Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity

Genre: Top-Down Dungeon Crawler

Players: 1

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Review:

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity is a Top-Down Dungeon Crawler released on Nintendo 3DS in 2013. This is the fifth title in the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series, and the first entry in the series released on Nintendo 3DS. With this being the case, you might expect this addition to the series to take advantage of the new hardware to really expand on the series’ premise and deliver something noteworthy.

Well, I’m not going to bury the lead: nothing like that happens here. While Gates to Infinity does feature a presentation that makes some minimal use of the Nintendo 3DS platform, the gameplay still feels very much entrenched in the same simple Dungeon Crawler design that the series has had since the first game. Even the story repeated the same tired themes that have been with the series from the outset (oh no! You’re a human that has somehow been turned into a Pokemon and must work with other Pokemon to find a way to get back to the human world! Who could have seen this coming!?)

While not outright bad, per se, this game’s design is pretty dull, tedious, and repetitive, with players going through randomized dungeon after randomized dungeon, fending off hostile Pokemon they encounter using one of their Pokemon’s four moves (with helpful partner Pokemon acting automatically). Having only four moves at a time may work in the mainline Pokemon games where you can build and organize your own custom team from literally hundreds of Pokemon, but it is absolutely dreadful when you’re stuck with the characters you choose at the game’s outset and whatever Pokemon randomly become “recruited” by the player through the course of the game – as per Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series standard, you have no way to actively “capture” Pokemon to bring them onto your team, and can only hope that a Pokemon becomes “recruited” after you defeat it.

When it comes to the presentation, this game does make use of 3D to depict the Pokemon within the game, and there’s even some fun animations as these Pokemon go through a variety of emotions as their story plays out. However, the quality of the visuals overall lack the same depth and wonder of the mainline Pokemon games. The sound doesn’t help much here either – this game features the same sort of digitized-sounding Pokemon calls, no voice, and a forgettable energetic soundtrack.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity isn’t a bad game, it doesn’t do anything especially wrong, but neither does it do anything particularly right. This game is just as dull, tedious, and simple as the series has always been, and what little attempt has been made to use the Nintendo 3DS to modernize the series is far outpaced by other games on the market, most noticeably the mainline Pokemon franchise. Ultimately, like the rest of this series, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity is pretty much a game only for the most diehard Pokemon fans.

tl;dr – Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity is a Dungeon Crawler that does little to move the series forward, resulting in a dull, repetitive, simple game that’s only worth bothering with if you’re the most diehard sort of Pokemon fan.

Grade: C

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