Adventure and secrecy await players in Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon as you pit yourself against tough foes within the rogue-like dungeon crawler. But with a weak storyline, odd pacing and character development that feels all too hollow, the game just fails to dazzle.
As the tenth release in the Pokémon spin-off series and developed by Spike Chunsoft, Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon is distinctly average rather than super; as its title suggests. By choosing one of 20 starter Pokemon, including those from all six generations, players will be able to pick one which suits them best or one that is established by answering a set of pre-determined questions. Keeping in the spirit of its predecessors, you’ll be sent down into the world of Pokemon and suffer from a severe case of amnesia – yes, that old chestnut. Upon waking up, you’ll be cornered by three Beheeyem until your fellow guardian Nuzleaf chases them away.
Comprising of 22 in-game chapters, Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon sets the scene in Serene Village – a quaint, humble town with nothing more than a school and a few houses. While its opening sequence and the meeting of your partner provide some highlights here, the lengthy and mundane tutorial session dilutes the experience entirely. From the daily school sessions to the monotonous field trips, it’s a three-hour lesson in drab and dreary land. Fortunately, Super Mystery Dungeon brightens up after the game’s basic chapters as you enlist within the Expedition Society. Working side by side with your partner and by encountering a number of legendaries that have mysteriously turned to stone, you’ll have to defeat the dark matter that’s threatening to usurp the Pokémon world.
With five continents to explore of grass, mist, air, water and sand, Super Mystery Dungeon isn’t short on gameplay. Each area will require you to pick up a pass from the Kecleon Shop before you are able to take on quests via the Connection Orb – given to you when joining the Expedition Society – and hunt down foes in the various dungeons. And while the dungeons deliver enough variation from their randomly generated layouts, the quests all bear the same resemblance as they did in the previous games in the franchise. From the simple treasure fetch quests to the save a companion and fight an enemy quests, there’s just not enough spice to warrant playing past the main storyline.
Though, with that said, the title does present a wonderfully robust selection of characters to team up with on your adventures. While not every Pokémon in the world is playable, you can at least speak to or see all 720 characters to date in the franchise; an impressive feat for the game. Of course, Super Mystery Dungeon also showcases a number of new elements to get to grips with. Players can use alliances to deal great damage in succession against one enemy, while there are also new items such as Looplets and Emeras.
Attaching a looplet to a party Pokémon will allow the wearer to receive certain stat buffs, while nullifying various status ailments. However, these depend entirely on which emeras you attach to the looplet; you can boost attack, defence or remove confusion for example. And though you can only attach one looplet to each party Pokémon, you can use up to eight emeras on one looplet at a time, depending on how many slots they have. Both alliances and looplets are a superb addition to the overall strategy of the game and remove the usual mundane, sluggish feeling from level grinding.
Food and hunger has always been considered to be a necessary part of the dungeon-crawler. In Super Mystery Dungeon, players have the ability to pick up and eat apples once their belly starts to deplete. Apples are the game’s go-to for filling up a belly and, although these can be found scattered across the dungeons in abundance, they are also quite an annoyance – particularly when trying to explore a dungeon in full. Since most of your pack will be filled with these luscious treats, looplets, and healing items, there isn’t much space for those more intriguing and rarer orbs. Though players have the ability to expand their pack’s hold limit throughout the storyline, being able to stack apples in sets of five would be more adequate and less of a niggling frustration. But then, I’ve never been any good at packing the necessities for long-haul adventures.
Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon’s gameplay, then, certainly makes up for the title’s less than appealing storyline. Taking anywhere between 25 and 30 plus hours to complete the main tale, most of which can be attributed to a heavy grievance with lengthy and unskippable cutscenes, it’s actually Spike Chunsoft’s unfortunate script work that causes many a pained expression. Most of the character dialogue on offer feels like it was written by children and for children. And while this isn’t a problem for youngsters, older fans that have grown up with the franchise may be wearing a permanent grimace. It’s cheesy rather than endearing and painful instead of entertaining. Couple that with characters that echo the world is doomed but run themselves ragged chasing after an Ampharos that can’t walk straight, it’s a typical hollow and empty affair.
Visually, Super Myster Dungeon is really quite lovely to view and play within. Carrying the same visuals as Gates to Infinity, many of the dungeons have their own quirks, with some even depleting your HP as you progress through. It also helps that each area comes with its own distinct music, keeping the battles quite fresh with a good beat in the background. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help matters when the game’s pacing is slightly askew. While you’ll have ample opportunities to explore the same area in the beginning, your freedom to take out quests towards the end of the storyline is practically obliterated as your party is locked into back-to-back dungeons. It’s this pacing that can severely knock players into game over territory if they are not careful, culminating in a fruitless search for your team in Super Mystery Dungeon’s separate world located on the home menu.
Though there are moments when Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon shines during its gameplay with the neat addition of alliances and looplets, the title’s storyline just isn’t up to scratch. Perhaps newcomers should throw caution to the wind here, while die-hard fans are welcome to bite. But for now, it’s best to dig our way out of this mystery dungeon.
6.5/10
*Based on the PAL Version
Yeah I know what you mean. This shit is boring. It can’t even fully grasp my undivided attention.
-||These games are made for civilians||-
I tried it because it seemed bad ass because all of the legendaries were. This is nothing but two fucking kids whining about going on adventures and shit. Glad I rented this shit.
-||I tried a demo once from one of these games, my core shut down from boredom after 1 minute||-
Good. Maybe I should plot a fucking kidnapping. So I’ll finally rid your obsolete as out of this world. With this horrid peace of shit.
i want opinion of someone who have played old titles.
The Pokemon Mystery Dungeons games aren’t fantastic, but they’re a guilty pleasure of mine. Well… the older ones were anyway. I can’t speak for the new one because I don’t have it yet, but it looks better than the one that came before it because you can choose from all of the starters and not just 5 of them.
It was meh.
I probably have the fondest memories of the Red/Blue rescue team games, as everyone I knew had one of the two, and it was generally really fun playing it with everyone.
The Dark/Time/Sky rescue team games were also very good, pretty well a direct fun transfer from the originals, it was easy to jump back in, the art was pretty well the same, the graphics and gameplay on par with the previous rendition, the story even better, it was an all around good time.
I left this game feeling very little I had felt during those previous games, it was just kind of bland and generic to me, I dunno. I’ve heard mixed things online, you either love it with a passion or find it really meh. I’m definitely in that second, larger spectrum on this one.
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Another shit game o well
If they took the time to make an interesting story, then maybe it would be worth playing. But they didn’t, so it’s not.
ITT PEOPOLE WHO HAVENT PLAYED THIS GAME
the game is good, shit the ending have a nice plot twist for the series for me was one of the best games of the past year, the intro was a bit slow but the ending was so ducking good, I didn’t spected see arceus comanding all the Pokemon in the world to help, shit event when was the partner who leaves and not the protagonist I was in tears, and you can have all 720 Pokemon different species and all
If you are able to pass the first town tutorial, the plot goes fast as fuck
For me was the best in the series tied with sky explorers
Don’t listen troll in this tread who haven’t played this game it’s a solid 9/10
I played every Mystery Dungeon game other than Gates, and I can say this game was a MASSIVE disappointment-failure of a Mystery Dungeon. The first 6 hours is all tutorial; the story is written for 6 year olds; the difficulty spike was evident. Even during the tutorial you can be one shot by an enemy that uses a multi-hit move. Storage is a huge problem in the game since you’re forced to bring tons of oran berries and reviver seeds cause you WILL die.
On the final boss, I ran out of reviver seeds and berries so it was impossible to get past his second phase, since he can easily one shot you, so I had to go to Pelipper Island to stock up on items and restart the final dungeon from the middle. The plot itself seemed pretty good, but was overshadowed by the long breaks between story mission and random exploring quests right after.
This game had potential, but they really screwed up.
Git gud
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