Mystery Dungeon fans unite!

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!

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.

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).

tkarispe

What Pokémon do you end up playing as in the games? Do you answer the quiz questions honestly or try to get a certain result?

I keep turning into a Charmander for some reason. I didn't realize I had such a fiery personality.

Darren

tkarispe In Explorers of Sky, I was Turtwig, and as a result I have a greater appreciation for that Pokémon than I did when Diamond & Pearl first released.

KomodoZero

tkarispe I'll be real and say that when I play games with the option, I like to capitalise on mechanics and abuse them to no end, so I do meta picks like Skitty when I have attempted PMD, lol. Call me boring, but at the same time I never really cared for Skitty until it ended up being a monster in the games due to Normalise actually being good, unlike the main series games.

BlueMoonFalls

tkarispe As a kid I used to cheat the quiz to play as Eevee every time, but in a recent playthrough I just picked whatever the quiz gave me and I got Vulpix, so that was fun!

tkarispe

Who are your favorite NPCs in the PMD series? I feel like the PMD characters honestly had deeper character development than most characters from concurrent core series games.

I loved Wigglytuff's Guild in Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky. Wigglytuff is so unhinged and everybody else is just trying to keep up with him. And then of course he's secretly ridiculously powerful and just enjoys pretending to be oblivious. He made me laugh out loud at several points. And I thought it was so cute to watch the guild members' friendships with the player character and partner grow and develop.

I also really love Espurr from Super Mystery Dungeon. She's all cool and calculating while the other kids in her class are being, well, kids, and she's a crucial element in how the player and partner end up saving the day, thanks to her quick thinking and levelheadedness under pressure. Just goes to show you should never underestimate the quiet ones.

Darren

tkarispe I haven't even played Super Mystery Dungeon! I have been wondering if it was worth picking up or not

tkarispe

Darren If you liked the previous titles, I think you'll enjoy Super Mystery Dungeon. The plotline is fun and full of the usual twists and turns and crazy reveals you never saw coming. They also added some unique gameplay functions like the ability to equip items called Looplets that let you collect and equip stat and ability-altering items called Emeras that only last for the dungeon you're in, giving you a little bit of a different experience each time even if you're using the same Pokémon. Mega Evolution is also implemented well, and it's just really fun to Mega Evolve a Pokémon with a move that hits all enemies in a room and watch them get decimated (very useful for Monster Houses).

Kind of my only complaint with Super is that they dispensed with the mechanic of endlessly regenerating semi-random requests, and there are no opportunities for grinding between story points (although it's still not a terribly difficult game if you know what you're doing). While there are a lot of prefabricated requests in the game, once you finish all of them there's really not much else to do. But I think it's a worthwhile entry in the series (and a big step up from Gates to Infinity).

trubbishguts

I've only played Blue Rescue team (and the switch remake which I loved), and about half of Sky (I got stuck at a certain point and never picked it up again lol)! I really love these games but my favorite thing about them is the worldbuilding/setting. I've both participated in and run a couple ARPGs centered around the PMD setting (art RPGs, where roleplaying/character development/etc is sort of gameified through making art of your characters... you might have a guild of OCs that you grow, level up, etc by making art according to "quest" prompts, for instance) because it lends itself very well to the format.

I got Cubone for the player character the first time I played Blue, and used Totodile as my companion. In DX, I happened to get Totodile as my player character, so I picked Cubone as the companion!

ICanSnake

I love the Mystery Dungeon series. I remember being so into Blue Rescue Team. One of the first forums I visited online was a search and rescue forum hosted by Filb where you could post rescue missions on dungeons you fainted on, as well as help others and rescue them from their dungeons.

There was a time when CYOAs were popular and there was this one CYOA on GameFAQs based on Mystery Dungeon, and I followed every update. I have no idea what the CYOA was about anymore but I just remember that it was good.

I played Explorers of Darkness and also had a good time with it, skipped Explorers of Sky although I hear really great things about it. I'm still not really sure what the difference is between that and Explorers of Darkness. I went to a launch event for Super Mystery Dungeon at Nintendo World Store, I think it was the last event before they rebranded into Nintendo NY. Went with a friend and also made new friends there, I had a good time.

In all the Mystery Dungeon games, I follow quiz guides so that I can get Cyndaquil as my starter and Mudkip as my partner.