Pokémon Mystery Dungeon/YMMV

This is the page for Pokémon Mystery Dungeon subjectives. The page will be split by game shortly.

• Alas, Poor Villain: Team Skull.
• Complete Monster: Darkrai, who caused the planet's paralysis in the future by stopping time so that he could usher in a Bad Future covered in darkness, assaults and torments others in nightmares, put Azurill in an eternal nightmare, and almost got the main characters to commit suicide. All for kicks! He may well be the most vile character to appear in the entire Pokémon franchise!
• Critical Dissonance: Of the critic-hated, player-loved kind. The story is generally agreed to be better than the supporting gameplay.
• Crowning Moment of Funny: Now with its own page.
• Crowning Moment of Heartwarming:
  • The Stinger for both games, plus the extended ending of Sky.
  • "Bidoof's Wish". He asks Jirachi for a friend he could be a sempai/mentor to. Some time later, enter the player characters. Awww...
    • Not to mention when he's about to be mugged by Team Rogue, and the entire guild shows up to defend him. There's even a second (obviously, much easier) fight scene, with a remix of the Guild music playing through it.
  • From "Igglybuff The Prodigy". Igglybuff is screaming and crying over the arrest of his master, Armaldo, and is about to attack Magnezone and Nidoking. Armaldo himself stops him and calms him down, accepting his own arrest and giving Igglybuff the very first treasure they found together to remember him by. Also a Tear Jerker.
    • Don't forget what Wigglytuff says after that: "Truly bad pokemon don't exist anywhere."
  • After Chatot makes a fool of himself over Perfect Apples and kicks your partner while they're down, you find out Bidoof and the other apprentices set aside part of their meals for you, and they spend some time encouraging you and bolstering the confidence Chatot just ripped to shreds.
  • Chatot gets one of his own later during his Heroic Sacrifice. That, and the entire Brine Cave cutscene with him and Wigglytuff. Awww.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: Created by Arata Iiyoshi (aka S.D.D.) & Atsuhiro Ishizuna, each series has many memorable tracks reprising several distinct melodies and themes. Explorers of Sky eventually unlocks a Sound Test where the player can listen to the entire soundtrack (all 141 songs!) at their leisure. Among the picks:
  • The music that plays in Crystal Cave (Tracks #43 and #44). If crystals could be played like musical instruments, they'd sound like that.
  • How about Track #59, "Hidden Highland"? It makes a nice dungeon theme, but it is truly memorable for its use during the scenes when Dusknoir warns about being erased from history, and again during Grovyle's special episode for Dusknoir's Hannibal Lecture, and Darkrai's Motive Rant at the end of the epilogue story.
  • Track #61, "Time Gear".
  • Track #62, "Through the Sea of Time": First heard during the player's entry into the Hidden Land, this piece takes on a new meaning when it emotionally punctuates Grovyle's Heroic Sacrifice against Dusknoir. Track #63, "In the Hands of Fate", which reprises the same melody slowly and solo, is also heard a precious few times.
  • Track #64, "Temporal Tower", a very climactic theme to crawl The Very Definitely Final Dungeon by, and itself echoes the melody from "Through the Sea of Time".
  • Track #68, "Dialga's Fight To The Finish!" is the Battle Theme Music for the (fake) Final Boss (which also reprises "Through The Sea Of Time"'s melody), but in a faster, more climactic pace, that also shifts a half-octave higher during its final verse. You don't need someone to tell you that This Is the Final Battle when the music does this all by itself.
  • Tracks #70 and #72, "Don't Ever Forget..." and "Farther Away...", could be the single most emotional theme in the entire soundtrack, considering that it's heard only after defeating the Final Boss, right as the change in history erases the player from existence, leaving the partner to return home alone.
  • Track #81, the cheerful melody of "Sky Peak Forest", can easily become an Ear Worm. (You have been warned.)
  • All four boss themes from both games, anyone?
  • The main theme itself is pretty damn good.
  • Special mention must also go to Rescue Team's Sky Tower.
  • Pretty much every track in the game is Crowning Music of Awesome, Ear Worm, or both.
• 8.8: The fans were not happy about some review scores, particularly the 3/10 Game Informer gave Blue Rescue Team.
• Even Better Sequel: Time and Darkness are generally considered this, mainly because of the major improvement in story.
• Game Breaker:
  • Unlike the main Pokémon series, "movement speed" actually provides a Haste effect, giving the user multiple turns in a row. It wears off quickly, but a quickened Pokémon can inflict a lot of damage if they also know attacks capable of hitting an entire room. This goes double in Monster Houses, where an enemy Pokémon using "Agility" can increase all enemies to double/triple/quadruple turns.
  • Due to the lack of genders in the original games, Attract could effectively disable anything in Red and Blue for several turns, even bosses.
  • Multi-Hit attacks (Bullet Seed, Fury Swipes/Attack, Pin Missile). Due to the damage calculation in the Mystery Dungeon games being much different than the mainstream titles, these moves now hit as hard as most other attacks each individual hit. This is made worse for the fact that the STAB bonus from the mainstream titles is also implemented in the Mystery Dungeon games, meaning with the right Pokémon (A Treecko with Bullet Seed and the Concentrator skill for instance), this can be quite lethal.
• Goddamned Bats: Pretty much anything that can inflict Poison status, attack from a distance (most Water-type attacks have ranged capability), or from within walls (the Ghost types).
• Magnificent Bastard: Dusknoir. Hell, if his epic plot in the main story doesn't qualify, how about his Xanatos Roulette in the Sky bonus chapter, which only fails because he actually Heel Face Turns right there and then?
  • Darkrai. It is revealed at the end of the post-credits story that he was behind everything and manipulates everything in his path so he can destroy time and space himself.
• Memetic Molester:
  • Drowzee was this in the main series thanks to its Pokédex entries; the mission where you have to rescue a child from him only escalated his status as one.
  • According to Bidoof's Diary, Croagunk sneaks into the men's bedroom and watches Bidoof sleep while smiling creepily.
• Moral Event Horizon: EVERYTHING Darkrai does, particularly trying to manipulate the heroes into committing suicide, pushes him FAR beyond this.
• Never Live It Down: "Perfect Apple Incident" anyone?
• Nightmare Fuel: Now with its own page.
• Nintendo Hard: Especially the bonus dungeons, some of which totally empty your inventory and level you down to 1. It's because of this that Zero Isle South is many players' favorite dungeon.
• Paranoia Fuel: In Time/Darkness/Sky, a conversation with your partner about killing yourselves ends abruptly as the two of you go to sleep. When you wake up, your partner's bed is empty.
• Player Punch: The ending of Special Episode 2 in Sky- Igglybuff the Prodigy. Igglybuff has befriended his loyal, trustworthy master (a retired explorer), they've explored and found heaps of treasure. Then, after they beat a remote dungeon, Igglybuff's friends and parents turn up to reveal that Igglybuff's mentor, Armaldo, is actually a B-rank outlaw. You can practically see Igglybuff's world ending as Armaldo's taken into police custody.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Most of Chatot's detractors (especially over the Perfect Apple incident) were rather impressed by his actions in the Brine Cave.
• The Scrappy:
  • PMD2's Chatot by far.
    • Of course. In a way, he's irritating to the point of actually being humorous.
  • Cresselia as well. More for being a Leeroy Jenkins Escort Mission in what's already a candidate for That One Level and against That One Boss.
• That One Boss:
  • The first game has Articuno. Sure, Zapdos and Moltres were already fairly strong, but Articuno is the first boss Pokémon to wield a move that strikes your whole party (Powder Snow) -- be prepared to lose a few Reviver Seeds here, especially if one of your starters is Grass- or Ground-type.
  • Palkia can be troublesome too, if he feels like spamming Spacial Rend. It also hits the whole party, and unlike Dialga's Roar of Time, he doesn't have to spend a turn recharging.
    • If you have Riolu, you can use Copycat to send Spacial Rend straight back at him For Massive Damage, given that it's Dragon-type, Palkia's sole elemental vulnerability.
    • Though Riolu is only available as a starter in Sky, and you have to answer "male" on the quiz to get it. So good luck if you're playing Time or Darkness (or if you wanted one of the female-only starters).
  • To be fair, most bosses actually lack Contractual Boss Immunity against Standard Status Effects. Throw them a Totter Seed (induces confusion, eliminating virtually all threat from anything short of a room-clearing move), an X-Eye Seed (causes a Mushroom Samba, harmless on you but paralyzes the AI), or a Hunger Seed (immobilizes Pokémon with "Hungry Pal" status), and you can Curb Stomp Battle them straight into the ground. Combat pragmatism for fun and profit!
• That One Level:
  • Any of the Legendary dungeons in the second game, i.e. Bottomless Ocean, Giant Volcano, etc.
  • Mt. Bristle can be a bit of a challenge for the sole reason that you're not quite strong yet. Like the Early Bird Boss, but for a level instead.
    • Not helped by the fact that Drowzee might be a bit of an Early Bird Boss, if you get unlucky and his Forewarn ability activates a lot.
• Tier-Induced Scrappy: Pretty much any Escort Mission you do will include this. You can't assign tactics to them if they get separated, and in Red/Blue Rescue Team the escorted Pokémon was almost always at Level 1, making it easy for enemy Pokémon to KO them. To put it nicely, these are the guys who tend to waste all your Heal Seeds and Reviver Seeds for doing annoyingly stupid things like wandering off and walking into lava/fire. Explorers was just a little bit nicer in the levels department, but your clients are still under-leveled.
  • Cresselia in Explorers Of Time/Darkness/Sky is perhaps the worst when it comes to this. Not only do you have to escort her to the end of the dungeon (Which contains tons and tons of lava for her to float over and burn herself with), but she also takes place in the final battle against Darkrai.
    • That being said, she at least has the Lava Evader IQ Skill, so she won't go onto the lava on her own.
• What an Idiot!: Yet again, the 'Perfect Apple' incident. Thanks Chatot, your insight and actions on the whole incident were really appreciated.
• The Woobie: The Partner in both endings.