Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team

"A beautiful dungeon crawler, just turn down the volume a bit...."

Well, the premise behind Pokemon:: Mystery Dungeon is that one day you wake up, and you're a Pokemon! What do you do? Will anyone help you in this strange new world? It's all up to you and your partner to find out!

Graphically the game is stunning, every Pokemon is represented by their own sprite, and the sprites are all very lively, even when you don't press any buttons, every Pokemon on screen is doing something. Dungeons all seem to look a little different from each other, but it doesn't look like developers went overboard with details there, each location is pretty much similar to the last one with a few different things depending on where you are. Attacks and Abilities also have a multitude of animations, keeping the battles fresh for quite some time.
Graphics: 10/10

Every location has different music for the most part, but it's short music and keeps repeating itself, I find myself cutting the volume just so I don't have to put up with the music. Attacks get a lot of different of sound effects, certainly more than enough to get the job done. Terrible music aside, the sounds in this game are very high quality, just what I was expecting from the series.
Sound: 7/10

The game really shines in the gameplay area, with unlimited missions, and almost seamlessly carrying over every aspect of the old Pokemon games into a whole new format while adding in a few new moves. Big fans of the series will notice that almost every item is either directly taken from past Pokemon games, or is related to Pokemon in a new and interesting way. The difficulty can be staggering at times, dungeons may be easy, but then you may have to attempt to beat a boss many times if you don't have the right team. With hundreds of Pokemon to raise and recruit, this game can keep you going for many hours. Though some people will find that the dungeons get stale rather quickly.
Gameplay: 10/10

Overall this game gets a 9/10 score because I was expecting far better musical quality than what I was given. Don't waste your money renting this one, if you're a fan of Pokemon, or just looking for a fun dungeon romp, buy this game right away!

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/21/06