The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series developed by Chunsoft/Spike Chunsoft and published by Nintendo, has been a popular Pokemon spin-off, mixing Pokemon with the “Mystery Dungeon” style of roguelike games. In particular, Explorers of Darkness and Time have generally been acclaimed to be among the best Pokemon games in general. In yesterday’s Pokemon Direct, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon has finally come back after an almost 5 year absence with Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX, with a demo currently out on the eShop.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX is a deluxe remake of Blue Rescue Team/Red Rescue Team, the first set of games in the series. As with all Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, you are a human that wakes up as a Pokemon in a world only inhabited by Pokemon. However, it’s hardly an ideal isekai, as the world is regularly struck by natural disasters and hostile Pokemon still exist, with the added distinction being that they just talk now. These Pokemon societies have responded by forming Rescue Teams to help Pokemon in need and fight trouble-doers lurking in the ever-changing mystery dungeons.

One of the first things to know about Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is that your player Pokemon is chosen from a small pool based on a personality test. Unless you’re gunning for a specific Pokemon, it’s a fun kinda thing to see what kinda Pokemon you’re associated with. Even then, you do get to choose what Pokemon your partner will be; your partner is pretty much your other main party member throughout the game and the character yours will bounce off of the most. In this test, I was diagnosed as a hardy type, making me a Bulbasaur while I chose Cubone as a partner because, well, Cubones are cool.

The Rescue Team DX demo consists of the whole beginning part of the game before the first proper boss. Now a Pokemon, you meet up with whatever partner you chose and you both wind up going into a mystery dungeon to save a Caterpie. Your partner’s like, “this is sick” and decides to team up with you to create a Rescue Team. After doing a bunch of jobs, you’re eventually given a job to rescue the Diglett that created the handy warp point between home and the post office for you… and the game ends, because this leads into the first real boss fight of the game. I feel that after the boss fight should have been the actual stopping point, but what can you do?

The gameplay of Rescue Team DX is standard Pokemon Mystery Dungeon fare, though it’s been so long since I’ve played the original, that i’m not sure if there are any concrete gameplay changes. There’s a quality-of-life change of the game telling you what moves an enemy Pokemon is weak to if you’re facing them with the move menu open, but that might have been in Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon. Again, it has been a long time. What is new though is that you can gain control of your partner Pokemon from the start, which I’m pretty sure was something you can only do after doing something in the original games’ post-game content. It’s a welcome change if your partner has moves more useful for the current situation but you don’t want to rely on an AI to do it.

Mystery dungeons are simple randomly generated dungeons with items and enemies strewn about. You walk toward an enemy and you can bring up a move menu to attack them. There’s some minor strategy elements in that some attacks can hit at range, so positioning is a thing to consider in that case. As you walk around a hunger meter goes down and you start taking damage when you’re starving, though, the demo dungeons are quick and brief enough that it likely won’t be an issue.

You delve into these dungeons to do assigned missions like rescuing a lost friendly Pokemon or escorting a Pokemon to another. It’s all very simple and easy to understand, though because of where the demo ends, you won’t get into the recruitment and team building that provides additional goals and complexity to the experience.

Besides, a lot of people actually come to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon for the story rather than the gameplay, which is actually more in-depth than the mainline games. However, again, because of where the demo ends, you don’t really get a sufficient enough hook beyond “why am I a Pokemon?” Again, I feel that a better stopping point would have been after the boss fight, like when the first NPC Rescue Team shows up.

New to Rescue Team DX is the different art style. It has a very storybook vibe, with environments looking like picture book backgrounds and characters having fuzzy textures to give the impression that they were drawn into the world. There’s even small crosshatch shading to help emphasize shadows. I think that it’s a pretty nice look that helps set this game apart from the mainline series, giving it its own distinct feel. If they’re going to follow up Rescue Team DX with further Mystery Dungeon games/remakes, I hope they stick with this style or refine it further.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX seems like it will be an okay time and a faithful reintroduction of the series to a new generation. It’s just that I personally feel that the demo isn’t fully representative of what people actually like about the game because it keeps things too simple. That said, I look forward to hearing more about the game to see what kinda things they add to the experience.

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