Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Magnagate and the Infinte Labrinth

[Bespinben]

There's always been something about every PMD game, that, once I get to a certain point, I have to mentally disconnect from that world in which I was so deeply immersed.
For Rescue Team, it was when my Partner decided to stop being a person. For Explorers, it was never a problem because the game doesn't attempt to say the in-game you is the real you.
For Gates to Infinity, the complete lack of post-game almost caused me to make that disconnect --- but then, I was just thinking today... GtI respects that you have your own life. The Partner initially hesitates to try to bring you back to the Poke-world because they wouldn't want to take you away from your friends and family in the real world (a dilemma beautifully solved thanks to Hydreigon). I would argue that the post-game of GtI is you going out and preventing the metaphorical Bittercold's of the degenerate society of today. Truly a game with a message.

[SlowPokemon]

The post game is just build up paradise and enjoy your fun life with friends which is honestly earned after that long adventure (the main game is much longer than that of the other PMD games but most people don't understand that and whine about post game). That game has an acceptable amount of content imo especially considering it's an adventure game

[Bespinben]

Yay, you understand this feeling! I will digress and say there isn't totally nothing to do -- you just have to be self-motivated and make your own goals (which is hard for most players to make that transition because you get plot-tunneled most of the main game). Getting the blasted materials together for that Music Paradise kept me plenty busy (before I lost my cartridge...). I like to compare the "daily grind" of post-game GtI to going to your Grandparents house, or something. Nothing has changed much, but everyone's just happy to you decided to come. Sure, you watch some old hokey Christmas movie together for the umpteenth time (e.g. rescueing the same 'Mon trapped at 20F somewhere), but what's important is just that you're all together. And that's cool.

(And yeah, speed running through Rescue Team takes no time at all XD)

[Bespinben]

2ND ANNIVERSARY OF US RELEASE DATE TODAY OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt_inTnij7k

(It's my first time getting to experience this, at last  )

[braix]

It doesn't feel like two years.

[InsigTurtle]

(Also of note: Red Rescue Team's 10 year anniversary (Japan) is popping up in less than a year.)

[Nebbles]

(Also of note: Red Rescue Team's 10 year anniversary (Japan) is popping up in less than a year.)

holy crap it's 10 years old??? oh god i feel SO OLD

[Bespinben]

(Trusty Snipping Tool and MS Paint, you never fail me)

[Bespinben]

I think my heart just broke.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6SHZ_mLmuc

[TheDreamingHawk]

Getting the blasted materials together for that Music Paradise kept me plenty busy (before I lost my cartridge...).

Wait, you lost the cartridge?!? Very sad that it happened.

As for my quick thoughts on the game (Full thoughts later), I still think it's a great improvement over the first two titles (And the Wii games if you count those but I consider them to be the Ys V of the PMD series. Forgotten and unloved for the better.), with great music, an amazing plot and fun gameplay. Even two years later I still hold pretty much the same score as I did back then (10/10 believe it or not and I'm still sticking to it with my feet in cement. Nothing will convince me otherwise unless I find out a terrible secret about the game or something), and nowadays I'm just using the famitsu score of 38/40 (TWO perfect scores from two out of the four reviewers) as a way to feel happy seeing games people have told me would destroy PMD in every way possible like Xenoblade Chronicles X get lower scores (I think the game got 34/40 today? Not sure but it wasn't as high.) PMD Forever baby! (Though the second game I have a bit of a problem with... I'll explain that another day I suppose.)

[Bespinben]

PMD...... famitsu score of 38/40

WAT
I didn't even know...

...okay I just spent 3 whole hours researching the source for that, and the only fairly easily accessible place I could find that reported that (without having to search the Japanese side of the web [which I did later]), was Serebii.net (on it's twitter page and random forum posts -_-)(https://twitter.com/serebiinet/status/268643265836888064). Everywhere else was really obscure off-shoot sites that I bet most Pokémon fans don't read (google "Pokemon no Fushigi no Dungeon: Magnagate to Mugendai no Meikyuu (3DS, Nintendo): 10 / 10 / 9 / 9 – (38/40)" and see what I mean). Being that I regularly research reviews on this game to get to the heart of why the fandom itself isn't fond of it (the whole series always had mixed reviews from reviewers since Blue/Red Rescue Team, that's not new), this comes as a huge shock that I have never encountered this exceptionally uplifting information before.

What disappoints me more is that I can't even find scans of the Famitsu magazine for that particular week. There are SEVERAL articles of pre-release screenshots of the PMD 3DS from Famitsu, but review score pictures from ISSUE #1249 (circa Nov. 14, 2012) are nowhere to be found on the site, or fan scans! I'd really love to know WHY those reviewers gave PMD 3DS a near perfect score. Contrast that with Pokémon Black/White, where with easy google of "pokemon black white famitsu review", the famous 40/40 score (with picture proof!) comes up immediately.

It's such a strange feeling. The more I look into it, the more it seems like the game was doing better off in Japan alone before it hit the North American/Worldwide market, and the more I feel like some invisible hand was trying to set up this game to fail upon global release (lack of gender in non-Japanese version, lack of publication of the few favorable reviews [while IGN's 4.5/10 comes instantly]).

All in all though, I found this excursion amusing. It's really refreshing reading people's thoughts on the game from Oct. 2012 - Feb. 2013. There's just a warmer air overall. More positivity. More open-mindedness. And.... since that was right when I left it's kind of nostalgic seeing what was going on during that period of my absence.

[TheDreamingHawk]

WAT
I didn't even know...

...okay I just spent 3 whole hours researching the source for that, and the only fairly easily accessible place I could find that reported that (without having to search the Japanese side of the web [which I did later]), was Serebii.net (on it's twitter page and random forum posts -_-)(https://twitter.com/serebiinet/status/268643265836888064). Everywhere else was really obscure off-shoot sites that I bet most Pokémon fans don't read (google "Pokemon no Fushigi no Dungeon: Magnagate to Mugendai no Meikyuu (3DS, Nintendo): 10 / 10 / 9 / 9 – (38/40)" and see what I mean). Being that I regularly research reviews on this game to get to the heart of why the fandom itself isn't fond of it (the whole series always had mixed reviews from reviewers since Blue/Red Rescue Team, that's not new), this comes as a huge shock that I have never encountered this exceptionally uplifting information before.

What disappoints me more is that I can't even find scans of the Famitsu magazine for that particular week. There are SEVERAL articles of pre-release screenshots of the PMD 3DS from Famitsu, but review score pictures from ISSUE #1249 (circa Nov. 14, 2012) are nowhere to be found on the site, or fan scans! I'd really love to know WHY those reviewers gave PMD 3DS a near perfect score. Contrast that with Pokémon Black/White, where with easy google of "pokemon black white famitsu review", the famous 40/40 score (with picture proof!) comes up immediately.

It's such a strange feeling. The more I look into it, the more it seems like the game was doing better off in Japan alone before it hit the North American/Worldwide market, and the more I feel like some invisible hand was trying to set up this game to fail upon global release (lack of gender in non-Japanese version, lack of publication of the few favorable reviews [while IGN's 4.5/10 comes instantly]).

All in all though, I found this excursion amusing. It's really refreshing reading people's thoughts on the game from Oct. 2012 - Feb. 2013. There's just a warmer air overall. More positivity. More open-mindedness. And.... since that was right when I left it's kind of nostalgic seeing what was going on during that period of my absence.

People have claimed that Famitsu is a terrible source for reviews in the past, mainly pointing to their infamous 40/40 Nintendogs review, but I still think that in recent years they are accurate and give honest thoughts on each score in their reasoning. I've also wanted to see the reasoning for why those two reviewers gave it a perfect score, as I'm dying to know what made them enjoy it as much as I did. One day I hope someone will grab that issue of Famitsu and translate it...

[Maelstrom]

Imo, Famitsu used to be good, but is slipping. It's impossible to have 4 people play the game in it's entirety for each and every game they review.

[AwesomeYears]

People have claimed that Famitsu is a terrible source for reviews in the past, mainly pointing to their infamous 40/40 Nintendogs review.

But Nintendogs was a great game 

[TheDreamingHawk]

But Nintendogs was a great game 

It may have been a success but it did make people confused on why it got a perfect score when these were the only games that got a perfect score before it at the time of the game's release:

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998, Nintendo, for Nintendo 64)
Soulcalibur (1999, Namco, for Dreamcast)
Vagrant Story (2000, Square Co., for PlayStation)
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2002, Nintendo, Gamecube)

When action games get that high score, a pet sim would be the least likely thing you'd expect to also get the same score.

Anyways looking back through some old videos regarding the game today I came across that abysmal North American TV ad. Oh god, it sounds so cheesy to the point it's almost as bad as Yokai-Watch in terms of cheesiness. Sadly it seems like none of the PMD ads were ever any good and were instead made to be more or less show off the "human is a pokemon" aspect, except for PMD Wii which didn't get a TV ad at all to my knowledge, probably because of the terrible changes they did to that game such as somehow making the NPCs less intelligent than the ones in from PMD2.

Speaking of PMD2, the guild from PMD2 is what makes it painful for me to replay those games in this day and age, as I feel like I'm restricted and surrounded by a bunch of goofballs who can't tell when impending danger is coming, even when they clearly see you and your partner get kidnapped by Dusknoir, show no concern when you return from the future, and show no concern when your partner returns from the final dungeon. Bidoof seems to be the only one with a brain in that group of characters, which is rather depressing honestly.

Besides him the only other NPCs I liked in the entire game were Grovyle and Celebi, (Pretty much PMD2'S version of Maxim and Selan from Lufia II) Dusknoir (Only acting bad out of fear for his own life, though sadly it took until Sky to explain this key element), and Darkrai (Due to him having the best entrance as a villain out of all of the PMD villains, as well as the fact that he's actually extremely dangerous in every single way).

I liked how Sky tried to show Sunflora and Wigglytuff's backstories to make them a bit more interesting, but they still come off as clueless. In RRT/BRT I was happy with the "independence" factor in the story, where you and your partner did everything yourselves, with nobody to boss you around. I was really glad they went back to that style for GTI as it made me feel more "free" as a character in the story. Though to be honest, I do wish you could take more than one job in the dungeon at a time like in the older games, as it would make my goal to get max paradise rank so much easier. As dumb as this may sound, I miss those missions in the 99 floor dungeons, as those were really challenging. Except for the level 1 escort missions, I'm glad they are gone.

...Oh goodness, I had a lot to say today. Sorry about that. Well, I might as well share one last thought for the day. Since it has almost been ten years since PMD RRT/BRT, do you think they'll remake those games for our Gen VI PMD? It could be possible, though I worry with Spike Chunsoft working with Atlus on Etrian Mystery Dungeon it took some time away from developing a Gen VI PMD... Here's hoping we'll find a new PMD game in our 3DS systems soon, or at least the old ones on the Wii U Virtual Console.