It gets a hell of a lot harder once you defeat Primal Dialga. Not to mention some of the post game dungeons are absolutely sadistic.
Zero Isle South is my favorite dungeon. Unfortunately I couldn't mention the few dungeons I liked, and why, because of the length limit. But it should also say something about the intended audience of the game that almost all people I've spoken to who played PMD 2 for the story refuse to touch Zero Isle with a forty foot pole.
I've only played the first game.
However, the difficulty has a HUGE spike when you get to the extra dungeons. Especially the 99 level ones.
Fight. Struggle. Endure. Suffer. LIVE.
The post game dungeons are indeed much more difficult.
You're reset to level 1, and you can't take any items with you.
Funny, the games also get a bunch of flak for Fake Difficulty. Mainly, it focuses on the fact that by the time you hit the halfway point, the dungeons just give you the bird and start making you go through multiple Humiliation Conga Lines with traps and Monster Houses galore. Watch as you appear to be breezing through a dungeon, then on the 6th floor, your Reviver Seeds and Oran Berries get stickied, your team steps on an Explosion Trap twice in a row, and sludge makes half of your food items go rotten. Then top it off with a room full of enemies that can often get Agility boosted later on to completely wipe your party (or at least you, since you're often stuck being the only one in the room, not being allowed to move to let your team in to help).
Newbies to Roguelikes?
IMO, that's like saying the main games aren't fun because you don't start over if you lose. In general, I feel like PMD gets trashed for a lot of the same things the main series does anyway. I've also heard a lot of people say "the gameplay is repetitive" but isn't it also kinda repetitive to run into Zubat and Geodude after Zubat and Geodude in the main series?
The main games are easy enough that starting over when you lose wouldn't even be a problem if you know how the game works.
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This is what happens when you try to make a Roguelike appeal to the masses.
As a fan of the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, I can honestly say it's about the novelty, not the gameplay.
When I first realized what these games were — Pokémon - themed Rogue clones — I was amused by the concept. I'm also amused by how the little creatures have gorgeous sprites (even better than those in the recent Gold and Silver remakes), and they're not only talking coherent English now, but telling a very epic, hilarious, and heartfelt story. It's a well-written Pokémon Fan Fic which deserved to be its own game. If you're into Pokémon-centric fanfiction, especially transformation stories, you should have no trouble appreciating these games. It's hard to ignore the beautiful music, too.
However, gameplay is another matter. In a nutshell? It's Easy, So It Sucks.
I'm not saying the game should have been harder, I'm saying the concept was a contradiction from the start. Roguelikes are niche games; the whole appeal is how the game could screw you over at every turn, so each step must be calculated and resources must be micromanaged. Getting to Floor 200 of a dungeon without dying is something exhilarating, it means you were both skilled and lucky where it counted. To really enjoy these games, you should get drawn into a certain mindset where you don't expect to win, but you're going to go as far as you can anyway.
But Pokémon... is the dictionary definition of mainstream. To put "Pokémon" into the title, you've got to appeal to the fans. Give the player enough storage to hold nearly 50 reviver seeds. Allow powerleveling. And no dungeons over 20 floors. After all, what good is the story if nobody's going to see the ending?
But without that element of intense risk and thrill, dungeon crawling becomes just. Downright. Boring. Hold the run button, fill the map, attack sometimes. That's literally all. The games deserve every negative criticism they got for monotonous gameplay. Even the casual players found it wasn't exciting unless they were doing poorly, and just narrowly escaping with their lives. Because that's the Roguelike showing a tiny bit of its true nature.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is just an unfortunate series: the gameplay can't work. But it does deserve thunderous applause for story, presentation, and everything it does right.