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Review

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity (3DS) Review

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To be totally upfront, I’ve never actually played a Pokémon Mystery Dungeon game before this, but I am fairly familiar with the genre and niche that they fill. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity if the first Mystery Dungeon game for the Nintendo 3DS, and things have changed quite a bit in this iteration of the series.

So despite my lack of experience with the Mystery Dungeon series, I was keen to see how Gates to Infinity played to a newcomer, but also read up on previous games to be able to properly comprehend what’s changed. I’ve got a bit of bad news – for both the series rookie and the series veteran – Gates to Infinity has got quite a few things wrong in shaking up it’s formula.
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Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity begins with players hearing voices in a dream asking them to save the Pokémon world. Without questioning why, your player character wakes up and is transformed into one of five Pokémon (Oshawott, Snivy, Tepig, Pikachu or Axew) who then partners up with another Pokémon to rebuild Pokémon Paradise.

It’s a very stereotypically cheesy story that tries it’s best to focus on the positive – though this approach admittedly makes the bleaker moments less impactful, instead appearing “annoyingly” cute.

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At its absolute core, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon is best described as a roguelike – players venture into dungeons to collect items and resources to build up Pokémon Paradise on the outside. The dungeons themselves are designed at a level that feels appropriate for this kind of game, but the actual act of dungeon crawling is slow and monotonous – which is problematic as it’s the main task you’ll be doing.

While exploring, player will run into different Pokémon to battle, and the typical “type” relationships from other Pokémon games also applies here. It adds a little bit of variety, for sure, but the battle system is still incredibly simplistic and never amounts to anything more than mashing the attack button to win. In an attempt to mix things up, the V-Wave system changes up the elemental type of each dungeon at random, which requires players to constantly change their approach, but the execution of this system is more annoying than dynamic.

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It’s a simplistic game design that has been employed by many games in the past, but there’s something about Gates to Infinity that makes it almost too simplistic. The game itself is very poorly paced – dialogue is long and drawn out, dungeon crawling is monotonous and there’s no sense of urgency conveyed through the story. This makes longer play sessions much more tedious. This problem is compounded by the game’s difficulty – it’s incredibly easy to breeze through and the simplicity of the battle system makes in-game items feel almost completely useless. Through my experience, I never felt challenged by Gates to Infinity, instead just mindlessly going through the processes to experience more of the story (which never really went anywhere either).

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The main story can take anywhere upwards of twenty hours to complete, with the side missions and post-game content easily pushing the game over the forty hour mark too. It’s a feature packed game with a lot of stuff to do and it’s worth commending for that fact alone. Players who want to jump into the game with a friend can do so, but only via local wireless play and only when companion mode is unlocked further into the story.

To further extend the experience, the 3DS camera can be used on round objects in real life to discover new portals and dungeons to explore. As if that weren’t enough, there are even downloadable dungeon layouts on offer that provide a little bit more challenge for more experienced players. Whether you enjoy it or not, it’s hard to deny that Gates To Infinity offers a lot of content to the player – though the question is now raised as to whether it’s quality or quantity that the game offers.

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One of the biggest changes that Gates to Infinity brings to the Mystery Dungeon franchise is that the game is now in full 3D. The Pokémon are now fully rendered just like they would appear in the 3D Pokédex, and animate just as beautifully as they did with sprites, if not better.

Despite this, the designs of the actual dungeons are unfortunately rather underwhelming. I feel like this problem is kind of balanced out by the Pokémon themselves, who appear to be quite lively with the new artistic style, but it’s still something worth noting. The soundtrack does its job but is on the whole quite uninteresting.

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I think it’s important to highlight that Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity is not necessarily a bad game – no, it’s not. Instead I think it’s important to highlight how much of a niche genre this is that can only be fully enjoyed by a specific group of people – and similarly, these people are searching for a very specific experience.

Gates to Infinity’s overly simplified approach to the Roguelike genre hurts it much more than it harms it, and I honestly cannot see many younger players revelling in its simplicity too, instead getting rather bored. It’s a hard game to recommend to just anyone, as it does feel a little bit dumbed down and fails to reach it’s true potential. Perhaps a sequel may mitigate these problems, but for now, I would tread very carefully. A game for the die-hard fans of Pokémon or the genre only.

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About The Author
James Mitchell
Avid gamer since I was as young as three years old when I received my first NES. Currently studying full time and consider myself a balanced gamer. Enjoy games on all systems, from all genres, on all platforms. Sometimes feels like he's too optimistic for this industry.
1 Comments
  • onequesti
    January 3, 2014 at 10:27 am

    My question is WHERE THE HECK DID THE GENDERS GO?!?!?? How will anyone know who is a girl and who is a boy besides telling you? And how will your partner know if you are a girl or boy? You obviously don’t have to answer the gender question, But I am only playing the demo… Oh, and I have notice that there is WAY to much text like in M&L Dream team, but unlike dream team, it isn’t interesting or funny!

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