This also amounts to most of Mystery Dungeon DX's plot. The salient point really, though, is that you are just a bunch of swell guys and everyone wants to hang out with you. But for them to join you, you need to have unlocked the right "camp", which costs coins, which you need to visit more dungeons to earn, where you'll meet more Pokémon that need you to have unlocked other camps, and so on. If you beat a Pokémon in a dungeon there's a random chance they'll want to join you, tagging along for the rest of the quest and, at the end of it, being able to join you as a squad option permanently - likewise for those issuing the quests too. You'll also still be collecting Pokémon as you go, although there's a twist to how that works, too. Everything in the dungeon moves when you move, so while it feels real-time it's really turn-based through and through, and as you get further into the game, where the puzzles get more elaborate and the enemies tougher, plotting your way through can become a genuinely interesting challenge. Your inherent knowledge of type matchups, utility moves, status effects and all of that will remain incredibly useful - although Mystery Dungeon kindly indicates what moves are super effective and what aren't through its UI - but you'll need to think further ahead and in a greater number of dimensions for success. The combat is turn-based and quite strategic, a mixture of the four-move, rock-paper-scissors familiarity of the main games and a bit of XCOM, if anything, in the importance of positioning and range. It's a departure from the main Pokémon games, of course, but there are actually more similarities there than you'd think.
![pokemon mystery dungeon rescue team dx review pokemon mystery dungeon rescue team dx review](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qdOuzxBGPKU/Xmc1LjheBEI/AAAAAAAAWqk/K53rmaMibOYewSy-PLUowTbCnPHc1uAewCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/pokemon-mystery-dungeon-rescue-team-dx.jpg)
The nuance comes in how you manoeuvre your party of Pokémon through the dungeons, ordering them in specific ways for specific circumstances, and in how you manage your inventory, trading off between items you want to keep with you and space for picking up more. These dungeons have random layouts each time you visit, with wild Pokémon that attack, various traps and obstacles, items to collect, and a friendly Pokémon in need of rescue.
#Pokemon mystery dungeon rescue team dx review full#
There's a central town hub, which is small but full of endearing Pokémon roaming around or managing one of a handful of important shops, and then there are the dungeons that you visit for the actual quests. The setup is all very typical for the mystery dungeon crawler. Slightly magical, slightly unsettling, a tiny bit forgettable, and at the same time a tiny bit of it will be burned into your mind's eye. Then there's the fact you are literally a human trapped inside the body of a Pokémon, and that you keep having these rather disturbing dreams, and all the contrast and saturation seems to be dialled-up beyond the natural average, and yes. The pixel art is gone, replaced with a kind of watercolour splash, and as such you're reminded, a bit, of that classic quest in Oblivion (no that's not the game I was thinking of) where you're stuck inside a painting. Mystery Dungeon DX is a remaster of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Blue Rescue Team and Red Rescue team games that came out in the early noughties, and one of DX's headline revisions is how it looks.
![pokemon mystery dungeon rescue team dx review pokemon mystery dungeon rescue team dx review](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/F2H1fqFSkbg/maxresdefault.jpg)
Much of that dreaminess comes from a fairly obvious source. A playable hypnagogia daydream: all quite pleasant while you're there but then as soon as you leave, poof! It's gone from memory. It's apt because Mystery Dungeon is one of those dreamy, trancelike, somewhat transient games. Which is apt! Or we'll make it apt anyway, if you'll bear with me. I am trying to think of what game it was that Pokémon Mystery Dungeon DX reminds me of and honestly, I just cannot remember. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon DX is pleasant and cheery, but for every moment of depth there's an accompanying frustration.