My retirement from Mystery Dungeon

There is a main-game related blog entry I want to do, but it's an ongoing story and I'm holding off until it's over - which looks like it'll be December 23, 2012 at the pace it's going now. It involves the Battle Tower and a streak that looks like it's going to make Cal Ripken Jr's look short.

When I get bored of the main games, I'll sometimes borrow a copy of one of the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games. I keep thinking that as someone who appreciates a good eastern-style RPG, I really need to get into rougelike games in order to have a fuller appreciation of the genre. But not any more. As of November 16, 2009 I am officially done with the Mystery Dungeon series.

And here's why.



It's not just the randomly generated dungeons - hey, I can deal with that. It's always a little bit of fun. The storyline is better than the main games... but the core gameplay drives me insane.

First off, there's escort missions. To quote X-Play, "we don't LIKE escort missions". When I rented Sky recently, one of the optional missions had a 3-part escort mission. The escorted Pokemon make (name deleted as I don't want to waste time banning 50,000 usernames for the same person from the comments) look smart, and have the battling talent of a L14 Magikarp.

OK, just don't take any mission that involves escorting someone. Except there's a mandatory one in the first game, and the most recent series has 3 or 4 mandatory ones. With Pokemon who enjoy dying by walking into anything, suicidal Beldum, and a Bidoof.

I thought I could get through that, but I reached the breaking point tonight. Early in Explorers of Sky, you unlock an optional mission starring Bidoof. Clearly, someone at Chunsoft needs their head examined for this decision. You get a decent Snover, but still, it's a frakking Bidoof. You get a boss fight against said Snover, and they make it 11-on-3. But then you have to go through five floors of hell after that with just a Bidoof.

At the bottom, you meet a Jirachi - who proceeds to tear you a new damhole in two hits. You lose half your items and get to go down again... and have this exact sequence happen 4 times on the final floor before the Jirachi rematch after you rebuilt your supplies...

Bronzong used Hypnosis! (Note that Bidoof has Tackle and possibly Rollout for offense. This will happen.)
Bidoof is asleep!
Bronzong attacks!
Gulpin attacks!
Lunatone attacks!
Bidoof is asleep!

Repeat until death and power cycling of the DS.

Take all of the BS odds you encounter in the Battle Tower - such as someone losing a 313 streak on 4 straight CHs, or 1-in-4096 odds - and multiply that by 20. That's the level of frustration a rougelike can cause you.

All I can do now is sit back, say "at least it's not Ranger" and plan my next Platinum runthrough...