''Never forget...''
I technically never really grew up with Explorers of Sky but rather with the original dual release version, Explorers of Time/Darkness , tho funnily enough, I can't really recall which one of the two it was exactly; what I do recall without even an ounce of effort, is the things I felt while playing it all those years back. It was one of the first times my younger self cared to pay attention to the dialogue of a game, one of the first times I was enthralled by the music and visuals of... well, anything ever; and the excitement I felt over new story beats and at the gameplay reached absurd points. However, I couldn't explain why the game had such an effect on me, plus I never got to beat it (got stuck at one of the boss fights... still have traumas over that) so it's not like I ever got a definitive conclusion to the story, nor a resolution to the feelings I had with the game.
And so, I left behind the game, and the only thing left were the good memories of it without really being able to explain why I liked it. Many years later, I was able to get a copy of Explorers of Sky for cheap (or at least, cheap compared to what it normally goes for), and not so long ago I finally beatBlue Rescue Team and delved in how, despite being a fun Dungeon Crawler RPG and having a brand new interesting take on the franchise, it was a deeply flawed one, with hiccups in the gameplay front, but especially in the narrative department, and that affected the enjoyment the moment to moment rescuing and exploring.
Many moons have passed, experienced has been gained and my views on games and the media as a whole have matured since I picked that DS for the first time (or at least I like to think that they have, if only a little bit), so now, the most expected thing is that I’d know to pin-point what did I exactly like so much about this game, or even that my opinions on it would sour a bit after coming back to it and reaching the end…
… but this one has a Croagunk with a big-ass cauldron, so that automatically makes it the best game in the entire franchise.
’’A future worth fighting for’’
It’s almost scary how good Explorers of the Sky builds on top of what was already established while also creating its own whole identity, and it’s doubly impressive when taking into account how much it borrows from the previous installment: the dungeon-traversing gameplay has seen little to none changes; everything that can be found in Treasure Town, from the shops to the dojo, are lifted straight up from the original Rescue Team games, with the only thing changes being some of the Pokémon at the front of these stores as well as one or two new shacks for two new mechanics, the eggs and the chests; the game retains the same chapter by chapter structure of its predecessor, and practically all of the bulletin board missions types are ones brought from the past entry. This is much more than taking just base or general the idea of a past game, most of Explorers is pretty much a direct follow up of every concept that the franchise stablished in its inception, and that should mean that it should carry the problems Blue/Red Rescue Team had that I previously described, or at the very least it should feel derivative, but I think it’s pretty clear where I’m going with this.
Thanks to a lot of systems being stream-lined or more options being given, mainly the whole territory buying to get new team members being COMPLETELY removed and the introduction of the Spinda Café to make the CI leveling process a lot more easier as well as to introduce a way to recycle items, the pacing of the game is made WAYYYY faster both in and out of dungeons, while also incrementing the amount of strategizing needed; while I’ve lost way less times than in Rescue Team and I’ve even won some battles that the game doesn’t expect you to normally beat, main battles in those previous games felt extremely repetitive. You don’t really come up with new ideas on the flying or plan ahead for what’s coming next; your response to the boss encounters doesn’t really differ from one another, and you are not rewarded from exploring outside of the box using different items; you just go headfirst into danger, throw some sleeping items and prey to god it works. The boss battles in Explorers work completely different, not only there’s more variety in the Pokémon you fight and even in the way they are organized, but the amount of seeds at your disposal as well as the new move-sets make strategy building on the fly some of the most fun I’ve had in the entire series. This even applies, at least to a certain extent, to the normal floor battles; even if most of the encounters are usually pretty easy and the difficulty comes mainly from your own resource management, half-way though the game some dungeons start to REALLY ramp up in difficulty, and even some of the normal enemy Pokémon start becoming a problem. You even need to take into account the weather present in some cases and considering changing it, and while I don’t have a exact way to confirm this, I’m pretty sure that the possibility of encountering monster houses has been raised considerably, and I actually like this! It gives spheres even more reasons to be used and show that sometimes a direct confrontation doesn’t really have to be the way forward, teaching indirectly even more ways to strategize and introducing a risk reward aspect into the game, since they usually have a ton of good items in them … But no yeah Monster Houses are still dumb. The fact the ladder or even you can spawn in one of them only creates artificial difficulty, and it’s alongside the randomness of the traps and the impossibility of using spheres in boss battles the only things I REALLY don’t like about the game (tho I understand why the latter is the way it is, even if I believe it would make sense to be able all the tools at your disposal in the major battles, specially the ones with multiple enemies). I also wanted to mention how the introduction of Wigglytuff’s guild is just… so fucking good. Having a main hub area related to the main story, our characters arc and that expands the story behind certain Pokémon and the rescue teams is one fantastic thing, but also be it one that makes so much sense with the setting, simplifies a ton of the mission systems, and also introduces a whole new minigame it’s just pure gold… tho I could have gone the rest of life without knowing the shape of Nidoking’s feet, that wasn’t really necessary…
Make no mistake, if the gameplay is so good in this game, it’s only because it was good in the first place; these changes aren’t revolutionary, but they do improve and strengthen a system that was already fantastic in the first place, making it more rewarding than it ever was. Explorers is a sequel after all, one that seeks to enhance everything that could have been enhanced, and that includes a certain something that, not in a million years, could I ever had seen coming.
Not in this way. Not like this.
’’A story that had to be told’’
Explorers of Sky is a culmination. No, I’m not talking about a culmination of Time/Darkness, which it is, but that’s not what I’m referring to. Back when I beat Blue Rescue Team, I left with this deeply sour taste in my mouth, I had enjoyed what I played, yes, and there were some stellar moments, but a ton of it’s potential was squandered for the shake of telling a flashier, less intricated plot. And hey, looking back maybe I was a bit too mean, maybe that was exactly the story they wanted to tell; a story that touched on some interesting themes but ultimately was just an excuse to live a couple of fun adventures and battle some cool looking Pokémon, maybe I just had my expectations misplaced and was just too overly critical to a story that didn’t deserve even if it did affect the gameplay… or maybe I knew a glimpse of what would come next.
If I already praised Blue Rescue Team for its fantastic visuals and music, then I don’t know what I’d need to do to express how Explorers goes above all and beyond everything I thought was good about the original game; I think I’m exaggerating when I say this is probably the best original pixel-art in any DS RPG along side the one in Bowser’s Inside Story. Every single scenery on here is worth putting on a portrait, hell, singular stones have more detail than entire games in the franchise. The beautiful close-ups and scenes that happen and certain moments, like watching a myriad of bug Pokémon flying around a tower of water, or contemplating the sunset on top of a cliff with an impossible shape, plus the fantastic use of the dual screens not to enhance gameplay, but to improve certain moments and cutscenes are such fantastic details that I cannot do nothing but smile when simply thinking about it. Add on top of that an amazing minimalistic sound design and probably the best OST in the entire franchise and DS catalogue along with the fifth-generation games… and I don’t really know what more to tell you, man.
This moments, no, everything I’ve said about the game, it’s pretty good on their own right, and they are impressive by any game standard, but what makes me absolutely adore them, what makes me gush and appreciate them even more, it’s how every single occurrence, behind every single event, a story is taking place. Blue Rescue Team took the story as more of a excuse to present harder challenges than normal and introduce certain concepts, and as such a lot of the duration of the game was taken by missions that didn’t really amount to anything in the great scheme of things. Explorers has, let’s just say, a different philosophy on this. The world is no mere back-drop for cool things to happen, every single location has a place, every single event, every step we take amounts to something; the few moments things stop for a minute feel genuine and add the sensation that time needs to pass for certain characters to do their thing, but it’s never too long before everything’s back in action. The world is filled with fantastic characters and I adore them all, even the stinky ones that I’m supposed to hate, I love every single one of them. They all have their moment to shine, their own unique aspirations, even their own fears and weaknesses, and even when you expect certain plot-points to happen, there’s far more depth behind the curtain. The episodic format does nothing but wonders for this, not only because it allows to have an overarching plot while introducing sub-stories in a cohesive way, but it gives more room for every single critter to breath and have their own moment, couple that with the extra episodes in Explorers of Sky that dig deep into certain characters past and even future, and we have an experience that only gets stronger as it goes on.
I felt genuine emotion for the events that happened, specially the ones close to the end: the wrath, the sadness and the happiness are contagious because of how well everything is laid down and accompanied by the fantastic music, and whereas, in the first game, I felt like the companion or the main betraying bad guy were just a shadow of they could have been, these are it, these are what they seemed to want to be since the beginning. I understand why so many people adore Grovyle, I adore Wigglytuf’s comedic relief, I loved every single mon at the Guild (yes, even you, Chatot, you deserve a hug), and I’m fascinated by the main character’s arc, I didn’t think that I could care about my Piplup self and my Vulpix companion this much, but I do, I really do, and it saddened me struggle and made me happy to see them overcome the challenges. And these characters being put in this setting, a setting that I didn’t think could be even done this exceptionally by a Pokémon game, a story that touches on overcoming personal flaws and anxieties, and culminates on the inevitability on saying goodbyes to your loved ones, even if it hurts.. and it does fucking hurt, and I love that it does.
''I’ll never forget you’’
Explorers of Sky wasn’t made by another team wanting to make a different take on this idea, it was the same team at Chunsoft that worked in the original games, even the writers, Shin-ichiro Tomie and Emiko Tanaka, to the artist and composers, are the same for both entries; and it’s in that moment you realize that all these people cared beyond belief, cared to tell a fantastic, cohesive narrative, a beautiful story about fate and fear, darkness and time, love and courage, of despair and hope.
Like a perfect dance, everything flows magically, and the experience it’s only that even to this day it’s hard to describe. It’s not flawless, mind you, but it’s absolutely fantatic, and it’s hard to find just the right words to define such an experience, an experience that feels so right and hits all the right notes in both gameplay and narrative. An experience that truly broke the bounds of the series and changed the minds of millions on what these little silly animals could tell though a story and its themes, and that transcended and became not only a good Pokémon spin-off game, but a fantastic game by its own and a highlight of entire franchise. An experience that, like all dances, sadly ends, even if there’s more adventures to be had, and I’ll surely have, but for now, and at the risk of repeating myself, I really recommend Explorers of the Sky; I’ve tried really hard to not spoil concrete plot-beats and only talk about the themes and strengths of the game, ‘cause I believe this a game worth playing blind, a experience worth discovering… worth exploring.
’’…farewell…’’
I technically never really grew up with Explorers of Sky but rather with the original dual release version, Explorers of Time/Darkness , tho funnily enough, I can't really recall which one of the two it was exactly; what I do recall without even an ounce of effort, is the things I felt while playing it all those years back. It was one of the first times my younger self cared to pay attention to the dialogue of a game, one of the first times I was enthralled by the music and visuals of... well, anything ever; and the excitement I felt over new story beats and at the gameplay reached absurd points. However, I couldn't explain why the game had such an effect on me, plus I never got to beat it (got stuck at one of the boss fights... still have traumas over that) so it's not like I ever got a definitive conclusion to the story, nor a resolution to the feelings I had with the game.
And so, I left behind the game, and the only thing left were the good memories of it without really being able to explain why I liked it. Many years later, I was able to get a copy of Explorers of Sky for cheap (or at least, cheap compared to what it normally goes for), and not so long ago I finally beatBlue Rescue Team and delved in how, despite being a fun Dungeon Crawler RPG and having a brand new interesting take on the franchise, it was a deeply flawed one, with hiccups in the gameplay front, but especially in the narrative department, and that affected the enjoyment the moment to moment rescuing and exploring.
Many moons have passed, experienced has been gained and my views on games and the media as a whole have matured since I picked that DS for the first time (or at least I like to think that they have, if only a little bit), so now, the most expected thing is that I’d know to pin-point what did I exactly like so much about this game, or even that my opinions on it would sour a bit after coming back to it and reaching the end…
… but this one has a Croagunk with a big-ass cauldron, so that automatically makes it the best game in the entire franchise.
’’A future worth fighting for’’
It’s almost scary how good Explorers of the Sky builds on top of what was already established while also creating its own whole identity, and it’s doubly impressive when taking into account how much it borrows from the previous installment: the dungeon-traversing gameplay has seen little to none changes; everything that can be found in Treasure Town, from the shops to the dojo, are lifted straight up from the original Rescue Team games, with the only thing changes being some of the Pokémon at the front of these stores as well as one or two new shacks for two new mechanics, the eggs and the chests; the game retains the same chapter by chapter structure of its predecessor, and practically all of the bulletin board missions types are ones brought from the past entry. This is much more than taking just base or general the idea of a past game, most of Explorers is pretty much a direct follow up of every concept that the franchise stablished in its inception, and that should mean that it should carry the problems Blue/Red Rescue Team had that I previously described, or at the very least it should feel derivative, but I think it’s pretty clear where I’m going with this.
Thanks to a lot of systems being stream-lined or more options being given, mainly the whole territory buying to get new team members being COMPLETELY removed and the introduction of the Spinda Café to make the CI leveling process a lot more easier as well as to introduce a way to recycle items, the pacing of the game is made WAYYYY faster both in and out of dungeons, while also incrementing the amount of strategizing needed; while I’ve lost way less times than in Rescue Team and I’ve even won some battles that the game doesn’t expect you to normally beat, main battles in those previous games felt extremely repetitive. You don’t really come up with new ideas on the flying or plan ahead for what’s coming next; your response to the boss encounters doesn’t really differ from one another, and you are not rewarded from exploring outside of the box using different items; you just go headfirst into danger, throw some sleeping items and prey to god it works. The boss battles in Explorers work completely different, not only there’s more variety in the Pokémon you fight and even in the way they are organized, but the amount of seeds at your disposal as well as the new move-sets make strategy building on the fly some of the most fun I’ve had in the entire series. This even applies, at least to a certain extent, to the normal floor battles; even if most of the encounters are usually pretty easy and the difficulty comes mainly from your own resource management, half-way though the game some dungeons start to REALLY ramp up in difficulty, and even some of the normal enemy Pokémon start becoming a problem. You even need to take into account the weather present in some cases and considering changing it, and while I don’t have a exact way to confirm this, I’m pretty sure that the possibility of encountering monster houses has been raised considerably, and I actually like this! It gives spheres even more reasons to be used and show that sometimes a direct confrontation doesn’t really have to be the way forward, teaching indirectly even more ways to strategize and introducing a risk reward aspect into the game, since they usually have a ton of good items in them … But no yeah Monster Houses are still dumb. The fact the ladder or even you can spawn in one of them only creates artificial difficulty, and it’s alongside the randomness of the traps and the impossibility of using spheres in boss battles the only things I REALLY don’t like about the game (tho I understand why the latter is the way it is, even if I believe it would make sense to be able all the tools at your disposal in the major battles, specially the ones with multiple enemies). I also wanted to mention how the introduction of Wigglytuff’s guild is just… so fucking good. Having a main hub area related to the main story, our characters arc and that expands the story behind certain Pokémon and the rescue teams is one fantastic thing, but also be it one that makes so much sense with the setting, simplifies a ton of the mission systems, and also introduces a whole new minigame it’s just pure gold… tho I could have gone the rest of life without knowing the shape of Nidoking’s feet, that wasn’t really necessary…
Make no mistake, if the gameplay is so good in this game, it’s only because it was good in the first place; these changes aren’t revolutionary, but they do improve and strengthen a system that was already fantastic in the first place, making it more rewarding than it ever was. Explorers is a sequel after all, one that seeks to enhance everything that could have been enhanced, and that includes a certain something that, not in a million years, could I ever had seen coming.
Not in this way. Not like this.
’’A story that had to be told’’
Explorers of Sky is a culmination. No, I’m not talking about a culmination of Time/Darkness, which it is, but that’s not what I’m referring to. Back when I beat Blue Rescue Team, I left with this deeply sour taste in my mouth, I had enjoyed what I played, yes, and there were some stellar moments, but a ton of it’s potential was squandered for the shake of telling a flashier, less intricated plot. And hey, looking back maybe I was a bit too mean, maybe that was exactly the story they wanted to tell; a story that touched on some interesting themes but ultimately was just an excuse to live a couple of fun adventures and battle some cool looking Pokémon, maybe I just had my expectations misplaced and was just too overly critical to a story that didn’t deserve even if it did affect the gameplay… or maybe I knew a glimpse of what would come next.
If I already praised Blue Rescue Team for its fantastic visuals and music, then I don’t know what I’d need to do to express how Explorers goes above all and beyond everything I thought was good about the original game; I think I’m exaggerating when I say this is probably the best original pixel-art in any DS RPG along side the one in Bowser’s Inside Story. Every single scenery on here is worth putting on a portrait, hell, singular stones have more detail than entire games in the franchise. The beautiful close-ups and scenes that happen and certain moments, like watching a myriad of bug Pokémon flying around a tower of water, or contemplating the sunset on top of a cliff with an impossible shape, plus the fantastic use of the dual screens not to enhance gameplay, but to improve certain moments and cutscenes are such fantastic details that I cannot do nothing but smile when simply thinking about it. Add on top of that an amazing minimalistic sound design and probably the best OST in the entire franchise and DS catalogue along with the fifth-generation games… and I don’t really know what more to tell you, man.
This moments, no, everything I’ve said about the game, it’s pretty good on their own right, and they are impressive by any game standard, but what makes me absolutely adore them, what makes me gush and appreciate them even more, it’s how every single occurrence, behind every single event, a story is taking place. Blue Rescue Team took the story as more of a excuse to present harder challenges than normal and introduce certain concepts, and as such a lot of the duration of the game was taken by missions that didn’t really amount to anything in the great scheme of things. Explorers has, let’s just say, a different philosophy on this. The world is no mere back-drop for cool things to happen, every single location has a place, every single event, every step we take amounts to something; the few moments things stop for a minute feel genuine and add the sensation that time needs to pass for certain characters to do their thing, but it’s never too long before everything’s back in action. The world is filled with fantastic characters and I adore them all, even the stinky ones that I’m supposed to hate, I love every single one of them. They all have their moment to shine, their own unique aspirations, even their own fears and weaknesses, and even when you expect certain plot-points to happen, there’s far more depth behind the curtain. The episodic format does nothing but wonders for this, not only because it allows to have an overarching plot while introducing sub-stories in a cohesive way, but it gives more room for every single critter to breath and have their own moment, couple that with the extra episodes in Explorers of Sky that dig deep into certain characters past and even future, and we have an experience that only gets stronger as it goes on.
I felt genuine emotion for the events that happened, specially the ones close to the end: the wrath, the sadness and the happiness are contagious because of how well everything is laid down and accompanied by the fantastic music, and whereas, in the first game, I felt like the companion or the main betraying bad guy were just a shadow of they could have been, these are it, these are what they seemed to want to be since the beginning. I understand why so many people adore Grovyle, I adore Wigglytuf’s comedic relief, I loved every single mon at the Guild (yes, even you, Chatot, you deserve a hug), and I’m fascinated by the main character’s arc, I didn’t think that I could care about my Piplup self and my Vulpix companion this much, but I do, I really do, and it saddened me struggle and made me happy to see them overcome the challenges. And these characters being put in this setting, a setting that I didn’t think could be even done this exceptionally by a Pokémon game, a story that touches on overcoming personal flaws and anxieties, and culminates on the inevitability on saying goodbyes to your loved ones, even if it hurts.. and it does fucking hurt, and I love that it does.
''I’ll never forget you’’
Explorers of Sky wasn’t made by another team wanting to make a different take on this idea, it was the same team at Chunsoft that worked in the original games, even the writers, Shin-ichiro Tomie and Emiko Tanaka, to the artist and composers, are the same for both entries; and it’s in that moment you realize that all these people cared beyond belief, cared to tell a fantastic, cohesive narrative, a beautiful story about fate and fear, darkness and time, love and courage, of despair and hope.
Like a perfect dance, everything flows magically, and the experience it’s only that even to this day it’s hard to describe. It’s not flawless, mind you, but it’s absolutely fantatic, and it’s hard to find just the right words to define such an experience, an experience that feels so right and hits all the right notes in both gameplay and narrative. An experience that truly broke the bounds of the series and changed the minds of millions on what these little silly animals could tell though a story and its themes, and that transcended and became not only a good Pokémon spin-off game, but a fantastic game by its own and a highlight of entire franchise. An experience that, like all dances, sadly ends, even if there’s more adventures to be had, and I’ll surely have, but for now, and at the risk of repeating myself, I really recommend Explorers of the Sky; I’ve tried really hard to not spoil concrete plot-beats and only talk about the themes and strengths of the game, ‘cause I believe this a game worth playing blind, a experience worth discovering… worth exploring.
’’…farewell…’’
7 Comments
@AlphaOne2 And it's in those small little stupidly hilarious moments where the magic of Pokémon shines... seriously tho that it's amazing ang honestly, considerin how much damage the final boss does with a certain attack, it absolutely deserves getting fissured xD.
And thank you so much for the kind words! :DDD
And thank you so much for the kind words! :DDD
I love this game very much. I hope pmd gets back to this point, or if theres a remake im praying it gets treated with respect.
This is a great review but ive noticed that every time you write something it always shows up in my feed a few times, like its new? Its not something that bugs me or anything but im just curious why it happens
This is a great review but ive noticed that every time you write something it always shows up in my feed a few times, like its new? Its not something that bugs me or anything but im just curious why it happens
@moschidae Oh, it may have to do with me logging it again, since I like to keep track of the hours I play of a game and me resetting the ''complete'' status when changing stuff may make it show up in the feed. I'm seeing that it happens a ton and can be annoying, so I'll just modify the logs and don't touch the complete/played section from here onward. Thanks for pointing it out and I apologize if it bodered anybody!
Ohh i see, that makes sense. Dont worry, youre not bothering anyone, i was just curious
I genuinely believe this is one of the best Pokemon games ever made, not even the best spinoff, just the best game in the series. It tells a story that still has a tight grip on me to this day, never failing to make me shed some tears, and I really don't think I'll ever be able to express just how much I love this game's characters, art, soundtrack, everything. Thank you for this review, I'm almost finished with my replay of Darkness and I loved seeing your thoughts on Sky (it's the version I prefer, but I don't want to erase my save file).
@Yoshijammer I have yet to try other Pokémon spin-offs like the Ranger games and the Colosseum and Gale of Darkness duology, but out of the games in the series, this is easily in my top 2 hands-down (still have to ponder which I prefer, either B&W or this one). It's an incredibly strong RPG in all the ways, and I already gushed about it in the review itself, but I also adore the story, the dialogue is really strong and themes it touches are surprising as they are interesting. If it wasn't because I kinda grew up with the original versions, I never would have expected a Pokémon game having this kind of story, hell, it's amazing even by episodic RPG standards.
And thank you so much for enjoying the review! Glad you enjoyed it :DDD
And thank you so much for enjoying the review! Glad you enjoyed it :DDD
AlphaOne2
8 months ago