HOME | DD

Description
Holy cow, I managed to beat this game yesterday and... holy cow.

So um... Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon. Is it good? Is it bad? It varies. I personally liked it and think the good far outweighs the bad, but there were times where plot elements or gameplay made me want to turn the game off and chuck my DS out the window. I've always been of the opinion that each PMD game is of equal quality in their own rights, because for all the good there's something bad. And it's a matter of the sequels removing the good bits but fixing the bad bits. It always balanced itself out, but for all of Super's faults, I think it's just so strong of a game that it's still the best of the entire PMD series, even if there are like, one or two things the previous games did better. So let's talk about it without spoilers since it literally came out a couple days ago.

Gameplay! Lots of improvements here, especially compared to Gates. I think I'll bullet point them.

The Good

*Upset about the lack of Pokémon in Gates? Guess what? They're all here.
*In a hall or just stepped into a monster house and need to fall back with your team? No longer do you have to order them to fall back, waste a turn waiting on them to do so while you get hurt, and THEN fall back and waste another turn waiting on them to reclose the gap. Now you just take a step back and your team will automatically move with you by all pushing each other. At first it seems odd that pushing teammates is the default and you have to hold a button to swap places like in past games, but trust me, it's the default for a reason. As you progress you'll be falling back a LOT.
*Hunger's back and with a vengeance. Even in past games, starving to death wasn't a big issue because food was EVERYWHERE and your stomach drained slowly. That's why in Gates it was removed. It didn't make a big difference. In Super it appears that the rate you become hungry is faster, and food is not as easy to find. There's also more actions to drain your stomach as well as traps and such. Apples become one of the items you need to keep a stockpile of.
*Scarves are gone. In replacement are looplets which are essentially the exact same thing but you customize them with perks (IQ/Team Skills in past games) that only last for the dungeon. You find these perks in pickups throughout the dungeon, but each one has a turn limit before it explodes, so you need to decide whether you want to try picking up that perk or you want to deal with the enemies in the room. It's actually really fun to have the extra complexity of this decision and the challenge of needing to adapt to survive with what you can find in each expedition.
*Big one. You don't get ripped from the dungeon if your team fails. You just continue through and they'll revive for the cutscene, then pass out again until the dungeon is over. Of course this also means you'll have a harder time in dungeons if your team falls, so you want to revive them. Also story escorts. Same deal, you don't have to even waste your reviver seeds on them. Just finish the dungeon with one less member.
*You can do multiple missions in one dungeon again. Yay!
*Varying difficulties. Sometimes things would get so hard I would have to sneak around corridors, avoiding fights and letting clueless enemies pass me, warping other enemies that notice me away. The game would become stealth based. It was cool.
*Improved enemy AI. I had enemies constantly pathfinding to avoid me getting in range to attack while they could still use their ranged moves, rather than just charging me. In the first dungeon.

The Bad
*Difficulty spikes. Holy hell sometimes things get extremely unfair out of nowhere. You're doing fine then the next dungeon has all the enemies get room clearing moves and/or long range attacks that will leave your entire team dead from off the screen in a near endless loop. Getting oneshotted from off screen, then having that move travel through me and oneshotting my partner is not fun. Then the next dungeon is easy as piss. Thankfully the dungeons are short, so it's not long easy dungeons like the first two games, but short sadistic ones.
*No renaming recruits. I don't understand why we can't do this. If you never do anyways you'll be fine, but a few special members I would like to name.
*Only three members in your team. Technically you can get more through escort missions, but your actual team is only three strong. Tri-Force Heroes and now PMD. What's Nintendo's issue with four member teams in past games?
*Oh yeah, and accuracy has been nerfed big time. I once missed an attack five times in a row, without me or the enemy having any status boosts or nerfs being applied to us at the time. It becomes better after the post credits story line for some reason. I'm not sure. Not that I'm complaining.

As you see, not a lot of bad. Very solid gameplay. VERY.

Story on the other hand... it varies. Because spoilers this will be short but uh...

The Holy Freaking Cow This Is Amazing Buy The Game Now Just Trust Me

You get invested. It's the most invested I've been in a PMD game since BRT. You'll be cycling through emotions constantly to the point you feel drained by the end. The charming characters that you can't help but grow attached to even if sometimes you want to strangle them, the pacing, the audience interaction as you speculate on what's happening over and over again going through all these insane conspiracy theories, it's all great. They really got the story right here, everything they did, even familiar elements, they just did BETTER. I want to explain how, but again, spoilers. However,

The Fatal Flaw If The Rest Of The Game Wasn't So Amazing

The ending. Specifically the tail end of the ending. The rest of the ending before that is great. Now PMD is known for sad endings and this one has one. But to me it feels tacked on and doesn't make any sense. I legitimately don't understand what happened, and was hoping the post game would explain. But it didn't. It also leaves many unanswered questions and creates a few plot holes, while only answering one question that doesn't even pop up until towards the end. The more I think about the ending, the less it makes sense, and it almost spoils the entire experience. Bioshock Infinite's ending made more sense than this one. And that one took some stepping back, thinking, and reexamination of the game to truly piece together. But as I said, thinking about the ending only makes it worse because you realize to what degree it just doesn't... compute. I spoke with a few others who beat the game and they agree that the ending sure does create a lot holes in the story, as well as ignore or give a hand-wave answer to vital questions from the start of the game. For me the ending didn't create a sense of bitter sweet sorrow in my heart that makes me cry where few games can, but rather a confused kicked-in-the-balls feeling that doesn't get better. Which ironically would be fine and even fitting the game if this stuff was just explained in the post credits game. So if you're looking at the game for that sweet PMD Ending heartbreak, expect it to be broken for all the wrong reasons.

Description
Holy cow, I managed to beat this game yesterday and... holy cow.

So um... Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon. Is it good? Is it bad? It varies. I personally liked it and think the good far outweighs the bad, but there were times where plot elements or gameplay made me want to turn the game off and chuck my DS out the window. I've always been of the opinion that each PMD game is of equal quality in their own rights, because for all the good there's something bad. And it's a matter of the sequels removing the good bits but fixing the bad bits. It always balanced itself out, but for all of Super's faults, I think it's just so strong of a game that it's still the best of the entire PMD series, even if there are like, one or two things the previous games did better. So let's talk about it without spoilers since it literally came out a couple days ago.

Gameplay! Lots of improvements here, especially compared to Gates. I think I'll bullet point them.

The Good

*Upset about the lack of Pokémon in Gates? Guess what? They're all here.
*In a hall or just stepped into a monster house and need to fall back with your team? No longer do you have to order them to fall back, waste a turn waiting on them to do so while you get hurt, and THEN fall back and waste another turn waiting on them to reclose the gap. Now you just take a step back and your team will automatically move with you by all pushing each other. At first it seems odd that pushing teammates is the default and you have to hold a button to swap places like in past games, but trust me, it's the default for a reason. As you progress you'll be falling back a LOT.
*Hunger's back and with a vengeance. Even in past games, starving to death wasn't a big issue because food was EVERYWHERE and your stomach drained slowly. That's why in Gates it was removed. It didn't make a big difference. In Super it appears that the rate you become hungry is faster, and food is not as easy to find. There's also more actions to drain your stomach as well as traps and such. Apples become one of the items you need to keep a stockpile of.
*Scarves are gone. In replacement are looplets which are essentially the exact same thing but you customize them with perks (IQ/Team Skills in past games) that only last for the dungeon. You find these perks in pickups throughout the dungeon, but each one has a turn limit before it explodes, so you need to decide whether you want to try picking up that perk or you want to deal with the enemies in the room. It's actually really fun to have the extra complexity of this decision and the challenge of needing to adapt to survive with what you can find in each expedition.
*Big one. You don't get ripped from the dungeon if your team fails. You just continue through and they'll revive for the cutscene, then pass out again until the dungeon is over. Of course this also means you'll have a harder time in dungeons if your team falls, so you want to revive them. Also story escorts. Same deal, you don't have to even waste your reviver seeds on them. Just finish the dungeon with one less member.
*You can do multiple missions in one dungeon again. Yay!
*Varying difficulties. Sometimes things would get so hard I would have to sneak around corridors, avoiding fights and letting clueless enemies pass me, warping other enemies that notice me away. The game would become stealth based. It was cool.
*Improved enemy AI. I had enemies constantly pathfinding to avoid me getting in range to attack while they could still use their ranged moves, rather than just charging me. In the first dungeon.

The Bad
*Difficulty spikes. Holy hell sometimes things get extremely unfair out of nowhere. You're doing fine then the next dungeon has all the enemies get room clearing moves and/or long range attacks that will leave your entire team dead from off the screen in a near endless loop. Getting oneshotted from off screen, then having that move travel through me and oneshotting my partner is not fun. Then the next dungeon is easy as piss. Thankfully the dungeons are short, so it's not long easy dungeons like the first two games, but short sadistic ones.
*No renaming recruits. I don't understand why we can't do this. If you never do anyways you'll be fine, but a few special members I would like to name.
*Only three members in your team. Technically you can get more through escort missions, but your actual team is only three strong. Tri-Force Heroes and now PMD. What's Nintendo's issue with four member teams in past games?
*Oh yeah, and accuracy has been nerfed big time. I once missed an attack five times in a row, without me or the enemy having any status boosts or nerfs being applied to us at the time. It becomes better after the post credits story line for some reason. I'm not sure. Not that I'm complaining.

As you see, not a lot of bad. Very solid gameplay. VERY.

Story on the other hand... it varies. Because spoilers this will be short but uh...

The Holy Freaking Cow This Is Amazing Buy The Game Now Just Trust Me

You get invested. It's the most invested I've been in a PMD game since BRT. You'll be cycling through emotions constantly to the point you feel drained by the end. The charming characters that you can't help but grow attached to even if sometimes you want to strangle them, the pacing, the audience interaction as you speculate on what's happening over and over again going through all these insane conspiracy theories, it's all great. They really got the story right here, everything they did, even familiar elements, they just did BETTER. I want to explain how, but again, spoilers. However,

The Fatal Flaw If The Rest Of The Game Wasn't So Amazing

The ending. Specifically the tail end of the ending. The rest of the ending before that is great. Now PMD is known for sad endings and this one has one. But to me it feels tacked on and doesn't make any sense. I legitimately don't understand what happened, and was hoping the post game would explain. But it didn't. It also leaves many unanswered questions and creates a few plot holes, while only answering one question that doesn't even pop up until towards the end. The more I think about the ending, the less it makes sense, and it almost spoils the entire experience. Bioshock Infinite's ending made more sense than this one. And that one took some stepping back, thinking, and reexamination of the game to truly piece together. But as I said, thinking about the ending only makes it worse because you realize to what degree it just doesn't... compute. I spoke with a few others who beat the game and they agree that the ending sure does create a lot holes in the story, as well as ignore or give a hand-wave answer to vital questions from the start of the game. For me the ending didn't create a sense of bitter sweet sorrow in my heart that makes me cry where few games can, but rather a confused kicked-in-the-balls feeling that doesn't get better. Which ironically would be fine and even fitting the game if this stuff was just explained in the post credits game. So if you're looking at the game for that sweet PMD Ending heartbreak, expect it to be broken for all the wrong reasons.