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Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team Review
Written by Dan Biersdorf on Thursday, September 28, 2006
User Score
Lots of depth.
Repetitive missions. High learning curve.
Ah, finally the first Pokemon title in the RPG genre has made its way onto the Nintendo DS... and it's absolutely nothing like you would expect. For all of you hoping this was the next big entry in the Pokemon series, then stop reading now and come back in 2007. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Force (for Nintendo DS) and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Force (for Game Boy Advance) are not the next installments in the franchise. They are, like many games before them, spin-offs to cash in on the Pokemon brand name. As of now the DS has seen two Pokemon games, Pokemon Dash which was garbage and Pokemon Trozei which turned out pretty good; Blue Rescue Force and Red Rescue Force lie somewhere in the middle.
The Pokemon series has been pitched off to a variety of developers over the years, and this time Chunsoft got to take a stab at the series. Notorious for creating games dubbed only as "dungeon crawlers" it's no surprise that the Rescue Force titles fall under the same category. Basically you'll be traveling through randomly generated caves as a team of four, chosen from any of the 386 available Pokemon. Team building and raising each character's level is just as intoxicating and deep as the traditional Pokemon games, and is definitely one of the high points of the game.
But you won't be able to obtain all of these Pokemon from the get go. Instead you'll start the game as a random monster (based on a series of questions asked at the beginning of the game) and be partnered up with a monster of your choice. From there you and your partner will start your own rescue team to help those in need of... well, rescuing. After accepting these missions you'll travel through large dungeons infested with a variety of blood-thirsty monsters, while obtaining experience, money and items a long the way. Eventually you will your way to the final floor (how convenient that they're always stranded on the top or bottom floor) and rescue a trapped Pokemon.
And that's basically it. Once you go on your first mission, the experience pretty much repeats itself over, and over, and over again. You'll discover new creatures, you'll endure more difficult endeavors, but at the core of it all it's pretty much the same old boring mission. Worst of all is that the gameplay can be very frustrating. Defending yourself and your partner can get really tough resulting in unwanted retries. Even attacking can be incredibly difficulty, especially early on if you're stuck with a worthless monster (avoid Machop.) To top it all off Chunsoft had the grand idea of forcing your Pokemon to keep their "belly" filled with food regularly, to prevent your him from fainting (leading to another retry).
What really surprised me about these games was the extremely high learning curve. There's little to no tutorial on how to actually play the game, and with the Pokemon series being recognized as a kid's game, it seems bizarre that this would even be allowed. Unlike the traditional Pokemon games, Blue Rescue Force and Red Rescue Force are very complicated and have a great amount of depth. After a couple hours I still didn't understand how everything worked, and it's the first impressions that really forms one's impression of a game as a whole.
For the first time, the two different versions have appeared on two different platforms. Don't be fooled, however. While the games are extremely similar, Blue Rescue Force for the Nintendo DS is the superior version. With the advantage of two screens you'll have less clutter then you would with Red Rescue Force on the Game Boy Advance. Touch screen controls are also present (but not required!). They're pretty dreadful, but at least it's an option. If you do happen to own both games you'll be able to take advantage of the duel cartridge bonuses on the Nintendo DS by transferring teams from one game to the other.
Being a hardcore Pokemaniac, it really hurts to see yet another Pokemon game succumb to mediocrity. What happened to the days of wonderful spin-offs such as Pokemon Pinball or Pokemon Puzzle Challenge? While the effort to make a great game is here, the numerous missteps have caused the games to fall flat on their faces, and the result is a mixed bag that is really only going to appeal to the die hard "dungeon crawler" fans. So sit back, we've still got a ways before we get our hands on what we really want next in the Pokemon franchise because Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue and Red Rescue Force are definitely not it.
posted June 28, 2007