SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
Although it has a compelling Pokémon-centric story and a captivating new art style, Rescue Team DX is sabotaged by a tedious grind and a lack of innovation.
The remake is a rarely justified thing, and in the case of the Mystery Dungeon remake for the Nintendo Switch, I struggle to see true justification. I try not to call out the films and games that dangle nostalgia as a juicy piece of bait too often, because if I did, every other review would mention it and to be blunt, that doesn’t make for good reading. However for this game, it deserves more than just a mention, because it’s particularly blatant about it all. Rescue Team DX is decent and even entertaining, but only by virtue of the decent entertainment value offered by the Game Boy/ Nintendo DS games it’s based on.
There have been quite a few entries in the Mystery Dungeon spinoff series, but the basic premise is this: you play as a human transformed into an amnesiac Pokémon who joins up with a Pokémon pal to form a rescue team: a ragtag band of critters who take on various busywork jobs, rescuing, escorting or delivering items to Pokémon stuck in procedurally generated dungeons. Usually the world of Pokémon is undergoing some turmoil (natural disasters in this game), and you set off on an adventure to uncover the cause and to discover the story behind your sudden transformation.
I remember playing these games on a Game Boy Advance, just to lend some context to how old they actually are. The first bit of good news I have is that, bar a few of the Pokémon franchise’s better entries (and let’s face it, it’s been a while since they’ve released one of those), this Pokémon-centric story is possibly the best tale they could have told. Rather than a story about a bunch of listless, blank-faced humans, the focus is shifted to the real stars of this franchise. Even after fifteen odd years, it still remains resonant thanks to its heartwarming story about the power of a friendship so strong it makes the world tremble, and the virtues of bravery and self-sacrifice. More than that, a story about people facing danger and uncertainty choosing to believe in better days and banding together is unintentionally timely and indeed, it’s even comforting. The main series games have only rarely introduced characters with qualities we hope to see in ourselves. It’s enough to make a grown man cry and I should know. Tears were shed during the credits, so kudos for what it’s worth.
It’s a shame then that to progress this story, the player has to endure a tedious grind. This I don’t remember from the originals, but this is something many kids won’t really notice. If you’re a parent looking for prospective games to purchase for your young ones, then this actually doesn’t pose much of a problem. Essentially, to get from opening to closing credits, all the game has you do is dungeon crawl. In between major event missions, you’ll take on jobs to earn cash, items and skill points for your fledgling rescue team’s next adventures, exploring a rich world whose colour-pencil painterly art style wonderfully accentuates the cuteness of its pocket monsters and the natural beauty of its forests, lakes and caves. The Switch lends itself well to vibrant, complex art styles, and the good folks at Spike Chunsoft have wisely taken advantage.
Everything looks stunning, from the expressive character models and portraits to the environments. Add to that a remastered soundtrack, and you have a recipe for some truly potent nostalgia bait. However, a pretty façade can’t make a game great on its own, even when the art and sound design are pushed to their limits like in Rescue Team DX. Enemy Pokémon only move or act when you do, so there’s some strategy involved for dungeon crawling, but the combat quickly grows repetitive. The introduction of the auto-mode, which lets your rescue team explore a level without player interaction until they bump into an enemy, is a little telling; an introduction seems to anticipate that some will find the game tedious.
There’s not a lot of variety in the jobs and missions you take on, and the dungeons don’t differ from one another much either. Aside from the occasional introduction of new terrain like lava flows only Fire type Pokémon can traverse, spelunking in a volcano dungeon offers much the same experience as exploring a deep-sea trench dungeon, just with a different set of monsters.
There’s no real new content either; the introduction of Mega-Evolution and autosave doesn’t feel particularly revolutionary. The post-game is thankfully packed with new stuff like Evolution, new dungeons and legendary Pokémon encounters, but you’ll have to do more grinding and crawling to get there. Is it worth it? Depends on how patient you are, and whether you’re the kind of Pokémon fan club member who wants to see it all. Personally, Rescue Team DX feels like it’ll soon be consigned to that lengthy list of games that I’ll eventually get around to finishing. A good buy for your kids, and perhaps even good as an occasional timewaster for adults who’ll arguably be too aware of the true limits of nostalgia in the face of such a grind.
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