| Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness | 
 enlarge | From: Nintendo
Category: Video Games
List Price: $34.99
Buy New: $19.62
You Save: $15.37 (44%)
Buy New/Used from $18.99
Avg. Customer Rating:   (19 reviews)
Sales Rank: 421
Platform: Nintendo Ds
ESRB: Everyone
Media: Video Game
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Age: 5 - 20 years
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 5.4 x 4.9 x 0.7
MPN: DS-NTRPYFYE
Model: NTRPYFYE
UPC: 045496739706
EAN: 0045496739683
ASIN: B0013B30SE
Release Date: April 20, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Mystery Dungeon review July 13, 2008
My grandson, for whom this game was purchased, would give this game at least four stars.
 Pokemon Explorers of Darkness Review July 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I love these rescue games...I feel like a hero when I've accomplished rescue jobs! A lot of the game's graphics are beautiful, and the game is simple to learn!
Underappreciated, great story and fun! June 29, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness, capitalizes on the failures of the first entry in the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series. Offering a much more adorable and emotionally intense story, with addictive gameplay, I have found that this one is more of the pick-up and stay playing variety.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness launches by asking you, the player, a series of questions that gauge how well your personality traits match against the set of several Pokemon. The answers that the player gives determine which Pokemon they will play as for the entire game. The questions are quite interesting in that they sometimes match, even in its simplest state, the player. For a true Pokemon fan or just someone who knows exactly what Pokemon they want to be there are several faqs are available online that guide you in the way to answers questions to get who you want. After the player has chosen their Pokemon, they proceed to choose their partner. The partners range from the starters from all Pokemon generation games to including a few other choices. I went along and chose the adorably and always cute Pikachu. After choosing the Pokemon, the player proceeds into the Pokemon world.
The main story of the game is to discover why time has been stopping all over the region. One of the earliest opening cinematic sequences indicates that a Grovyle is stealing the games time gears. The mission is to stop Grovyle. I will admit that the story proceeds at a quick pace from the start. However, it is broken into pieces by the ability to go into a series of quests, if one wanted to build up the teams rank. The higher the rank the more items the player can carry or keep in storage. It is difficult to discuss the story any further as it will reveal pivotal events that are vital to the intrigue of the game.
The story soon takes off from their in which you will meet your partner and help them conquer their fear of several things in the world. Generally, the player serves as a way for the Pokemon partner to develop confidence with the benefit of creating a long lasting friendship. The player will soon be inducted into the Wigglytuff Guild (a team of explorations teams) as apprentices, and soon go on explorations quests.
The quests range from a variety of options. The quests can generally range from escort missions, search and rescues, or capture the bandit. There is a ranking system for these missions with different awards being award in respective denominations based on the difficulty. Some missions will reward you by allowing you to explore new areas that do not relate to the main story.
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What makes this game appeal to people who aren't just Pokemon fans, is probably the idea of dungeon crawling, or for those that aren't in the arena of video game terminologists (and yes terminologist is a word), traveling through an infinite number of dungeons with layouts that change randomly. In the past Pokemon was a game in which the only idea is to catch Pokemon, travel through an over world map, and defeat a prestigious class of elite Pokemon trainers or go through a smattering of Pokemon recreational facilities in an effort to gather enough certifications to show that one has mastered the training of their Pokemon. Pokemon mystery dungeon strays away from that tradition and allows the player to play as a Pokemon, gather other Pokemon friends, and explore dungeons in an effort to see all Pokemon and gather treasure.
Explorers of Darkness raises the bar over the previous version by offering the extensive story, more hilarious characters, more items, more Pokemon, and perhaps a feeling that what you are doing isn't just something random. I could not get into the previous offering for the middle of the game seemed like a chore.
Explorers of Darkness never feels like a chore for it attempts to make sure that you never get bored, whether from the witty and silly way that Team Skull (skulltank, zubat, and koffing) acts and responds, from the way that your partner attempts to bond with you, or the hilarious members of the Wigglytuff Guild. Most of the dungeons are kept short, offer save points (sometimes with access to the players storage), and provide healing for the player before they face a boss. Although that last part may make the game sound easy, some of the bosses are in themselves very difficult even with full health, if your team is not up to par.
Players are able to extend their team by attempting to recruit other Pokemon. Recruiting is generally random. Once you recruit a Pokemon, you can add it to your active team roster and take it with you (only in the most story intense battles will you not be able to use them).
In terms of sound, the game offers an interesting mix of tunes. I only have one favorite and that can be found in the first area of the game, the beach with the Krabby. The other music is a hit or miss for some people, I generally kept it on low while listening to other music but for boss battles or monster houses, I turned it up. The sound effects in the scenes are perfect and sound fitting, if not powerful.
On the graphics side of the spectrum, I would pin this as perhaps a beautiful game to behold. Somehow, the style of pencil artwork seems to expand this greatly and keep it looking fresh. The cinematic sequences are always interesting to see, and really do look beautiful.
After completion of the main story, players are given the ability to continue to play through and accomplish a few more chapters to get to know the guild, open up the ability to evolve, and recruit all 490+ Pokemon, or even rescue others via the Wi-Fi service.
Pros
+Ability to recruit all 490+ Pokemon on one game
+Emotional yet fast paced story line (about 20-25 hours to beat main story)
+Hilarious Characters
+Varying Dungeon Locations
+Level Grinding is not required
Cons
-Music could have been a bit more robust in dungeons
-Some Attacks are a bit too unfair (such as Fury Swipes, can one hit KO, if all 5 hits hit)
-Dungeons become a bit difficult
-Monster Houses will kill low-level players or those inexperienced with using the items
-Unless one really desires to keep his or her items, just save before a dungeon instead of waiting for someone on Wifi service to rescue the team
A New and Improved Pokemon Mystery Dungeon June 26, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I'm a middle-aged lady who adores Pokemon, and I've also become addicted to Mystery Dungeon games. I loved the first two Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games (Red and Blue Rescue Teams). I wondered if it was worthwhile to purchase this game, since it would probably be a reworking of those earlier games. (Nintendo seems to prefer updating their Pokemon franchise games, rather than discovering new approaches. We're still playing the equivalent of the original Pokemon Red and Blue, but with two screens and better music!)
Anyways, I was delighted to discover that the story mode in this game is about three times as long as in the previous games. And that there's a second story mode which begins sometime after the first story ends. Lots of new dungeons, and all of those rare Pokemon from Diamond and Pearl.
I've read that this game is excessively talky, and I agree with that. Too much time is spent on clicking through cutscenes and conversations. And yet, when I reached the end of the first story mode, I was so deeply moved that I cried.
Even though I finished both story modes about a month ago (and something like 100 hours of non-story playing time), I am truly enjoying the challenge of beating Zero Isle (the equivalent of the previous games' Purity Forest, etc.)
If I could ask for only one thing... I wish that there were X-Ray Specs in this game! I miss the thrill of sniping those random Kecleon Shops!
This game is more challenging in several ways. For instance, gummies and Reviver Seeds are much more rare. After feeding my Pikachu every Yellow Gummi that I can find, she is still a three-star IQ.
I love the smoother graphics, the wide variety of previously-unseen Pokemon, and the warmth and kindness of the characters' relationships.
My only complaint is that they should have found something better to do with the second screen, instead of just leaving a set of basic instructions there. The dual-screen format is meaningless in this game, because it plays exactly like the GameBoy Advance version of Rescue Team. All of the action is displayed on the bottom screen, and there is no touch-screen activity at all.
I do recommend this game for Pokemon fans, and for people who'd like to try a fairly simple but addictive Mystery Dungeon game. I've truly enjoyed it, and I will pass it along to my niece who is getting her first Nintendo DS later this summer.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Darkness ROCKS!!! June 17, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This game and Pokemon Diamond are the BEST games you can get. Explore a new world as a pokemon. You can get Darkrai, Cresselia, Heatran and all the others! I used to think pokemon mystery dungeon was retarded. When I played this game and bought it, it totally changed my mind. PLEASE get this game. IT RULES THE WORLD OF POKEMON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (p.s. if U get it U rock too!)
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