Mystery Dungeon fans unite!

tkarispe

I can't be the only one who loves the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series. 🙂 The storylines and character development are generally more sophisticated than much of the core series, and I don't know about you, but I find grindy, roguelike dungeon-crawling very relaxing.

What's your favorite game in the series? Do you want more Mystery Dungeon games--and if so, what are some things you'd like to see in them?

Darren

In January 2020, a friend I originally met online, came to visit me for the day. We had a nice day together, and while we were out shopping we popped into a video game store called CeX (Computer Exchange). We looked over the Nintendo DS section and he spotted Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky. He said that it was one of his favourite video games, and I told him I had never played a Mystery Dungeon title. He was surprised, and said I needed to buy the game. At the time it was £40 which I told him was too expensive, which is hilarious when you consider that people try to sell game at double, if not tripple that price five years which has followed (i'm quite frugal with my money).

After some exchanges, we agreed to pay half each. I knew that the game had a good reputation, and was spoken of fondly and passionately by a lot of fans online, but I just never got around to it. I started playing it in mid January, and chipped away at it for a while. A couple of months later the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and we had a lockdown in the UK. This game helped me through that challenging time.

I took it to bed with me and played it until I passed out. I haven't really done that with a game since I was a kid! I enjoyed the writing and the personalities of the different Pokémon characters, it was a breath of fresh air that I hadn't experienced previously. I am not ashamed to say that I cried at points, and I was shocked that a game which focused on Pokémon characters, could get such an emtional reaction out of me.

Around the same time, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX released on the Nintendo Switch, so I played through that one too. I've also played through Red Rescue Team and Blue Rescue Team when I picked them up years after.

Last year, I finally got around to playing through Explorers of Sky's post-game content, which was surprisingly long! Once again, I was blown away by the stories and the reveals. How I avoided being spoiled, I will never know. Incredible!

In short, I absolutely adore Explorers of Sky, and anyone who has had the good fortune of playing this amazing title will hopefully feel the same. If you haven't? I BEG you PLEASE play this game, if you can find an affordable way to do so.

My copy of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky:

tkarispe

Darren Thank you so much for sharing your wonderful experience with Explorers of Sky! I'm glad it gave you some good experiences during the craziness that was 2020. I agree that it is an incredible game and definitely one of the strongest in the series both in terms of gameplay and story. I don't understand how it got such a bad rep and poor reviews, but I suspect maybe it just wasn't what most people were expecting. But that's an unfortunate reason for a game to go underappreciated.

Regnum Thanks for sharing! Good video games can be such a healing escape during stressful times. I like your ideas! In PMD: Gates to Infinity, the storyline involves building up a town, but I'd love a see a system like you're describing. And I like the idea of an upgraded IQ system; it was really useful, but it wasn't really explained well either in the games or the manuals, so I think a lot of players overlooked its potential.

I'd honestly really like to see a PMD mobile game. I think the PMD formula has a lot of potential for a live-content game with regularly updated dungeons and recruitable Pokémon. I'd also love to see a big, ongoing storyline that involves all the characters from the series so far, since Super Mystery Dungeon established that all the games take place on the same planet.

Regnum

The first PMM game I had as a kid was Blue Rescue Team. Along with Emerald, it was a very important piece during some dark times. While I do appreciate the others a lot, I would have to choose this one as my favourite.

I can't get enough dungeon crawlers. Top-down view, first-person view… It doesn't matter. The first game with this style that I played was Azure Dreams on the PS1, which I believe is the root cause of it all. I have also played some of the other games in the Mystery Dungeon series, especially Shiren the Wanderer. There are some things I have seen in these games that I'd like to have in PMM:

Town upgrades. In Azure Dreams you could upgrade the city by buying expansions. Some of these would increase your storage's size or the number of familiars you can have. You could even get new buildings, like a bowling alley or a library.
Difficulty. The Shiren games are hard. Let me have difficulty modes.
An upgraded IQ system. After seeing so many skill and levelling systems, I can't help but think that it could do well with an overhaul, with more choices. During most normal playthroughs I barely use it, just mainly in the post-game.

(As a side note: I invite any PMM fan to check the games I mentioned; they are difficult to get into but worth the time!)

Regnum

Regnum I just noticed I used the Spanish name for the Pokémon games (PMM) instead of PMD. It seems like I cannot edit it anymore. My bad!

Darren

Regnum Just a quick note, you should be able to use the edit function to make an adjustment to your original post, without having to double post. If you're having trouble with this, please let me know!

Update: Apologies, it would appear this setting wasn't set, and has now been changed. Hopefully this helps!

KomodoZero

PMD is definitely a series I've long been planning to get into.
I have actually started a run of Sky (Vulpix/Skitty starting pair) but haven't got round to getting particularly deep into the weeds with it, and I also grabbed the Switch remake of the original, but I am something of a backlog fiend so many things kinda sit on the bench for far too long (I blame ADHD).