Posted April 19, 2016
Pokémon: Super Mystery Dungeon (3DS)
Warning this will be a massive rant, this doesn't mean this is a bad game, it's a good game, a lot of things ruined it for me however.
The Mystery Dungeon franchise for pokemon is probably the best ongoing side series for pokemon (Though if they make a Snap 2 I might reconsider), it takes the battle mechanics from the main series and mixes it with a dungeon crawler/ Roguetype. I had Pokémon Red Mystery Dungeon on GBA, I loved it but wasn't any good, I then got Explorers of Time and it was even better and Explorers of Sky topped that (Even though it was essentially the same game). Explorers of Sky is my favourite game ever released on the DS and according to my 3DS I've amassed over 300 hours playing it, though I've had it on my regular DS for longer but that doesn't track Gameplay length. I didn't play any of the sequels because of either Never hearing about them (I think the next one was on the Wii and was essentially a demo) or because they didn't include every pokemon like the first ones and I assumed that must mean it was also really short. I saw Super Mystery Dungeon on the online store last month and saw that it had every pokemon and I brought it instantly. I'm very slightly regretting it now.
This game is nowhere near as good as the earlier ones, they added some new mechanics that were pretty good (Emera's, Gold Bar's,Wands) but they took a lot of good mechanics out. I don't know whose idea it was but why would you remove a quicksave function from a game that has dungeons 99 floors long, the alternative is to pay for a device that you can use to save your progress (Unusable in dungeons that prevent bringing in items) if your busy it is incredibly frustrating, or if your low on battery when half way through a dungeon, it's stupid. Other mechanics include letting you power up your moves with repeated use, which is a good idea, if accuracy wasn't one of the things that got boosted, it basically means your character will repeatedly miss attacks as you have incredibly low accuracy when you start, especially in harder dungeons as higher lvl enemies can dodge attacks more easily, when you miss 8 attacks in a row it starts to get annoying. Also in previous games when there were infinite missions available, this is reduced to a finite number just under 200, I think this was to make each mission personal but the 'personality' is 2 or 3 lines of dialogue. The mission system also meant one of my first missions involved having my 2 lvl 9's having to fight a lvl 50 with boosted stats and hp.
If your still reading, I'm sorry but there's gonna be more complaining. The story has become more... I can't think of the word... childish. To illustrate my point where as you had your own house or lived in a guild in previous game, the first half of this game you go to a school, and then when you finally complete it, you beat the final boss by 'learning to accept them for who they are'. Characters don't have the charm they did in previous games, particularly your partner, who is so infuriating and is almost constantly happy and shows other emotions rarely. Though not technically a bad thing another annoying thing is that the main enemy in this game isn't even a pokemon, the final boss has some good mechanics, but they never used those mechanics with any other boss fight, which could've been a really good feature.
Still complaining... I've never played a game where the protagonist feels so useless. You and your partner are some of the worst pokemon in the game. The developers obviously realised this so most of the story is spent doing escort missions, yet your escort is usually 3 x stronger than you. This ends up with any non escort mission being really difficult, and it gets even more difficult later as you have to beat some dungeons with just the protagonist. It takes about 10 hours of crawling through dungeons before your a decent lvl and that's only if your stubborn enough not to replace your weak protagonist with one of the many stronger pokemon you recruited earlier in the game.
Almost done... I don't know how they did it but the AI is worse than previous games. Enemies are unable to comprehend dead ends and simply get stuck for ages if they walk into one, you can also see them walking in circles in rooms not being able to get out, I feel like this is a result of trying to get enemies to 'head' towards the players general area but it just screws up their navigation. Your teammates AI is also incompetent which I believe to be a result of removing the IQ system from previous games which allowed you to better customize your teammates AI. You basically have 2 settings for their AI: Break away from following you to pick up random items you didn't want, or never break away but won't attack enemies that put you to sleep as they won't attack an enemy you didn't attack first. Also the code that decides what attack they'll use favours STAB over potential damage, so they'll continually use a weak move instead of a strong one if it's the same type as them.
Right that's the majority of the complaining done. When your favourite game gets a sequel you hope for something like the previous game but better, and when this doesn't prove to be the case it can lessen the experience you might have had had you not previously played the game (This also happened to me with Oblivion, I was hoping for something closer to Morrowind). Here's the good points, this is a good time waster game, it can pass a few hours away. If your a fan of pokemon you'll like this game. Parts were fun, and the graphics are much improved since the previous games in the series, and there are some good scenes and action sequences. Music is alright. I would only recommend this game if it was discounted, anyone asking for a good dungeon crawler on the DS I'd recommend Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky, it has much better story, your character can actually fight and not miss opponents and it's got a greater range of difficulty. I feel like there's a DLC coming to the game, mainly because the hardest dungeon in the game isn't that difficult compared to previous games. Also I'd like to apologize to anyone who actually decided to read through that whole rant. In better news now that I've completed this I can get started on Earthbound.
Warning this will be a massive rant, this doesn't mean this is a bad game, it's a good game, a lot of things ruined it for me however.
The Mystery Dungeon franchise for pokemon is probably the best ongoing side series for pokemon (Though if they make a Snap 2 I might reconsider), it takes the battle mechanics from the main series and mixes it with a dungeon crawler/ Roguetype. I had Pokémon Red Mystery Dungeon on GBA, I loved it but wasn't any good, I then got Explorers of Time and it was even better and Explorers of Sky topped that (Even though it was essentially the same game). Explorers of Sky is my favourite game ever released on the DS and according to my 3DS I've amassed over 300 hours playing it, though I've had it on my regular DS for longer but that doesn't track Gameplay length. I didn't play any of the sequels because of either Never hearing about them (I think the next one was on the Wii and was essentially a demo) or because they didn't include every pokemon like the first ones and I assumed that must mean it was also really short. I saw Super Mystery Dungeon on the online store last month and saw that it had every pokemon and I brought it instantly. I'm very slightly regretting it now.
This game is nowhere near as good as the earlier ones, they added some new mechanics that were pretty good (Emera's, Gold Bar's,Wands) but they took a lot of good mechanics out. I don't know whose idea it was but why would you remove a quicksave function from a game that has dungeons 99 floors long, the alternative is to pay for a device that you can use to save your progress (Unusable in dungeons that prevent bringing in items) if your busy it is incredibly frustrating, or if your low on battery when half way through a dungeon, it's stupid. Other mechanics include letting you power up your moves with repeated use, which is a good idea, if accuracy wasn't one of the things that got boosted, it basically means your character will repeatedly miss attacks as you have incredibly low accuracy when you start, especially in harder dungeons as higher lvl enemies can dodge attacks more easily, when you miss 8 attacks in a row it starts to get annoying. Also in previous games when there were infinite missions available, this is reduced to a finite number just under 200, I think this was to make each mission personal but the 'personality' is 2 or 3 lines of dialogue. The mission system also meant one of my first missions involved having my 2 lvl 9's having to fight a lvl 50 with boosted stats and hp.
If your still reading, I'm sorry but there's gonna be more complaining. The story has become more... I can't think of the word... childish. To illustrate my point where as you had your own house or lived in a guild in previous game, the first half of this game you go to a school, and then when you finally complete it, you beat the final boss by 'learning to accept them for who they are'. Characters don't have the charm they did in previous games, particularly your partner, who is so infuriating and is almost constantly happy and shows other emotions rarely. Though not technically a bad thing another annoying thing is that the main enemy in this game isn't even a pokemon, the final boss has some good mechanics, but they never used those mechanics with any other boss fight, which could've been a really good feature.
Still complaining... I've never played a game where the protagonist feels so useless. You and your partner are some of the worst pokemon in the game. The developers obviously realised this so most of the story is spent doing escort missions, yet your escort is usually 3 x stronger than you. This ends up with any non escort mission being really difficult, and it gets even more difficult later as you have to beat some dungeons with just the protagonist. It takes about 10 hours of crawling through dungeons before your a decent lvl and that's only if your stubborn enough not to replace your weak protagonist with one of the many stronger pokemon you recruited earlier in the game.
Almost done... I don't know how they did it but the AI is worse than previous games. Enemies are unable to comprehend dead ends and simply get stuck for ages if they walk into one, you can also see them walking in circles in rooms not being able to get out, I feel like this is a result of trying to get enemies to 'head' towards the players general area but it just screws up their navigation. Your teammates AI is also incompetent which I believe to be a result of removing the IQ system from previous games which allowed you to better customize your teammates AI. You basically have 2 settings for their AI: Break away from following you to pick up random items you didn't want, or never break away but won't attack enemies that put you to sleep as they won't attack an enemy you didn't attack first. Also the code that decides what attack they'll use favours STAB over potential damage, so they'll continually use a weak move instead of a strong one if it's the same type as them.
Right that's the majority of the complaining done. When your favourite game gets a sequel you hope for something like the previous game but better, and when this doesn't prove to be the case it can lessen the experience you might have had had you not previously played the game (This also happened to me with Oblivion, I was hoping for something closer to Morrowind). Here's the good points, this is a good time waster game, it can pass a few hours away. If your a fan of pokemon you'll like this game. Parts were fun, and the graphics are much improved since the previous games in the series, and there are some good scenes and action sequences. Music is alright. I would only recommend this game if it was discounted, anyone asking for a good dungeon crawler on the DS I'd recommend Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky, it has much better story, your character can actually fight and not miss opponents and it's got a greater range of difficulty. I feel like there's a DLC coming to the game, mainly because the hardest dungeon in the game isn't that difficult compared to previous games. Also I'd like to apologize to anyone who actually decided to read through that whole rant. In better news now that I've completed this I can get started on Earthbound.
