Ok, so it arrived at last yesterday, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon—Blue Rescue Team! There are a couple of differences between Blue and Red, the most obvious being that Red is for the GBA, and Blue is for the DS, to take advantage of the DS’s split screen and touch screen facilities. There is also the usual discrepancy of a dozen or so Pokémon that are available only in Red that aren’t in Blue, and vice versa. Of course, Red and Blue can interact by putting in both in their respective slots in the DS.

Now, the game starts with you being asked a series of inane questions in order to determine your personality. There is a copy of it on the Pokémon website. I was determined to be of an Impish personality type, and being male, I ended up being a certain annoying yellow rat!!!11!! Apparently, if I were of a Quirky type, I would have been Meowth. Strange, as every time I answer the questions on the website, I end up being a Hardy type, thus Charmander. I then had to pick a partner. As Pikachu, my choices were the nine starter Pokémon (Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle, Chikorita, Hinoarashi, Waninoko, Treecko, Achamo, Mudkip). I chose Charmander, which is just as well, because the first major boss to fight turns out to be Eamudo, its Flying/Steel type making it weak to both Electric and Fire. I suppose if I ended up as Charmander, I’d have picked the rat as my companion anyway.

I should, at this stage, point out that you are a human who is transported into this Pokémon world as the Pokémon determined by the results of your personality quiz. So, I woke up wondering how and why I turned into a yellow rat.

So, at first, you and your partner (Pikachu and Charmander in my case) are met by a Butterfree who is frantic that her baby (a Caterpie) has fallen down a fissure, and naturally we have to go in and rescue it. The combat system is vaguely similar to Sword of Mana. You have a standard physical attack, or you can use your moves (like Ember, Thundershock, etc.). You get more experience for moves than for standard attacks, but they take a LOT longer to set up. But you can create combo moves (Hypnosis-Dream Eater, anyone?)

A few points about dungeons. The dungeon levels are generated randomly each time. Also, once you’re in a dungeon, you can’t get out, unless you complete the mission that you went there for, or you get to the last floor (or you use an Escape Orb), which can be annoying if you went there by accident. Once you go down (or up) a set of stairs, you can’t return to the previous floor. So if you have a mission on, say, the 7th floor, and you go through to the 8th floor without completing the mission, you have to complete the dungeon and the mission remains uncompleted, and you’ll have to go back into the same dungeon. It’s best to wait until you have a few missions in one dungeon before going into it. Also if any of them is an escort mission (they’re usually higher-rank missions), it’s best if that is on the lowest floor in the dungeon that you’ll be visiting.

After a certain point, (Mt Steel, I think), you can start to recruit other Pokémon that you defeat in combat.

More to report soon!…