Going rogue with Pokemon once again.

NOTE TO THE READER: This review is currently based off the Japanese release of Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon (Pokemon Chou Fushigi no Dungeon). While much of the game should remain the same in localization for its Western releases, I cannot guarantee this, nor can I guarantee that my lack of full fluency in Japanese did not inhibit my interpretations of the game's storyline.







~ Review in Short ~



Gameplay: A great improvement on previous PMD titles, boasting improved difficulty, rescuing, and recruitment styles in addition to the roguelike system.

Play Time: Completing the main storyline takes about 25 hours (shorter than normal); obtaining all of the Pokemon reaches to about 75 hours.

Replayability: High. The game's plotline alone makes replays worth it, furthered by the exceptional variety in dungeons and in recruitable Pokemon.

Story: A slow-to-develop plot that, while it takes a while to get there, hits hard and fast in the late-game with several twists for PMD fans.

Graphics: On the level of Gates to Infinity, with great 3D graphics and variety.

Audio: An exceptionally varied soundtrack, moreso than any PMD title to date, with hundreds of themes, both remixed and new.

Final Verdict: Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon is, by and large, a must-have for fans of Pokemon and rogue-likes alike. It boasts not only the great aspects of the previous titles that have made the series so popular, but even improves upon them further and removes much of the negative, becoming quite possibly the best game in the five-entry series, rivaling the fan-favorite Explorers of Sky.







~ Review in Long ~



The average gamer has some idea of what the term "Pokemon" refers to. Pokemon has become a large part of our everyday lives, really, as gamers - we see it in three, four or more video game releases per year; we see it in arcades; we see it in a TCG; we see it in manga; we see it at the movies; we see it in anime; we see it in plush toys, amiibos, 3DS faceplates, the sides of buses (if you live in Japan). Pokemon has been an influential video game series, but the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon franchise remains oddly niche, which is a sad fact as, in my eyes, PMD (Pokemon Mystery Dungeon) is truly where some of the best aspects of the series lie in terms of single-player gameplay and entertainment.



While Pokemon did begin with Pocket Monsters: Aka & Midori (Pokemon Red & Green) on the GameBoy in the mid-1990s by Game Freak, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon didn't begin until almost ten years later. It was first released on the GameBoy Advance and Nintendo DS as Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red/Blue Rescue Teams, developed primarily by ChunSoft, a developer not well-known outside of Japan. (To the curious, PMD is actually a cross-over between Spike ChunSoft's Fushigi no Dungeon (Mystery Dungeon) franchise - which remained almost exclusively in Japan, starting in the 1990s with Torneko no Daibouken: Fushigi no Dungeon (Torneko's Adventure: Mystery Dungeon), a Japan-exclusive SNES/Super Famicom title.) A second entry followed several years later (Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky), then a Japan-only WiiWare adaptation in 2009 and the 3DS title Gates to Infinity in 2013. Many dubbed Gates to be a bit of a flub on ChunSoft's part, being the first to not sport all available Pokemon at the time and removing several other beloved features.



Two years later, we see that the PMD franchise is nonetheless continuing. For many, it's time to see whether ChunSoft did right by the beloved franchise - did they step up their game?



GAMEPLAY: 4.75 / 5.

What Are Fushigi no Dungeon/Mystery Dungeon Games About Anyways?

Many games with the title "Mystery Dungeon" (even if not directly affiliated with ChunSoft's work, as with Square's Chocobo's Mystery Dungeon series) almost unilaterally have the same basic premise. PMD, like them, is a rogue-like game. As you play the game, you'll unlock an excessive number of dungeons, and each dungeon is segmented into floors. What's special about these dungeons (and, indeed, earns them the nomer of "Mystery") is that they are randomly generated. So each floor has a random layout; you are never guaranteed to find the same dungeon twice in a row. In fact, the Explorers games' rescue system would essentially contain all of the info in a 54-letter password, where only several of them determined anything and the rest of them (producing nearly 10^100 - that's a one followed by one hundred zeroes) sufficing to keep the layout of the dungeon the same between players. That is the source of the great variety in Fushigi no Dungeon - you'd HAVE to cheat to get the same experience in consecutive playthroughs!



Of course, there are Pokemon aspects embedded into the game as well. During the course of the game, you will play as a Pokemon (more on this momentarily). You can construct a team comprised of only three Pokemon and go into dungeons. During the course of dungeons, you will encounter many other enemy Pokemon with which you must, to put it lightly, "kill or be killed". As of right now, 720 species of Pokemon, over 600 moves, hundreds of abilities, and 18 types ("elements") exist in the game, each as different from the last; each dungeon only has a specific set of Pokemon in them, admittedly, but that by no means lessens your challenge. In fact, many times these Pokemon are stronger than you, and you and your team must work together to defeat them, an element not so present in previous PMD games.



I CAN PLAY AS A POKEY-MAN!?

One of the biggest and most noticeable differences from the main Pokemon franchise is the ability to actually take direct control of a Pokemon - moving them about, using moves, buying items, chatting with other Pokemon, and so on. In the first two iterations (Rescue Team and Explorers) of the series, you would take a personality quiz - you would be asked several questions which would help determine, based on your personality, what Pokemon you play as. In the latter two ones on the Wii and 3DS (Adventure Squad and Gates to Infinity) you simply chose the Pokemon to play as, which was met with particular criticism upon the localization of the latter title (the former not being released outside of Japan, after all). People have often preferred the personality quiz option, because it gives you a sense of emotional bondage with the Pokemon chosen, and helps to enhance the plot.



A common question is which you get in this game - the quiz or straight-up choosing. It's both! Yes, at the start of the game will be forced to take the personality quiz, but, if you don't like the Pokemon you get, you can choose another! There are 20 Pokemon in all - 18 are the regional starter Pokemon from the main games, and there's also the fan-favorites in Pikachu and Riolu.



The Dungeons: What Are They Like?

Dungeons are fairly homogenous, ironically - admittedly, yes, they are comprised of multiple, highly-varied floors, but dungeons are less structured like a series of stages than they are a long marathon. What do I mean? Well, ultimately, each floor has items, Pokemon, stairs to the next floor, and maybe a few other things - use the stairs, and you go to another floor, which is, essentially, the same. So it's more like running through a very long stage than it is progressing linearly from one stage to the next. This is further emphasized by the fact of what occurs when you lose - when all of your Pokemon take sufficient damage to KO them (i.e. their HP hits 0), then you are immediately ejected from the dungeon. Sure, it's not a game over (indeed, there is no such thing as a "game over" in most roguelikes, this included), but you fail missions you're on and thus have to retry them, lose items, and lose money. Not exactly appealing.



There are various additional features added in that mix things up, however. For example, enemy Pokemon can evolve (that is, change into a stronger Pokemon species) when they defeat you. The weather can change, which, as any competitive Pokemon player knows, can change the entire game. Certain Pokemon are only found on some floors. Certain dungeons (in)famously have restrictions on you.



An interesting footnote is that there are many more dungeons in this game than any other PMD game to date, even surpassing the collective of several of them - there are over 120 dungeons! Dungeons vary in all sorts of ways, from their environment to the Pokemon inside to restrictions and more, so exploring them all is a part of the fun. They are not all unlocked at the same time, though, but the conditions to unlock them are nicely spaced out in such a way that you can't get overwhelmed by 120 at the start or have to work for hours for each one; you'll be finding them almost right up to the point you 100% the game, if you choose to do so.



A final note on dungeons: in previous PMD games, a common complaint was that dungeons are too long or too grindy. Sometimes you'd be forced to go through partitioned dungeons in direct sequence with next-to-no break in-between. This doesn't happen nearly so often in Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon, except for a few storyline-related times where it'd be a necessity, and the dungeons are not as long as a partial compensation. For example, dungeons in previous titles (just for the plot) could range into 20, 30 floors with ease, while the longest dungeon you're forced to go through in Super Mystery Dungeon is closer to 15 floors or so. Many dungeons do extend beyond that, but not many exceed 20 or 30 floors over of the 120 dungeons there are.



Pokemon: How Can I Get 'Em All?

Another noteworthy (and welcome!) change from PMD tradition comes in with the overhaul of the recruitment system. In previous games, recruitment was handled pretty simply: you beat the stuffings out of a Pokemon in a dungeon, and it suddenly might want to join your party. This was very luck-based, requiring sometimes dozens or hundreds of defeats to recruit a specific Pokemon, which would make "getting 'em all" excessively tedious as you might have to go through 30, 40, 50, or more dungeon floors to fight a specific boss Pokemon with a high chance of having to do it again. Many often ignored this core feature of Pokemon for that reason. Well, complain no more! Super Mystery Dungeon changed the system entirely. While you can combat foes as normal in the dungeons, recruitments are independent of most battles. Instead, you will, early in the game, obtain this object known as the "Connection Orb". This orb is sort of like a literal social network - Pokemon who are somehow related to each other are shown on there, connected to each other as their relations are established. These branch out dramatically over time, as it is a very intertwined web with dozens of paths to pursue. Each Pokemon on that map has something you need to do to recruit them into your team; it may be as simple as talking to them, but for others you'll have to beat very difficult bosses, or perhaps just rescue them in dungeons. It varies. It is much preferred already over the previous system, however, since it allows you to more carefully micromanage your team-building process into your favorite Pokemon instead of just hoping to get lucky with something decent in the dungeons.



And, in case you haven't read much, you can indeed get all of the Pokemon in this game, all 720 available at this time. This seems pretty expected for a Pokemon game, but, really, it was a common complaint with Gates to Infinity.



You Said That Difficulty Increased...

One of the most notable changes in this game compared to other PMD games is the level of challenge. Granted, I'll admit that Pokemon has not ever been a particularly "challenging" series, except for perhaps the Rumble series, a few other side titles, and the Johto-region core-series games. Even PMD hasn't been exactly "challenging" so long as one has a basic knowledge of the series mechanics and fairly basic logic - in fact, as I've often said before, PMD (prior to now!) was primarily motivated by the storyline and less by the gameplay, and was one of the only series I would play for the storyline more than the gameplay itself.



This changed significantly with Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon. An overridingly noticeable change is the limits placed on your party - instead of four members being carried into dungeons, now it is limited to three, and, even among those Pokemon from which you can choose, you can not use some of them in consequential missions. (Example: You want Pikachu as a partner. You can choose it for a mission right now, but, on the next mission, you might not be able to use him, but can on the third.) Your power is already cut down by 25% right there.



It is also noteworthy to mention that the level of Pokemon - particularly boss Pokemon found on even the earlier Connection Orb missives - are at very high levels. As an example, you will fight a Level 50 boss at one point, when you really only have access to Pokemon around Level 15-20 at best. Even using a team of three, said boss is exceptionally difficult and can KO your Pokemon in single hits if you're not very careful. The same is true of many dungeon Pokemon, though not to this kind of an extreme.



The concept of Hunger has also made a return. In the first couple of PMD games and other related Fushigi no Dungeon titles (most recently, Etrian Mystery Dungeon), the concept of Hunger was almost like a timer. As you move in the dungeon, you will lose points in a value known as "Belly". This stat can be refilled, of course, by eating food staples, such as the Apples so often found in dungeons. This becomes a stat that requires effective management at times, but, sadly, unlike Etrian Mystery Dungeon, Belly is not so significant a concern as Apples come fairly often in most dungeons, so it's more a stat you just continually fill up rather than something that can be a significant danger. Admittedly, there are several ways to unwittingly speed up the loss of Belly, but these, too, are easily discovered and hampered with proper management.



Monster Houses (swarms of Pokemon that appear out of nowhere in the dungeon) and hidden traps also appear more commonly in this game than in other titles.



There are several counterbalances to this, at least. Firstly, the primary means of reviving your automatically from KO (Reviver Seeds) are split into two varieties: Small Reviver Seeds and regular Reviver Seeds, with the latter also restoring PP and Hunger. Reviver Seeds are, in general, around 70%-80% cheaper as compared to previous titles, a pure attestment as to how difficult the developers know this game is. But, in short, it's not what one could call "excessively difficult" - if anything, it just ups the level of challenge, providing the player with something to work against rather than rushing to complete the storyline.



Is There Multiplayer Functionality?

Yes and no - it depends on your definition of "multiplayer". Rather, in PMD, the only multiplayer ever truly established was that of the rescue system. Whenever you got KO'ed in a dungeon in previous titles, you had two options - accept the pseudo-"Game Over", or send out a rescue request via the internet or password, depending on the game. This feature was removed and swapped for a StreetPass-based system in Gates to Infinity, one among a pile of reasons for disappointed fans. Why is that a problem? Well, most of you live in North America, Europe, and Australia - check your 3DS and see how many StreetPasses you get daily. Now, how about a specific title? A niche title, no less? While the StreetPass functionality may have had use in Japan, where Pokemon has the strongest fanbase, it was next-to-useless in the Western world, which basically meant you would have to forfeit.



This is the case no longer! Now, when you get KO'ed in a dungeon, you can send out a password or a QR code. You can send these to people and ask to be rescued and revived. You can also take such requests yourself! In doing so, you'll go down into the dungeon to a specific floor to save the fainted party, much as you would for a Connection Orb mission almost.



Play Time & Replayability:

By comparison to other PMD games, Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon is slightly shorter. Whereas a 30-35 hour playthrough is expected of most titles, Super Mystery Dungeon is a bit shorter, being more in the 25-30 hour margin. This is, of course, largely dependent on your playstyle in dungeons, such as whether you choose to completely empty out the floors of their contents or simply make a beeline to the next floor. My playstyle was more in the middle of these, opting for the completionist path early on and then later sliding more into the beeline in an eagerness to experience more plot.



As far as its ability to be replayed goes, Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon stands out well, as do most rogue-like titles. PSMD takes the cake of PMD titles for several reasons though - beyond the rogue-like dungeon gameplay most expect. The first is the storyline, which is more moving and dynamic (in later portions) than other titles in the series; even just those other titles are worth replaying at some points for just the story, but this game has (albeit marginally) the best story in the series to me. The innovations in gameplay also make it worth playing, since now you're not just playing to get to the next event in the story, but you're having significantly more fun in doing so, which is invaluable in engaging players of all types. The most particular innovation, however, is that of the Connection Orb. This exponentially multiples the variety a player can get from their experience, as it gives you only so much to do within a short time, so you almost never get to play with the same Pokemon twice in a row, and you often even get to play with your favorites if you play your cards right, which is a nice "feels" thing that people love to have.





STORY & PLOT: 4.75 / 5.

As Noted Earlier...:

... My Japanese is not very good - as I said, this review was based off a Japanese import I borrowed from a friend. These details are not 100% guaranteed to be perfect and fully representative of the actual game, particularly when localization is accounted for. So be ready to take these things with a grain of salt, and I apologize for any inconvenience caused.



A Quick Overview of the Plot:

Much of the plot (that I can reveal to you without providing significant spoilers) is fairly generic and common to the PMD series. When your adventure begins, you'll find that you are a human who has turned into a Pokemon suddenly, with little memory beyond that fact and your name. You are quickly chased away by unknown Pokemon and meet a Pokemon known as Nuzleaf. Nuzleaf decides to help you out and, given your age, enrolls you in the local school, a school which helps to train kids to join the Expedition Society and gain general knowledge of the world and of Mystery Dungeons. The Expedition Society is a group of Pokemon - the analogue of previous games' rescue teams and guilds - that collectively work together to help Pokemon in need, which is a dangerous task often requiring treks into the dungeons.



Around the same time you join the school, strange happenings begin to occur. Various legendary Pokemon feel a sort of unease, a brooding sense of anxiety albeit one they cannot quite put their fingers on. Sudden disappearances begin to occur regarding the school and other people in the town. What is the cause of these things? This is something you'll find out as you explore in the plot.



Plot Dynamics:

In terms of the overall plot development, I would have to place its evolution on the level of classical works like The Scarlet Letter and Homer's Odyssey (the latter on the assumption you've read its prequel) - they're good, but very slow until the second half and they don't really peak until the last quarter. A lot of the earlier half of the game is dominated by the stuff that could almost be expected of you - you go to school, help out people, and so on; it's fairly linear and, at times, almost bland. This leads, in fact, to a lot of "filler days", those in which you don't really do anything plot-related, although there are some exceptions.



This changes starting around the middle of the game as you yourself begin to encounter the aforementioned cause of angst and learn the true nature of what they are. This leads to several incredible plot twists in the end. Plot twists are a concept not often messed with in PMD: they've each had two primary twists up until this point (neither of which I'll tell you). Super Mystery Dungeon, by comparison, I can spot out at least four or five - and, what's funny, is that they're not cliche, not "plot twists for the sake of plot twists". They each tie in the story together very nicely and actually fill up a lot of holes had in the beginning of the plot. This gives the latter half of the game a sort of "roller coaster" feeling - the sense of anticipation gathered because of mid-game events followed by a series of plot twists in the last quarter to really clear up holes and make you think about the story as a whole. These are plot twists that literally make you question everything about the game as well, which works well - the game gives you certain expectations, just to knock them down. It's an effective technique.



There's also the most important topic in a PMD game - the ending. I have heard many stories of people - not children, but grown men and women, and I proudly include myself among them - crying at the ending of various PMD titles. There was a reason why I established earlier that a big reason I play PMD is for the storyline, or was in the case of this title. And I can promise you that, just as with previous titles, there is another heart-jerking, satisfying ending sequence at the conclusion of this one, albeit it with an element you'd not expect that only amplifies the effects.





GRAPHICS: 4 / 5.

The 2D graphics are almost exactly on par with Gates to Infinity; many of the models for characters, dungeon graphics, and such are ripped from that game, after all, to keep things moving along quicker, so if you've played that game you have a fair idea of what to expect; they're also fairly similar to other 3DS Pokemon titles like Pokemon Rumble Blast/World. The graphics for much of the game are a sort of variant on cel-shaded stuff like in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, with a great deal of variety in terms of colors and textures used, particularly when evaluating all of the dungeons. Each environment is given a sense of uniquity among the others, though, in the individual dungeons themselves, the same graphics used in one portion are often reused throughout, mostly to save on room.



The 3D graphics are very good, as is unusually the tendency with spin-off Pokemon games, producing the pop-out 3D graphics that should actually be expected of 3DS games. Granted, it's fairly pointless to bother with them without the New Nintendo 3DS/XL models with their face-tracking feature since it's still annoying to try holding the console and your body relatively still to get the 3D to work properly.



The game's framerate is fairly steady as well, and I experienced almost no lag in the dungeons, except in very rare cases where virtually every possible enemy Pokemon was on my screen, and even then it was relatively minor. The animations, in the cutscenes in particular, are done extremely well and are very fluid with no unusual jumps or anything, which is great as many said scenes are action-filled.





AUDIO: 4.5 / 5.

Various rips of this game's soundtrack can be found on the Internet, if you so choose to please yourself by listening to them. The themes in Super Mystery Dungeon by and large are more varied, more numerous than any other entry in the series, boasting the largest soundtrack. The soundtrack in Gates to Infinity amounted to approximately 86 songs and just over 4 hours of content, loops ignored; Super Mystery Dungeon's soundtrack boasts around double that quantity and over 8 hours of material, by comparison. Numerous themes are remixed and remastered from previous titles, some just for their iconic usage, some for filler material, and some for some important canonical references in the series. Overall, the audio is highly varied, which helps to allow for unique dungeon experiences each time (as compared to the, say, three dungeon themes handed out in Explorers of Sky to non-required, for example, we have around 10), and there's always that "feels" moment when you hear a favorite tune, whether it is just your favorite dungeon music or when you get flashbacks to previous PMD titles.





FINAL VERDICT. Overall opinion: 4.75 / 5.

Or 9.5 / 10 for those stuck with remembering the old GameFAQs system of reviews.



In any case, Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon is definitely a game that lives up to the name of "Super". It finally lives up to the name set forth by the Explorers games, a bar which two consecutive iterations fell under. It takes the best of the PMD series and takes out much of the worst, and then sprinkles in more good. It is, in virtually every way, what many people have envisioned for a "perfect" Pokemon Mystery Dungeon title, or at least the prototype of one given some minor flaws in the game. Even with those flaws (like worthless Hunger and the ease of spamming team-based attacks on bosses), Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon is by and large a PMD title much worth having, whether you're just a Pokemon fan, a Fushigi no Dungeon fan, or a fan of rogue-likes, and maybe even beyond that, for it is truly the first PMD that perfectly balances what are, in my eyes, the two most important facets of any video game - gameplay and story. ChunSoft has nearly perfected these aspects in this title great magnificence and aplomb, making it a very worthwhile title to play when it comes out. (Yes, when it comes out, in your region. It is probably best to experience this in your native language and get the full impact of the story. As someone who's already played this game with heavy translations and many PMD games in my native tongue, it is a wait that will be worth it and always has been in my eyes.)

Rating: 9

Product Release: Pokemon Chou Fushigi no Dungeon (JP, 09/17/15)