If you're new to the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series, the premise is that you, a human, become a pokemon and befriend a pokemon partner while trying to rescue other pokemon that are trapped in mysterious, randomly generated dungeons, often with an excellent soundtrack to serve as your background. Item management, positioning, and move management are important in these games, like they are If you're new to the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series, the premise is that you, a human, become a pokemon and befriend a pokemon partner while trying to rescue other pokemon that are trapped in mysterious, randomly generated dungeons, often with an excellent soundtrack to serve as your background. Item management, positioning, and move management are important in these games, like they are in most dungeon crawlers.



If you've played a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon game before, this perfects the formula!



Gameplay:

Combat balance has been changed significantly from older Mystery Dungeon games, with every starter learn-set, either natural or via TM, containing both ranged and melee options. Generally, ranged options are safer but deal less damage, while melee options have additional secondary effects and higher base damage. Previously overpowered moves like Smokescreen are no longer game-breaking, and it seems like the only moves that are useless are non-damaging, stat-lowering moves when used on non-bosses. Almost every item is actually useful, rather than a core 10-20 being objectively better than everything else, so you have more strategies open to you based on what items you want to bring with.



Poison is much more intimidating because, rather than being slow and removing your natural healing, it just does a huge burst of damage every so often that usually out-paces your healing unless you have very high HP. Burns are the same but weaker (and still halve attack). Paralysis lasts much longer, so it's actually a dangerous status problem instead of a mild inconvenience. While you can only bring up to 3 pokemon into a dungeon, your party maximum is either 7 or 8, and CAN follow you into boss battles to level the playing field. While having a team of 7 might be excessive, having 4 or 5 can make boss encounters interesting logic puzzles of who to push where and when.



While previous games had IQ and Emeras, this game makes enemy and ally pokemon smart by default, and instead offers "Rare Qualities" either coming with a pokemon as they join your team, or being gained through consumption of... you guessed it, gummies. You don't lose these Rare Qualities, and they essentially offer the team-building of IQ, without the temporary nature of Emeras or ridiculous grind that IQ mechanics had. "Grinding for stats" is also pretty much nonexistent, as you have access to a very fast method of leveling and empowering your moves right from town on your 4th or 5th day, so as long as you cover everyone's weaknesses and build a good team, you should be fine.



Speaking of team building, you can now recruit pokemon in almost any dungeon, even during the majority of story dungeons. Essentially a pokemon always has a chance of wanting to join your team, and if they do, they will either permanently join your team if you accept and have their friend area, or they'll give you money as thanks for taking them on the adventure. If you don't have the friend area already, have no fear! Money is very prevalent in the game, able to be gained in large quantities without any farming, so simply bring a Wigglytuff Orb so that if you encounter one of your favorite pokemon, you can immediately buy their friend area before continuing the dungeon. Most prices of items are more expensive, but you can frequently get high-sell items that don't fit your play-style as a reward from rescues, so I personally recommend you sell any you don't think you'll need. You can organize friend areas by cheapest to most expensive, and just buying any that are less than 1000 as a baseline covers the majority of pokemon in most dungeons.



Story & Aesthetics:

The main story is largely the same, but is augmented by a watercolor art style, 3d world, smoother transitions between areas, and endearing animations. Areas in this game are beautiful to look at, and even the dungeons themselves are varied aesthetically, so they don't feel repetitive. Pokemon on your team have little chat bubbles as they use or are hit by moves & items, and it breathes a little bit of extra life into the dungeon crawl. The background music has been beautifully re-scored from both the original 2005 game and from others like Super Mystery Dungeon and Gates to Infinity, with a few original tracks peppered here and there to add a bit of ambience to key moments in the story.



Story: 10/10 (probably a 7 or 8/10 without nostalgia)

Art: 10/10

Music: 10/10

Gameplay: 10/10 (If you like dungeon crawlers and pokemon mechanics) … Expand