Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team (Nintendo DS) Review

Chunsoft has been creating Mystery Dungeon games since the beginning of the 1990s, with the team working alongside high profile developers such as Squaresoft and Enix to use the basic game engine to develop newly themed outings. Therefore, we have seen the likes of Dragon Quest spin-off ‘Torneko: The Last Hope’ and the Final Fantasy take ‘Chocobo’s Dungeon’ be released, yet work from the same style of gameplay. This time round, Nintendo has enlisted Chunsoft to work its magic on the Pokémon franchise, with the story revolving around a human that wakes one morning as a Pocket Monster living in a world full of wild Poké-critters. You then team up with another Pokémon and decide to help rescue everyone else. How nice and helpful…

Considering this is on the Nintendo DS, you might expect the visual standards to be quite high. In fact, the reality of there being a GBA version of the game as well would likely lead you to believe there would be a significant difference between both versions. Sadly, that is not the case and Mystery Dungeon on the DS looks, for all intents and purposes, just like a basic SNES game. The dungeons are bland, the villages and other locations you visit are forgettable and the numerous in-game characters are barely on par with their Game Freak counterparts from the main series on the GBA. And on top of that you have to deal with the screen stuttering quite often in ‘normal’ mode, with things only becoming smoother if you adjust the speed on the option screen! Disappointing…But at least the audio side slightly makes up for this, since the tunes on offer are perky, enjoyable affairs that will manage to lodged themselves in your head at least for a short while.

So anyway, once you have jumped into the game and answered the strange questions at the beginning, you will be faced with yourself in Pokémon form. You then start up a rescue team with a fellow Pokémon and start off by wandering into town to check out the bulletin board near the local Post Office to accept whatever rescue missions are available. These normally range from finding a certain item in a dungeon, bringing someone to another creature deep down on one of the levels or helping a poor Pokémon escape when trapped and in danger. The more missions you complete, the stronger your popularity becomes, and you eventually start to get dedicated requests in your letter box outside your residence.

You can have a team of up to four in total as you work your way through each dungeon and the try and ensure things do not get too boring, these dungeons are randomly generated so each trek through is different. The aim is to wander around the first floor you land in until you discover some stairs, taking you to the next level, and it continues like this until either you fulfil your set objective or simply reach the end of that particular dungeon. Due to the random nature of dungeon creation, sometimes you will get lucky and find your exit is right next to where you just appeared, which comes in handy. There are also numerous points dotted that rectify any status ailments picked up from enemy attacks.

In terms of battling, each character takes a turn to attack and with each step taken, an opponent can also move one place. Therefore, as you run around (with your energy slowly refilling automatically), the enemies randomly run around as well, until you both come within range of each other. At this point you have a choice of hurling projectiles in your possession, hitting them with typical Pokémon attacks moves (watching how many times you do so as certain moves can only be used a limited amount of times – like in the main series), or merely using a standard jabbing technique (this move is in endless supply, so it is normally the one you will rely on) to despatch of them. Of course your team helps out as well, and since the computer controls their actions, it is up to you to preset their tactics, such as merely following you or charging off on their own for the kill.

Sadly, the computer characters drive you crazy at times, since they wander off in random directions and end up with hordes of enemies surrounding them. So it all works a bit better if you keep them close-by. It is not just a case of running around, hoping for the best either. Your Pokémon will eventually become hungry, so you need to ensure you have a nice supply of the right food items in your possession to appease them and prevent ‘fainting’ (read: death). There are plenty of items (and money) in the dungeons, so having to buy them is not really too much of a necessity, thankfully, meaning your cash can be spent at the shops in your village.

Being Pokémon, and an RPG, there is levelling-up after you have killed enough enemies and once boosted, your stats will also increase, opening up new attacking moves as well. Sadly, evolving does not really come into play, but that should not prove too bothersome as long as you remember that this is not part of the main franchise. The elements that remain, though, such as different elemental type Pokémon being able to affect others to various degrees depending on their type (Fire, Water, Earth, Psychic and so on – you know the drill) and the use of TMs helps to give enough familiarity for this to appeal to a wide range of gamers. And finally, in terms of recruitment, this is not done using Pokéballs, but simply by taming wild creatures within dungeons and then letting them join your team and help you become better than the other rescue teams around! All-in-all, Mystery Dungeon proves to be a fine adventure that works best if you play it in short bursts to avoid repetition grinding you down too much.

Because, you see, the main game itself is fun for as long as you can stomach the repeated dungeon-crawling experience. Working your way through the story can take up to twenty hours, which is plentiful for an RPG on a handheld, but clearly the majority of that time is spent repeatedly heading into the same dungeons to complete more and more banal rescue requests. If you have the patience and determination to complete the game, then you will find more than enough action packed into this game. Sadly, if you are bored after the first half an hour or so, then do not expect much to change as the game goes on.