Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team

"Mystery Dungeon is indeed a mystery."

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Blue has to be by far, one of the worst pokemon games I have ever played. I got this game to see what it would be like to play as a pokemon and in my honest opinion, they should have kept the trainers.

Introduction
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When turning on this game and starting a new file it asks you a series of questions. Why? Because it wants to decide which pokemon fits you best. You may or may not be confused. If you are, read on. If not, then go to the next paragraph and start reading sounds. Now what I mean by "it wants to decide which pokemon fit you best" is that when you answer a question, it has a hidden score. That score can be 1, 2, maybe even 3 or 4. And each time you answer a question it goes and adds that score up to the personality that matches your answer. For example lets say you chose "I want to play around all night instead of studying!" Well that might be 3 points added into naive personality. (Note: that question is not an actual question!) So when your done answering all your questions it adds up all the points and which ever personality got the most, thats the pokemon your going to get. Each personality is assigned to a pokemon, which is how it decides your pokemon. In my honest opinion, thats an ok quiz and also a pretty bad one. I like being surprised by a pokemon that matches my personality, but I also like to pick the pokemon I like best too! The plus side about this is that you get to pick your partner.

Sound - 2/10
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Theres not much to say except the sounds and music get repetitive. Some of the music loops every 1 to 2 minutes while some may loop every 4 to 5 minutes. The sounds from battling or selecting an option gets old REAL QUICK. It gets to the point where I actually have to sometimes just turn the volume down or just stop playing the game due to the annoyance of it looping over and over so quickly.

Graphics - 8/10
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The graphics are a little off, and by off I mean different from the other Pokemon games. This isn't a bad thing but instead a good thing. Some may or may not know this, but doing all the graphics in a game (especially a game like this) takes A LOT OF WORK. Each pokemon is made pixel by pixel. But I thought some of the graphics on here were, excuse my language, half-assed, while others took probably about an hour or two to make. For example, some of the graphics in the dungeon were, excuse my language again, half-assed, while graphics in the Blue Team Base, Village, etc were exceptionally good. I like the pokemon sprites too, only I thought they could have added more variety to the movement, moves, emotions, etc.

Gameplay - 2/10
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Here comes the major downfall of the game. At first when playing I figured this would be interesting. The dungeon never being the same, random pokemon coming out to fight you. But I was wrong. Not about the dungeon never being the same or about the random pokemon coming out to fight you, but about me finding this interesting. When I first started playing this game, I encountered a sunkern which killed me in about 4 turns. I had just started playing so what the hell, of course Im gonna die. But progressing through the game it just got boring. I started to not die as often and my partner (pikachu) could kill almost any pokemon with one of its moves. Going through more levels and levels I found out that it got EXTREMELY ANNOYING finding the stairs and going up about 20 levels just to get to the end. And what made it worst was if you are poisoned, you have low belly, trying to get your client to its destination, etc, you would have to reach the stairs before the pokemon killed you, your client, or before you fainted. Sometimes reaching the stairs does not help if you have a low belly. Once you have low belly and have no more apples or seeds, its literally survival of the fittest. And in this case your most likely going to lose unless your in a small cave and at the end or if you just have a lot of health.

Now I could go on and on about how bad the gameplay was but I wouldn't want to ruin the rest of the game for all the people that still want to get this game.

Replay Value - 0/10
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This game is basically a replay of each day. Only different parts are the story line, and new rescue missions which get boring because they are the same damn thing over and over. There might be other things to do but I don't feel like playing this game over just to find out.

Overall Score - 2/10
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This game should be a 1, but I gave it a 2 only because they used a new idea in the line up of Pokemon games. This game definitely stands out from the other Pokemon games, but from what I have played, not in a good way.

Rent or Buy?
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To tell you the truth, despite what I said, go to a local game store and buy a pre-played one. I think the last time I saw a pre-played on at my Eb games, it was on sale for about $19.99 or so. If you or whoever you bought it for doesn't like it, you should still have the receipt, return it for your money back or sell it on Ebay to see if you can get more money.

Conclusion
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This game is horrible. Some people might disagree while others agree. To tell you the truth I don't care really. This is my opinion and this is my review.

This game really taught me a lesson, and that lesson is stick to the old pokemon style games. So as for me Im going to stick with my Pokemon Blue, Red, Yellow, Gold, and Emerald. As for PMDB and PMDR(which I also bought and paid dearly for) they right now are going to be given to my friend.

And with that, I hope you like my review, and thanks for reading.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 10/20/06