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Incredibly Boring

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 16, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Pros:

+A Surprisingly Interesting Story
+Very Colorful
+Tons of Missions

Cons:

-Bland Dungeon Designs
-Repetitive Gameplay
-Very Stale and Boring Gameplay
-Far too easy
-Not too big on the graphics
-A Very slow story

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Blue Rescue Team (Or Red, depending on which version you had) was not exactly a great game. While it sold very well, it wasn't even close to touching the surface of what other traditional Pokemon games have done. Blue and Red Rescue Team weren't that exciting, they had boring gameplay, were incredibly repetitive and just all around bland. Sadly, Chunsoft didn't really do a whole lot to improve a severely flawed game. In fact, it suffers from many of the same problems as the other Mystery Dungeon games.

Just like the previous one, you are a human that one day wakes up as a Pokemon. You get a partner based off the questions you answer at the beginning. Same basic principle as the first. Then you'll go on missions where you will hunt down outlaw Pokemon or rescue other Pokemon. It's simplistic stuff. The story actually isn't so bad. It's a very slow story, but for Pokemon you're actually getting something good. You won't see a trainer throughout the game. At all. This is all about the Pokemon.

On the other hand, the story and flow of gameplay is repetitive. Seeing the same cutscene before and after each mission over and over and over again gets very annoying when you just want to jump into your next mission. However, it's easily the gameplay that's the worst part of the game.

Just like the Rescue Team games, the gameplay is incredibly stale and boring. You go into a dungeon and explore floors that are randomly generated until you get to your objective. The floors are all very bland and boring. The biggest problem with the random generated floors is when you enter the next area and you're right next to the exit. It happens from time to time. Then again, most of it you'll want to get through quickly, anyway. The environments are so bland and devoid of details that one floor doesn't feel any different from another. It's like walking through an endless dungeon. They have their own themes, but no real design.

The combat is worse. When you approach a Pokemon, you'll engage them. There are no random battles, but that doesn't mean it'll play like an Action RPG. At first glance, combat really doesn't seem all that bad until you realize there's no strategy involved whatsoever. What makes the traditional games addictive, other than catching them all, is the surprising amount of depth that goes into each battle. This is exactly what the Mystery Dungeon series lacks. It quickly becomes a button mashing affair with no real thought or strategy. The game is also unbelievably easy. Even boss battles are an easy, button mashing affair to see who can get in the most attacks. Even though you're given a set of moves you can use, and there's a little bit of strategy here, you'll find that you never actually need it. There's hardly an incentive to pick moves over another. You'll go exploring with a party of four, and you can control their moves as well, but mostly, you'll find you need just one Pokemon to get much of the job done. Combat is just boring.

Much like the previous one, you can get wild Pokemon to join your rescue team. You can only have four in your party at a time, however, but nonetheless you can still get them to join.

What would a Pokemon game be without two versions? With this duo you have Explorers of Time and Explorers of Darkness. Much like all the duo's, the games don't have that many differences, but you'll need both to uncover and unlock everything. This means you'll either have to buy the other version or convince a friend to do so. Should the worst ever happen and you actually get taken down in a dungeon, you can send out a distress signal in hopes that a friend will come by and rescue you. Unfortunately, you're probably better off accepting your fate.

Pokemon has never been a game to push graphics and sound. Mystery Dungeon is no exception. It's a very colorful game, but hardly takes the DS to the standards it can accomplish. Much of it looks like it belongs on the Gameboy Advance rather than the DS. And with the boring design of the dungeons, there's really nothing here to look forward to in terms of graphics. As I said, however, Pokemon has never been a graphical powerhouse. It doesn't really sound great either. Much of the music is forgettable.

If you enjoyed Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Blue Rescue Team or Red Rescue Team, then chances are you'll like this one as well. It's essentially the same game. So if you did like Blue and Red Rescue Team, then you can very much disregard this review. If Blue and Red Rescue didn't do much for you, don't expect the latest release to turn you into a fan.

A Seven Year Old Boy's Opinion

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: August 06, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I think this game is great because you can make friends and you go on lots of missions. Later in the game you will find a treasure and battle legendaries. Some places like Beach Cave and Drenched Bluff are a little weak. Other places are harder.

Great game!!!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: July 13, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game is really fun according to my 8 year old son. Some of the dungeons are a little hard, such as Concealed Ruins, but the tasks are interesting and the music/storylines are great. The game is not too long or too short and it isn't too hard either. The scenery is very good. Overall, we recommend this game.

Mystery Dungeon review

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 13, 2008
Author: Amazon User

My grandson, for whom this game was purchased, would give this game at least four stars.

Pokemon Explorers of Darkness Review

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: July 03, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I love these rescue games...I feel like a hero when I've accomplished rescue jobs! A lot of the game's graphics are beautiful, and the game is simple to learn!

Underappreciated, great story and fun!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: June 29, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness, capitalizes on the failures of the first entry in the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series. Offering a much more adorable and emotionally intense story, with addictive gameplay, I have found that this one is more of the pick-up and stay playing variety.

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness launches by asking you, the player, a series of questions that gauge how well your personality traits match against the set of several Pokémon. The answers that the player gives determine which Pokémon they will play as for the entire game. The questions are quite interesting in that they sometimes match, even in its simplest state, the player. For a true Pokémon fan or just someone who knows exactly what Pokémon they want to be there are several faqs are available online that guide you in the way to answers questions to get who you want. After the player has chosen their Pokémon, they proceed to choose their partner. The partners range from the starters from all Pokémon generation games to including a few other choices. I went along and chose the adorably and always cute Pikachu. After choosing the Pokémon, the player proceeds into the Pokémon world.

The main story of the game is to discover why time has been stopping all over the region. One of the earliest opening cinematic sequences indicates that a Grovyle is stealing the games time gears. The mission is to stop Grovyle. I will admit that the story proceeds at a quick pace from the start. However, it is broken into pieces by the ability to go into a series of quests, if one wanted to build up the teams rank. The higher the rank the more items the player can carry or keep in storage. It is difficult to discuss the story any further as it will reveal pivotal events that are vital to the intrigue of the game.

The story soon takes off from their in which you will meet your partner and help them conquer their fear of several things in the world. Generally, the player serves as a way for the Pokémon partner to develop confidence with the benefit of creating a long lasting friendship. The player will soon be inducted into the Wigglytuff Guild (a team of explorations teams) as apprentices, and soon go on explorations quests.

The quests range from a variety of options. The quests can generally range from escort missions, search and rescues, or capture the bandit. There is a ranking system for these missions with different awards being award in respective denominations based on the difficulty. Some missions will reward you by allowing you to explore new areas that do not relate to the main story.

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What makes this game appeal to people who aren't just Pokémon fans, is probably the idea of dungeon crawling, or for those that aren't in the arena of video game terminologists (and yes terminologist is a word), traveling through an infinite number of dungeons with layouts that change randomly. In the past Pokémon was a game in which the only idea is to catch Pokémon, travel through an over world map, and defeat a prestigious class of elite Pokémon trainers or go through a smattering of Pokémon recreational facilities in an effort to gather enough certifications to show that one has mastered the training of their Pokémon. Pokémon mystery dungeon strays away from that tradition and allows the player to play as a Pokémon, gather other Pokémon friends, and explore dungeons in an effort to see all Pokémon and gather treasure.
Explorers of Darkness raises the bar over the previous version by offering the extensive story, more hilarious characters, more items, more Pokémon, and perhaps a feeling that what you are doing isn't just something random. I could not get into the previous offering for the middle of the game seemed like a chore.

Explorers of Darkness never feels like a chore for it attempts to make sure that you never get bored, whether from the witty and silly way that Team Skull (skulltank, zubat, and koffing) acts and responds, from the way that your partner attempts to bond with you, or the hilarious members of the Wigglytuff Guild. Most of the dungeons are kept short, offer save points (sometimes with access to the players storage), and provide healing for the player before they face a boss. Although that last part may make the game sound easy, some of the bosses are in themselves very difficult even with full health, if your team is not up to par.

Players are able to extend their team by attempting to recruit other Pokémon. Recruiting is generally random. Once you recruit a Pokémon, you can add it to your active team roster and take it with you (only in the most story intense battles will you not be able to use them).

In terms of sound, the game offers an interesting mix of tunes. I only have one favorite and that can be found in the first area of the game, the beach with the Krabby. The other music is a hit or miss for some people, I generally kept it on low while listening to other music but for boss battles or monster houses, I turned it up. The sound effects in the scenes are perfect and sound fitting, if not powerful.

On the graphics side of the spectrum, I would pin this as perhaps a beautiful game to behold. Somehow, the style of pencil artwork seems to expand this greatly and keep it looking fresh. The cinematic sequences are always interesting to see, and really do look beautiful.

After completion of the main story, players are given the ability to continue to play through and accomplish a few more chapters to get to know the guild, open up the ability to evolve, and recruit all 490+ Pokémon, or even rescue others via the Wi-Fi service.

Pros
+Ability to recruit all 490+ Pokémon on one game
+Emotional yet fast paced story line (about 20-25 hours to beat main story)
+Hilarious Characters
+Varying Dungeon Locations
+Level Grinding is not required

Cons
-Music could have been a bit more robust in dungeons
-Some Attacks are a bit too unfair (such as Fury Swipes, can one hit KO, if all 5 hits hit)
-Dungeons become a bit difficult
-Monster Houses will kill low-level players or those inexperienced with using the items
-Unless one really desires to keep his or her items, just save before a dungeon instead of waiting for someone on Wifi service to rescue the team

A New and Improved Pokemon Mystery Dungeon

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: June 26, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I'm a middle-aged lady who adores Pokemon, and I've also become addicted to Mystery Dungeon games. I loved the first two Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games (Red and Blue Rescue Teams). I wondered if it was worthwhile to purchase this game, since it would probably be a reworking of those earlier games. (Nintendo seems to prefer updating their Pokemon franchise games, rather than discovering new approaches. We're still playing the equivalent of the original Pokemon Red and Blue, but with two screens and better music!)

Anyways, I was delighted to discover that the story mode in this game is about three times as long as in the previous games. And that there's a second story mode which begins sometime after the first story ends. Lots of new dungeons, and all of those rare Pokemon from Diamond and Pearl.

I've read that this game is excessively talky, and I agree with that. Too much time is spent on clicking through cutscenes and conversations. And yet, when I reached the end of the first story mode, I was so deeply moved that I cried.

Even though I finished both story modes about a month ago (and something like 100 hours of non-story playing time), I am truly enjoying the challenge of beating Zero Isle (the equivalent of the previous games' Purity Forest, etc.)

If I could ask for only one thing... I wish that there were X-Ray Specs in this game! I miss the thrill of sniping those random Kecleon Shops!

This game is more challenging in several ways. For instance, gummies and Reviver Seeds are much more rare. After feeding my Pikachu every Yellow Gummi that I can find, she is still a three-star IQ.

I love the smoother graphics, the wide variety of previously-unseen Pokemon, and the warmth and kindness of the characters' relationships.

My only complaint is that they should have found something better to do with the second screen, instead of just leaving a set of basic instructions there. The dual-screen format is meaningless in this game, because it plays exactly like the GameBoy Advance version of Rescue Team. All of the action is displayed on the bottom screen, and there is no touch-screen activity at all.

I do recommend this game for Pokemon fans, and for people who'd like to try a fairly simple but addictive Mystery Dungeon game. I've truly enjoyed it, and I will pass it along to my niece who is getting her first Nintendo DS later this summer.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Darkness ROCKS!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: June 17, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game and Pokemon Diamond are the BEST games you can get. Explore a new world as a pokemon. You can get Darkrai, Cresselia, Heatran and all the others! I used to think pokemon mystery dungeon was retarded. When I played this game and bought it, it totally changed my mind. PLEASE get this game. IT RULES THE WORLD OF POKEMON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (p.s. if U get it U rock too!)

I love this game!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: May 27, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game is not too long and not too short but very fun. You get to unlock dungeons like secret waterfall and many more. Once you unlock dungeons you can battle in them and unlock stores in treasure town.
I think this is better than pokemon pearl because you get to go to more places and there is more action. This game is great for any pokemon fan.

My 12-year-old's favorite DS game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 27, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I've never played this game, but my 12-year-old says it's awesome. And judging from the amount of time he spends playing it, I have to believe it's got all the right stuff. It's his favorite DS game of the moment. If your kid has a DS and loves Pokemon, I don't think you can go wrong with this one.

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