Pokémon Mystery Dungeon is probably my favorite of the Pokémon spin-off franchises, but that’s much more for the Pokémon end of things than the Mystery Dungeon end of things. I love the concept of a world populated entirely by Pokémon who go on adventures and have their own society of adorable cartoon creatures, and I absolutely love how hard the stories tend to go. Obviously, the first entry’s story doesn’t go quite as hard as future entries like the Explorers games, but it’s still charming and surprisingly emotional in places. That’s ultimately what I play the games for, and it was great to revisit Rescue Team in a brand new package.
I have to admit, I mourn the loss of spritework, especially given how good the originals looked. However, I actually really love how this game looks! The backgrounds and textures give the game a storybook feel, and I think the effort put into giving this game a unique stylized look really puts this above a lot of games that are technically more impressive. Admittedly, I don’t think some of the smaller models look that great, but the bigger models like the legendary Pokémon look fantastic and the cutscenes accompanying their appearances really do sell their majesty.
So now we get to the Mystery Dungeon part, which is where… I am not as thrilled. Don’t get me wrong, I think the game had a lot of interesting work done to it. Things like rare qualities and strong enemies add a lot of variety to the game, although… perhaps not enough for my own tastes. I always find myself falling off of these games pretty hard once the credits start rolling, because the difficulty curve ramps up and I don’t enjoy the actual dungeon diving enough to commit to the postgame.
I tried to get into the postgame, I really did. If you’re into the Mystery Dungeon formula there are some pretty interesting twists brought to familiar fights based on the inclusion of mechanics from more recent generations. Personally, though… I got super frustrated and quit. Ultimately, I wish the stories of these games were attached to a genre I liked more than procedurally generated dungeon diving roguelites, but I’ll also be the first to admit that I would absolutely eat up an Explorers remake in the same style.
I have to admit, I mourn the loss of spritework, especially given how good the originals looked. However, I actually really love how this game looks! The backgrounds and textures give the game a storybook feel, and I think the effort put into giving this game a unique stylized look really puts this above a lot of games that are technically more impressive. Admittedly, I don’t think some of the smaller models look that great, but the bigger models like the legendary Pokémon look fantastic and the cutscenes accompanying their appearances really do sell their majesty.
So now we get to the Mystery Dungeon part, which is where… I am not as thrilled. Don’t get me wrong, I think the game had a lot of interesting work done to it. Things like rare qualities and strong enemies add a lot of variety to the game, although… perhaps not enough for my own tastes. I always find myself falling off of these games pretty hard once the credits start rolling, because the difficulty curve ramps up and I don’t enjoy the actual dungeon diving enough to commit to the postgame.
I tried to get into the postgame, I really did. If you’re into the Mystery Dungeon formula there are some pretty interesting twists brought to familiar fights based on the inclusion of mechanics from more recent generations. Personally, though… I got super frustrated and quit. Ultimately, I wish the stories of these games were attached to a genre I liked more than procedurally generated dungeon diving roguelites, but I’ll also be the first to admit that I would absolutely eat up an Explorers remake in the same style.