Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness - Review

Pokemon games sell a lot of copies. A lot of copies. It’s hard to deny this when every new addition to the series is released alongside a nearly identical version, and both games top the charts for weeks. This sales phenomenon continues to get more and more stupefying with the success of each set of sequels, which are almost indistinguishable from their predecessors.

All of this repetition is sure to make even the most diehard Pokefan anxious for something new, which is why it is so refreshing to see these pocket-monsters starring in spin-offs. This is especially true when the spin-offs are actually fun, unfortunately, in the case of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness, the game is only slightly refreshing.

The main purpose of the game is to give fans of the franchise a new way to play with their favorite character, and it succeeds at doing so. It is great to see the Pokemon in a new setting (some more than others…who really cares about some of the newer additions like Croagunk and Corphish?), and it is fun to be able to directly control a Pokemon rather than its cookie-cutter trainer. While the concept behind the game is swell, the actual game is less successful.

The gameplay is split into two locations. The first is within Treasure Town, the central-hub where most of the game’s forgettable story is told. While in city limits, players can use their time to purchase items, choose their teammates, and receive jobs to be completed in the second location: the dungeons.

Dungeons are where the majority of the game plays out. Players will travel through multi-level caves and gain experience by fighting wild Pokemon. These battles will be foreign to those used to the combat in the regular Pokemon games. Rather than having random encounters and separate battle-scenes, fighting Pokemon in the Mystery Dungeon games takes place in an almost real-time fashion with enemies that are visible outside of fights. Though characters still take turns attacking or using items, the actual skirmishes happen much faster than in traditional RPGs.

This system has its advantages and its drawbacks. On the plus side, taking the time to partake in battles to increase your experience is a much faster task and is less likely to become a chore than it is in traditional Pokemon games. Unfortunately, this method only allows control over the main character, leaving all actions of the supporting crew up to the computer. This lack of control can be nice on unimportant battles, but the computer is more likely than not to make some bad decisions during struggles with more difficult enemies.

Also, in an attempt to make the battles flow better, attacks are mapped to button commands rather than through menus. However, there is only room for one of the character’s four special attacks in the control scheme, so menu access is necessary quite often. The menus are a little too difficult to manage for simple tasks that would ordinarily be done efficiently. To perform the average task of choosing an attack that is not assigned, a player must enter four different menu pages. There were times when I chose to ignore my fight strategy and just use the assigned attack, rather than go through all that trouble.

In a game that is fun to play through, however, these complaints about the fighting mechanics can be overlooked. Unfortunately, the dungeons aren’t terribly fun to experience.

All of the game’s dungeons are randomly generated. This is generally thought of as a great way to keep players interested in levels after playing through them. Since the terrain is created on the spot by the computer, the experience of exploring a cave is never the same twice. The problem with this system, however, is that it prevents the developers from creating worlds that are worth exploring at all. With no interesting environmental sights or puzzles, the emphasis of playing through the game is put back onto the flawed battles.

Obviously, there is a lot to complain about with Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness. Of course, some people do appreciate what randomly generated dungeons add to a game. These people will definitely find some worthwhile content in this title. There are also the people that will buy anything that has a Pikachu in it. These people will find even more to like about this game. However, those who have only a passing interest in RPGs or Pokemon should check out Pokemon Diamond or Pearl instead. It’s not like it will hurt Nintendo at all; the game is still going to sell a ton of copies.

Score: 6/10