Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX (2020)

December ‘22

This was my first experience with a mystery dungeon title and it wasn’t a very good one lol. To start with some positives, at least a few tunes stuck out as particularly good (notably the main town). The graphics were really pretty as well. And that’s basically it. The story is obnoxiously childish but I can’t exactly fault a game aimed at children for being childish. Nonetheless it was inoffensive and mostly boring. My biggest impression came from the gameplay loop. Let me start by saying that you can’t evolve Pokémon until you beat the game. That’s just fucking dumb?? So I used an Eevee and a Squirtle for the 8-10 hour story. I think I beat a Moltres with quick attack 🤔. There’s a mechanic to link moves which just objectively beats not doing it with no clear downsides (PP is easily regenerated). There is an overwhelming number of Pokémon to recruit, which is OK, but its so laborious for a completist to re-do easy and bland dungeons over and over to recruit them all — only a madman would do it. Battles are very simple and easily won. They’re mostly automated although you can choose moves if you want. The AI does a perfect job winning encounters though. The mystery dungeon formula is just not so good :/ Floor after floor of frequent, no-strategy encounters with mostly uninteresting unevolved Pokémon. And if you do die you lose all of your items, which is just frustrating because getting back an equal bag means 15-30 mins of grinding. Not to mention they have a power leveling mechanic. You can literally boost yourself two levels in a matter of seconds at any time during the game. It’s kind of just a mess with a bad formula. Maybe I’d try a mystery dungeon game outside of Pokémon and form a more concrete opinion on the genre.

Pros:

• Art style
• 400+ Pokemon to collect
• cute main story
• meeting legendaries is awesome
• can listen to audiobooks when grinding as it's just the same thing over and over
• auto walk

Cons:

• harsh death punishment, you lose everything in your bag
• Rescued Pokemon don't have ANY personality, shallow and terrible generic dialogue pool

Maybe I've been too spoiled by games like Hades and the Rune Factory series, but apart from the main story line where relevant Pokemon are given dialogue, all other times they are dull and robotic. No life in them at all. And after the credits roll, even your partner and you lose the power to have any meaningful talks, they also share the generic dialogue pool.

The moment a wild Pokemon joins your team, they don't acknowledge anything and just speak the same few lines that are shared between all Pokemon over and over as if they've been with you from the start. Legendaries are the same.

Such a wasted potential to not allow the players learn more about the pokemon world when we actually become one of them and can speak to them!

I loved the main storyline as Pokemons talked to me and revealed their personalities and quirks. There were a few hilarious moments and I just feel like they could've put more effort in and given other Pokemons the chance to shine too.

Gave the game a four-star because it's just too adorable. But there is nothing pulling me back to play the game. Game's probably worth it at half price.

If you used to play the original as I did, you are going to basically be playing the same thing on this new updated version. The story is the same, the levels are the same, no changes at all, even the music is the same. The only thing different is the fact that the graphics look very clean and modern. The game itself is quite fun! The dungeon crawling is tough but never unfair which might be a new addition since the original was insanely difficult at points. The missions for explored levels are repetitive as hell, you either rescue a Pokmon, escort a Pokemon to a floor, or bring an item to someone. Over and over which is a shame, but then again the game is very simple. I did find that the aftergame content was overwhelming, so many things at once, a lot of which could have been in the normal gameplay! All in all, this is a simple dungeon crawler but with Pokemon that remakes the original without changing much, I would love to see other Mystery Dungeon games receive this treatment but maybe add something new to the mix.