Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of the Sky

2025-01-26
Friends I am sorry but despite the seemingly near unanimous praise this game receives it is not for me. I struggle to think who it is for. Yes it has the best story ever put in a Pokemon game. But given the average Pokemon game has a story that only resonates with 6 year olds or people suffering a subdural hematoma it's not that amazing of a feat. And absolutely the sprite work on display is a feast for someone who's played every Pokemon game since Red/Blue. But the actual game, the way you're meant to spend the bulk of your time is WORK. No matter how much I'm enjoying the tale of Wigglytuff's Guild or the bangin' Amp Plains theme tune I snap out of it and realize I'm grinding in the least engaging way possible.

The loop is: bring some Pokemon into a randomly generated dungeon, find the stairs for the floor (repeat 10-20 times), engage in boring battles along the way, maybe fight a boss at the end. The game is suffuse with grinds, repetition, and tedium. You grind levels, you grind IQ (a mechanic which basically improves the default brain-dead AI for your companions), you have a storage limit you're constantly hitting forcing you to throw away items you'll need later meaning you have to go back and farm them again, you have dungeons that are all the same except the Pokemon/color-palette/music change, you have enemies with moves that slow you and burn resources, an unending supply of cookie-cutter missions, and on and on. And don't even get me started on Aegis Cave. Jesus tap dancing Christ.

And it's tragic the gameplay stinks because the story is good. Sure it's a tad juvenile in its simplicity of language and its tendency to over-explain everything (kids aren't that dumb!). But it has so much heart. The way they breathe life into the cast of Pokemon so you feel like "Wow this would be what it'd be like to hang out with a bunch of Pokemon and go on adventures" is something special. It's tragic the gameplay stinks because the art is phenomenal. The way they have a unique animation for every single Pokemon you can choose as your main character and partner for the way they sleep, wake up, or celebrate a victory is maximally cute.

Having played Etrian Mystery Dungeon sometime back and similarly finding it terrible, it strikes me that Chunsoft did the best they could trying to build a wonderful setting around the mediocre Mystery Dungeon loop. If you're still interested in checking Explorers of Sky out the best way to excise the tedium is probably to grab a save editor and max out your Pokemon right from the get-go. Then you can enjoy the ride without all the speed bumps along the way.