Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team

"A good pokemon game that isn't pokemon for once."

Seems like it's the first since the Stadium Games or Puzzle Challenge...

Anyway, yeah, I'm here to talk about why I think this is a pretty good game. Note that this review can be applied, word for word, to Mystery Dungeon Red also. They're the exact same game. Which is a pretty good thing, because if you have both, you can play them together, and rescue yourself with the other one if you die in a dungeon. It's dual-pack, too, no weird cables or anything. Just slip in Blue into the DS slot and Red into the GBA slot, and off you go!

The story in this game is pretty standard for a pokemon game, you know, become a high ranked trainer/pokemon with some important side-quest (AKA the main game >_>), with some twists. For one, you're a Pokemon, not a newbie trainer. You do start out at Level 5 as your starter does. Another twist is that you have partner, who can talk to you, as can all pokemon. You're the same pokemon all the time, and your partner is always on your team, but after the game, you can change what pokemon you are, and who's on your team. There are a lot more then 3 pokemon you can choose from, too. While you don't say I WANNA BE CHARMANDER or whoever, you take a little personality quiz, which decides who you are. If you don't think you're like your favorite pokemon, just check out the Personality Quiz FAQ. But if you are, for example, timid, male, and you like Cyndaquil, today's your lucky day! There are all 9 starters, Pikachu, Machop, Skitty, and a few others.

In this game, the plot is that you mysteriously turn into a pokemon. There are natural disasters destroying the world, and you have to stop them, and on the way you solve the mystery about why you become a pokemon. Don't want to go more specific then that, then this would be full of spoilers...

The gameplay, contrary to what you might hear, isn't THAT different from the regular Pokemon series. It's definently different, but it isn't actually real-time, as some poeple seem to think. It's still a mostly strategy-based battle system. For each action you do (taking a step, attacking, etc), everyone else on the map also does. But some differences are that you can only take 3 Pokemon into a dungeon at one time (if you recruit a 4th in the Dungeon, that's the limit for as many as you can have at one time). There's also Body Size. For example, Squirtle is size 1, Mantine is Size 2, and Groudon is Size 4. There don't seem to be any size 3... anyway, your size limit for your team in total is 6. That doesn't mean you can take 6 Squirtles (yes, you can get starters in the wild), the 3/4 poke thing still applies. But this just "balances" it more. Anyway, almost all the pokemon are size 1 anyway. Even 3rd stage evos of the Starters are size 1.

Another new thing this game introduces is attack range. In the old pokemon games, moves with more power or accuracy are just better. But in here, there's a new factor: Range. This might put Bubble over Water Gun. Bubble goes in a straight line forever until it hits someone or a wall. Water Gun only goes one space. And Dungeons are usually pretty big, so attacking from a distance is pretty useful.

Yet another new thing is the way you get new Pokemon. After a certain point in the game, if you defeat a wild pokemon in a dungeon and have less then 4 pokemon with a total of 6 body size with you, if you're lucky, they'll ask to join your team. You can say yes or no. No Poke Balls needed, because when they're not in your party, they go back to a habitat which you can buy (if you don't have a pokemon's habitat, they won't ever ask to join you) until you need them, in which case you can just visit them and ask them to tag along for a mission.

In this game, instead of Gyms and such, you go in Dungeons on missions. You get mail every day, and you can check the bulletin board at the post office for rescue requests. You can accept them and do them. Obviously you get some cash and sometimes some items or rarely a TM for doing these. Of coures, there are story events in dungeons too. When you're done with the story, you're in free mission mode, where you can just do missions, evolve, etc.

Things that are still the same are types and such. Bug still beats Psychic, Fire still beats Bug, etc. Moves are still the same type. Items are kind of different, but not much. There are no potions or anything anymore, just berries, which you just find on the floor of dungeons.

A few things that I don't like so much are that if your main character or possibly partner is defeated in a dungeon, you lose ALL your items and ALL your money. This can be easily remedied by having someone rescue you online, but it takes time, especially since the codes (you tell someone a game-generated password, no wi-fi is needed) are very, very long, and some dungeons are really deep, and it'll take them a while to rescue you if you're deep in a tough one. Of course, if you have Red and Blue you don't need a code, just use the double game pak thing I mentioned before. Of course, if you don't have someone to rescue you, you can just store important items and money in storage outside dungeons, but it does get rather annoying. But I don't think there's a limit to how much stuff you can store, so that's fine. You'll find yourself storing things rather often, too, because you can only carry 20 items. And if you have two Oran Berries, that takes up 2 spaces. It's not Oran Berry x2 like it is in the other games. A few items are still whatever x however many, but those are offense items that are kind of useless once you're at a high level, mostly.

Another annoying thing is hunger, although this one isn't that bad. Every bunch of steps you take, you lose a belly percent. If you get to 0, you faint. You start each dungeon with 100 (if you eat a lot of food or certain types, your belly can grow), and Apples, which are pretty common, give you 50 back, so it's not that bad. I guess this was introduced so you can't walk in circles to get all your health back, because in this game, every few steps, you and all your party members get an HP point back, if they're not full. If this wasn't there, this game would be way too hard...

The Graphics in the game are the same as the GBA version. Not really imprsesive, but pokemon game's graphics are never really high-tech. Plus, if the game is good, Graphics doesn't really matter, as long as you can tell what's going on, and it's certainly each to tell that.

The Music is pretty standard too. There's a town theme, a house theme, cave themes, just like the regular pokemon game. You'll get used to it in no time if you play regular pokemon games a lot.

One of the biggest problems with the game is that it's easy if you stop and level up once in a while, which happens a lot faster then it does in the "real" pokemon games. Also, it's pretty short. Actually, I'm not sure if I can say that... the in-game story part is short, but there actually are all the pokemon catchable in this game (including Mew, Celebi, etc), and you can unlock cool dungeons after the game to get them, and that can take a looooooooong time, so it might not really be short. But if you only care about in-game, this game is pretty short.

Overall, I'd say, despite it's flaws that this is an excellent game. Very fun, and it'll destract you from the infuriating wait for Diamond and Pearl. For a while, anyway. For the Buy, Sell or Rent part, definently Buy.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/19/06, Updated 03/29/07