Tying Pokémon recruitment to something that isn’t as satisfying as the original capture analog, and giving so many high-level ones early, breaks progression, devalues the Pokémon you do manage to get, and kills some of the urge to explore that earlier games offer in spades. It is Pokémon Mystery Dungeon after all, and the core is still good.īut still, the game’s flaws feel just as critical as the ones in Gates to Infinity – if not worse. And beating those super-hard dungeons later on does, in fact, feel just as good as it always has. It’s the easiest game in the series to get into, and it’s the freshest this series has ever felt. The quests have also been streamlined in a positive way, allowing you to go into a menu, pick your quests on a large globe (fitting considering the massive number of dungeons in the game), and unlock other quests based on what quests you choose to beat. Super Mystery Dungeon also introduces both Mega Evolution and Awakening in a limited capacity (the latter of which being a power boost for Pokémon who can’t Mega Evolve), and brings Looplets into the fold, equipment that allow you to get various temporary power boosts by picking up and equipping certain items in dungeons. The game brings back hunger entirely (a meter that decreases over time that has to be filled by eating food), one of the most noted omissions in the previous game. Having representation of over 700 Pokémon is no small feat. It doesn’t feel good to say any of this either, because as a game, Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon is probably the most ambitious one in the series. It’s just not as good as Gates to Infinity, which, despite its weaknesses, has much more personality to its characters and story. You’re a human, you need to find out how and why you became a Pokémon, and there’s some antagonistic force. There are some of those staple, emotionally resonant moments later on in the plot, but the first 60% of the game, which involves you going to school and trying to join the Pokémon Expedition Society, has nothing to say and feels all too similar to what came before. Unless you restrict yourself to playing with level-appropriate Pokémon recruits, there is absolutely zero sense of difficulty progression.īeyond that, the story, which is usually one of the strongest characteristics in a Pokémon Mystery Dungeon game, just doesn’t deliver. It’s not front-loaded or back-loaded difficulty. The game gives some harder dungeons in its four-hour tutorial section, allows you to start recruiting and using Pokémon significantly above your current level right after, becomes extremely easy as a result, and then throws some disproportionally hard story missions in your way sprinkled throughout the 20+ hour story. In that way, the pacing in the game is just bizarre. 10 hours in, my Snivy and Riolu that I was given at the beginning of the game were still under level 20. In the first five hours, I did a few easy quests and got a Salamence, Dragonite, Alakazam, and Tyranitar over level 50. What’s more, you aren’t just getting level-appropriate Pokémon anymore. If Mankey gives you a quest to get to a certain floor and rescue a Pokémon, and you do the quest, you get to use Mankey from now on. Instead, you recruit Pokémon by doing quests for them. In this new game, you can no longer do that. In that way, it felt like you were “catching” them, and felt like a strong analog for one of the best parts of Pokémon. In past games, should you defeat a Pokémon in battle, it may choose to join you as a team member in future battles that you can select from an ever-growing roster. The largest difference to that core gameplay comes in the Pokémon recruiting. If you’ve played one of these before, there’s not much you need to know other than the core gameplay beats. You go in dungeons in that Shiren the Wanderer style, go through procedurally generated floors, and battle Pokémon using the Pokémon moves, stats, experience, and abilities you’re used to. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon is a Spike Chunsoft roguelike spin-off in which you play as a human transformed into a Pokémon, and, with a party of up to three Pokémon, have to find out why you became a Pokémon and progress through the narrative.
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