''Pokémon is a franchise that plays it safe'' is a statement that only gets more and more true as time goes on and the whole brand gets bigger. The card game, the mobile free-to-play ventures, an animated series and every conceivable form of merchandising under the sun; the games aren't the only major product anymore, and it could even be considered that they aren't the main ones anymore. There’re deadlines to be met and other products to coincide with, and opportunities to expand or experiment upon the stablished formula, let alone deliver a polished product, are something that now can only be considered a luxury instead of a standard.
But you most likely already knew all of this, even if you are not a fan of the series; this rather pedantic introduction is not to say something about this Pokémon age in which we are in that everyone knows, but rather how it is made all the more bizarre considering that, not so long ago, the series went through what is perhaps its most experimental and weird (in a good way) period, the ‘’DS Era’’. The mainline games, while maintaining the same core gameplay, sought revolutions in other ways beyond visual changes, most interestingly in the narrative department: the fourth generation bringing a more ‘’spiritual’’ perspective to the world of Pokémon with the exploration of myths and legends; and the fifth generation proposing an entire deconstruction of what the series stood for. Beyond personal gripes or serious problems that the games may have had (I’m looking at your direction, Diamond and Pearl!), it’s obvious that during this time there were attempts at exploring what new things Pokémon could bring to the table, and even tho Pokémon Dash or even Link! came before, and in reality this one is a GBA game as much as it is a DS one, there’s no doubt in my mind that Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team is the game that marked the first step into this Trainerschool of thought… That was my worst pun to date I’m so sorry…
There had already been a lot of spin-offs for the series like Colosseum and Snap, but Mystery Dungeon stands out for different reasons: not only does it try out a new form of gameplay, or at least new for this series, but it also puts a ton of focus on the narrative, something that the games outside of the main generational line usually stray out of, specially the handheld ones, the which at this point mainly consisted of the trading card games and… pinball. So while Blue Rescue Team is not the first Pokémon game to try out new gameplay styles or have a more involved narrative, it’s certainly the first of its kind on trying to mix and match this myriad of elements in a way none of the other spin-offs had ever even attempted, a big full-blown adventure outside of the usual catching and battling routine, and all of this is extremely important to consider, or at least it is to me, because it gives me the lenses in which to review this game; I already knew that I didn’t want to compare it to what would come after simply because it isn’t fair, and a lot of factors that would come in consideration for latter entries don’t really apply here, and I also know that I don’t want to analyze it like any other game in the series ‘cause that’s just not what it is. Blue Rescue Team, even by today and its own series standards it’s its own thing that asks for your investment and considering what it’s trying to do… and it’s all this build-up and considerations with it what makes it even more painful to say that, despite some bright spots, I can’t bring myself to ignore its faults and feel the shame of how it close comes to greatness, only to throw out most of its inspired ideas for seemingly no reason.
The Very Good Stuff
But that’s a story for the half-way mark, ‘cause when the adventure starts there are little to none complains. If this game is something, it’s charming: from the cheesy dumb quiz that will decide what Pokémon you will be to the almost manic attitude of your companion and how you both become best buddies almost immediately, it gives for a fantastic first impression of what will be a seemingly more carefree adventure, but it also has a great hook: I really wanted to know what happened that resulted in the transformation into a Pokémon and the meaning of the dreams that the main character had from time to time, and even if it takes a while, these are questions that the game will pick up in extremely interesting and compelling ways. Yes my friends, this is an isekai and I’m IN. I also couldn’t stop myself from falling in love of how this game looks and sounds; like I said, this is effectively a GBA game, and the differences with Red Rescue Team are minimal. The game doesn’t hide that it was made for a completely different system, and it has barely adapted to the newer hardware, both in the lack of updates to the non-existent use of the DS particularities like the touch screen (and the use of the upper screen is a minor convenience at best and inconsequential at worst), and even tho this should by all accounts translate into me calling it a ‘’lazy port’’… I just couldn’t care enough when everything was so good-looking and sounding as it was.
The different musical pieces are stellar, simple but catchy and wonderfully brought to the newer sound-font, it just took the title screen to win me over, like… Listen to it, listen to it and REJOICE IN THE DUMB FUN! The pixel art work is also immaculate, a ton of attention and care was put into every single tile: the Pokémon themselves and the amazing portraits representing their emotions unique to each one, the buildings with more personality than entire games, the fantastic environments, even if most are static, feel alive and pop out thanks to the amazing detail and colors. It’s joy to listen and watch this game… which it kinda need to be since most of the time is spent in otherwise very similar narrow corridors… Speaking of which…
Dungeons, More Dungeons and… You Are Never Gonna Guess It...
Dungeons!
Soooooooooooooooooooo remember when I said that the gameplay of this game was new to the Pokémon series but not exactly a brand new concept? Well, what is also not brand new is the name ‘’Mystery Dungeon’’! Even tho now it’s a name that’s almost completely associated with Pokémon, in reality it could be considered a subseries of sorts, in which they stand along several games based on Dragon Quest and even a remake of the second entry of theShiren The Wanderer series. So yeah, in reality this spin-off was born of taking a concept that originated from another spin-off from another series and putting Pokémon in it, and the result is a Pokémon Rogue-Like game!... Those bastards… Jokes and simplifications aside, the ‘’Mystery Dungeon’’ formula fits this new context EXTREMELY well; it retains a ton of the elements from the main series while still feeling organic; the type chart, the four selectable moves and the possible items all are ones that those familiarized with the series will immediately recognize, a the transition from main-line game to MD is made a lot easier by the fact, tho it’s not like it really matters. All of the systems are extremely simple and can even be simplified, like binding actions to certain commands, and while as I said the type chart is still present, it has been MASSIVELY simplified, eliminating immunities and a ton of resistances, and while knowing what type of move to use it’s still very useful in most situations, this is that type of game where you can brute force your way out of pretty much every situation with the right items and right positioning… except when you steal something Kecleon. DO NOT STEAL ANYTHING FROM KECLEON
So, on paper, everything sounds fine and dandy: we have a gameplay system that fits quite well on the context of controlling one of these capsule monsters and recruiting others and has a ton of elements from the original series plus putting a flare with its own ideas, plus the motivation for saving and helping other Pokémon makes it so the possibilities for missions are almost endless… Even if I wish they weren’t.
That simplicity that originally wasn’t that bad and even welcomed starts becoming a problem when you notice things like that the AI partners are incredibly slow and won’t ever take any kind of initiative, the death of any of the partners will prompt the immediate failure of the mission, the rewards feel lackluster at best and the game ends up almost encouraging you only accepting the missions with the best rewards DESPITE the story saying the opposite message… The systems are stretched so thin that it’s impossible to notice the broken stitches; repetition is the name of the game here, and boredom is guaranteed when you have to do the exact the exact same tasks over and over again purely for the sake of padding, and I mean it literally since many of the story sections are stitched through these pointless deviations, SPEAKING OF WHICH.
The Not So Good Stuff
What at first seems like a game that seems to mix the fun on going on to missions with a more episodic but still cohesive narrative doesn’t take too long to turn into a snail-paced adventure with more care for the spectacle than for the substance.
It drops its most interesting arc, one where you and your partner are forced to run from every single other rescue team and abandon the town and your friends, just before it can have a proper conclusion, depriving us from a proper final confrontation from what it seems like a logical final battle, but hey, you battled some really cool legendary birds along the way! That makes up for it right?... Right?
What at first is charm dumb fun ends up turning into a desperation for the story to take a logical turn, to have proper stakes instead fumbling around to battles that happen out of nowhere and the only stakes that they have is that they are against big birds and dragons. It’s clear it wanted to tell a story, a story about characters, a story about the people on this small world and their slow desperation against the superstitions and the impossible, but instead it just didn’t. Instead, we have a ‘’villain’’ that I really like the concept and his personality, but ultimately feels wasted because he has so little importance in the main story, and he only gets more focus after the credits roll. Instead, we have a final battle that its barely built upon and the final menace comes up of nowhere. Instead, we got wasted opportunity for expanding upon the world after wasting opportunity. Instead of an absolute success, we got a faulty attempt… an attempt with a ton of heart.
Where I found a repetitive gameplay loop and a wasted storyline, many others found n amazing game worth loving, one that sparked in many the love for the franchise, all because a small experiment that turned out to be so unique in so many way.
Blue Rescue Team would go on to create a pretty big series, and its sequel would result in a monument of a game, and that’s a story for another time, but even ignoring that, even with its many errors and faults, I’m glad Pokémon Mystery Dungeon is real, I’m glad it came out at the time it did and even if I wished I could be more positive about it, it sure did make me smile and have fun.
I just wished it went harder at places, that it had the courage to go all in. But that’s more of a dream than anything else…
“All dreams are but another reality’’.
‘’Never forget…”
But you most likely already knew all of this, even if you are not a fan of the series; this rather pedantic introduction is not to say something about this Pokémon age in which we are in that everyone knows, but rather how it is made all the more bizarre considering that, not so long ago, the series went through what is perhaps its most experimental and weird (in a good way) period, the ‘’DS Era’’. The mainline games, while maintaining the same core gameplay, sought revolutions in other ways beyond visual changes, most interestingly in the narrative department: the fourth generation bringing a more ‘’spiritual’’ perspective to the world of Pokémon with the exploration of myths and legends; and the fifth generation proposing an entire deconstruction of what the series stood for. Beyond personal gripes or serious problems that the games may have had (I’m looking at your direction, Diamond and Pearl!), it’s obvious that during this time there were attempts at exploring what new things Pokémon could bring to the table, and even tho Pokémon Dash or even Link! came before, and in reality this one is a GBA game as much as it is a DS one, there’s no doubt in my mind that Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team is the game that marked the first step into this Trainerschool of thought… That was my worst pun to date I’m so sorry…
There had already been a lot of spin-offs for the series like Colosseum and Snap, but Mystery Dungeon stands out for different reasons: not only does it try out a new form of gameplay, or at least new for this series, but it also puts a ton of focus on the narrative, something that the games outside of the main generational line usually stray out of, specially the handheld ones, the which at this point mainly consisted of the trading card games and… pinball. So while Blue Rescue Team is not the first Pokémon game to try out new gameplay styles or have a more involved narrative, it’s certainly the first of its kind on trying to mix and match this myriad of elements in a way none of the other spin-offs had ever even attempted, a big full-blown adventure outside of the usual catching and battling routine, and all of this is extremely important to consider, or at least it is to me, because it gives me the lenses in which to review this game; I already knew that I didn’t want to compare it to what would come after simply because it isn’t fair, and a lot of factors that would come in consideration for latter entries don’t really apply here, and I also know that I don’t want to analyze it like any other game in the series ‘cause that’s just not what it is. Blue Rescue Team, even by today and its own series standards it’s its own thing that asks for your investment and considering what it’s trying to do… and it’s all this build-up and considerations with it what makes it even more painful to say that, despite some bright spots, I can’t bring myself to ignore its faults and feel the shame of how it close comes to greatness, only to throw out most of its inspired ideas for seemingly no reason.
The Very Good Stuff
But that’s a story for the half-way mark, ‘cause when the adventure starts there are little to none complains. If this game is something, it’s charming: from the cheesy dumb quiz that will decide what Pokémon you will be to the almost manic attitude of your companion and how you both become best buddies almost immediately, it gives for a fantastic first impression of what will be a seemingly more carefree adventure, but it also has a great hook: I really wanted to know what happened that resulted in the transformation into a Pokémon and the meaning of the dreams that the main character had from time to time, and even if it takes a while, these are questions that the game will pick up in extremely interesting and compelling ways. Yes my friends, this is an isekai and I’m IN. I also couldn’t stop myself from falling in love of how this game looks and sounds; like I said, this is effectively a GBA game, and the differences with Red Rescue Team are minimal. The game doesn’t hide that it was made for a completely different system, and it has barely adapted to the newer hardware, both in the lack of updates to the non-existent use of the DS particularities like the touch screen (and the use of the upper screen is a minor convenience at best and inconsequential at worst), and even tho this should by all accounts translate into me calling it a ‘’lazy port’’… I just couldn’t care enough when everything was so good-looking and sounding as it was.
The different musical pieces are stellar, simple but catchy and wonderfully brought to the newer sound-font, it just took the title screen to win me over, like… Listen to it, listen to it and REJOICE IN THE DUMB FUN! The pixel art work is also immaculate, a ton of attention and care was put into every single tile: the Pokémon themselves and the amazing portraits representing their emotions unique to each one, the buildings with more personality than entire games, the fantastic environments, even if most are static, feel alive and pop out thanks to the amazing detail and colors. It’s joy to listen and watch this game… which it kinda need to be since most of the time is spent in otherwise very similar narrow corridors… Speaking of which…
Dungeons, More Dungeons and… You Are Never Gonna Guess It...
Dungeons!
Soooooooooooooooooooo remember when I said that the gameplay of this game was new to the Pokémon series but not exactly a brand new concept? Well, what is also not brand new is the name ‘’Mystery Dungeon’’! Even tho now it’s a name that’s almost completely associated with Pokémon, in reality it could be considered a subseries of sorts, in which they stand along several games based on Dragon Quest and even a remake of the second entry of theShiren The Wanderer series. So yeah, in reality this spin-off was born of taking a concept that originated from another spin-off from another series and putting Pokémon in it, and the result is a Pokémon Rogue-Like game!... Those bastards… Jokes and simplifications aside, the ‘’Mystery Dungeon’’ formula fits this new context EXTREMELY well; it retains a ton of the elements from the main series while still feeling organic; the type chart, the four selectable moves and the possible items all are ones that those familiarized with the series will immediately recognize, a the transition from main-line game to MD is made a lot easier by the fact, tho it’s not like it really matters. All of the systems are extremely simple and can even be simplified, like binding actions to certain commands, and while as I said the type chart is still present, it has been MASSIVELY simplified, eliminating immunities and a ton of resistances, and while knowing what type of move to use it’s still very useful in most situations, this is that type of game where you can brute force your way out of pretty much every situation with the right items and right positioning… except when you steal something Kecleon. DO NOT STEAL ANYTHING FROM KECLEON
So, on paper, everything sounds fine and dandy: we have a gameplay system that fits quite well on the context of controlling one of these capsule monsters and recruiting others and has a ton of elements from the original series plus putting a flare with its own ideas, plus the motivation for saving and helping other Pokémon makes it so the possibilities for missions are almost endless… Even if I wish they weren’t.
That simplicity that originally wasn’t that bad and even welcomed starts becoming a problem when you notice things like that the AI partners are incredibly slow and won’t ever take any kind of initiative, the death of any of the partners will prompt the immediate failure of the mission, the rewards feel lackluster at best and the game ends up almost encouraging you only accepting the missions with the best rewards DESPITE the story saying the opposite message… The systems are stretched so thin that it’s impossible to notice the broken stitches; repetition is the name of the game here, and boredom is guaranteed when you have to do the exact the exact same tasks over and over again purely for the sake of padding, and I mean it literally since many of the story sections are stitched through these pointless deviations, SPEAKING OF WHICH.
The Not So Good Stuff
What at first seems like a game that seems to mix the fun on going on to missions with a more episodic but still cohesive narrative doesn’t take too long to turn into a snail-paced adventure with more care for the spectacle than for the substance.
It drops its most interesting arc, one where you and your partner are forced to run from every single other rescue team and abandon the town and your friends, just before it can have a proper conclusion, depriving us from a proper final confrontation from what it seems like a logical final battle, but hey, you battled some really cool legendary birds along the way! That makes up for it right?... Right?
What at first is charm dumb fun ends up turning into a desperation for the story to take a logical turn, to have proper stakes instead fumbling around to battles that happen out of nowhere and the only stakes that they have is that they are against big birds and dragons. It’s clear it wanted to tell a story, a story about characters, a story about the people on this small world and their slow desperation against the superstitions and the impossible, but instead it just didn’t. Instead, we have a ‘’villain’’ that I really like the concept and his personality, but ultimately feels wasted because he has so little importance in the main story, and he only gets more focus after the credits roll. Instead, we have a final battle that its barely built upon and the final menace comes up of nowhere. Instead, we got wasted opportunity for expanding upon the world after wasting opportunity. Instead of an absolute success, we got a faulty attempt… an attempt with a ton of heart.
Where I found a repetitive gameplay loop and a wasted storyline, many others found n amazing game worth loving, one that sparked in many the love for the franchise, all because a small experiment that turned out to be so unique in so many way.
Blue Rescue Team would go on to create a pretty big series, and its sequel would result in a monument of a game, and that’s a story for another time, but even ignoring that, even with its many errors and faults, I’m glad Pokémon Mystery Dungeon is real, I’m glad it came out at the time it did and even if I wished I could be more positive about it, it sure did make me smile and have fun.
I just wished it went harder at places, that it had the courage to go all in. But that’s more of a dream than anything else…
“All dreams are but another reality’’.
‘’Never forget…”