System: Gameboy Advance (Red) / DS (Blue)
It's about time for me to give a probably much-liked opinion on late 2006's Pokemon game, Mystery Dungeon. This game is an RPG, as I'm sure you all know, and was built by Nintendo alongside Chun Soft, who has been making similar “dungeon” games since 1993. Nintendo actually split the versions between systems, which was laughable. Don’t ask me why they did it, even I have no idea. All it does for most gamers is force them to pick one version or the other.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon starts out with some human getting transformed into a random Pokemon and sent into a world where there are no Trainers, just Pokemon. Because you are a Pokemon in this game, you are able to understand the Pokemons’ speech. In other words, the Pokemon will actually talk, rather than just say their name, which is what you’d hear if you were a human. Sounds strange? Yeah, it is. That's an interesting start to the story, but the rest of it is mostly just various quests you go on with your chosen partner as a rescue team. The real part of the storyline I care about, though, is that all of the legendary Pokemon play a big role in the storyline that unfolds, and are also “Bosses” you fight. That makes the game awesome, right? 10/10! Stop the Review now! It's over! Actually, that's not the case, and now I'll actually get to the real Review. Let the shocking begin!
This Review is rated on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 meaning *yawn* and 10 meaning... zzz... Oh, come on, you should know this standard rating system already!
Graphics: 9/10
Since the Red
version plays on the GBA, I’m going to give a rating based on comparison
to other GBA games. For the Gameboy Advance, I'd say they're really nice
graphics. The game looks really good. Sure, it may not be full-blown 3D,
but it looks good nonetheless. It's hard to find that many problems with
the graphics. I especially liked the effort that went into the Friend Areas
and the Boss Stages, it looks brilliant. I guess I could nitpick if I felt
like it, and they aren't ground-breaking, so no perfect score here. Still,
a very good performance.
Sound/Music: 5/10
The music is
very forgettable. How many times have you heard this in Reviews? "I got
bored with the music, so I was listening to my iPod instead." Well, that's
the truth, so I have to say it in a Review of my own. The music isn't that
great. Believe me, I'll still listen to music in games to get a rating,
but practically all the points for this category came from the boss battle
music and a few of the dungeons. Those songs are great, but the rest of
the game lacks catchy music. How about the music used in Sinister Woods?
It doesn’t get much worse than that, the sheer repetition of already annoying
sounds in a boring series of music notes that tried and failed to give
a creepy atmosphere. So no, the game is not that great in this category,
which is surprising for a Pokemon game.
Difficulty: 8/10
Mystery Dungeon’s
biggest problem isn't exactly the difficulty, but it's related to the difficulty.
Later I'll talk about it in relation to the gameplay, but I must mention
it first here. The problem is, if even one of your Pokemon faints and you
have no items to revive it with, you lose. Sure, you may get a lot of Oran
Berries, but what happens when your supply of Oran Berries dries up? Well,
you can always go around beating the early dungeons until you slowly get
enough Oran Berries, experience, and other items to go back where you want
to go, but that takes too long and is too boring (making the many random
battles of the previous Pokemon RPGs seem exciting by comparison). Now
one way of making sure you don't need to use so many Oran Berries (and
Revival Seeds) is by staying away from the wild Pokemon roaming the dungeon
(your HP slowly recovers as you walk around), but I just find it so hard
to avoid encounters in this game. The fact that it's so hard to avoid battles
makes staying alive, and thus getting through the game, a chore.
Now don't get me wrong, this is no Pokemon Colosseum Battle Mode or The Lost Levels. This game is not impossible, or anywhere near it. It's just annoying to have to keep all of your Pokemon alive at all times, and to be using Oran Berries left and right. It's also annoying for it to be so hard to avoid battles. It's a hard game, though not an impossible or next-to-impossible game. It will take a lot out of you to keep going in it. I'll expound much in the gameplay section on these topics.
Story: 6/10
It's not the
best of stories, but not totally horrible. It's a new story, at least.
I don't mind the whole Pokemon-finally-getting-to-talk thing. But the human
becoming whichever Pokemon is most like his personality? Natural disasters
occuring because you were turned into a Pokemon? The legendary Pokemon
fighting to protect wildlife and nature? These things I don't get. I don't
mind the fact that it's in a different land, but I would have appreciated
the previously mentioned things making more sense.
Controls: 7/10
Sometimes the
controls can be confusing when you're trying to switch places or choose
your attack and items, but overall, I find them easy enough to use. It
can be quite a chore to get used to them at first, and sometimes the B
Button can act “sticky” (not always opening the menu when you press it)
but once everything clicks, they’ll seem more simple. But why isn’t the
START button Menu? Menu should always be START, no matter what kind of
game it is. B should never be Menu.
Gameplay: 4/10
Something I've
always liked about RPGs with multiple characters is that all of them must
have their HP drop to 0 before it’s Game Over. Whether the game's Final
Fantasy X, Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire, Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year
Door, or Pokemon Gold/Silver, if someone fainted, the battle could still
continue as long as at least one character was still standing. There was
no pressure. If I had at least one character with at least 1 HP and still
managed to defeat whoever was attacking, I could go back and recover later,
no matter how badly I did in that last battle.
Not so in Poke’mon Mystery Dungeon.
You may not dislike this, but I do. Greatly. In fact, this is the very thing that made Poke’mon Mystery Dungeon an annoying experience for me. I'd get in some volcano or cave or other dungeon, and I'd be using up maybe one or two Oran Berries PER FLOOR! Even worse, it's not like I could just get out of there and go heal for free. I would have to just keep using Oran Berries and hoping that all my Pokemon would stay alive and that I wouldn't run out.
When I found out about this early on, I got fearful. I thought, however, that this would clear up later on. It only got worse as time went on, as I started losing Oran Berries more frequently. It eventually got to the point that I didn't want to play this game anymore.
That’s the biggest problem in terms of gameplay. One other thing I dislike is the fact that one of the Pokemon you play as is chosen at random for you based on how you answer a Quizilla-wannabe personality quiz at the beginning. While I love taking these kinds of quizzes, video games really aren’t the place for them, least of all when your result impacts your ability to make it through the game. In the previous Pokemon RPGs, you could choose who you liked best and try to win with that starter. Not in this game! Imagine if Super Mario RPG, Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire, or Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door was decided on the first choice you made, the first time you turned the game on. It wouldn’t be worth it. It’s more like playing in Game Guy’s Room than playing an actual RPG. Although, I guess to be fair, you are given a choice of your computer-controlled partner to “balance out” the weaknesses of your random starter. For example, I got Mudkip as my personality starter, and chose Chikorita as my computer-controlled partner. But still…
However, before
you start to think that this game ranks below Zebco Fishing, understand
that I did enjoy some things about the gameplay. I'll go into detail about
certain gameplay features now.
The actual battle
system is very different from the previous Pokemon RPGs. The turn system
is the same, but the actual battling is more similar to Smash Bros. (think
a combination of the two ways of battling). You can use either your Special
Attacks (which are the same in as in the other Pokemon games), a regular
attack that has no type and doesn’t use any PP, or you can throw items
such as Gravelerocks to hurt the other Pokemon. Because the fighting is
not completely RPG-like, your positioning in the dungeon also has an impact
on your ability to hit the Pokemon (you have to be facing the right direction
and be in front, or just stand back throwing Gravelerocks). This is an
interesting way of battling, although the aforementioned problems really
do hurt it quite a bit.
Catching Poke’mon also works differently, since you do not play as a Trainer in this game. After you beat a wild Pokemon in the dungeon, there is a chance that it’ll join your rescue team if you have bought its “Friend Area” – a place that the Poke’mon can stay in between adventures. This is an interesting idea, but because whether or not they join you is totally random, it is a massive challenge to get all 386 Pokemon this way.
One other thing that I enjoyed in this game was going around places and making it through the actual land. The dungeons are all randomly generated, but this is what should be in an RPG – lots of memorable places to go through on your adventures. Finding the stairs to the next floor is never really that big of a challenge, and the fact that you get a different layout each time you enter makes things all the more interesting.
There is also a dizzying array of items you will come across in the dungeons, from Apples to eat when your Pokemon are hungry, to berries, to money on the ground, to a wide selection of Seeds and Orbs that have various effects. There aren't enough Oran Berries and Revival Seeds in this game, unfortunately, and yes, there are a lot of them. Overall, the items aren't enough to improve this game, nor are they bad enough to hurt this game.
I must also mention the fact that each dungeon has a fixed maximum number of moves you can make on any single floor before you are swept from the dungeon by a massive gale. Having this happen is a bad thing since it causes you to have to start the dungeon over. But at least you are warned several times before this happens by a text message and leaves blowing by. Before playing this game, I was worried that I’d constantly be seeing these warnings and would have to worry about getting to the stairs as quickly as possible rather than getting items and gaining experience. Happily, the game allots you many more moves per floor than you really need to use, so you can walk around and attack just about as much as you want. The dungeons are also limited in size, so you’re bound to find the staircase to the next floor before the first warning appears in even the most complicated dungeons. You might also have the stairs appear really close to you if you’re lucky.
Size: 10/10
This could well
be one of the largest games on the Gameboy Advance, with nearly 50 different
dungeons for your rescue team to enter. The actual storyline includes about
15 of those dungeons, so even after the final credits roll, there’s still
a lot more for you to unlock and see. Getting past the final storyline
boss took me about 20 hours of game play, but going all the way through
to the final dungeon, the game will take you well over 100 hours. This
is both good and bad, which I will explain in the next section, Replayability.
Replayability:
5/10
Well, this is
tough to decide on. For one, the game continues for a long time even after
the credits and may take you a long time to make it through with the lack
of items, so you could be replaying it for a very long time to try to unlock
everything. On the other hand, with the fact that the game can be annoying,
boring, and nerve-wracking at times, you may not want to play it that much.
It's too tough for me to give a clear rating one way or another, so I'll
give this category the middle rating of 5/10.
Fun Factor!: 4/10
Yikes. This is
one thing that Pokemon Mystery Dungeon falls short in, that prevents it
from being one of the greatest Pokemon games. This game bored me and angered
me. It made me not want to play it anymore, and it got on my nerves. It
frustrated me. Now I'm talking about the battle-related problems here,
which hurt the game big time. When it comes to exploring the dungeons and
finding the exit, I actually liked those things, which were fun, but not
enough to wipe out the high difficulty of staying alive and continuing
through the game. Thus the 4/10 rating goes to this section.
Recommendation:
6/10
Should you buy
or pass on this game? It all depends on how much you're willing to spend.
I'd say $25 or less for Red version on GBA is a good price. $35 for the
Blue version on DS isn't that steep, so if you want to take a chance and
see the Pokemon talk and the legendary Pokemon play the role of the bosses,
sure, go ahead and buy it at full price. But when you’re on the last floor
of the dungeon with no Revival Seeds and your partner accidentally faints,
you'll feel my frustration, so don't say I didn't warn you.
Overall: 6/10
Well, it was
a good try, Chun Soft. But you came up short in the end. Pokemon Mystery
Dungeon is a strange game. It's a game you'll love at times, and hate at
others. At times you'll be enjoying it, and at other times you won't want
to play it. If the problems listed under Gameplay had been addressed it
might have been one of my favorite games of all time, but as it stands
it is still a decent game, but was a bit of letdown compared to Poke’mon
Ruby/Sapphire.
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