Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Sky Review

	With the main series Pokémon games being some of the most beloved games in all of gaming, it’s easy for some of the lesser known spin-offs to get left in the dust. One of these spin-offs being Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, Pokémon’s take on the roguelike genre. The game features randomly generated dungeons, items, and enemies making each dungeon an adventure of its own. Out of the games in the series Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Sky stands out as the best, most notably for its incredible story that still stands strong to this day. So, let’s take a journey to the past and see why Pokémon Mystery Dungeon stands as one of my favorite games of all time.

	The game begins with you taking a personality test asking you questions to find out what Pokémon you are, and the results may surprise you! Afterwards you are able to choose from a list of Pokémon to be your partner for your journey based on the Pokémon you’ve become. You are then thrusted into a storm, trying to hold on to your friends’ hand but are unable to and slip into darkness. All the while your timid partner wants to join an exploration guild, but is too scared. As you lie unconscious on the beach you’re found, and introduced to your new friend. It’s then brought to your attention that you have in fact been turned into a Pokémon, and all that remains of your memory is your name. With nowhere to turn, you accept your partners request to form an exploration team. With your back to the beach, and nowhere to move but forward, your adventure begins.

	Wigglytuff’s Guild is the base of operations for apprentice explorers, and you quickly make yourself at home. Through the guild you learn that bad Pokémon are appearing rapidly, and many Pokémon are in dire need of help. As an exploration team you can take requests from other Pokémon to help them with a problem, whether it be a rescue, item retrieval, or even taking down a wanted outlaw. Now before setting out you need supplies, luckily the residents of Treasure Town can help you become more prepared for your endeavors. Kecleon Market supplies items for your journey as long as you can provide enough Poke, the currency of the game that can be found in dungeons, obtained from jobs, or by selling items. Now to avoid losing important items and money, you can visit Duskull Bank and Kangaskhan Storage. While storage has a limited amount of space, you are able to upgrade it through experience obtained from doing jobs, and increasing your exploration rank.  Now through all of your adventures, items and money can be stocked up relatively easily. While this is a natural progression in gameplay, the ability to hoard items negates any real difficulty curve. Another contributor to this issue is the lack of true urgency in story progression. While there might be a dire situation happening, such as there being no perfect apples left in stock, you can take as long as you’d like before progressing the story. In between your story points are the times where you do your freelance work, helping other Pokémon in need.

	Now while you’re in the dungeon itself, movement is set to a grid-based system, with a floor map that fills out the more you move around. Moves also function differently with this grid system, for instance bubble will travel in a straight line until it hits an enemy or a wall. Tackle and most other moves will only reach the space in front of you, while moves like explosion will hit everything around you. You are able to select moves and items from the menu, where as your partner has moves that you can set, and they use. You can turn moves on or off giving you slightly more control of your partners actions. In addition to the control of moves, you can teach you and your partner skills by feeding them gummies. There are many different types of gummies, with each type of Pokémon having a preference that will increase their IQ if you feed them the correct gummie. IQ Skills and stat increases can be unlocked through this allowing for passive abilities like being immune to sleep, or saving PP when using moves. This can be extremely helpful, especially when you can have up to four Pokémon accompany you in a dungeon. Now to have more Pokémon join your team, you’ll have to defeat them in battle, and they will occasionally ask to join you, you can instantly add them to your party and continue through the dungeon. If you don’t want them with you, you can easily reject their request, or after adding them to your party, you can simply send them home. It can be extremely useful having extra Pokémon with you, essentially doubling the amount of damage you put out, but also covering you and your partner’s weaknesses. Sadly, most story-based missions will not allow you to bring other Pokémon along, luckily you are still able to recruit Pokémon in the dungeon you are in. These Pokémon will accompany you until the end of the dungeon, but will not be around for most of the bosses found at the end of some of the dungeons.

	Now while the story appears to hinder the gameplay at times, it is one of, if not the best story that has spawned from the Pokémon series. While you are unable to remember anything about your past, you have an ability that allows you to see events from the past or future when touching things. Sadly, you aren’t able to activate this ability whenever, leaving many things a mystery still. Through you and your partners adventure this ability gives clues about the distortion of time, and why it’s happening. Through the main story you will primarily focus on restoring time to a stable state, where as the post-game story focuses more on you, and the events that caused you to turn into a Pokémon. Both sections of these stories will take you around 20 hours to complete give or take depending on the pace you decide to set for your adventure. Even after you complete both stories, you have the ability to enter codes for Wonder Mail missions, that allow you to explore secret dungeons, and even recruit legendary Pokémon to accompany you during your adventure. Moving on as to not spoil anymore of the story, during your playthrough you will unlock special stories about guild members that you meet, that you are able to access at anytime without losing any progress on your current playthrough. With all of this content you could easily spend upwards of 80 hours if you’re looking to complete everything this game has to offer.

	Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Sky, is truly a game that can fly under the radar due to the popularity of its main series counterpart. Bringing forth a different take on the turn-based gameplay, it’s a breath of fresh air, and keeps you on your toes. Despite the lack of a set difficulty curve, the punishment for fainting in a dungeon always lingers in the back of your mind, and keeps you on your guard. Though the gameplay can feel repetitive at times, the story bringing forth a unique perspective on the inner workings of the world we know as Pokémon, and will keep you wanting to push forward. Personally, I can say Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, retains the same impact and it had nearly 10 years ago, and after nearly 10 playthroughs the game retains that same magic.  With this game holding a special place in my heart as one of my favorite games of all time, it belongs in the hands of any fan of the Pokémon series.