Game Review: Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX

The Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games are probably one of the most successful spin-off games in the Pokémon franchise. The original roguelike games were released simultaneously on Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS back in in 2005.  Mystery Dungeon was an already existing series of games developed by Japanese developer Spike Chunsoft starting from 1993. Tsunekazu Ishihara had previously worked for the developer before moving over to the Pokémon Company and was happy to greenlight their own spin-off in the Mystery Dungeon series when Seiichiro Nagahata and Shin-ichiro Tomie approached him offering to make an easier version specifically for the series. The rest as they say is history, the series grew to be quite popular among fans despite less than stellar critical reviews.  Spawning over seven entries since the initial release it seems appropriate Nintendo and the Pokémon Company would choose to revisit the franchise with a brand-new remake of the original title. 

Developed once again by Spike Chunsoft and published in collaboration with The Pokémon Company and Nintendo, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX is a top-down roguelike RPG in which you play as a team of Pokémon who explore procedurally generated dungeons on rescue missions.  The game was released exclusively on Nintendo Switch on March 6th 2020.  Critically the game received similar reviews to the prior entries, amassing a critical average of 69 from media outlets.  On the commercial end the game did phenomenally well, totalling over 1.99 million total unit sales as of December 31st 2022.

The narrative of the game follows the player character who is a human who for some mysterious reason wakes up in the body of a Pokémon in a strange world where Pokémon can talk and have formed their own society. Aware that you are a human that has somehow turned into a Pokémon, you meet another Pokémon who offers to ally with you to form a rescue team while you try to piece together how you came to exist in this world.  Natural disasters have recently started plaguing the land and have frenzied Pokémon into wild anger.  As a rescue team it will be your job to venture into different biomes to battle these frenzied Pokémon and rescue other Pokémon in peril. While the two narratives appear seemingly separate initially, you’ll soon discover there’s an underlying connection between your presence in this world of Pokémon and the frequent tremors that might spell disaster for the entire world. 

I may be a bit biased in this review on account of my nostalgia for it, but I really do like the narrative of this game.  I think the fish out of water trope works in this sense because it’s framed as an interesting mystery to tie you to the plot.  Knowing you’re a human who for some reason turned into a Pokémon gives you enough justification to pursue the story to try and figure out the how and why of it.  It helps that the characters who inhabit the story are all so likable, especially your partner Pokémon who I feel the development team do a great job in forming an integral bond with you that works to support the more emotional plot beats of this game.  Truth be told this game knows very well how to play with an array of emotions.  There are quite a few twists, turns and actual tension in this story which doesn’t feel half-hearted like it does in your typical mainline Pokémon games.  It was the first actual game that was able to make nine-year old me cry at a video game and that emotional strength is still present all these years later in the remake. 

On the gameplay front, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon does quite well in taking the typical turn-based RPG mechanics from the mainline Pokémon games and incorporating them into the unique Mystery Dungeon formula.  The dungeons you navigate work in a semi-isometric perspective with each movement being the equivalent to moving 1 tile space.  Dungeons are randomly generated so you’ll never get a sense of familiarity with the environment which is the key element of the game. Exploring these dungeons comes with its own risks and rewards depending on how capable a player you feel you are.  Each dungeon has a specific set of floors to ascend/descend too so it’s down to you to prepare your expedition accordingly with the right levels and gear. The roguelike element definitely works to give this series a unique flavour. I know there’s a lot of arguments made about the difficulty it presented, especially for a younger audience but I would argue it balances the difficulty quite well and actually helped younger me learn strategy and patience much more than the mainline games did. 

It helps that with Rescue Team DX that there’s a plethora of improvement and touch-ups to the gameplay that make it even more accessible for newer players.  It incorporates a lot of the modern advancements like new typing’s, mega evolutions and special/physical stat splits.  There’s more ways to improve your stats with gummi’s you can acquire from your time exploring dungeons as well as the rescue missions you take on.  The way the game is touched up to provide additional accessibility between the games numerous features highlight a more streamlined approach.  I do feel however that some of the efforts to streamline have blemished the charm of the original game however.  In the original game the team-building mechanic was so cool because you would buy camps and be able to explore them and see your fellow Pokémon living and inhabiting the environment, that feature is done-away with here and instead you accessing your team members via a pretty boring menu. 

From a visual perspective, I appreciate the effort to capture the core art-style of original games. The fact that they went to the effort of designing character art and expressions for each Pokémon and their evolutions shows there’s a lot of dedication from the designers to try new stuff.  One area I do feel lacks somewhat is the 3-D rendering of the game.  I feel the charm and allure of the traditional sprite-work of the original games is somewhat lost in translation with the 3-D work.  Character models aren’t able to move or animate in a fluid sense which does make things look a bit stunted when moving around and during cutscenes.  On an audio front Keisuke Ito does a good job reimagining the original score with a more advanced level of sound to work with. I’ve always had a soft spot for the music of the original game, especially the main theme!

On the whole, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX is a very solid remake that does an excellent job in faithfully recreating the core blueprint of the original Mystery Dungeon games. While it’s efforts to simplify and innovate do lead to the erasure of some of the finer charm of the original games, it’s not enough to write off the game in any substantial fashion. If you have any level of affection to the Mystery Dungeon games, especially the original Red and Blue Rescue Team ones; then this game will offer you a reasonably fun trip down memory lane with a few modern touch-ups to appreciate.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐