Super Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Review

**Becky** Fri Feb 26, 2016 7:16 pm

Oh noes you've suddenly been turned into a Pokémon, but what Pokémon are you? Well the only way to find out is answer some questions, actually a lot of questions. And I find out I'm a Snivy... Luckily I could decline the fact I was a Snivy and choose who I wanted out of most of the starter Pokémon ever to grace our beloved games.

And so it begins. Oh noes again, we're attacked by some beheeyem (that's a Pokémon) and the only escape is going into a mystery dungeon that changes form every time you enter.

We end up in Serene village, which is our base for the first half of the game and meet a mischievous little Pokémon who becomes our best bud and whom we adventure with. It starts out sloooooooow taking over 5 hours before even catching a first Pokémon. There are chapters upon chapters of tutorial and it didn't need to be that way, all the tutorial could have been done in the first dungeon or two. The game really opens out about half way through the main story. Some of the dialogue in the story is actually quite funny. Well it's more like it's so bad it's good kind of funny (like Bruce Willis films) but this is actually intentional. It is really an amazing to have a whole world inhabited by Pokémon that actually have personality’s not just obedient monsters like in the main series of games.

Super Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Review Serene10

What a pretty village you live in Amanda the charmander

You’ll spend most of your time exploring dungeons in Super Pokémon Mystery Dungeon (no surprises there) and these will be a mix of story dungeons and picking from request dungeons. Catching Pokémon is done in a super friendly way. You get requests from various Pokémon and when you complete the request, they join your troupe. The requests are basically go to a certain floor of a dungeon and find something, someone or beat the poop out of someone. It's a nice idea for a game where you're playing as a Pokémon but for me it lost the sense of 'gotta catch 'em all'. Despite this the choice of which Pokémon to befriend becomes almost strategic as through the friendship web you can potential future friends to aim for such as I'd rather befriend vaporeon than whiscash but whiscash led to the chance of befriending charizard.

In a dungeon you travel around in a crew of three Pokémon, two of which are CPU controlled but you can give them general commands, sometimes there’ll be a guest Pokémon as well. Battles are done in the field and it's good ole turn based, with a twist. Moving or using a move uses a turn, for every turn you take all enemy Pokémon get a turn too. This means enemies are moving around the map the whole time and can even pick up items which are dropped again when you defeat them. As in Pokémon games you have your 4 moves which you choose by pressing L, these moves have PP which can be used up. You can also all attack at once using an "alliance" press 'R' and then pick all 3 moves but doing this makes you hungry.

Super Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Review WVW69i75c9AkgjN5od

Pikachu use your thunderbolt attack!

As you wander about a dungeon your health replenishes itself (handy) but your belly slowly empties (natural but not so handy). Once your belly is empty you start to lose HP as I assume your insides slowly eat themselves.

Then there's looplets which are basically invisible belts that gems called emeras go in. The emras provide stat boosts. But the catch is each dungeon you have to recollect emeras as they all shatter when you exit a dungeon. Oh did I mention these emeras also explode if you don't collect them quick enough meaning you have to dash over to them and ignore the fact another Pokémon is trying to hydro pump your arse. They are well worth collecting as they provide invaluable boosts such as a chance to put Pokémon to sleep or even attack twice.

Super Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Review Kids_w10

That's what you get for messing with kids in an RPG

As for streetpass in Super Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, well that's used from a different game mode called Pelipper Island. At Pelipper Island you can register Pokémon to send away to help other people through streetpass and the internet and then receive helpers too, which randomly help you out for one floor of a dungeon. Also you can go on rescue missions to save yourself if you get KOed in a dungeon in story mode, this lets you go back into story mode and carry on from where you got Koed. It's an excellent use of streetpass, the internet and an invaluable feature for saving items and money that you'd otherwise lose in a dungeon.

The Pokémon look fantastic in Super Mystery Dungeon (even better with the 3D on) the rest of the game looks average but lets face it we're going to be looking at the Pokémon whilst playing not the grass or the little Pokémon huts.

Super Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Review Stone_10

Oh how much easier it would've been to catch you in Ruby and Sapphire if I could turn you to stone

Disappointingly there aren't any Pokémon sounds and just a few basic sound effects. The music is exaggerated in every way, it's like a pantomime of music. At one point it's overly chirpy, at another it's overly dramatic. I didn't see a problem with this though as it helped set the scene.

Once it’s all over, you’re actually left with hours upon hours upon hours of end game in which you go dungeon crawling to befriend all 720 Pokémon as you won’t be even close to that when you complete the story. For some parts your hand is held a lot more than main series Pokémon games such as showing you which moves are super effective and not very effective. But others are brutal such as you really aren’t sure how difficult a dungeon will be until you enter it, even easy dungeons say the difficulty is difficult and many dungeons you simply aren’t ready to face till after you’ve finished the game. This adds to the longevity though and means you always need to be on your toes as you don’t want to lose all your items and money that you have on you (the punishment for being KOed).

Super Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Review Lets_e10

[Insert world ending situation here]... nope, food first when you're a Pokemon

Super Pokémon Mystery Dungeon is a game of two halves, the first half is slow and limited. Then the second half you get to travel to other towns, take a big variety of quests at a variety of dungeons and the story gets really good. At the end of the day if you like Chunsoft’s Mystery Dungeon games or dungeon crawling in general and Pokémon this is a great game, even with the slow start. The second half is worth the wait and it has the most absorbing world of any Pokémon game I’ve ever played.

8/10