Gather friends and clear mystery dungeons! Is Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX worth playing in 2023?
Table of Contents
We’ve been here before, nearly twenty years ago. In 2006, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Red and Blue Rescue Teams released simultaneously on the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS. This is a remake of those two games for the Switch, with a lot of quality of life changes.
The cast is mostly comprised of the 386 Pokémon from generations 1-3, but evolutions from later generations make an appearance, such as Sylveon, Elekivire, or Dusknoir.
You can use wondermail codes to obtain some items and Pokémon. You won’t be able to recruit some of the Pokémon until you have their habitat, but you can use the items to get overpowered early on. I specifically recommend getting the mail codes for vitamins and items that you can sell like throwing items (corsola twig, cacnea spike, golden fossil, etc.) or gold ribbons and other equip items. This will give you a huge influx of cash early on that you can use to grab friend areas early. You can also use the dojo tickets and joy seeds to level up quickly. Realistically, you should sink everything into your starter, as that’s who you’ll be controlling. I’d recommend using stat boosters on your starter and partner. Use gummies to fish for good rare qualities on your other teammates.
You might think that the story is the meat of the game, but instead, it’s more like an extended tutorial. The game opens up massively and the training wheels come off after the credits roll. If you go straight into certain postgame dungeons, you’re going to get rolled, so be prepared.
There’s a healthy selection of starters in this game, and there aren’t any restrictions like gender or whether they’re the main character or partner. You have the starters from Kanto (including Pikachu and Eevee), Johto, and Hoenn, as well as Skitty, Cubone, Machop, Meowth, and Psyduck.
For balance reasons, some mons won’t have their best or hidden abilities: no Lightning Rod Pikachu, Sheer Force Totodile, or Speed Boost Torchic. Egg moves may also not be available.
Ultimately, the choice is up to you and I would recommend going with your favorites, because you can make it work with nearly any combination. With that said, they aren’t all created equal and some of the starting mons are miles ahead of the competition. Keep in mind that many of the games bosses are flying type. Machop and the grass-type starters can expect to have a harder time.
Personally? I went with Pikachu and Charmander. Pikachu starts with a whopping 24 special attack and gets Discharge early, which is a great room-clearing move. Charmander fulfills the artillery role with long-range special attacks and can learn Heat Wave to clear rooms in the postgame.
Each Pokémon can have a single rare quality. These qualities are not created equal, and some are either incredibly rare or locked behind post-game. The main character will always get Squad Up, which is S-tier. My partner got Steamroll, though I’m not sure if that was random. You should prioritize these two qualities, and then one of the following qualities for your third teammate. My team permanently consisted of Squad Up, Steamroll, and Friendly.
Many of the other qualities have their uses, and all of them are better than nothing. These are just the top tier qualities.
Most moves simply attack an enemy in front of you, be it face to face or a few squares away. You’ll start running into enemies with moves that hit everyone in the room. The best way to deal with this is to pack some room-clearing moves of your own. Some of these moves are TMs, so you can pick them up early.
Moves that only target enemies:
Moves that target everyone:
The original versions released with generation 3 mechanics. A lot has changed since then, such as the physical/special split.
Notably, the IQ system is gone and has been supplanted by rare qualities, which are more streamlined in comparison. In previous games, you would eat gummies and gain IQ points that would lead to a variety of different abilities. Now, you can simply select a Pokémon based on a rare quality. This is preferable to needing to sink tens of gummis into them so that they learn good IQ skills. Rare qualities also affect your whole team.
Overall, the game looks great and plays well. It looks great on the Switch Lite. It lends itself well to short bursts of play, and with the large amount of content, it’s also a contender for being your go-to portable title.
If you’ve played the mainline games, you’re automatically going to gravitate to certain high-tier Pokémon, like starters, legendaries, etc. Don’t sleep on the 400 Pokémon available in this game; consider picking teammates that you would usually catch and forget.
This game is balanced differently from mainline: Any Pokémon can become overpowered with enough stat boosters and levels. You don’t have to worry about early game mons falling off in terms of stats.
Pokémon with suboptimal typings also have an easier time in this title. You can mitigate bad offensive typing with rare qualities like steamroll. This means that types that would normally be unimpressive, like normal or grass are much stronger. Enemies don’t have competitive movesets, so you can actually bringing grass types into a water dungeon without necessarily having to worry about them all packing Ice Beam.
Rescue Team DX is a stellar remake, but there are a couple minor issues. First, there’s no basic attack; you have to use a move every time you act. Move stats are shared across your whole team though, so you can offset this by pumping up the accuracy, power, and pp of moves to make them more efficient.
The other big issue is the living dex. The game does tell you whether you own a mon, but needing one of each stage results more trips spent trying to recruit weaker monsters.
The story itself won’t wow you, but is a good primer for the postgame that is to come. I had fun all the way through, but my satisfaction rose greatly once I got to the really fun postgame dungeons.
Unlike the mainline games, which require trading, this is an entirely self-contained adventure. Value abounds here.
This game is for Mystery Dungeon enthusiasts, but all Pokemon fans will have a good time with this title.
Definitely. I’m glad there’s a lot of replayability here, because the genre is pretty shallow. Here’s hoping that the other PMD games get remastered soon.
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