If there is one series that's easy to collaborate on for this site, its Pokemon, especially the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games. Red and Blue Rescue Teams were the first ever video review in the site's history, followed by the three Explorers games, and we've had Super Mystery Dungeon waiting in the pipeline, clawing to get a review since it launched in the US (because they decided to delay the game here in Australia so I had to make Marissa bite her tongue every time she considered spoilers). However, neither of us were on board for reviewing Gates to Infinity, the third generation of the Mystery Dungeon series. Part of it could have been neither of us really jumped on the gen 5 bandwagon back when it was in its prime, part of it could have been we were more excited for Gen 6 and it flew under the radar. Part of it could have been (in my case at least) that I was in Year 12, and there were more important things for me to focus on then it. Regardless, it took a long time for me to get the game, and I'm pretty sure Marissa still doesn't have the game at all. Well, its time to give Gates to Infinity the chance it deserves. Now to see if there's more to why we were hesitant to get the game.
Starting with the story, you are drawn into the Pokemon World at the (assumed) desires of Munna in order to try and help them and save the Pokemon world (two polar opposite ideas as you'll eventually learn). But in PMD tradition, that takes a back seat for the first part of the game as you come across your partner Pokemon, who dreams of... making a town? In the game they call it a "Pokemon Paradise" but its a little unclear as to what it is. It's basically a collection of shops that help the player out, thereby making the nearby town almost redundant... Capitalism? As you go through the story, you help Pokemon in trouble or have gone astray, and eventually save the world from... a snowflake... This is something I have a personal problem within Super Mystery Dungeon as well, but I have no idea why the final bosses for this and SMD were objects. In this game, its a giant snowflake of death called Bittercold is the final boss of the story, and you fight Kyurem right before it. So... why couldn't Kyurem be the final boss? While the story itself is ok, it just never hooked me like Rescue and Explorers did. I was invested in the major and minor characters in those two games, but not here. Most of the town members are mediocre, the only ones I remember aside from Kecleon are Cinccino and Cofagrigus, who is AMAZING and I'm so glad they brought him back in Super!
If I'm invested in a story, I can often look past the faults of the gameplay. But because the story never hooked me, the gameplay faults became far more apparent. I will, however, start with the positives. The main dungeon gameplay is almost unchanged. You can have a team of four and a growing number of items thanks to what you can bring in and what you find on the ground, and you must complete the dungeon or a goal in it to progress. A new way to boost the strength of moves exists in the game along with the V-Wave which powers up Pokemon depending on what type the wave is for the day, but I do find those to be kinda useless mechanics overall. Don't get me wrong, Victini is a good character (not as good as Cofagrigus though), just a mediocre mechanic is tied to it. I did, however, enjoy the variety in the dungeon layouts as some dungeons have outdoor sections to them which makes them feel bigger then they really are, and led to some interesting, if basic, puzzle ideas, like trying to form a bridge of floating logs in order to get to the back of a dungeon.
There was some streamlining done to the gameplay by way of focusing on Generation 5 Pokemon and removing the Hunger mechanic While I prefer the Hunger mechanic, I can understand getting rid of it. What I can't understand as it only seems to exist to pad the game to make it feel bigger then it really is: removing a way to stack missions. In the older games, if you had lots of missions to do in a dungeon, you could do all of them at the same time, a great way to grind rank points and items. Here though, you have to do missions one at a time, which killed the game for me to the point where I haven't actually finished it at time of writing. You can thank Bulbapedia for a lot of the story info. Just doing missions one at a time, and the only rewards you see on the mission details (most of the time) is just materials that you use to build up the Paradise, so the incentive of rewards is missing too cause you can't really grind for money using missions, or Reviver Seeds, or recruitable Pokemon, or any number of rewards. It's not fun cause it makes the pacing of the story feel like weeks of in-game time, going through boring mission after boring mission just to get to the next cutscene when previously I could just compress five weeks of in-game time into a few dungeons.
Presentation-wise, it's definitely a step up from the DS era games, as the inclusion of 3D models makes the dungeons feel bigger, but something was lost in the transition, as I did like the little animations the sprites had, which wasn't carried over to the 3DS. The soundtrack is of a higher quality as well, but nothing stood out to me personally. That could just be personal tastes though. To me, Gates to Infinity is the weakest of the Mystery Dungeon games, and I know its a bit unfair to say that for now as I haven't finished the game, but I cannot stress how slow the game feels thanks to that one change to missions. It's genuinely something that killed the experience for me. It's probably the worst official Pokemon game I've reviewed and one of the worst Pokemon games I have ever played because of that one change. I can't even give them "oh it's the first game, they'll hopefully fix that next time" because this is the third generation of the games, and the sixth game (if you separate the Rescue and Explorers games). There's no excuse for it. At least next week will be a bit faster in terms of pacing, Fire Emblem Warriors, and the next review on the Toybox is a battle of the Slugs. You can check out the Swoop vs Strafe review here: https://mediaholicstoybox.blogspot.com.au/2018/02/transformers-power-of-primes-deluxe.html
Oh and before anyone asks, no I don't care about the Augmented reality aspect of the game about turning circles into dungeons.
love it
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