Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time [DS]

In the 1970s, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson's Dungeons & Dragons introduced geeky fantasy enthusiasts and beardy college students to the pleasures of the late-night dungeon crawl. In the '80s GameSpy Hall of Famer Nethack and other "Rogue-like" games brought this experience to the computer realm, providing countless adventures to those willing to sacrifice their every waking moment to explore the unforgiving depths of each trap-laden, monster-filled, randomly-generated dungeon.

If it Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It

Japanese developer Chunsoft has been making Rogue-like games under its Fushigi no Dungeon (aka Mystery Dungeon) label for years. The latest, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness, come to the DS hot on the heels of the arguably purer Rogue-like experience Shiren the Wanderer.

This latest pair of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games are much like the GBA games, Red Rescue Team and Blue Rescue Team. You'll enter a colorful world with plenty of adorable Pokemon to encounter and recruit, but instead of a meaty RPG you'll find an emphasis on challenging dungeon-crawler gameplay. Pick whichever game has your favorite Pokemon on the cover: in most other respects they're identical.

The games start off with a personality test that will ask you a series of questions to determine what sort of Pokemon you'll play as. See, you're not a Pokemon trainer out to beat the best. Instead you play as a human who has suffered aa bit of amnesia and woken up as one of those adorable creatures. While the game makes a decent attempt at piecing together a storyline to give meaning to your journey, it's all secondary to the meat of the game: leveling up, collecting treasure, and exploring bigger and more dangerous dungeons.

Rogue-like games share several things in common, and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is no different. Each dungeon is randomly generated, though you'll see only a couple different tile sets in use. The action takes place across turns, and on any given turn you can choose to move, attack, use an item, or just have a little rest.