Game Re­view: Poké­mon Mys­tery Dun­geon: Res­cue Team DX

MISHAWAKA – Once again, Nin­tendo demon­strates its knowl­edge of the adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” as it slings yet an­other re­mas­ter our way.  

Ei­ther to save time or be­cause I don’t care to write out the full name, I shall start by say­ing I will be call­ing this ti­tle “Res­cue Team DX” for the rest of this piece. Res­cue Team DX is a graph­i­cal up­grade to the 2005 ti­tle of the same name, mi­nus a few let­ters. The orig­i­nal was split up into two ver­sions, Red and Blue, in keep­ing with the main­line Poké­mon ti­tles, but only the sin­gle ver­sion has been re­leased this go around. 

The 2020 re­lease that found its way onto store shelves on Mar. 6 is a “graph­i­cal up­grade” be­cause the orig­i­nal story re­mains largely un­changed. Nin­tendo seems to think all it needs to do nowa­days is give the cob­webbed junk in its at­tic a good dust­ing and a fresh coat of paint to make a ver­i­ta­ble boat­load of money. Not that I’m com­plain­ing, I’m wait­ing for it to re­lease Xenoblade Chron­i­cles: De­fin­i­tive Edi­tion, my­self, but I di­gress. 

The pro­logue opens in quite a dif­fer­ent style than your stan­dard Poké­mon games; in­stead of play­ing as a trainer, you ini­tially play as a dis­em­bod­ied spirit, try­ing not to freak out from the psy­che­delic void you’re in, as a gilded ten­nis ball per­forms a My­er’s-Briggs per­son­al­ity test on you. As far as I know, the ball is not named af­ter a tree, like the nu­mer­ous pro­fes­sors that usu­ally guide you through these poly­chro­matic pur­ga­to­ries, but you don’t get enough time to ask be­fore it force­fully stuffs you, still in­cor­po­real, into the tiny body of a small se­lec­tion of Poké­mon.  

Among the po­ten­tial Poké-per­sonas you will be un­will­ingly in­hab­it­ing are Cyn­daquil and its fel­low starters; Mud­kip, and its fel­low, but ir­rel­e­vant, starters; Eevee; Skitty; Cubone; Psy­duck; Pikachu, of course; and the bizarrely-Brook­lyn-brogue-bear­ing Me­owth of Team Rocket in­fame. Based on your an­swers, you will be given a Poké­mon re­sult in­stead of a per­son­al­ity, but not be­fore the game makes wildly in­va­sive com­ments on what your re­sponses sug­gest about you.  

Then, the ten­nis ball deigns to let you have a part­ner to ac­com­pany you, as there’s no “I” in “team.” Un­less, of course, you take in­spi­ra­tion from the “Wii” and its pop­u­la­tion of “Mi­i’s” and de­cide to make a “tiim.” The ball, as with most, does­n’t ap­pre­ci­ate my sense of hu­mor, and re­fuses to let you leave with­out a com­pan­ion. Luck­ily, you’re al­lowed to choose from the re­main­ing pool of Poké­mon who your part­ner will be, and what their gen­der is. 

Pro­ceed­ing that, you will be gen­tly woken by your part­ner in the game world, who promptly in­forms you that you, de­spite your ve­he­ment protes­ta­tions, are, in fact, a Poké­mon. You, and only you, are to gather, then, that your pre­sum­ably and pre­vi­ously hu­man soul has been placed into the body of a Poké­mon. 

No time to sort out this ex­is­ten­tial cri­sis, though. A dis­traught But­ter­free rushes into the clear­ing, in­form­ing you that its child is in im­mi­nent dan­ger, falling into a re­cently formed fis­sure. Un­for­tu­nately, But­ter­free is too much of a cow­ard to han­dle two or three level-five Poké­mon on its own to res­cue its child. There­fore, it en­lists the help of you and your part­ner-to-be to save its baby Cater­pie. This mis­sion func­tions as the tu­to­r­ial, but all it should be teach­ing you is how to press “L” on your con­troller, as that shifts the game into “Auto Mode.” The Poké­mon move on their own, col­lect trea­sure on their own, and move you closer to the ob­jec­tive, with­out you hav­ing to lift a fin­ger, save for bat­tles. 

Af­ter the con­clu­sion of the tu­to­r­ial, your part­ner is­sues a heart­felt plea for you and them to start a fledg­ling res­cue team, which you can refuse! Sev­eral times! Why get emo­tional and fis­cal ful­fill­ment out of this story that you paid for when you can make a fic­tional char­ac­ter, con­trolled by a panoply of ones and ze­roes, mo­men­tar­ily sad, un­til you get tired of the same four lines of di­a­logue and fi­nally re­lent, caus­ing them to for­get the im­mense trauma and des­per­a­tion you in­flicted on them in mere sec­onds? I’ll tell you why: hu­mans are cu­ri­ous and bad, not nec­es­sar­ily in that or­der. 

Res­cue Team DX, though not any­thing new, de­liv­ers a lovely, Poké-cen­tric tale of tiny an­i­mals res­cu­ing other tiny an­i­mals from slightly big­ger an­i­mals and from be­ing in dun­geons, I guess. This de­light­fully col­or­ful re­mas­ter is cer­tainly not one to overlook, as, like the tit­u­lar dun­geons, there’s quite a bit go­ing on un­der­neath the sur­face.