That's right, I'm gracing you all with a review again. Feel flattered, this is like, my third review ever.

So yeah, the vast majority of the time, spin-offs from popular games aren't particularly impressive. Occasionally, a good one comes along, and I'm pretty happy with this one, as they go.

The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, for those of you who've never played one, are odd little games which draw a lot of stuff from the actual pokemon games, but are very different.

Probably the biggest difference is that, instead of playing as a human who catches and trains pokemon, you play as a pokemon who can talk and go around killing animals of its own free will. Everything is played through the pokemon's point of view.

The pokemon you play as isn't entirely your choice, since you're greeted with a pretty odd 'personality test' thing at the beginning, which determines your species for the rest of the game.

Instead of striving to be awesome and defeat the elite four and single-handedly thwart entire groups of delinquent chavs, you instead play as a member of a 'rescue team,' which can consist of up to four active pokemon at any one time (although you can have far more pokemon on 'standby' should you decide to change). Near the start of the game, you can choose your 'partner pokemon' from a list, and for the majority of the storyline, your active team will require you to have you and your partner both in it.

You go around,a accepting job requests in a large variety of dungeons, ranging from 'someone stole my item, murder them please,' to 'I'm lost and didn't have the forethought to bring a map, come rescue me 'kay?'

Dungeons are large, multi-floored caves, mountains, forests, etc... through which you'll progress and encounter various violent animals such as yourself, and then kill them. There are items you find on the floor which vary a lot, from the many types of 'orbs' and magical ressurecting seeds.
(On a completely unrelated note, the spellchecker on this browser doesn't like 'ressurecting,' and its closest match was 'pressure-cooking.')

You go through the story, encountering increasingly difficult and lengthy dungeons, in a time-travel related quest filled with odd mystical things and odd mystical characters.

Orrite, now for the bit where I rate individual bits 'n' stuff.

Graphics
8/10

The graphics are reasonably good. There are plenty of luffly bits of artwork and cutscenes outside of gameplay. Each move (as in the main pokemon games, each pokemon can learn up to four moves at any one time) has its own individual animation, and adds quite a nice touch to the game. The pokemon sprites are fairly small, but they're plenty detailed enough. Imagine something sort of halfway between the titchy sprites you see when you look in your party on a normal pokemon game, and the sprites you see while in a pokemon battle. Not too bad.
My only qualm would be that you can't go back and look at the cutscenes again.

Gameplay
7/10

Gameplay's pretty good. You can play through the entire game without ever using the touchscreen, or likewise, you can play through the entire thing without ever using the buttons. There's a shortcut for most actions, usually in the form of both a button shortcut or a touchscreen flick.

You can battle many pokemon at once, using items and moves. One nice touch is the ability to have just a plain 'attack' as well as your moves, meaning that 'struggle' isn't necessary, and also you can waste weak pokemon which aren't worth wasting precious PP on. Conflicts with pokemon aren't heralded with a flashy screen or exciting music, so slipping in and out of battles feels very natural and not as slow and hindering as some of the main pokemon games can be.

Once you defeat a pokemon in a dungeon, there's a chance it may request to join your team. Some pokemon are more likely than others. You can pretty easily swap which pokemon are in your team. Eventually, if you accept lots of pokemon, your explorer team member list is going to get pretty crowded, but you can search for pokemon by name, so all is well.

While the gameplay is nice, there are a couple of things which really detracted from the score for me-

-You can only have one save game, and you have to delete it before you can start afresh, meaning you can't just start a new one and not save just so you can mess around with the personality test, you'd have to destroy your current one first.

-There is an 'anti-raegquit' feature, wherein if you turn off your system without saving while inside a dungeon, you will automatically lose that dungeon, and many of your items alongside. While this is a pretty clever feature to stick in there, the problem arises when your DS system decides to spontaneously freeze, or you drop it and the game comes out. Then, you've got to restart the game to the failure message, along with the knowledge that your hard-earned treasure has been lost forever.

-Once you totally complete the story, it's pretty repetitive. You just wake up, go through the town, maybe find a vaguely interesting mission and accept it, destroy many pokemon, then end the day again. The replay value is limited, and while no two expeditions are never the same, neither are they ever significantly different.

Music
9/10

Music is very good. There's a very big collection of soundtracks, ranging from some which is very spooky and atmospheric, to some which is jumpy and exciting, and then more which is upbeat and cheerful. You can listen to music tracks you've encountered in the game in the 'sky jukebox,' which has a huge library of available music. The majority of the tracks are surprisingly good, and are well worth listening to again. The jukebox was, I think, a very nice feature.

Plot
9/10

The plot is, to its credit, pretty long-lasting, interesting, and very original. In some places it can be very haunting, with a dark and mysterious atmosphere. If the substantial story isn't enough for you, there are five 'episodes' which you unlock after getting to certain stages in the game. These let you play as other characters encountered in the game, and each have their own little plot which are sometimes completely unrelated to the main story, and sometimes very closely indeed.

Practically every pokemon ever created prior to the game's release is available to add to your team, which is good if, like me, you'd choose Groudon over Palkia any day.

[cemter]Overall score
8.5/10[/center]

Overall, a very fulfilling and time-consuming game, with some nice gameplay and a surprisingly interesting plot, all accompanied with some very atmospheric music. One or two little irks which detract from the overall score, but still well worth the money.