Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers  is a dungeon crawler game based on Nintendo's Pokémon franchise released for the Nintendo DS. The game is originally was divided in two versions: Explorers of Time and Explorers of Darkness. A third version, Explorers of Sky, which includes additional new content was released later.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) The game is set in a Pokémon only society with the player being a Pokémon as well, therefore every Pokémon in the game talks.
 * 2) You take a quick personality test to determine what Pokémon your main protagonist will be, like in the Rescue Team games. You can then choose a partner Pokémon of a different type to be by your side in the adventure. There are sixteen Pokémon to choose from, and nineteen in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky.
 * 3) Dungeon mazes are randomized therefore every level is different each time you visit them. The amount of floors each level has and the available Pokémon don't change however.
 * 4) Every Pokémon existing at the time the games were released are playable.
 * 5) Obtaining new Pokémon is done by recruiting. When you defeat an enemy in a dungeon there's a chance it can decide to join your team.
 * 6) Pokémon learn the same moves at the same levels in the regular series, adjusted to work in the dungeons.
 * 7) Aside from plot-related & special levels, you can take any Pokémon you've obtained in a party of four members. You only control the leader however, the other three are AI controlled.
 * 8) After beating the main story you can decide who is the team leader in most parts of the game.
 * 9) Your team mate's AI behavior can be modified, and in general they are rather competent on their own. They gain IQ abilities as they gain IQ points, which can be shut off or on at any time.
 * 10) Every time you defeat an enemy the entire party gains Experience points.
 * 11) Excellent soundtrack for a DS game.
 * 12) Strong, emotional, mature, and deep plot. Tons of character development for the main characters in the game, and a strong post-campaign plot.
 * 13) Lots of unlockables.
 * 14) It's very fun to fight other player's teams and receive missions via Wi-Fi connection and Passwords, a mode introduced in the Explorers series.

Explorers of Sky only

 * 1) Five unlockable "Special chapters" that place you in control of one of the game's side-characters to show their background stories.
 * 2) New locations and levels, some of which make it easier to obtain Legendary Pokémon.
 * 3) Some new characters/teams were added to the game, such as Team Frontier and Team Charm.
 * 4) Post-campaign plot is expanded with a few additional levels.
 * 5) Four more choices for the Pokémon the main protagonist turns into - Phanpy, Vulpix, Riolu, and Shinx - bringing the total to nineteen Pokémon.
 * 6) When you recruit a new Pokémon, you can send a current team member back home and have the newly recruited one join the party right away. Which can be useful.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Your main characters can't evolve until after you finish the entire post-main campaign story, which causes an unnecessary difficulty spike in the later levels where the player has to battle fully evolved enemies with unevolved Pokémon. This was presumably done to make it less complicated to design the main story of the game due to not having to make additional sprites. Most of these issues can be fixed via mods with SkyTemple.
 * 2) * Due to the evolved forms not having those additional sprites, if the player would be cheering or sleeping in Treasure Town after evolving the game only plays the standard walking animation. Unlike the previous game, in which the game crashes if it doesn't load the correct animation for the Pokémon.
 * 3) * The evolved forms also don't have any character portraits other than the standard one so if for whatever reason the game would show a face portrait other than the standard one after evolving the portrait box is shown blank or doesn't show at all.
 * 4) There's a heavy luck element in the game due to the dungeon floors being proceduraly generated. For example, Monster Houses randomly appear which are rooms where lots of enemies spawn at once and ambush the player.
 * 5) Some of the original starters from Red and Blue Rescue Team are no longer playable, such as Machop, Cubone, and Psyduck. However their face portraits are still in the game's files, they still have some required animations to be playable, however the only way to play as these three starters is by modding the save file VIA a program called the Sky Editor. They still have some wrong/missing animations however.
 * 6) The Aegis Cave is an annoying Dungeon.
 * 7) The plot can be very dark at times, even for a E rated game. It should be rated E10+ at most.
 * 8) * When Dusknoir captures you and your partner, the Sableye tie them up to a pillar. And they try to kill you, your partner, and Grovyle.
 * 9) * Grovyle is gagged and tied in ropes, when he was captured by Dusknoir.
 * 10) * During the post-game, there is a moment in which Darkrai (Disguised as Cresselia) tells the player that they and their partner caused the distortion in the fabric of space, and to solve this you and the partner have to disappear. Later on there is a moment where the partner is standing near the corner of the cliff, and asks the player if they should disappear (implying suicide). Which is a very dark moment for the game.

Explorers of Sky only

 * 1) Despite Eevee and Riolu being available as a choice of the available Pokémon you can be as a main character in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky, Eevee and Riolu can only be played as a main character if your main character is female or male respectively. Also, this game does not have Munchlax or Meowth available to play as the main character despite the previous games allowing you to do so, though they can be still selected as a partner Pokémon at the start of the game.
 * 2) The game is basically just a reskin of Explorers Of Time/Darkness, but with more features and new dungeons. This could be the reason why it didn't sell very well.

Reception
The game has sold pretty well, selling over 4.50 Million copies worldwide for the Explorers Of Darkness and Time. However Explorers Of Sky only sold 1.40 Million copies worldwide.

The game was mostly reviewed mixed by some critics. Gaming magazine Famitsu gave Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time and Explorers of Darkness a score of 35 out of 40.

And for Explorers Of Sky, Gaming magazine Famitsu gave Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky a score of 35 out of 40. It holds a rating of 55.84% on GameRankings, based on 19 reviews.

Trivia

 * The game later became popular in 2021 when a rom hacking program named SkyTemple made a Game Jam where users can make their own PMD Rom Hacks to share to the players. Some of them are rather impressive in which some of them feature custom sprites and characters, some of them continuing the story of a special episode, and it was easy to use.