N0ximilien

Ignoring explores of darkness and time, this is the game to play if you want to try the mystery dungeon series. The game relies of course around exploring dungeons, fighting and avoiding enemies, managing health, stamina, items and pps. For a kid this is enough, but for grown ups, is more of a "find the path for the next floor". It's not an fps, and there are no explosions, or pretty women so beware for those who cannot stay focused for more than 10 seconds and then complain. The game is CLEARLY aimed at children, but if there were options for a more mature audience it would be great. Some dungeons are very challenging and you must prepare for them, most of them are very quick and can autopilot through them. The main plot is quite full and rich for a kids game, I remember playing it for the first time when I was 11 and crying to it. I recently played it again and it's still among the best games pokemon has to offer (along hearthgold/soulsilver, platinum and withe/black). It's very sad to see where this series is today. If they refined some aspects, introduced some more challenges for grown ups, more subplots, in the main story - rather than side missions for some characters - and properly developed the "exploration" in the dungeon, having random events that can truly impact the exploration, rather than trying to find the stairs as quickly as possible, the game could spark some interest and be more appraised. Sadly it will never happen.

I honestly cannot understand how people can praise this game. I had to force myself to finish it, because I wanted to play through the entire zelda series, and this was BY FAR the worst experience of the entire journey. A long and repetitive grind, with no reward at the end of it. You have to revisit the same three maps over and over and it got boring so quickly that it felt like a job. At some point I set up a timer of an hour, after which I would close the game and dread the idea of having to repeat the process again the day after. The fighting, although responsive, feels uncoordinated; you can try to swing properly the sword, but after a few hours you will either skip every enemy or just swing your arm at random, because enemy take multiple hits to defeat and some of them can block. The items, aside from very few, feel useless 90% of the time. The trials are so boring and repetitive you will wish to have a skip button. The main antagonist is a joke. Truly a joke, a huge let down. The only redeeming qualities of this game are: Ghirahim. Koloktos's fight. Scaldera's fight.

The game is a very disappointing experience. Personally I couldn't find anything interesting in it. The first in the legends series, although lacking in content and repetitive, introduced an entire new way of playing and I could accept the lack of things to do, thinking that for future entries they would improve and polish it. But no. This is worse. Feels like a chinese knock off, what a diehard fan, without any taste, would make if he had the chance to do so. The megas feel very uninspired, the map feels nonsense. The pokemon just a shell of what they could be and do.