Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team

""Welcome to the World of Pokemon!""

The game opens with a personality quiz. This is used to determine you nature and that nature to determine which Pokemon you will play as. You can answer truthfully to find out who you are or try and get a starter you want. It doesn't really matter. You then select a partner who you will be fighting along sides with until the main story is over so choose wisely.

Gameplay: 8/10

This is basically a dungeon crawler type of game hence the name. The battle system is turn-based so you can take your time choosing your moves. You have a basic attack, (a button) and your normal moves. (Scratch, Growl, etc.) The main reason I bumped the score down on this is because the PP (Power Points) of moves were drastically decreased. Maybe because they're too powerful compared to the "A" attack. Also I think they over exaggerated the hit-to-miss ratio, making it seem every 3 or so turns you miss, wasting valuable PP. Other than that it's pretty good. (Except the Agility/Double Team/Sand Attack spammers get really annoying really quick.) But it's rare to find these types before the post-story. You pretty much have to learn the controls on your own when you start the game which is another reason for bumping the score. I didn't know how to use PP moves until I learned Ember... But it's not learning chess on your own it's fairly easy to pick up things about a quarter through the game. You can also recruit Pokemon! All 386! But good luck with that if your going to do it... Basically though you usually can have an average maximum of 3 members on your team. (The exception being having 3 members then recruiting a fourth in a dungeon or overall team body size is too large.) This is pretty much the "Pokedex" part of the game, recruiting all of those buggers, then choosing to train them or not.

Story: 7/10

The story is one of the best parts of the game. I loved it! (Especially the ending, which was very saddening.) The story is actually pretty short which is why I dropped the score. It seemed like the story just came to a sudden halt like, "That's it I'm done no more story good-bye." But after the story there's still plenty to do which kept me happy. New dungeons open for exploration, more legendaries/previously unavailable to join your rescue team, and a little teeny bit of extra story, but not much... I don't have much else to say about the story because you know... The story is a storyline which means if I told you I'd be giving out spoilers and I don't want to ruin it for you.

Graphics: 8/10

These graphics are pretty good for the game they're used for. I'm not saying they're bad they're actually pretty good for a game. Remember when you'd open up your team/party/pokemon section in the start menu of your R/S/Fr/Lg/E/D/P? Well think of the sprites or the tiny icons of the pokemon moving up and down. Except bigger a little bit and have a visual for every direction it faces. These are the graphics. The dungeons are similar to dungeons in DS or more recent games. It has a text box,(I hope it does or else they're wouldn't be a story would there?!) to display, err... Text. It shows facial expressions in a box above the text box. And on the actual game your character may do something. (If you laugh there's a shiny silver curved line above your head.) But they could have made more graphical use for the top screen other than for a map... It has the same graphics as the DS version so they could've done better with the GBA. But they are pretty decent graphics.

Sound: 8/10

The sounds aren't bad either. The same as RRT but still decent. It makes a beep here or a boop there when selecting games. And throughout dungeons music changes so you're not too bored. The music fits what goes on in the game too. A slow, easy-going tune for Pokemon square. Or a speedy tune for boss battles. I actually like the boss battle music too. Not much to be said here either as it's just sounds and they can be pretty much pointless if you turn the volume off so that's enough with the sound section.

Replayability: 7/10

The game is actually pretty replayable. You probably wont be literally "replaying" it for quite some time as there's loads to do! Dungeons do get old though but to try and keep it exciting the music and dungeon's appearance changes as you progress through them. As stated earlier there's 386 pokemon to recruit and train so that should keep you pretty busy for a little bit. After you finally do manage to 100% beat the game, (All items, lots of money, all 386 pokemon level 100, etc.) which I don't think has been done yet for the exception of hackers, You will probably not replay this or even delete your data to just start a new game that you probably wont even finish the main story again. It does get repetitive after you beat the story and defeated all dungeons and currently working on 386 level 100 pokemon. But I have about 50 of those, (50 recruited not level 100 FYI.)and I have 50 hours logged and I still find myself playing this more than my Pearl version. So that should tell you it's pretty good.

Rent or Buy?

It depends. Rent it and try it out and send it back if you don't like it. (Obviously an option.) But I do recommend this game to those who are long-time fan boys/girls of the pokemon franchise or someone who's never played a pokemon game but loves rpg games as this is a very addicting game. Well that about does it for this review and thanks for reading this one out of the 30-40 reviews out at this time. I hope it helped you made your decision. Before you go let me remind you that this is my first review so it may or may not be good advice.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/13/07