We ve got the latest Pokémon game straight from Japan and we’re here to tell you all about it!

When you think about all the Pokémon games so far, there’s not really that much variation from the typical RPG fare. The odd spin-off title like Dash, Snap or Puzzle League drop familiar characters into unfamiliar settings but in terms of actually exploring the wide world of Pokémon, only Snap and Channel have even come close to giving us a glimpse of what goes on outside of Trainer battles. Until now, that is. Mysterious Dungeon: Red Rescue Team is a Game Boy Advance game that makes a lot of fundamental changes to the way you think about Pokémon and from what we’ve played so far, the game seems to really benefit for it.

For a start, Trainers are a thing of the past. No, not the shoes – the people that command Pokémon in which attacks to use and raise them as their own. In Mysterious Dungeon, you take direct control of a party of Pokémon on their own adventures in the wild. When you start the game, a series of questions will determine what monster you start with and later, friends can be recruited as the game goes on. But the odd thing is that your starting monster isn’t really a Pokémon. You see, you play a human that has been transformed into a Pokémon. This means you’ll be able to talk to other monsters as you would to Trainers in a more traditional Pokémon title, bringing a whole new slant to the game. Rather than just hearing “Bulba! Bulba!” when Bulbasaur opens his mouth, you’ll actually be able to understand him and help him out if needs be. The concept of the game revolves around the Rescue Force part of the title, dropping your newly Pokéfied character into a situation where he needs to help out and Pokémon that are in trouble. And believe us, there are a heck of a lot of those…

Working out of a main central headquarters, you’ll be able to take on missions and quests in several different ways as well as just going out exploring if you’d rather just do that. As you might expect, quests vary massively in difficulty and once the game opens up, you’ll have loads of potential job offers, each with its own reward. Reward is a word you’re going to be hearing a lot with this game – while tasks almost always yield some degree of booty, the dungeons themselves are also rich with collectibles and valuable sources of experience to get your squad into the shape of their lives. The missions themselves take on many forms, from simple ‘kill everything’ objectives to more detailed tasks that involve finding a certain item, getting to a certain depth within a dungeon or guiding another Pokémon safely through a risky and dangerous area.

Like in so many other Chun Soft games, the dungeon-crawling action is based on ever-changing catacombs that get deeper and deeper as the game goes on. The fact that these dungeons are randomly generated gives the game practically unlimited replay value and every time you venture into one, the experience will be different to the last. This in itself makes Mysterious Dungeon something to look forward to – an infinite supply of different dungeons, each teeming with critters and loot should be enough to bring a beaming smile to the face on any budding Pokémaniac. Dungeons get stupidly deep and if you’re brave enough to venture into the lower levels, you’ll have your work cut out for you in defeating higher level monsters but the rewards are greater still. Vast sums of cash are up for grabs in the deepest areas and that’s also where the rare and particularly useful items can be found. It’s worth taking the risk sometimes.

When you find another Pokémon in the dungeons, combat naturally ensues. With the game’s grid-based format, this means that once an enemy gets within range, the pace slows and things go all turn-based. After you move, the enemy will follow suit until you’re within range for an attack at which point you’ll be able to choose, like with a regular Pokémon game, from four attacks. You can even equip monsters with items that allow ranged attacks and new abilities if you so desire, but there’s still a great feeling for getting little Charmander in range for a successful and scorching Flamethrower attack.

But the poor little Pokémon can’t be expected to go off on a massive adventure on an empty stomach. As you delve deeper and deeper into the constantly growing dungeons, your monsters will need to eat to keep their stamina up and stop them from fainting from hunger. Naturally, food can be found littered around the caverns or, if you’re slightly more cautious, you can always take your own supplies into the dungeon with you. You can’t rely on finding food in a dungeon generated entirely at random, after all…

And as the game goes on, you can expect to recruit bigger, stronger and rarer monsters to your cause, all of which naturally make the dungeon trawling that much easier. Well, sort of – you’ll be up against stronger adversaries as well but as long as you’ve been rigorous in your training, nothing should be able to stand in your way. The game allows for three partners to be used at any one time and this can lead to some really tactical decisions, choosing comrades that counter your main monster’s weaknesses. Mysterious Dungeon is a pretty forgiving experience. There’s no Game Over screen and the only penalty for having your squad suffer defeat is that you’ll lose any inventory items you were holding, be it treasure you’ve accrued on your dungeon raid or things you took with you. If you managed to find some great swag, this can be pretty gutting but going into a dungeon that’s far too difficult will simply mean that you get punished in seconds before waking up back home, ready to pick on someone your own size. Simple!

It’s a long way away from the traditional and widely accepted belief of what Pokémon games are but, regardless, Mysterious Dungeon is set to be a great game regardless. The variety alone will be enough to keep you occupied until Diamond and Pearl roll into town and you could pour hundreds of hours into this game without ever seeing some of its finer surprises, monsters, items and missions. We’ll keep you up to speed with release dates and regional changes over the coming months but in the meantime, cast your eyes over these pages and have a look at the great Pokémon adventures you could be having in the not-too-distant future.

Two screens good…
Like most Pokémon games, Mystery Dungeon will come in two flavours, namely Red Rescue Team and Blue Rescue Team. But for the first time, these are split across two separate formats, with Red being the Game Boy Advance version while Blue is the DS game. To all intents and purposes, the games are the same with a few minor differences. As is usually the case, each version will star different monsters but the DS version also takes advantage of the handheld’s increased functionality – touch screen control is possible for both menus and exploration and the upper screen can be used for stats, menus, maps and other such useful information. It isn’t much but it certainly helps to have all the data available at once, especially when you’re trying to work out how best to tackle a situation. And as for link-up… well, we’ll save such information for another time!