME? I gave up on it, I'd rather play the original 100 times over this shit.
Very faithful remake that still has the charm of the original with GREAT QoL changes. Thank you for allowing legendary Pokemon in the postgame to join you after defeating them instead of grinding for them. The literal best change possible. If you've never played PMD before, this is the best way to get into the series. Then play the Explorers DS games. We don't talk about the 3DS PMD games.
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
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
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
It's a really cute game with a neat idea, and love answering the questions to see what Pokemon you are, but this is a very boring game for me.
I'm sure it's for certain people but it's definitely not for me.
I'm sure it's for certain people but it's definitely not for me.
Ta guapardo que flipas, es mu bonico
All of what I'll say should apply to Blue and Red Rescue Team as well, since this game only improved on those in my opinion, and didn't change anything too significantly. The Rescue Team games are very good. It's a different take on Pokemon, which the series needs. These games are Roguelikes, and are really fun ones at that. The artstyle for Rescue Team DX in particular is really beautiful and adds some cool things such as the Fairy-type, new Pokemon, and Mega Evolution. And the story! Utterly heartbreaking, and surprisingly good for a Pokemon game.
I do think nostalgia has slightly overrated this game a bit. It does get repetitive at times, and I never really was a fan of the hunger mechanic in dungeons. Other roguelikes don't boot you out of dungeons prematurely but PMD feels the need to. People forget how long some of the later dungeons are too, making them feel really grueling and honestly, boring. Those dungeons make me refrain from replaying this.
Great games though.
Score: 86
I do think nostalgia has slightly overrated this game a bit. It does get repetitive at times, and I never really was a fan of the hunger mechanic in dungeons. Other roguelikes don't boot you out of dungeons prematurely but PMD feels the need to. People forget how long some of the later dungeons are too, making them feel really grueling and honestly, boring. Those dungeons make me refrain from replaying this.
Great games though.
Score: 86
An amazing remake of an equally amazing game. It holds the same charm as the original, coupled with a very sweet artstyle and useful QOL features. I found myself loving completing this game to its fullest and am currently doing it all over again. I can only hope for an Explorers DX in the future.