a marked improvement over Red and Blue Rescue Team in every single way. the gameplay is what you'd expect in a Pokemon rougelike - get to the next floor, beat other Pokemon on the floor, and maybe find some treasures along the way...

but the story is what most people come to this series for, and this story is.... pretty good!! there's some high stakes and the characters are all great, even if I have some personal gripes about poor explanations throughout the story ("what's the Dimensional Scream? well in the future we used it to find Time Gears. oh it doesn't work that way in the present? well maybe it works differently here" with no elaboration or interest for the rest of the game).

still have to dock half a star for doing Team Raiders dirty