Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team

"The battle system has been rescued!"

Pokemon has always had the same concept that all RPGs have: make the opponent's HP 0 before he can do the same to you. And, like all RPGs, that hasn't always been the easiest thing to do. Although, in some cases, it hasn't been the most fun thing to do either.
Gameplay: 10/10

For me, Pokemon has always, up until now, been missing one important thing. That is that the battle system has always been too bland. There was little strategy. I would have quit if double battles weren't introduced. Often, for any one given opponent Pokemon, you could simply just spam the same move until it's dead, and this would usually be the most efficient and quickest victory strategy. And it almost never required much thought to figure that move out. The show had a battle system that was much more realistic, which teased me like heck. (That explains why I stopped watching it.) They weren't just blurting out moves, they were blurting out TACTICS, such as move left, aim right, and so on. Their position on the battlefield ACTUALLY MATTERED. It didn't in Pokemon games...until now.

The battle system, in a nutshell, has been COMPLETELY redone. Not only can you have even more than double battles, you can CHANGE YOUR LOCATION on the battlefield! Using your turn you can:

1) Move one square in any direction, including diagonally.

2) Do a small, very weak tackle-like attack which is not considered a move, and available to all Pokemon. Since it is not considered a move, it has infinite PP.

3) Do something with an item.

4) Just wait...

5) Use any one of up to four moves.

Many moves have been changed quite a bit. While most strike an enemy only on the square in front of you, there are various ranges for moves. Examples include Bubble's ability to travel indefinitely in one direction until contact and Quick Attack's ability to strike two squares ahead, over water, ground, and even through allies. Some status effects have been changed, as well. For example, poison now only hurts you every ten turns, because some hallways can take 20-30 turns to get through. Because of this, they added badly poisoned, which damages every two turns.

Unfortunately, with greatness comes the catch. You can only control your team leader. The other Pokemon will follow you and use whatever move they want. However, you can give them general orders, such as to try to stay with you, or not to use a certain move. This has the possibility of becoming annoying, and even a drawback in some cases.

Graphics and sound: 8/10

I never have much worthwhile stuff to say about either of these. I'll just say this: they get the job done.

This is also worth mentioning: I own both Red and Blue versions, and the music in Blue is much better. To sum it up, it's a bit softer with more instruments.

Replay value: 10/10

I bought the game over three weeks ago, and I just can't put it down! I beat the main storyline yesterday, but after looking at some FAQs written, and from what I can tell, the main storyline is only a part of the game equal to the size of a Simpson's pupil, considering the entire eye is the entire game. And if you're a hardcore Pokemon fan like me, this sort of stuff never gets old.

Learning time: 4/10

This is the one fault in an otherwise perfect game. When you start it for the first time, the game picks your starter Pokemon and you pick your partner, then you see the start of the story, then you're just plopped into a small, easy dungeon. I didn't exactly know what was going on, or even where the heck I was supposed to be going. I just sorta waddled through, without much of an idea what the heck I was doing. I was playing using purely experience from past Pokemon games. It really has absolutely no tutorial levels, but the game explains its features as you progress. Through your in-game mailbox, you'll receive 'news', in which about the first 20 issues will teach you of many of the game's features. Fortunately, being a big Pokemon fan, I quickly caught on after learning the controls, and started kicking butt after some of this 'news' came in. I would recommend you at least understand how a game like Pokemon Sapphire works before buying this game, because many battle features still exist. If this is your first Pokemon game, it may not be until after the main storyline that you finally understand everything.

Story: 10/10

Aaah, the part some people don't want to know about, the story. Don't worry, this is spoiler-free. Basically, you play a human which has been transformed into a Pokemon. You form a 'rescue team' with your chosen partner, and go out rescuing other Pokemon that are lost, tired, fainted, etc. As the story unfolds, it goes through many plot twists, and you eventually find out exactly why you were transformed into a Pokemon. And, of course, we have the antagonist, a very evil rescue team bent on world domination (how original...:|) who will be a complete *** to you quite often. In fact, they hate you. And I hate them.

Overall, I found the story to be a great one. At times, it even got very unpredictable and random, and at other times, it got predictable enough for me to know what was going to happen next.

Overall: 10/10

Definitely, the stand-alone thing that made this game rock is how well they pulled off the redoing of the battle system. It added the many missing elements of what the battle system could be. I could see it being slightly better, but I know I'm happy.

Oh, and for you grammar cops out there, they corrected the only other thing wrong with this game, the CAPS problem. Yes, what was ORAN BERRY is now Oran Berry, and what was PIKACHU is now Pikachu. And so on.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 11/21/06