Unsurprisingly, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of the Sky takes up exactly the plot of its clones, giving you the possibility of embodying a particular Pokémon, according to the answers you have given in the introductory questionnaire. Once in the shoes of a Tortipouss, Tortipouss or other Pokemon with undisputed fame, you will then have to choose your future permanent teammate from a list of many creatures. This duo formed, you will then follow the story of a young trainer reincarnated in a Pokémon, who will try to find out what happened to him on the one hand, and discover the secrets of time on the other. To do this, the duo will have to find a way to be part of Rondoudou's exploration teams and also tries to make as many friends as possible to complete the various missions offered. The player accustomed to the Mystery Dungeon series will therefore find nothing new at the level of the script and the newcomer will discover a rather rusty game system. Explanations.
Pokémon: Catch a headache
Trying to diversify for a few years, the Pokémon saga has gone through various types of experiments, never really departing from the basics of the most classic RPG. With the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series, Chunsoft has chosen to follow the path of the Dungeon-RPG, one of the most arid types of the genre. In principle, a Dungeon-RPG is composed of a root city, the starting point for all quests, and often randomly generated dungeons. Thus, exploration is limited to these dungeons, in which the player must fight for several floors before finding a key object or facing a boss. Suffice to say that in such a restrictive and suffocating framework, the gameplay and the objectives must necessarily arouse a deep interest so as not to put off the explorer. Rather clever, Chunsoft has once again based the challenge on obtaining a staggering number of Pokémon, namely 490. keep alive. The fault of a functioning that is far too archaic. Indeed, once one of the missions divided between two specific types (the search and the hunt for evil Pokémons) has been chosen, your team goes on the road. Composed of a maximum of four members, the latter will have to evolve in randomly generated levels until it accomplishes its objective. Then, after a triumphant return to Jigglypuff's HQ, your squad rests, and is vehemently awakened in the morning. A pattern that will never change, only interspersed with rare new special events, telling the private lives of some members of the Rondoudou clan.
If the prospect of unlocking the secrets of different dungeons and unearthing rare items is enough for a moment, the combat system quickly dampens all enthusiasm.
Faced with a usual redundancy of the genre (and which should therefore logically be taken into account by Chunsoft), Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of the Sky never comes out of a laborious game principle. If the prospect of unlocking the secrets of different dungeons and unearthing rare objects is enough for a moment, the combat system quickly dampens all enthusiasm. Limited to actions without rhythm and requiring you to go through a menu worthy of that of the first Dragon Quests, the fights turn out to be redundant and extremely poor, despite the fact that these clashes take place in the same movement as the progression, without the slightest change. At the same time, the interface is very poorly thought out, the path in the more than sober frames of the menus being of a heaviness rarely seen. Faced with these design flaws, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky becomes a kind of slide game, cutting out the action so much that the impression of simply moving forward becomes almost obsolete. The natural repetitiveness of the Dungeon-RPG then returns to the assault for lack of balance and transforms Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of the Sky into a simple update without inspiration that turns in circles. Certainly, the cute graphics and the humorous atmosphere of the game make it possible to immerse yourself in it with a certain pleasure. But in the absence of a solid background, the title of Chunsoft loses its kind of amusing naivety. All that remains is a skeleton, perhaps dense but friable.
