What is your honest opinion on Pokemon Mystery Dungeon?

What is your honest opinion on Pokemon Mystery Dungeon?

the mystery dungeon formula doesnt need pokemon and other varieties do it better

pmd1 was alright
pmd2 mogs the shit out of every other pokemon game including main series
i tried 3 and 4 but couldn't really get into them

sovl
only played the Blue one though when it came out
been meaning to try the Sky one since everyone says it's good but haven't gotten around to it yet

tedious as fuck, never understood how anyone could sit through them

made me cry

its extremely soulful, but when you play the other mystery dungeon games, going back to it makes you realize how boring it is

i want to be sent to the pokemon world and have sex with my partner after a long day adventuring.
i also enjoy the game but admit it's not going to be for everyone, however, i am a roguelike enjoyer, so they are right up my alley. i wish we could get a new one, don't know how the remake sold.

was fun but super rng and brutal in later levels

First game is fun enough for the story, but it loses it's soul in the post-game literally as the player and partner just become another unit in the system. There's also too many 99f dungeons, but the gimmick ones are a bit more fun than the sequel's wacky caves.
Sky is a lot better both with the story and post game, even after you beat Darkrai. It also has the special episodes. There's no friend areas but the trade-off is worth it.

It's a randomized dungeon crawler where you play as, fight, and recruit pokemon. The gameplay is largely based on the mechanics from the mainline series (that is to say, gen 3/4/6 mechanics) but adapted for grid-based combat.

If you're already familiar with pokemon it's a good twist on the usual mechanics.

The DS version is just flat out superior, though the GBA version isn't unplayable by any stretch of the imagination. People only prefer the GBA version out of nostalgia.

I've only ever played Red but I had a lot of fun with it. The later areas are brutal. One time I can definitively say advertising worked on me because why are the Pokémon suddenly talking I need to know.

The GBA version is better these days because DS emulation is shit on phones.

what are the best romhacks? during the Anon Babble downtime i read about explorers of spirit on >reddit but i'm hoping people here have some solid suggestions too.

You could just not play it on a phone. Play it on a PC. Get a DS flash cart. Use twilight menu on a hacked 3DS. This is a silly reason to say the GBA version is better when it just isn't.

DS emulation

phones

only brown thirdies even emulate on phones in the first place.

Most of the hacks are story hacks. A lot of them are basically remixes of the base story but some do more.
Spirit is the best one for just difficulty. But it removes monster houses, so it's more like "fair" difficulty rather than difficulty derived from reacting to unforeseen scenarios.

I like it.

i'm fine with story hacks if you (or anyone) have any recommendations.

Super Mystery Dungeon is the best in the series

Soulful

First game was beyond unbalanced
2 is fine
Shiren BTFOs Pmd

43 unique ways to die

nintendo should give up the child friendly image and just make official pokemon porn so people can be autistic over that
serisoly could you imagine what that would do to the rule 34 community? id love to watch that and Anon Babble would have a front row seat

Explorers of Sky is the best game in the entire franchise

This is my main issue. It’s a novel idea, but the appeal of mystery dungeon is going into a dungeon and strategizing on the go. Sometimes you get really good weapons, sometimes you gotta play baseball with your items, other times you’re a mage.
PMD offers a lot of options but ultimately a Pokémon is going to specialize in one major area + have a type advantage, so you’re strategizing BEFORE a dungeon, making it kind of tedious.
I thought Chocobo did it better, because even though it also had a lot of pre-dungeon prep with levels and gear, the job swapping made things dynamic.
Recruitment in PMD is also arcanely difficult and obtuse (or just fucking rng)

sky remains the best game in the franchise, mainline and spinoff

The series peaked with Red Rescue. Sky removed the sovl.

Special Episodes > Friend Areas

Played red rescue team and it was trash.

piss easy

all jobs are boring shit

simplified type chart (no immunities, no 4x damage or resistance)

"catching" new pokemon is a tedious grind

fucking TMs are RNG what the shop decides to give you

have to return to each friend area every time to re-add them to my party

the fucking repeated dialogue for every job you finish

all party members are completely AI controlled... in a turn based game

cant even pick your starter for some gay pop psychology quiz I literally got MEOWTH and had to reset for a non-ugly pokemon

can teach your pokemon the same move multiple times

all pokemon have the same stat potential

Not to mention the campaign is horribly designed

dude, replay the same dungeon 3 times to pick chestnuts for some mankeys to repeat the same cut scene 3 times

inb4

NOOOO THE POSTGAME

Tried it and I killed Kyogre in about 4 turns by spamming 2 linked thunderbolts. Where is the postgame supposed to be good?

Notice how none of the posts shilling this games ever explain why it's actually good other than

NOOOOOO PIKACHU LE CRIED WHEN THE SELF-INSERT MC DISAPPEARED AT THE END

Is that really al it takes to appease redditors? Butchers the mainline series mechanics and the actual Pokemon aspect, dungeon gameplay is boring auto-generated shit, story sucks and the cutscenes are unskippable

I played a lot of them last year. I'll post some finished ones.

Special Episode 0

Grovyle and Dusknoir prequel story in the future. It starts with them as a Treecko and Duskull as one of the few survivors of the world. Takes a bunch of creative liberties and tries to be dark (lots of death, some swearing, starts with a sableye massacre) but is long and has an entire post-game about him in the events of the game and episode 5. It's about 15-17 hours or so, and it does get hard at times but only at the bosses so put a save state. They're making a sequel right now which has the main team from the game evolved and long after all the missions in EoS, except for anything in Destiny Tower.

The Weather Up There

Anon Babble made this one for a hack jam. Only really including it for that. It's kinda gay, it's from the mystery dungeon general so don't be surprised. I think it's part of their "clover guild" but it stands on its own, I've never read a single one of their stories. It's pretty good if you want a down-to-earth team doing some random job. Not really edgy like Clover or anything. It's pretty short, it's alright I guess. There's a prequel hack called "Team Misfits" I played after that was less gay and only 25 mins or so. Only really posting this cause it's from Anon Babble and you may like it, I guess.

Seal of Ancients

This one is really high quality, it has entirely custom maps and is it's own story. It's about a Cherubi and a Spiritomb, with both having multiple souls tied to them (Cherubi's little cherry, and the sealed spirits in Spiritomb). It's 3 hours or so, probably the highest quality one here.

Turnabout Dimension

Running out of words I think, so I'll just say this one is Ace Attorney but in PMD. 2 hours or so if I remember correctly, was pretty amusing.
hacks.skytemple.org/ download here. Most hacks are still a work in progress and hacking only really started around 2020.

amazing how its always frogposters

How's Super MD?

fun! ::::D

Some say it's the best one. That or skyexplorers.

got filtered at the zapdos dungeon as a kid

dropped the game

replay it again on NSO

steamroll the entire game over the course of a day with totodile+chikorita

aside from chikorita being an absolute fucking jobber for 95% of the game it was fun

I vaguely recall liking the GBA one, but I've heard Explorers of Sky is really good in terms of story
It's not without its flaws, though. Recruiting party members was pretty tedious, and the difficulty was either piss-easy or frustratingly hard depending on how dungeons were generated.

Having a Grass Starter as yourself or a partner and dealing with the Three Legedary Birds + Rayquaza

Grass type is basically hard mode, what with doing Mt.Blaze, Frosty Forrest and Mt.Freeze or back to back.
They have it rough.

Except types barely matter in this game as stated Grass still hits fire/flying for 0.7x, not 0.25x like in mainline

Also you can just spam attract (even on legendaries) because the devs forgot to learn how Pokemon works

Attract is a useless move in mainline anyway.

Is the second game Blue Rescue Team? Or do you mean the 2nd as Explorers of Time&Darkness? I've never played any of them but might try them out.

Not going against your points, but that anon did say his partner Chikorita did jackshit for most if not all of the game.

wiki.pmdo.pmdcollab.org/Pokémon_Mystery_Dungeon:_Origins
Not exactly a romhack, but I like PMD: Origins
It's more focused on gameplay than story, so if you want a PMD game that's a bit harder and liked doing the level-reset dungeons from the older games it's great. If you want something more story focused you might be a bit disappointed though.

It's currently unfinished with a 15-ish dungeon demo, but you can unlock the unfinished content early if you want:
wiki.pmdo.pmdcollab.org/Release_Candidate

not a fan of how recruits worked with the connection orb and availability

I love it so much, was blown away when it came out, it has so many great animations for every single pokemon. And the end game is great. I spent so much time creating different teams of 3.

Its based and has a great ost

Red & Blue are the same game, just different consoles (GBA vs DS). It also got a remake 15 years later in the form of Mystery Dungeon DX, that has its own positive and negatives to each of their own, but virtually they are the same game. Just depends on how much QOL changes you want in exchange for no sprite art.

Explorers Dark & Time are the second game, but Explorers of Sky is the re-release version like Emerald & Platinum, so there is literally no reason not to play Sky instead. Often considered the best in the franchise.

Gates (3rd Game) and Super (4th Game) I haven't really tried, so can't offer an opinion on them personally. I've heard mixed results for different reasons for each.

thanks, i'll look into these.

Thanks for the quick rundown of the series. I just realized that Red Rescue is on the Switch GBA subscription service. So that's convenient (not like I don't have a CFWd 3DS tho)

great gameplay, dogshit everything else
i enjoyed it enough to 100% it, but the rescue team remake has the same gameplay and is better in every other category so there's not much point to playing Super now.