What We Want From the Next Pokemon Mystery Dungeon

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon offers an exciting change of pace and if The Pokemon Company will put in the work, here’s what we want from the next game.

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While the Pokemon franchise is primarily known for its core RPG series with games like 2019’s Pokemon Sword & Shield, there’s been a number of highly-successful spin-off games over the years from Pokemon Go to Pokemon Snap that have proven the brand is big enough to make anything a success. Back in 2005, The Pokemon Company took a stab at dungeon-crawling in a new spin-off series called Pokemon Mystery Dungeon where players could control a Pokemon for the first time. Spawning six games across three platforms, the series was niche but beloved and that was enough for the original games to be remade from the ground up for Nintendo Switch with Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX.

Despite being considered classics, the original Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team and Red Rescue Team were flawed games that left a lot to be desired, meaning that even after completely overhauling major aspects of the game, the critical response to the remake was to mixed to average at best. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon offers a refreshing change of pace for the series, and if The Pokemon Company is willing to put in the work, there’s a lot of potential in a new game developed for Switch. Here’s what we want to see from the next Pokemon Mystery Dungeon game.

Open-World Exploration

One of the most exciting aspects of a brand new Pokemon generation is the prospect of being able to explore a whole new region that’s full of new locations, characters, friends, foes, and of course, new Pokemon. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX introduced an enormous new world full of cool locations like Mt. Thunder, Great Canyon, and Sky Tower, and yet the only places that could actually be explored were the player camp and dungeons. The small hub world could be explored within a matter of two minutes, and dungeons were all chosen from a menu.

For a new Pokemon Mystery Dungeon game, the world needs to be opened up, not on the scale of a mainline Pokemon RPG, but enough to let players see these locations come to life. In the original Need for Speed: Underground, for example, all races were chosen from a similar menu system and it worked perfectly fine for the time, whereas the far superior sequel, NFS: Underground 2 introduced an exciting open-world to explore and players would drive to locations on the map to start a race. Similarly, the Link’s Awakening remake for Nintendo Switch has a fairly small open-world overall; however, exploring the map at the player’s will and discovering dungeons made for a far better experience.

An Exciting (And Meaty) Story

Anyone that played Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX could agree that developer Spike Chunsoft played it very safe when it came to Blue Rescue Team and Red Rescue Team’s story. It took a couple of hours to get past the cutesy “we’re a Rescue Team” narrative and even when it began to explore something deeper and more exciting, there wasn’t a whole lot of meat on the bone. To go along with the new open-world, while the core gameplay should remain dungeon-crawling, a new Pokemon Mystery Dungeon game needs a far more exciting and meaty storyline. Tie the world of Pokemon to the human world, set an end goal from the start of the story that would give credence to the open-world, use bad guys like Team Rocket, and give a good reason for why legendary Pokemon (or even Pokemon trainers like Giovanni) would be bosses throughout.

More Exciting Hub-Worlds

One aspect of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX that desperately needed some work was Pokemon Square, the main hub-world that players can explore outside of dungeons. From Pokemon Square, players could visit the Post Office to pick up new quests, a Shop to buy items, a training dojo, and other vendors all within a few meters of each other, as well as the players camp. Pokemon Square does what it needed to, but it never felt like an exciting place to visit and the small amount of Pokemon that will interact with the player have very little to say. Expanding to an open-world could allow for there to be upward of 3-4 hub-worlds that players could find throughout the map, each with new and exclusive items or moves, their own unique design, characters that fit into the larger narrative, and so on.

More To Do in Dungeons

Rescue Team DX made a number of significant gameplay changes to help modernize the remake from its GameBoy counterpart, none more prominent than the ‘Auto’ explore feature that allowed the computer to take over and the player through dungeons in search of items or the next level. It’s difficult to believe that developer Chunsoft didn’t decide to include this feature, at least in part, due to the fact that there’s very little to do. The player always has a goal to reach a specific floor for each quest which varies from Floor 4 to Floor 99, and on each floor are a variety of enemies, items, the possibility of a ‘Powerful’ mini-boss, and finally, an actual dungeon boss for mainline quests.

Outside of the fairly bland aesthetic of most locations, players need far more to do in dungeons moving forward. Offer new items, specific rewards like evolution stones that can only be found in certain dungeons, and expand on the concept of mini-bosses and dungeon bosses. The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series has always been criticized for repetitive gameplay from Red Rescue Team to Super Mystery Dungeon and that critique lives and dies in the actual dungeons.

Proper RPG Leveling

Giving players more to do and achieve from completing dungeons will immediately make the moment to moment gameplay a lot more enjoyable. Another way to make dungeons more meaningful and give the player a larger purpose and goal to work toward is to expand on the RPG leveling system, because while one exists in the games, it’s just in a state where leveling is basically meaningless.

Dungeon difficulty could be designed around the Pokemon’s level, requiring players to meet certain requirements like Level 25 in order to progress to the next story dungeon and boss. RPG leveling would also create a meta game where level and stats actually mean something, for example Attack power is always important, however, certain dungeons could be designed with Pokemon in mind that would require the player to build their team based on a combination of Speed and Defense, and so on.

Evolve, Evolve, Evolve!

The final big change the next Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games desperately needs is a complete overhaul of how the Evolution system works. In Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX, not only is leveling meaningless but it has no impact on how a Pokemon evolves. To evolve Pokemon, the player must first complete the main story which is the bulk of the game for most, and then complete difficult dungeons to unlock a consumable used for evolution. Revamp the evolution system to match the mainline RPG games like Pokemon Sword & Shield, if for no other reason than the fact that it’s a lot more exciting for players to be able to get any Pokemon they want rather than being stuck with a Level 50 Charmander and Eevee.

In our Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX review, we wrote: ” For newcomers and veterans alike, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX offers a near-perfect overhaul of the classic dungeon crawling experience.” As such, there’s a lot of potential in the spin-off series, and if The Pokemon Company is willing to put in the work to develop a proper sequel made for the Switch, introducing any of these changes could make for one of the best entries so far and a great new Pokemon game for fans to enjoy.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX is available now for Switch.

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