I've never played Explorers of Time or Darkness, just Sky, so I'm treating it as its own game here. And...I mince no words when I say this game is such a beautiful, gorgeous, emotional experience, at least when it comes to the story and characters. Everyone knows how impactful the ending of this game is, and its actually a big reason why I never replayed this for the longest time. It was just as much of a gut punch as it was when I was around 11 years old beating this game for the first time, way more emotional than Rescue Team DX was even though I have more nostalgic connections to it than I do this game. Man this game hit me hard and, despite its reputation, I was not expecting that at all. The game's a bit short and I never did the extra episodes, but I do remember those being pretty solid and expanding the story well, so maybe I'll play those sometime.

I'll start with gameplay. Its pretty good. Not much has changed from Red/Blue Rescue Team but sometimes you don't need a big change to a solid foundation. Still randomly generated dungeons that end at a certain amount of floors, still got basic attacks and the IQ system, still got the iconic Monster Houses, team recruitment, asking for online help (sadly unusable because DS Wi-Fi stopped working a long while ago)...the fundamentals are all here. Unfortunately it is lacking some nice quality of life features that the newer games have, like letting you choose the Pokemon you control (that isn't available until post game in Explorers of Sky), but they're ultimately pretty minor and didn't affect me much at all. The AI gets a lot of flack for being dumb and...well yea, it isn't very smart, but it is serviceable. At the very least, you won't get your team killed because of a mistake the AI made, but it will be a little annoying having to deal with the AI not attacking enemies when it should, occasionally being useless in combat because it likes to spam status increasing moves, or getting lost and separating from the team in tight corners (this one is mostly a problem when you have a full team with four party members). If you like dungeon crawlers with some RPG elements, you'll like this game, and I fit that criteria so I like it. One Mystery Dungeon tradition this game has that I appreciate, though, is that type matchups aren't everything. Of course, Super Effective moves are always preferred and can deal a ton of damage, but you can definitely get by with not very effective moves since they don't do as little damage as you'd think they would. This is super important because you can't choose your starter unless you want to retake the quiz over and over, and, regardless of which starter you get, you'll inevitably come across bosses or enemies that are Super Effective to you. Not all hope is lost with these bosses, so if you have a good number of healing items and some kind of move that deals decent damage, you can beat them. It also helps that all status effect items work on bosses and you can get some pretty damn cheesy boss kills if you're lucky with them. The X-Eye Seed is the go-to boss killer since it makes them unable to do anything and causes them to randomly wander the room, plus the game seems to give you them somewhat often. Don't feel bad for abusing the shit out of these, especially for Dialga since he is one tough cookie.

So, the gameplay's good, but I feel like fans are really in it for the story when it comes to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. Certainly not often that I can say that about a Pokemon game; this has by far the best out of any Pokemon game imo and not in a lackadaisical "well its a little better than the rest" way. I also think it is much better than Rescue Team's story since I feel it remedied most of my problems with that: the stakes are high but they don't come out of nowhere, everything is connected in a way that feels more natural, and you just feel a lot more attachment to the characters along the way. Even the most minor members of the Wigglytuff Guild are very likeable in their own ways and there's just a sense that they all really care for you and your partner that makes the moments when things get tough all the more impactful. The partner character was pretty good in Rescue Team but I think they're more likeable in this game because of how you see them grow and change over time, from a nervous little guy with big dreams to a determined and kind adventurer who still gets tripped up with fear, but is ultimately able to get through anything thanks to his friendship with you. I really appreciate the pacing of this story, too; it does take a bit to get to the real meat of the plot, so I could imagine some people dropping the game for that, but I felt like there was much less meandering around on pointless side stuff than in Rescue Team. The most you do is like three repeats of previous dungeons with requests from the request board and then you're right back into the actual plot. The big thing about the plot of this game is the twist that comes into play a little over halfway through, when its revealed that Grovyle - the guy that's been stealing Time Gears (they keep the fabric of time in balance) - was actually doing the right thing and that he is tied to your past as a human. This is kinda sorta like the relationship between the player character and Gengar in Rescue Team, but flipped on its head since Grovyle was always a Pokemon (Gengar was a human) and you're made to think he's the bad guy even though he isn't. The supposed "great Dusknoir" that the people idolize for doing good deeds was actually a minion of the corrupted Dialga of the future, which he reveals soon enough by dragging the player character and the partner into the future with him. Speaking of the future, yea you see quite a bit of that here. The desolate future, where nothing moves and life is at a standstill, carries some real good imagery. Everything is grey and it really sells the future looking super bleak. Nonetheless, this whole twist was done pretty well imo, even if I would have preferred it was alluded to more; I feel like, if I didn't already know about this twist, it would have felt like it came out of nowhere. I was especially relieved to see that they don't pull the whole trope of being hated by the world for telling the truth. Instead, the Guild is naturally suspicious at first, but they very quickly come around because they trust and support you...and because, the more they thought of it, the more they realized how suspicious Dusknoir was. Before all this meaty plot thickening, though, you get some small little subplots that are entertaining in their own right. Admittedly it doesn't really feel like the story is going anywhere solid until Dusknoir shows up and starts dropping hints to the player character's past, but it isn't too big of a deal since it feels like you're building yourself up as the new rescue team on the block. The only one of these subplots I didn't like was the one with Team Skull (the bullies that have been relentlessly trying to mess with the partner character since the start of the game) weaseling their way into the guild in search of treasure, but that's not the fault of the story and its just because of how well they conveyed that sheer frustration of knowing someone is a bad person yet you can't tell anyone without them thinking you're crazy. Thankfully they get themselves expelled by getting too big for their britches and thinking they can take on the Guildmaster.

I'm gonna dedicate a section to the characters here since I really love them and I've already prattled on long enough on the story paragraph. Chatot is somehow both so hateable and so lovable at the same time, the guy is like the definition of an egotistical manager who's also desperately trying to earn brownie points with his boss. He keeps a cheery singsong disposition for the sake of his image but he's pretty two-faced. The Guildmaster, Wigglytuff, is funny for how bizarrely he acts and how almost childish his personality is. Definition of "power of friendship", naive and yet very powerful. Later on in the game he gets more focused and serious, so it seems to be implied that that's either an act or he just doesn't take anything seriously before things really get serious. His dynamic with Chatot always got a chuckle out of me, this uptight hoity bird hardly understands the Guildmaster at times and yet is always the one speaking for him. The two do have a close friendship, though, and I hear it is elaborated on in the Igglybuff episode I haven't played. Grovyle was a surprisingly pretty interesting character in my opinion; he was the partner of the player character back when he was a human and the two were both born into the desolate future that they are now fighting so hard to change. Of course the player character doesn't remember because amnesia, but it really recontextualizes the scenes in which Grovyle knows the player character's identity but has to withhold that information because he knows the player doesn't remember. It's not super deep or anything but it is a pretty cool dynamic, especially when Grovyle reveals just how close they were and how nice it was to be back together (I can only imagine how much ship art these scenes inspired). Already praised the partner character a lot but I like how he stubbornly denies the truth about Grovyle even though he knows in his heart that its true, the kid idolized Dusknoir and desperately wanted to believe he wasn't lied to all this time. I like some of the minor guild members, too; they don't really do a ton in the story but they are cute little one-note characters with some fun personalities.

Last thing I want to shout out is the music and visuals. I genuinely think this game has some of the nicest looking sprite art on the DS, especially the art for the environments that the game loves to show off on the top screen. There's a scene with artwork depicting Chatot in a cave about to be ambushed by Kabutops and some Omastar and that one especially looks just like something I'd expect to see in an official Pokémon artbook. Usually I don't care for games that only use the top screen to show off stuff but this game earns it in my opinion. The only downside I can think of for the visuals is that a lot of the actual Pokémon sprites are reused from Blue Rescue Team, but they work great here so I won't complain about that. The music is also just absolutely fantastic, whether its a catchy bop of a dungeon theme or the sheer emotion present in the songs that play during emotional moments. I love the themes for Treasure Town and the Wigglytuff Guild, they have such a positive energy and are pretty catchy tunes.

Overall, I really do think Explorers of Sky is something special, especially for being a Pokémon game. The story puts every other Pokémon game to shame. The ending was heart-wrenching to me and a big part of that is because the characters were ones you could feel an attachment to. The gameplay is pretty fun, too, but there's a reason I keep emphasizing other stuff here. I can't not give this game 5 stars.