When the original pair of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games were released in 2006, they were received as the ugly Duckletts of Pokemon spin-offs. Now, almost 15 years later, it is clear how wrong we were to write off Spike Chunsoft's ambitious take on the titanic series: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX for Switch is wondrous to play and, in a way, boasts a substantially more resonant fable than most other recent Pokemon games.
You wake up one morning and everything seems pretty ordinary, at least until you realize that you're not a human anymore. Instead, you've magically and mysteriously metamorphosed into a Pokemon--which exact species is determined by a fun little personality quiz you take at the beginning of the game. Before long you make a new best friend, who is also a Pokemon, and you decide to form a rescue team together. Why? To save foolish Pokemon who have ventured into dangerous dungeons stricken by environmental disasters, even though they're totally aware of said environmental disasters. Over the course of the game, you embark on arduous odysseys to the many dungeons scattered sporadically across the world of Pokemon, each of which contains several 'mons in desperate need of help and lots of others who are a bit aggravated by the daily earthquakes.
What's important about Mystery Dungeon carving itself out a new home on Switch is that DX isn't just some sort of lazy rehash. Perhaps the most striking thing about this reworked spin-off, at least at first, is its revised color palette. It's pretty different to the old Mystery Dungeon games, sporting a warm painterly style to replace the originals' GBA-era pixel art. The revamped rescue base you get about halfway through the game is especially gorgeous, while the relentlessly upbeat soundtrack is capable of both intensifying the charming tone of the art and flipping even the tensest moments on their head. This is an essential part of the game's overall appeal, as it goes hand in hand with the fact that Mystery Dungeon is ultimately about overcoming adversity with a smile on your face. One second it seems as if you're on the verge of the inevitable apocalypse, the next you're bobbing along, beaming for no reason, ready to hurtle headlong into a procedurally generated dungeon to save some 'mons and make some money.
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