Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky

Good day, readers! Guess what I didn't do today? Play Marvel Vs. Capcom 3! Tis' a shame, truly. Either way, since I can't talk about that, I might as well talk about a game I recently bought, so here we go!

I grew up on the Pokemon games, and I still play them to this day. I'll usually play them on my long bus rides to school, or road trips to visit family. While it may be childish to say this, these games are very close to me, and mean a lot. My favorite games in the series are probably the spin off series of games, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. The gameplay is you go in these dungeons with randomized small mazes, and your goal is to get to the stairway to go to the next floor. These games are pretty basic, but require a lot of strategy. I don't think they're for everyone, but my god, I love them so much that it's probably unhealthy. I've played through the first 2 games more than I should have, I could have been using that time for school or something. Either way, I figured I'd talk about one of the entries in the series I played recently, and give my opinions on it.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers Of Sky is an updated version of the second game on the Nintendo DS, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Time/Darkness. These games need to learn how to have shorter titles Despite that the second game was one of my favorite things to play as a little 10 year old Carg, I never got Sky for some reason. However, now that I'm a grown up and junk, I decided to buy the game for 30$ used from a Game Store.

Overall, this is definitely this is certainly the best version of the game. It adds a few new starter characters, and includes a few small changes throughout the game, such as new items, shops, and improved some features of the game. Finally, at long last, the Croagunk Swap Shop actually makes sense! The main, big feature of this version is the 5 bonus stories that unlock while you play the game. They're small, short campaigns that let you play as secondary characters from the main story. This is the real meat and potatoes of this version, it's really interesting to play as characters that have a unique and different playstyle than what I usually use. Not to mention all of the stories in these missions are really cute, short and simple. They usually explain some backstory to the character, it's really interesting seeing the stories of other characters. I really wish there were more than just 5 of these, they're really fun to play, and have a nice story. I feel like these stories would make for good DLC in later, games. You could pay 10$ or so for a pack of extra mission starring other characters, I think that would be pretty cool. I always love seeing secondary characters being put into the spotlight, sometimes I feel like they can be more interesting and entertaining to watch than the main protagonists.

Here's a summary of all of my opinions on the special episodes in the game:

Bidoof's Wish:

Probably the episode with the most different playstyle than what I'm used to. Not only are you stuck with playing as Bidoof, an incredibly weak Normal Type Pokemon, you also have to deal with your awful partner that has an ability that constantly makes the weather hail, meaning you're forced to slowly take damage anytime you're with him. Thanks for nothing, Snover. It has a nice, cute story to go along with it too. I do have a huge conspiracy theory for this mission though, maybe I'll talk about that someday.

Igglybuff the Prodigy: 

By far the easiest special mission, hands down. Igglybuff can kill anything in one or two hits maximum, and nothing ever seems to do much damage to him. Despite this, I feel like this mission is very fun, and has a really cute story. It's really entertaining to see a character who has such an important role in his youth, and that's where I think most of the charm of this episode comes from. The ending also made me sad, so that's something.

Sunflora's Mission Who's name I don't feel like looking up:

This mission wasn't bad, but I do feel like it was certainly one of the weakest both in terms of story and gameplay. I believe that my biggest problem with the mission is that Sunflora is a really weak Pokemon, making it a pretty hard episode. Despite it being hard, however, it's not the fun kind of hard. I guess the one positive is that the story had me guessing a lot, but aside from that, it was meh.

Here Comes Team Charm:

Behold, a probably unpopular opinion! This mission is laaaame. It's my least favorite by far, and I blame the characters you play as, team charm. They're so bland and boring it's ridiculous. They're entire personality is that they're basically the best team ever, and they're perfect and junk. All the other NPCs are saying that they're the coolest team ever throughout this mission, despite that I never see them doing anything cool or interesting. You know what's fun to watch? A character with flaws and motivations, not a group of perfect girls who succeed without trying and get constant praise from everyone for doing everything on the first try. Another thing that bugs me is that I'm forced to play as the weakest member of the team, Lopunny. The mission would be a lot more bearable if I could control one of the other team members, but instead, I'm forced to play as the brittle support character. It would be much more enjoyable if I had control of the other two physical characters, since I don't think it's a good idea to have the character who should be in the back healing people should be in the front taking all the hits.

Into the Dark Future:

Definitely the most cinematic of all of the episodes. I really enjoy this one, mostly because I really like the setting of the future and the characters that go along with it. My favorite part is when they went to blizzard island, it was really cool seeing a familiar area in the future. We only saw the future of the hidden land in the original game, it makes me wonder what the other areas were like in the future. I'd like to image treasure town has been burned to the ground. This mission also probably has some of the best life morals I've seen in a story in ages, which you really wouldn't expect from Pokemon. The only real problem I have with this episode is the ending. (Spoilers from here on out, if you actually care) Since it is technically a game made for kids, they had to give it the perfect, happy ending where everyone is OK, rather than having a bittersweet ending. I thought that it was going to end with everyone being dead, but noooo, they come back to life and everything is all cheery. Booo, lame! You don't give everyone some of the saddest deaths I've seen in recent time and then just have them come back to life for the sake of a happy ending. Booo! Shame on you, shame!

So there are my overall opinions on the bonus episodes. I think they're a great addition to the game, this is certainly the best version of the game. However, is it worth getting this game over the other version? In my opinion, not really. While this may be the best version of the game, I usually see it for about 3 times as much as the other two versions of the game.You could easily get another version, and still mostly have the same experience. I mean, the original game was 10$ at a used game store, while I got this version for 29$ at that same store. Heck, just look at the prices on amazon:

I love this version of the game, but I really don't think it's worth an extra 30$. If you can get this version, go for it, but otherwise you're essentially paying for an overpriced DLC that should have been included with the game. So, in other words, most games nowadays!

But yeah, like I was saying: Best version of the game, more expensive than it should be. I recommend playing the other two versions if you're interested in these games, or if you really feel like spending the extra money, buying the Sky Version. As a final note, I feel like this game is a lot easier than I remember it being, I barely had any trouble playing this game. That's all for this post, see you next time, where I still won't have Marvel Vs. Capcom 3.