I’m in maybe the most pro-Pokemon mood I’ve ever been in since the initial craze dominated my 90s childhood. The live-action Detective Pikachu movie was a revelation. Pokemon Sword and Shield rewarded my long break from the franchise by actually offering some meaningful gameplay growth thanks to the power of the Nintendo Switch. I actually tracked down a used copy of Pokemon Black to bring back some legacy monsters into Pokemon Home and mix things up before the Sword and Shield expansion pass.
So I found myself being more charitable than ever going into Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX. And I have nothing really bad to say about the game. I just wanted to pat it on its cute little head and then go spend my day doing something else.
Unlike previous DX Nintendo Switch games, which have largely been Wii U ports, this is actually a remake of the first two Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games that launched in the early 200s on Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS. These games are older than Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. That’s a cool overlooked era of Nintendo handheld gaming to pull from for Switch remakes.
And remake it they did. Mystery Dungeon may not garner as many headlines as last year’s gorgeous remake of Link’s Awakening, but the visual overhaul is similarly substantial. The game takes place in a village of nothing but Pokemon and is presented through this warm and soothing watercolor storybook filter. It looks like a lovechild of Okami and Winnie the Pooh and it’s just absolutely delightful. It arguably looks better, or at least more consistent, than Sword and Shield.
The gentle style is also your first major clue that Mystery Dungeon is intended for a younger audience, younger even than the core Pokemon RPGs. With no violent trainer battles, the modest rustic Pokemon village feels much friendlier and more fantastical. You play as a human turned into a Pokemon, determined by a personality test, and you don’t even have to be that bothered by the transformation if you don’t want to. I’m a Mudkip. The biggest danger in this world is Pokemon simply getting lost in the various environments. And as the Rescue Team it’s your job to rescue them.
That brings us to the gameplay, the area where I have by far the fewest thoughts. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is a roguelike and in some cases an extremely old-school example of the resurgent genre. Level layouts constantly change. Whenever you move or perform an action the enemies do so in turn. And death can wipe out an entire run, unless if you’re willing to wait for some real-life friends to rescue you online.
But whereas today’s roguelikes use their randomization to highlight some unique mechanic, here you just walk around various grids spamming the attack button. If it weren’t for various meters to manage like health, hunger, and power points for moves, I would’ve used the automatic option even more. Outside of dungeons you can take different jobs and recruit new teammates to bring into battle. But the actual bulk of the experience, seemingly by design, just doesn’t warrant that much thought. Ironically, I can’t even get invested enough to be that bothered by death.
That’s okay though! It’s the same reason it’s okay for Goodnight Moon to not have the prose density of Moby Dick. Everything has a proper audience, including Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX.
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