Gamertell

Title: Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness
Price: $34.99 (each)
System(s): DS
Release Date: April 20, 2008
Publisher (Developer): Nintendo (The Pokémon Company)
ESRB Rating: “Everyone” for mild cartoon violence.
Pros: It has “Pokémon” in the name, the character and town graphics are good and attacks can be mapped to buttons.
Cons: You have to buy two games, the gameplay is more frustration than fun and the dungeons graphics are really bad.
Overall Score: One thumb sideways, one thumb down; 62/100; D-; * 1/2 out of five.

Instead of another a humdrum version of the usual Pokémon games, this is instead an annoying addition to a well-intentioned obscure offshoot of the franchise. Instead of being a Pokémon looking for fame, you are instead a human turned into a Pokémon on a quest to fix time. To some, that would sound pretty exciting.

It’s not. Put that pocketbook down and instead save it for something else. What should be a exciting upgrade is instead more boring and frustrating than fun.

Random Acts of Gameness

To begin the game, you take a quick personality test that determines which of 12 Pokémon will be your avatar. After that, it’s pretty much a repeat of the previous two Dungeon Mystery games (Blue Rescue Team and Red Rescue Team) with the usual goals of leveling up, winning trophies, earning money by completing missions, spending money (aka Poké), managing items and saving the world from some terror that’s revealed after you get past a certain point in the game and properly using acquired items. You do get to travel with a friend and, in true Pokémon style, acquire many more buddies.

As usual, your Pokémon’s element type matters, especially when battling opponents.

One feature that should be nice is that the dungeons are all randomly generated, although you’ll only see a couple types of tiles used. The action is also turn-based which is not quite as cut-and-dry as it might seem with other characters moving and doing stuff even when you think it should be your turn.

You can also see opponents coming in the dungeons, which is kinda nice as opposed to the surprise attacks in other Pokémon and older Final Fantasy games. The crappy part is that if you can see them, they can probably see you can will usually catch up and attack unless you can get to an exit.

One nice feature is that an attacks can be assigned to a button although the immediacy of a button attack tends to add to the who’s-turn-is-it-really confusion. As if meant to negate that nicety, the touchscreen offers a poor excuse for a movement control (but, thank the game gods, is made redundant with other more finger-friendly controls)

Since item management is of utmost importance, if you pick the one wrong item to carry, you’ll likely perish pretty fast and be forced back to the beginning without gold and some items. Not a permanent death but still pretty dern annoying.

Adding to the annoyance is that your Pokémons (Pokémen? Pokémi?) will also need to periodically eat otherwise they’ll get hungry and lose HP. This is true for you and your buddy, which means you are really managing two stomachs. If you do perish from famishment, you can send a wireless SOS for help, but you’ll need a) to be in range of your wireless router b) have friend codes c) have those friends playing and connected and d) able to help you to get any resurrection love. (Phew). Even then, you’ll have might have to leave your characters in “request a rescue” mode. It is nice to keep all of your stuff but damn annoying to wait for help.

Poké Mé Béfore I Fall Asléép

While most Pokémon games can keep me interested far longer than any critic should spend on one game, the Mystery Dungeon duo was never able to pique (or even sustain) any level of amiable interest.

Item management and stomach monitoring is tedious, turns are not clearly indicated, dungeons are unimaginative (and uninteresting) and the single touch-screen control is useless.

The game is technically adequate but the blandly generated dungeons don’t do the franchise justice. Also, for all of the well-intentioned features and pretty decent graphics (as is expected at this point from any Pokémon DS game), I played this for a few days, put it down and then never wanted to pick it back up. I had zero care as to the level of my avatar or getting through the next random dungeon. Instead, I am pretty content to leave it as-is, which is a really bad sign for a role-playing game that is intended to be enjoyed for months.

Site [Pokémon] Product Page [Pokémon Mystery Dungeon]

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