The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Thread!

Hey, yay or nay to buying this game?

Buying which game? There's at least 4 of it!

Rescue Team - Kinda outdated and outclassed, but fun
Explorers of Time and Space Darkness - Outdated, buy the expansion Sky
Explorers of Sky - Allegedly the best
That Wii game - No plot, no export
Gates - Less starters, OK characterization, various surprises, maybe worth a look
Super Mystery Dungeon - I played through the main plot twice! Buy it! Postgame is not as robust as Sky.

Edit: Whoops, fix'd. There's no Space.

edited 9th Feb '16 7:45:01 AM by Malco

Took a pic of th info you've given me.

When I'm done here I'm gonna do some serious pondering. Thanks.

Buy Explorers of Sky and Super Mystery Dungeon.

Rescue Team is pretty outdated and the characters are kind of one note. But it isn't bad per say.

Explorers of Time/Darkness are literally lesser versions of Sky

Gates To Infinity is just awful (zero challenge, story is meh, very few playable mons, no postgame, and the extra stuff is super boring)

Super Mystery Dungeon and Explorers of Sky are both great, though. SMD has a great plot and characters, and is fairly difficult. It takes a while to get the ball rolling though.

EOS also has great plot and characters. It's not as difficult as SMD, but has a better postgame. Though it's hard to say which between the two is better.

Rescue Team: Rather out-dated, and IMO, the plot is nothing special. I'd skip it, being perfectly honest.

Explorers: Easily the best of the series. If you can, get Sky, though like with Rescue team, the gameplay is a bit slow and outdated. Story easily makes up for it though.

Gates: Everyone gives this game hell and I really don't understand why. Honestly, outside of the lack of mons, there's really nothing that makes this game better or worse than the previous games. It lacks after-game, but the story is still pretty good, and it's a good starting point for anyone wanting to get into the series thanks to being the most "n00b-friendly" game, and it sped the overall pace of the series up considerably. Plus, according to the Reddit, more and more people are starting to say it has the best characters in the series so far, with all of them feeling important and not just feeling like they're there.

Super: My second favorite game in the series so far. Has all the improvements of Gates while still providing a challenge for veteran players. I should warn though, going off of what I've seen from the Reddit, more and more people are starting to shit on it as time goes by, primarily because a lot of the early game feeling like pointless filler and the partner becoming more and more of Base Breaker as time goes on.

I'm beginning to feel like the PMD series may be falling prey to the dreaded Zelda cycle. As time goes on, I'm seeing more and more people praise Gates while hating on Super...

I'd recommend SMD to kinda ease you into the way the whole game series works and then sky as an actual challenge (you do kinda need some before hand knowledge to be able to get through some areas with retaliative ease and knowledge of how to beat some of the traps you WILL have to deal with such as monster houses. That being said there are a LOT of references in SMD that you will miss so you might want to go for sky first for that reason or if you only have the budget for one game.

edited 9th Feb '16 7:55:41 AM by lukeskylicker

Well yeah this game is easier to get into for all the anti-frustration features added. Players will have to deal with sky's (and other older games) "dumb AI" allies for a long time, among other things.

There's also Monster Houses in SMD but they are way easier to deal with, even the ones with the jerks that carry to the middle before summoning the ambush.

You mean like how Wind Waker is hated at first but an absolute classic now?

Haha. Though Zelda 2 will forever be the black sheep. I love it though!

If I have complaints about Gates (if it will be Vindicated by History) it is the low starter count plus I like none of those starters.

And if people are gonna hate Super when Gates is Vindicated, it will be for the return of hunger and the Recycled Premise.

But honestly, I liked the early game alleged "filler". I grew to like them and was worried about them when it all goes to heck later in the game. Also it is cool they added red herrings so it's hard to suspect anyone is involved in anything. I hated Pancham at first but he comes around later.

Gates Late-Arrival Spoiler ahead
I liked how Virizion "punished" Keldeo for making the mistake of just leaving her for (in her view due to Poor Communication Kills) no reason at all... and how they never get back together, which is usually the expected thing, but nope! In Super Mystery she tells you to rescue him but that's as far as it goes.

Speaking of Keldeo and Super Mystery Dungeon, why must it cost 10k gold to learn Secret Sword a.k.a. make him viable? Bah. That being said, why should I pay 10k for someone who will take a vacation on me periodically anyway.

Nope. Not spending any money on move tutor moves except on anyone who is proven to be available outside of Pelipper Island 100% of the time.

I also made the mistake of deleting Swagger from Ampharos to replace it with confuse ray. (Soft reset.)

edited 9th Feb '16 8:04:43 AM by Malco

Pretty much. I define the Zelda cycle as when a game with a new installment comes out and everyone hates it, but then the next game comes out and everyone suddenly loves the previous one yet can't stand the new one. It happen with MM when WW came out, then WW when TP came out, and then TP when SS came out... A Vicious Cycle indeed. As a casual Zelda fan though I generally tend to like em' all for what they were, but that's a completely different topic entirely.

Only time will tell when the next PMD game comes out if the same thing will happen to Super. I will say, I enjoy Super for what it is though.

I think a major part of Gates status in the fandom is due to a combination of being a Tough Act to Follow after the series favorite Sky and the fact that it felt a bit rushed to make it into the tail of Gen V before it ended. Considering it was the first true 3D installment of the series, there were likely a lot of things they needed to in order to get it going, making new Pokemon models being the half of it. I figured that's primarily why it had such a low mon count in comparison to the other games.

edited 9th Feb '16 8:09:40 AM by TokoWH

Eh. I dislike GTI for valid reasons. I was never one to fall victim to the Zelda cycle if the game was actually a great game.

I do love GTI's characters though. That's a definite strength it has.

edited 9th Feb '16 8:54:40 AM by EpicBleye

I'm not sure why people like to bash Gates, the only "real" complaint I have is the starter selection.

Back to Super, I REALLY need a way to stop or lessen allies going on vacations. If I can do this, I will be able to justify spending money, vitamins and sitrus berries on a third wheel. If there's a way to do this I would gladly do it.

edited 9th Feb '16 7:16:47 PM by Malco

I'm pretty sure you need to be a higher level than they are before they stop going on vacations. Not sure though.

Well, I already outlevel many of my Serene Village classmates and Sylveon and they still go on vacations.

It'll take a while before I outlevel the better allies, but at least protagonist and partner outstat them really hard now thanks to a lot of performance-enhancing drugs, so I don't need the ally as much.

edited 9th Feb '16 10:29:25 PM by Malco

i went into friendly meadow and immediately a bunch of burmy's started eating my reviver seeds, and then started eating my blast seeds to one shot me

im well overleveled this isnt friendly at all

Beat the final boss of Super. That was really good.

That "don't give up" scene... Super weak characters facing powerful foes with basically no chance of victory and fighting on anyway because they're the only ones left to fight is 100% my jam. Goooood shit good shit.

i personally felt like it was stereotypical shonen shoved down my throat, but that's just me. i really do not like shonen

Honestly, it reminded me of the neutral route final boss of Undertale. Only done infinitely better and didn't completely ruin the experience of the game for me. /does not like the neutral final boss of Undertale one bit, and will fight anyone who says it was designed well

but it was designed well. if you don't like it that's fine, but it was a well-designed and impactful final boss.

It makes sense from a story and narrative standpoint, I'll give it that, but it was still one of the most infuriating video game experiences for me. Only reason I ended up sparing said boss was because I knew that was what the game wanted, as opposed to the rest of the monsters in the game where I legitimately started to care for them, which ended up ruining a lot of the immersion for me. IMO, it wouldn't have been nearly as bad if the battle was shorter and it didn't pull that fake troll move at the end, but eh'.

Of course, this is a completely different topic altogether. Probably not fit for discussing on the PMD thread.

Back on topic, I'm close to 100%-ing the game. I legitimately only have like forty or so floors left to Destiny Tower before absolutely everything in my copy is done. Now here comes the painful part of whether or not I want replay the game in the future or keep my file at 100%. One save file limits, whhhhhhy? /shot

Pokemon always had one save file limits. Which is NOT a good reason for them to drop that infuriating limitation.

You could always buy another copy but that's what Game Freak wants you to do...

As you know, I restarted once.

I need Meowth for my Pay Day team (Persian, Smeargle, Meowth). I'm assuming I need to beat Meowth Theater for that?

edited 10th Feb '16 6:45:32 PM by Malco

mystery dungeon 1 final boss be like◊

mystery dungeon 2 final boss be like◊

mystery dungeon 3 final boss be like◊

mystery dungeon 3 final boss again be like◊

mystery dungeon 4 final boss be like◊

mystery dungeon 4 final boss also be like◊

Whoof. What a rough couple of quests I just did. First Zoroark tricked me into a monster house full of pokemon who immediately tripled their speed, then I had to fight three Golurks who knew magnitude. I managed to get through, but that'll teach me not to come prepared.

Well, Rescue is "1", Explorers is "2", Wii is "3", Gates is "4", Super is "5"

Sometimes a "meet up" can be guessed from the request if it's a trick, by the way the quest is presented. Sometimes. (Besides outright memorizing or looking it up, though.)

Yet, being over-prepared loses potential drops but it's better than dying on a floor where rescues aren't allowed.

edited 15th Feb '16 6:07:20 PM by Malco

Wii Ware has like one boss. Yes, I actually played these.

Also, on PMD stats, there is this. Applies only to Rescue and Explorers, though.

edited 15th Feb '16 2:22:37 PM by PinkCelebi

In Explorers of Sky, the time gears should be in the Temporal Tower so time can be fixed. So, why weren't the gears initially in the tower, anyways?

They needed a plot, that's why.