Bit of a bump.
I finally finished Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity the other day.
I took quite a bit of a break from it.
Did the Worldcore mission, after being prompted to by the in-game characters, but first gathered supplies for a few days.
Which I hardly needed.
The final mission has you go in alone, and I required 1 reviver seed (due to a bad decision, when I assumed Axeey the Axew could survive one more Dragon attack) and probably 1 Oran Berry to heal.
Other than that, the very final mission was a piece of piss.
The ending to it was quite sweet and a really nice finish, and getting back to Post Town, it was nice to hear people say nice things to my character.
Although to be honest, considering the whole ordeal of the story (which I won't spoil), they didn't seem too fussed.
Like they had basically given up at the Credits and end of the main story, and were just watching from the side as the post-main story continued.
If you don't want to read a bit of a long review, then simply click
Here.That said, I suppose I'd have to sum the game up.
I'm a fan of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games, although I'm very much a rookie, having only played Gates to Infinity and Explorers of Time, but I thoroughly enjoy the games and think them to be a lot of fun, and quite a novel take on the Pokemon series.
I can't fault Gates to Infinity for any of it's gameplay. The mechanics are very much similar, if not identical to the previous games.
The lack of hunger was weird and made me feel like the game was a bit too easy on me (I liked having to plan food for the journey, and the thrill of nearly starving and having to survive off of random seeds found about), although it apparantely was present in the last few dungeon/levels (if that's the story ones, then I didn't even notice it, since the level was so easy).
What definitely is apparant when you play Gates to Infinity, and especially if you have played previous games, is that it is unbelievably short.
I've no doubt gotten a day or two out of it.
But I've gotten weeks and weeks out of Explorers of Time, and like many here, I've gotten possibly months out of Main-series games.
The storyline for Gates to Infinity was just incredibly short. While I seemed to have breaks between story progression where I was promoted towards going on regular adventures, they didn't seem to be as long as those in previous titles. Which ultimately meant that my story seemed quite sped up and forced on. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but it was over so soon.
The actual story missions had some challenge and length to them, indeed. But nothing that was so great and memorable as those in Explorers of Time.
And it's almost certain that there wasn't anywhere near as many story missions as there had been before.
In Explorers of Time, after completing the main storyline, it seemed like missions were coming on for miles before my game eventually ended and I was left with just going on un-scripted adventures.
I've had a single story-line mission in Gates of Infinity, following the end of the main-story, and I'm pretty sure that was the only mission I will be given following the end.
It's just too short.
And following that, the biggest downfall to the entire game is the complete lack of available Pokemon.
The miniscule amount of starters is a very good sign of this, where older titles would seemingly leave me with a myriad of Pokemon to recieve, assuming I answered my questions properly.
Yet Gates to Infinity most definitely did not.
And it didn't stop there.
Compared to Explorers of Time, where all but 2 of all Pokemon as of Gen IV are available, the Pokemon available in Gates to Infinity doesn't even include the entire Unova Pokedex, the most recent release of Pokemon for the game.
What this boils down to is that no matter where you go in this game, whether it's a volcanic region, or a chilly ice field, or a dark cave or a sunny forest, you will encounter the exact same Pokemon again and again.
Sometimes they don't even make sense in their present location, because there aren't enough Pokemon of certain types to fit the theme (I think there are only 3 ghost Pokemon, being the Litwik line, and I'm not even sure if Steel type Pokemon are in the game...).
And besides that, there are practically no Legendary pokemon in the storyline in this game.
As far as I am aware, there are 4.
Victini, who appears as a PostTown/Paradise resident and acts as a merchant for the new "V-Wave", an interesting feature that gives bonuses to a random type (enemy and players) each in-game day.
Virizion, who appears as a title character on boxart, is one of your main characters and soon joins your Team.
Keldeo, who acts as a minor plot device, and later on a possible team member.
Kyurem, who appears as a boss for the game.
I've expressed that there were almost all Pokemon in previous games, but the importance of that isn't stressed enough when you consider how many Legendaries were key to the plot.
In Explorers of Time, the Legendary Pokemon acted as key boss-characters who were central to the story-missions.
Each big story-mission usually ended in an interesting boss fight against a legendary, for respective purposes.
The interactions of Palkia and Giratina were crucial to the overall story in both Explorers of Time and Darkness, as was the minglings of other minor legendaries, like Celebi.
Yet in Gates to Infinity, there were so few legendaries in the story, (2/3 being good), that all the dungeon-bosses were taken up by regular Pokemon.
Characters like Gurdurr, Munna, Purrugly and others act as sad, boring bosses (who you could encounter as regular Pokemon within Dungeons), while the likes of Reshiram and Zekrom, Thundurus/Tornadus/Landorus, or Lugia/Ho-Oh were excluded from having key roles.
The Pokémon Mystery Dungeon team completely lost it with this game.
They made practically no use of all the previously rendered 3D pokemon that were created for Pokédex 3D and Pokédex 3D Pro.
They had a whole field to practice around with 3D animation and whatnot, prior to the release of Pokemon X and Y.
Yet instead, they went lazy.
They chose very few Pokemon to play with. They threw them at you time and time again, until you got really loving bored, and it seemed like Zweilous and Druddigon were the only Dragon Type Pokémon in existence.
And then they gave you a well-written, if slightly overly soppy story, that was just drastically short, and furiously thrown at you until you had no choice but to continue with the game (Up yours if you think you can stretch the benefits of your purchase out for as long as possible).
It leaves me feeling happy to have played the game, as a fan of the series, both Pokémon and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, yet ultimately I'm left feeling like I really missed out on what could have been a great game, and that really, I wish I had saved my money until the game went on sale, or the price dropped a bit.
Tl;DrPokémon Mystery Dungeon is a fun game, yet it runs out of steam quickly, hurries to finish it's own storyline, and provides very little in terms of change and diversity.
If you're looking for a great 3D Pokémon game to sink your teeth into before Pokémon X and Y, then look elsewhere. This will only leave you feeling disappointed, and nowhere near satisfied.
