WaterTypeStarter
Well-Known Member
What are the things you like best about it?
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Which of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games story is your favorite?
- Thread starter WaterTypeStarter
- Start date
Mythical-Moonlight
I just ran, I ran all Night and Day ~
Definitely Explorers of the Sky
It makes me cry everytime
It makes me cry everytime
Palamon
Silence is Purple
Explorers games had the best written story, if I'm being honest, and was the most fun to play. But, Super also has an extremely well written story, but not worth going through a second time considering how outright annoying a lot of the dungeons in that game are. The original PMD games were pretty good, too, but nowhere near a favorite in terms of story. The postgame was just...so empty.
As for Gates to Infinity, never played it. Now it's too late since it's been out for me to care enough to do so.
As for Gates to Infinity, never played it. Now it's too late since it's been out for me to care enough to do so.
Divine Retribution
Conquistador de pan
Explorers by a mile and a half and then a little extra.
Rescue Team's story was pretty good but not nearly as memorable, I hated Gates to Infinity and there were a lot of things about its story that made very little sense and were sometimes immersion-breaking, and Super's story was actually pretty good, but can't hold a candle to Explorers. It also seems to totally disregard the timeline in the post-game anyways as you can recruit Pokemon that aren't from the same time period, such as Grovyle, Dusknoir, and shiny Celebi at the same time as Wigglytuff's guild. I guess you could hand-wave that one away (there isn't really a reason Dialga couldn't repair the time tunnel and allow Grovyle and crew to visit the past, and we don't know how far in the future Grovyle's future even is, so you could also argue it's possible for Wigglytuff's guild members to still be alive at that point anyways). This brings into question whether or not the Mystery Dungeon series even has a coherent canonical timeline.
Now why do I like Explorers's story so much? Well, let's talk about that.
NOTE: Spoilers for Explorers but uh... Explorers is, what, a 14 year old spinoff game at this point that's nearly unobtainable outside of ROMs? I don't feel bad spoiling it; if you've never played it, can't get a legitimate copy yourself (they're going for over a hundred USD these days last I checked when they're even available at all), and don't wanna sail the seven seas with a peg leg and a hook arm, find a playthrough someone else did on YouTube or something and watch it through on mute if you have to. Then go listen to some of the amazing soundtracks you missed out on. Then join me in waiting for Explorers DX. If you can get your hands on a copy of Explorers and haven't already played it for some reason, play it before reading this. Seriously.
This isn't even half of what I could write about Explorers. I could talk about things like how it has post-game content that's almost as long as the main storyline, but I'm already sitting on a full-length essay here, so I think I'll stop here. The TL/DR is that Explorers's storyline is miles ahead of any Pokemon game from the same time period and is still arguably the best in the entire franchise, in my opinion, even despite having some minor holes in plot and logic. This is owed mostly to its competent pacing, well-developed characters, excellent soundtrack, and the fact that it plays with concepts that were basically absent from the main series at the time, like life and death and the meaning of one's existence itself. If you for some reason haven't already and you can get your hands on a copy of Explorers, play it.
Rescue Team's story was pretty good but not nearly as memorable, I hated Gates to Infinity and there were a lot of things about its story that made very little sense and were sometimes immersion-breaking, and Super's story was actually pretty good, but can't hold a candle to Explorers. It also seems to totally disregard the timeline in the post-game anyways as you can recruit Pokemon that aren't from the same time period, such as Grovyle, Dusknoir, and shiny Celebi at the same time as Wigglytuff's guild. I guess you could hand-wave that one away (there isn't really a reason Dialga couldn't repair the time tunnel and allow Grovyle and crew to visit the past, and we don't know how far in the future Grovyle's future even is, so you could also argue it's possible for Wigglytuff's guild members to still be alive at that point anyways). This brings into question whether or not the Mystery Dungeon series even has a coherent canonical timeline.
Now why do I like Explorers's story so much? Well, let's talk about that.
NOTE: Spoilers for Explorers but uh... Explorers is, what, a 14 year old spinoff game at this point that's nearly unobtainable outside of ROMs? I don't feel bad spoiling it; if you've never played it, can't get a legitimate copy yourself (they're going for over a hundred USD these days last I checked when they're even available at all), and don't wanna sail the seven seas with a peg leg and a hook arm, find a playthrough someone else did on YouTube or something and watch it through on mute if you have to. Then go listen to some of the amazing soundtracks you missed out on. Then join me in waiting for Explorers DX. If you can get your hands on a copy of Explorers and haven't already played it for some reason, play it before reading this. Seriously.
Contemporary Pokemon storylines from that time period were getting a bit stale and predictable. Bad guy awakens minor diety, nearly destroys world, child player character steps in and saves the day. Woohoo. There's only so many ways you can tell that story before it gets kind of old. Explorers, not being a traditional Pokemon game and therefore not being bound to the same story beats, throws that out the window. There's still the huge, climactic conclusion to the story as you fight a minor god to save the world from a fate that's arguably worse than simple destruction, but Explorers earns that so much more than other games in the series do.
So the first thing Explorers does right is the pacing. The pacing of traditional Pokemon games can also be sort of strange sometimes, and this is a problem they seem to struggle to fix (Sw/Sh is the perfect example of this, but even games more contemporary to Explorers had this problem to a lesser degree). The main villains usually show up a few times doing something of little to no consequence, then when the climactic point of the main story comes you have to deal with them for a solid chunk of time, then they sink back into the background. They've got this weird bell curve of involvement that I don't really like.
Explorers doesn't do that. You get a couple cutscenes of who you think is the main villain doing something your trusted partner tells you is so bad even the worst criminals don't do it, but never do you battle or even encounter Grovyle face-to-face until the build-up to the main climax of the story is starting to ramp up. The game doesn't throw him at you a few times in the early game like it usually does with evil team grunts and admins. Instead, that role goes to Team Skull (the original Team Skull), who act as sort of your rivals for most of the game but ultimately aren't very consequential towards its main storyline. The entire first half of the main storyline doesn't actually have that much to do with the main conflict, and that's okay. It introduces you to the world, it introduces you to some of the characters, it lets you get familiar with the game's mechanics, and it gives you some fun little missions to do even if they aren't ultimately all that important. Then it throws the action at you, fast and hard. That bell curve becomes a proper slope.
Then, once you you've finally outsmarted the main villain and foiled his evil plans... the game throws the biggest curveball in the entire franchise at you and reveals that he was the good guy the entire time, and the seemingly wise and benevolent Dusknoir is actually an agent of darkness working to preserve a paralyzed future where time has stopped, plunging the world into a state of permanent darkness and decay. That's the other thing Explorers does so much better than other games, not just other Pokemon games but honestly other games in general; its plot twists. There's several of them, and they're huge and well-earned.
This is actually one of the things I hated about Gates is it essentially copies a lot of the same beats as Explorers, including some of the plot twists, but it seems way more artificial in Gates. It's like they thought, "Well, they liked it when we did it in Explorers, so we'll just do it again!", but that's lazy in my opinion, and doesn't lead to an organic-feeling plotline. Super Mystery Dungeon does much better in this regard. There's still a couple plot twists, you still get backstabbed by a character you thought was an ally, but there's no real direct equivalent to Grovyle in that game, and they do a much better job at disguising who it is who ultimately betrays you, and adding interesting new beats to the story along with subverting one of the usual plot twists. Overall it feels a lot more creative, while still hitting some of the beats that are practically tradition within the Mystery Dungeon series at this point.
Another thing that Explorers does well is the characters. Well, mostly. At a time when Pokemon characters were too often bland and frankly soulless, most of the important characters in Mystery Dungeon have personality. Grovyle turns out to not be the generic bad guy you first think he is, but he's also not really a generic good guy either. He's rash and he's willing to follow his mission through at all costs, threatening Azelf's life when he seals away his Time Gear. He doesn't try to reason with the Lake spirits, he doesn't explain who he is or why he needs the Time Gears. Maybe they wouldn't have believed him, but maybe they would. It would have at least been worth a try to avoid violence, but Grovyle doesn't. He immediately attacks them. Sky fills out Grovyle even further, explaining his motivations for wanting to prevent a future of darkness, even if it ultimately means giving up his own life. Despite being from a harsh future of unending darkness and decay, something that explains his rashness and tendency towards violent solutions over peaceful ones, he's ultimately a good, selfless Pokemon who's willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good of the entire world; one of the only ones who seems willing to make that sacrifice, in fact.
Then we have Dusknoir, who initially seems charitable, wise, and benevolent, saving you from a dangerous situation Team Skull lands you in at no real benefit to himself. As it turns out, he's deceiving you and is actually motivated purely by self-preservation, but here's the thing; I actually really like Dusknoir as a villain. He's actually very relatable and sympathetic if you think about it.
Let's do a little thought experiment real quick. Let's say you have the opportunity to travel back to the dawn of humankind and permanently erase the concept of war from human history, but as a result the timeline you exist in is destroyed. You, all of your friends, your family, everyone you've ever known and cared about, gone for the sake of a world you'll never live in. It would make that world objectively better, but at the cost of yourself and everyone you love. How many of you would actually do it? How many of you would be able to fault someone who doesn't do it, even tries to prevent other people from doing it? Is that selfish? Sure. But is it evil or unreasonable? I don't necessarily think so.
This is the position Dusknoir finds himself in. He's presumably never known anything but the world of darkness. Everyone and everything he's ever known exists in it, and now Grovyle and the main character come along and threaten to destroy that to restore a timeline that none of them can exist in. Who can really blame Dusknoir for standing against them? Self-sacrifice for a greater cause might be a virtue, but is not having the strength to sacrifice not only yourself but everyone and everything you've ever known really a fault?
The minor characters tend to be a little less fleshed out but I'm fine with that. It's hard to make a few dozen characters all crazy complex and interesting without the story seeming bloated and unfocused. The important characters are deep, the not so important characters not so much. That's an efficient use of plot time in my opinion. Plus, Sky does remedy this a little bit with optional special episodes for some of the minor characters, including a satisfying conclusion for Grovyle and Dusknoir's story.
Then we get to the soundtracks. PMD2 has, in my opinion, the best soundtrack of any game in that time period. Yeah, I know, controversial opinion, but I stand by it. It's put to excellent use, too. Emotional moments in the storyline (which there are plenty of; some of them even hit quite hard if you're really immersed in the story) are always set to a very somber, emotional track, and it really amplifies their impact. Action-packed moments are set to very energetic music, subconsciously preparing you for a tough fight. Tough, gruelling dungeons have tracks that sound almost like training music, while more laid-back ones usually have more mellow, peaceful soundtracks that bring forth vibes of exploration and discovery. The final boss in the main story has what I still consider to be the single best soundtrack in the entire franchise, and it really helps sell the desperation of the fact that you're a pair of measly little first-stage Pokemon facing up to a rampaging diety. Even hopeless moments in the game's storyline where it seems all might be lost are usually set to this masterpiece, which fits the mood perfectly. I can think of no other game that both has amazing soundtracks like PMD2 and uses them as well as PMD2 does.
Finally we get to some of the fundamental concepts Explorers's story includes and talks about. Explorers's story is about many things, really.
It's about friendship, which most Pokemon games are about, but it does it so, so much better than main series Pokemon games. By having a partner who's constantly there for every moment of the storyline, who sometimes needs your support the way every friend does, but ultimately pulls through and has your back at every crucial moment, and who experiences significant character growth influenced heavily by you, it's very easy to get attached to them in a way that most characters from most games struggle to endear themselves to you. For many people, especially those who played the game at a young age, by the end you really don't want to say goodbye. You really do feel like you're parting ways with a trusted friend. You really understand the sacrifice your character is making.
It's also about life and death, and the true value of one's life. This is especially impressive when you consider that death was a concept almost entirely absent from the main series during this period in the Pokemon franchise. Never is the word 'death' even used in the Explorers games; instead characters threaten to 'destroy' you, 'eliminate' you, or 'force you to disappear', but the end result is the same, and so it finds an excuse to talk about the same concepts. It talks about the pain of leaving those you care about behind. It talks about their grief in your absence, the impact a sudden loss of a close friend can have. It talks about what one's life is really worth, not to others but to themselves, and what they might measure it by, what they would sacrifice it for. What it means to live. It talks about sacrifice, heroism, selfishness, self-preservation, and redemption. You even help your partner through a brief period of suicidal depression at one point.
So the first thing Explorers does right is the pacing. The pacing of traditional Pokemon games can also be sort of strange sometimes, and this is a problem they seem to struggle to fix (Sw/Sh is the perfect example of this, but even games more contemporary to Explorers had this problem to a lesser degree). The main villains usually show up a few times doing something of little to no consequence, then when the climactic point of the main story comes you have to deal with them for a solid chunk of time, then they sink back into the background. They've got this weird bell curve of involvement that I don't really like.
Explorers doesn't do that. You get a couple cutscenes of who you think is the main villain doing something your trusted partner tells you is so bad even the worst criminals don't do it, but never do you battle or even encounter Grovyle face-to-face until the build-up to the main climax of the story is starting to ramp up. The game doesn't throw him at you a few times in the early game like it usually does with evil team grunts and admins. Instead, that role goes to Team Skull (the original Team Skull), who act as sort of your rivals for most of the game but ultimately aren't very consequential towards its main storyline. The entire first half of the main storyline doesn't actually have that much to do with the main conflict, and that's okay. It introduces you to the world, it introduces you to some of the characters, it lets you get familiar with the game's mechanics, and it gives you some fun little missions to do even if they aren't ultimately all that important. Then it throws the action at you, fast and hard. That bell curve becomes a proper slope.
Then, once you you've finally outsmarted the main villain and foiled his evil plans... the game throws the biggest curveball in the entire franchise at you and reveals that he was the good guy the entire time, and the seemingly wise and benevolent Dusknoir is actually an agent of darkness working to preserve a paralyzed future where time has stopped, plunging the world into a state of permanent darkness and decay. That's the other thing Explorers does so much better than other games, not just other Pokemon games but honestly other games in general; its plot twists. There's several of them, and they're huge and well-earned.
This is actually one of the things I hated about Gates is it essentially copies a lot of the same beats as Explorers, including some of the plot twists, but it seems way more artificial in Gates. It's like they thought, "Well, they liked it when we did it in Explorers, so we'll just do it again!", but that's lazy in my opinion, and doesn't lead to an organic-feeling plotline. Super Mystery Dungeon does much better in this regard. There's still a couple plot twists, you still get backstabbed by a character you thought was an ally, but there's no real direct equivalent to Grovyle in that game, and they do a much better job at disguising who it is who ultimately betrays you, and adding interesting new beats to the story along with subverting one of the usual plot twists. Overall it feels a lot more creative, while still hitting some of the beats that are practically tradition within the Mystery Dungeon series at this point.
Another thing that Explorers does well is the characters. Well, mostly. At a time when Pokemon characters were too often bland and frankly soulless, most of the important characters in Mystery Dungeon have personality. Grovyle turns out to not be the generic bad guy you first think he is, but he's also not really a generic good guy either. He's rash and he's willing to follow his mission through at all costs, threatening Azelf's life when he seals away his Time Gear. He doesn't try to reason with the Lake spirits, he doesn't explain who he is or why he needs the Time Gears. Maybe they wouldn't have believed him, but maybe they would. It would have at least been worth a try to avoid violence, but Grovyle doesn't. He immediately attacks them. Sky fills out Grovyle even further, explaining his motivations for wanting to prevent a future of darkness, even if it ultimately means giving up his own life. Despite being from a harsh future of unending darkness and decay, something that explains his rashness and tendency towards violent solutions over peaceful ones, he's ultimately a good, selfless Pokemon who's willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good of the entire world; one of the only ones who seems willing to make that sacrifice, in fact.
Then we have Dusknoir, who initially seems charitable, wise, and benevolent, saving you from a dangerous situation Team Skull lands you in at no real benefit to himself. As it turns out, he's deceiving you and is actually motivated purely by self-preservation, but here's the thing; I actually really like Dusknoir as a villain. He's actually very relatable and sympathetic if you think about it.
Let's do a little thought experiment real quick. Let's say you have the opportunity to travel back to the dawn of humankind and permanently erase the concept of war from human history, but as a result the timeline you exist in is destroyed. You, all of your friends, your family, everyone you've ever known and cared about, gone for the sake of a world you'll never live in. It would make that world objectively better, but at the cost of yourself and everyone you love. How many of you would actually do it? How many of you would be able to fault someone who doesn't do it, even tries to prevent other people from doing it? Is that selfish? Sure. But is it evil or unreasonable? I don't necessarily think so.
This is the position Dusknoir finds himself in. He's presumably never known anything but the world of darkness. Everyone and everything he's ever known exists in it, and now Grovyle and the main character come along and threaten to destroy that to restore a timeline that none of them can exist in. Who can really blame Dusknoir for standing against them? Self-sacrifice for a greater cause might be a virtue, but is not having the strength to sacrifice not only yourself but everyone and everything you've ever known really a fault?
The minor characters tend to be a little less fleshed out but I'm fine with that. It's hard to make a few dozen characters all crazy complex and interesting without the story seeming bloated and unfocused. The important characters are deep, the not so important characters not so much. That's an efficient use of plot time in my opinion. Plus, Sky does remedy this a little bit with optional special episodes for some of the minor characters, including a satisfying conclusion for Grovyle and Dusknoir's story.
Then we get to the soundtracks. PMD2 has, in my opinion, the best soundtrack of any game in that time period. Yeah, I know, controversial opinion, but I stand by it. It's put to excellent use, too. Emotional moments in the storyline (which there are plenty of; some of them even hit quite hard if you're really immersed in the story) are always set to a very somber, emotional track, and it really amplifies their impact. Action-packed moments are set to very energetic music, subconsciously preparing you for a tough fight. Tough, gruelling dungeons have tracks that sound almost like training music, while more laid-back ones usually have more mellow, peaceful soundtracks that bring forth vibes of exploration and discovery. The final boss in the main story has what I still consider to be the single best soundtrack in the entire franchise, and it really helps sell the desperation of the fact that you're a pair of measly little first-stage Pokemon facing up to a rampaging diety. Even hopeless moments in the game's storyline where it seems all might be lost are usually set to this masterpiece, which fits the mood perfectly. I can think of no other game that both has amazing soundtracks like PMD2 and uses them as well as PMD2 does.
Finally we get to some of the fundamental concepts Explorers's story includes and talks about. Explorers's story is about many things, really.
It's about friendship, which most Pokemon games are about, but it does it so, so much better than main series Pokemon games. By having a partner who's constantly there for every moment of the storyline, who sometimes needs your support the way every friend does, but ultimately pulls through and has your back at every crucial moment, and who experiences significant character growth influenced heavily by you, it's very easy to get attached to them in a way that most characters from most games struggle to endear themselves to you. For many people, especially those who played the game at a young age, by the end you really don't want to say goodbye. You really do feel like you're parting ways with a trusted friend. You really understand the sacrifice your character is making.
It's also about life and death, and the true value of one's life. This is especially impressive when you consider that death was a concept almost entirely absent from the main series during this period in the Pokemon franchise. Never is the word 'death' even used in the Explorers games; instead characters threaten to 'destroy' you, 'eliminate' you, or 'force you to disappear', but the end result is the same, and so it finds an excuse to talk about the same concepts. It talks about the pain of leaving those you care about behind. It talks about their grief in your absence, the impact a sudden loss of a close friend can have. It talks about what one's life is really worth, not to others but to themselves, and what they might measure it by, what they would sacrifice it for. What it means to live. It talks about sacrifice, heroism, selfishness, self-preservation, and redemption. You even help your partner through a brief period of suicidal depression at one point.
This isn't even half of what I could write about Explorers. I could talk about things like how it has post-game content that's almost as long as the main storyline, but I'm already sitting on a full-length essay here, so I think I'll stop here. The TL/DR is that Explorers's storyline is miles ahead of any Pokemon game from the same time period and is still arguably the best in the entire franchise, in my opinion, even despite having some minor holes in plot and logic. This is owed mostly to its competent pacing, well-developed characters, excellent soundtrack, and the fact that it plays with concepts that were basically absent from the main series at the time, like life and death and the meaning of one's existence itself. If you for some reason haven't already and you can get your hands on a copy of Explorers, play it.
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Explorers definitely. It's not a perfect plot and some areas it does falter, but when putting it against the three even I'll admit it has the strongest overall package of the games. Its cast is not the most well rounded with some just being tropes to bounce off of, but they're utilized probably the best as the story makes good use of their quirks to drive forward the plot, its story has some pacing issues at the beginning, but once Dusknoir comes in it picks up and moves things forward at a good speed, and the story is interesting enough to keep you invested so that you want to play it from beginning to end. Explorers is definitely the game that took the idea of a more story focused adventure and used it to its best potential of the games and that's probably why so many adore these games so much.
They also benefit from having those special episodes, I really wish those became a staple as both Gates and Super (and Rescue DX) would've appreciated them.
Rescue Team was a good start to the spinoffs, but it does show in some areas. It meanders for the most part and its story doesn't really kick in until the protagonist gets chased out, and when it finally does its plot is more... typical for the lack of a better term as it's more of a general 'save the world' story with not as much done to make it stand out. As the first game that's to be expected though so I don't hold it against it too much, but I don't think it's amazing either. Character-wise I also would say it's serviceable overall, but only a couple I'd say stand out.
Gates is weird to me. Cast-wise I think it has a strong set of characters as each of the main cast have well rounded personalities that don't rely on cliches to stick, and their motivations are driven through their own personal thoughts and feelings. I also think some of the themes the story tries to tackle are interesting to explore and the pacing isn't too bad, but I feel that in the end the story falls short. I did enjoy my time with it, but I feel like there was something missing to wrap it all up, and it could've used a little clean-up here and there to make it all smoother.
I have to be honest, I'm harsher on Super's story than most. I think it had a lot of potential, but it has probably the worst pacing issues of the four games as it decides to spend half of the time in the school arc and then half dealing with the real meat in the Dark Matter plot. As a result the latter's plot doesn't move forward until halfway through the game and then it goes full throttle and speeds through the beats, and the characters don't fare much better as there's barely any intersection between the two halves (offhand it's just Ampharos, Nuzleaf, and Espurr) so the village characters are irrelevant past the halfway point and the guild's characters are mostly underdeveloped (especially Bunnelby and Swirlix). I also don't like that the villains aside from Dark Matter are just possessed as I preferred the previous three games giving their antagonists their own agency and reasonings for their actions. It's a personal gripe of mine, but it does make them less interesting to me then most of the villains that came before them.
They also benefit from having those special episodes, I really wish those became a staple as both Gates and Super (and Rescue DX) would've appreciated them.
Rescue Team was a good start to the spinoffs, but it does show in some areas. It meanders for the most part and its story doesn't really kick in until the protagonist gets chased out, and when it finally does its plot is more... typical for the lack of a better term as it's more of a general 'save the world' story with not as much done to make it stand out. As the first game that's to be expected though so I don't hold it against it too much, but I don't think it's amazing either. Character-wise I also would say it's serviceable overall, but only a couple I'd say stand out.
Gates is weird to me. Cast-wise I think it has a strong set of characters as each of the main cast have well rounded personalities that don't rely on cliches to stick, and their motivations are driven through their own personal thoughts and feelings. I also think some of the themes the story tries to tackle are interesting to explore and the pacing isn't too bad, but I feel that in the end the story falls short. I did enjoy my time with it, but I feel like there was something missing to wrap it all up, and it could've used a little clean-up here and there to make it all smoother.
I have to be honest, I'm harsher on Super's story than most. I think it had a lot of potential, but it has probably the worst pacing issues of the four games as it decides to spend half of the time in the school arc and then half dealing with the real meat in the Dark Matter plot. As a result the latter's plot doesn't move forward until halfway through the game and then it goes full throttle and speeds through the beats, and the characters don't fare much better as there's barely any intersection between the two halves (offhand it's just Ampharos, Nuzleaf, and Espurr) so the village characters are irrelevant past the halfway point and the guild's characters are mostly underdeveloped (especially Bunnelby and Swirlix). I also don't like that the villains aside from Dark Matter are just possessed as I preferred the previous three games giving their antagonists their own agency and reasonings for their actions. It's a personal gripe of mine, but it does make them less interesting to me then most of the villains that came before them.