Intrigue! Adventure! And… Pokémon? The long running series Pokémon Mystery Dungeon turns up the heat in its newest installment, and it’s pretty fun! The challenge of Mystery Dungeon remains, a compelling storyline, and enough depth in gameplay to get you thinking about each new challenge.
The Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series is a combination of both the Pokémon and Mystery Dungeon franchises. The wildly popular Pokémon franchise is about an individual’s journey (usually a child) to catch mystical creatures called “Pokémon”, and aim to use them in battles to become one of the best trainers in the world. The Mystery Dungeon series is a strategy based series focused on the main character(s) trying to escape dungeons that are randomly generated, removing all obstacles in their way. These two franchises blend in a way where players are immediately familiar with the characters and environment, and, at least from what I’ve heard, the difficulty level is lower than in traditional Mystery Dungeon games.
This review is based on a full playthrough of the main story of the game. I have not yet ventured to the extra content, which I’m sure adds some meat to the title.
The protagonist in Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon is a human who managed to somehow transform into a Pokémon and enter the Pokémon world. A series of questions is asked to determine which Pokémon you become, but at the end, you’re still able to manually choose which Pokémon you want to be. Shortly afterward, you meet a second Pokémon companion, which is also determined by the questions you answer (can also be manually picked). These two characters are the center of the entire story. In my playthrough, the second character was a rowdy/troublesome Pokémon, and the main one was more passive, although I’m not sure if the answers to the questions to the start of the game affected that in any way. In either case, the two work well together, but due to the main one being and representing a human, I can tell the safe route was chosen–hardly any personality at all–so that character wasn’t very compelling.
The gameplay is all about traversing randomly generated “Mystery Dungeons” that are presented to you throughout the storyline. There is a lot of depth to the gameplay, because instead of controlling one Pokémon at a time in a turn based battle as in the traditional franchise, you are a leader of a team of Pokémon traversing the dungeon at the same time. You choose which leader Pokémon to control, and the AI handles the rest. Different strategies can be employed to the AI, such as asking them to scatter about separately to map the dungeon, but I never felt safe doing that, so I always kept them following me, in line formation. Every pokemon you come across in a dungeon is hostile, and you can use one of four specialized attacks to defeat them, depending on the Pokémon that you’re controlling. These moves can vary from buffs to direct attacks, but there are also attacks that can affect an entire room and even attack from a far distance. You will very frequently encounter narrow passages in the dungeon, so your lineup is very important–I would recommend using a Pokémon that has strong frontal attacks as the leader of the team, and have your other team members learn moves that can attack from a distance–this way, you can land two to three hits in a single turn. The game also uses the traditional type matchups and weaknesses mechanics from their mainstream games, for example, fire is weak to water, grass is weak to fire, etc. A mechanic that is preserved from traditional Mystery Dungeon games are the items, which have varying effects. There are some, for example, that can make an entire room confused, others can be waved to petrify the Pokémon in front of you, and even ones that heal HP. Strategic use of these items could make the difference between victory and total failure.
The mystery dungeons all have “stairs” that lead to the next floor of the dungeon, and in many cases is the goal. However, it provides the interesting dilemma of “do I exit this floor now, or do I explore some more to see if there are any items I can take with me?” I’ve played with a few ideas myself, and found it most efficient to move on to the next room as soon as possible, although I’m sure there are others that may disagree with me. At the end of some of the story dungeons, you will face a special boss. I cannot stress enough how important it is to make use of items to win these fights–a majority of the time these bosses have moves that can KO your team in one or two hits–and although this game has checkpoints, it remembers the items that you have exhausted, making some of these fights impossible to win if you’ve even lost a single time. And while I’m no stranger to a good challenge, some of these fights seem practically unfair, and it almost feels like using items to win is cheap–at least to me, personally. However, that is simply the reality of the game, and the way to win, so once that is accepted, the rest of the game becomes more bearable.
Even though items are very important, there are lots of ways to build your team too. There are many natural progressions in the story which allow you extra team members, however, a bulk of the members you will receive will be through the “expedition gadget”, which is a gadget you can use to take on side quests within the dungeons that you have unlocked. Completing these missions will allow you to use the Pokémon that asked for the mission. However… I can’t help but feel there was a major mistake with one of the early expedition missions. This mission involves fighting a very powerful Pokémon–so much to the point that I failing this quest many times in a row. It felt practically impossible. What’s even more of a bother is that each time I failed, “days” were progressing in the main game, which advances the story, whether I wanted it to or not. After a few failed tries, I finally found the item and Pokemon combination that worked, and a slight bit of luck. I did a Google search on the issue and it seems that I wasn’t alone–many folks, including a friend of mine, had much difficulty getting past this mission. I imagine that kind of difficulty spike at the start of a game would make a new player put it down.
The many characters you meet, and story of the game is very detailed. All of the characters are Pokémon, and most times they fit the mold of their appearance very well, but other times they’re designed uniquely. For example, Hawlucha has the personality of an over-excited luchador, and Krookadile is a gangster in a popular town… however, Ampharos is a clumsy traveler with no sense of direction–which is the exact opposite for what it’s supposed to represent–a beacon for lost people (using the glow on its tail)… unless that was intentionally part of the joke. I’ve played Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity before this installment, and very similarly, not everything is as it seems, as the story is littered with compelling villains, plot twists, and friendships. More than once I was hit right in the feels, as it would seem that several characters would either change personality, or simply wasn’t what I imagined in the first place. And the ending of the game is very sad and upsetting. I have heard that continuing to play the game after the end explores more details about the epilogue, and sheds some light on past events, but I haven’t yet experienced that part of the game.
There are multiplayer features available using the Expedition Gadget. You can generate “help mail” with a QR code when you faint in a dungeon, send it to a friend, and ask them to try to rescue your team. It can be pretty handy, but it’s rather cumbersome. Sometimes rescuing another player’s team is so difficult it may take you quite a bit of play time. I only think this feature would be interesting with a dedicated group of people that play the game. Also, utilizing both Streetpass and Wi-Fi, you can have Pokémon downloaded to your game to help you out. This is a wonderful, and possibly even overpowered feature. Whenever you faint, you can go to a place called “Pelipper Island” to be able to try to rescue yourself using other Pokémon that has been obtained, including ones through Streetpass and the internet. More than often you’ll have overpowered teams, even to the point of feeling cheap; but with the few cheap shots this game takes on its players, I certainly didn’t feel bad about it.
Overall, I found Super Mystery Dungeon to be a good experience but not a great one. The difficulty seemed to be in flux at times, and the story ends pretty badly, however it is always fun to control a team of concurrently existing Pokémon, and in spite of the bad ending, the story is quite a trip.
Final Score: 3/5