The Mystery Dungeon series has existed since the Super Nintendo era, each game associated with this series share a few core game mechanics and these are: random dungeons, turn based dungeon that feel like they are in pseudo real time since if you do an action each opponent gets to do an action, a hunger mechanic(where if your hunger is at 0% you start draining health per turn instead of regenerating health per turn) and finally a death penalty. Each dungeon consists of an invisible square grid players and enemies alike can move up down left right or diagonally, since everything is turn based you can only do one action "per turn" so if its either moving to the next square, attacking whatever is in front of you, using a spell or an ability, equipping/un-equipping an item, and so forth once you do your action the enemies get a turn to do their move however everything happens seamlessly hence why I said it feel like a pseudo real time since there is no real delay.

This iteration of a mystery dungeon game stays to the roots in terms of gameplay and adds some new features to suit the Pokemon franchise and adds some new tech thanks to the capabilities of the DS. A day in this Pokemon adventure primarily consists of watching a small roll call cutscene picking out a jobs from the job wall (maximum of 8 jobs can be active at a time), doing whatever jobs you picked out to do at a given location, get rewarded if you complete your job watch a cutscene of pokemon eating a meal and then go to sleep where afterward you can save your game. A couple of times throughout the game you will be forced to do some story sequences but most of them just require you to go to a specific dungeon floor and face a specific boss. A couple of these dungeons are multi-area or multi-tier where you have a floor that's dedicated to saving or saving and giving you access to your storage if you need to put some items in or take some items out.

As I stated this mystery dungeon game stays to it's gameplay roots and adds some variation to make it fit with the Pokemon license and the DS hardware. In this mystery dungeon your character is essentially chosen through a kid friendly personality quiz and doing some sequences of pressing a finger on the touch screen the Pokemon is chosen by the results of the quiz and then the pokemon gets revealed, if you don't like what the game chose for you the game gives you an option to take the test again to see if you get a Pokemon that suits you better once you have chosen your pokemon you get to chose a a secondary Pokemon that will act as your partner (I personally got Chimchar and Pikachu as my partner). A party can include up to 4 pokemon at a given time but sometimes at some story sequences your limited to yourself and a partner, to get more Pokemon in your team to recruit a Pokemon you simply defeat them and sometimes they want to join your party and you chose to let the Pokemon go or allow it to be in your party if you reached the limit of 4 pokemon already in the party and want it to be in your lineup, it will go to town instead. Staying true to the traditional pokemon games there is the same exact move system with PP points, the moves stay true when you compare it to a Pokemon game but there are some differences with some moves. Death works a little different here if either you or your primary partner's health reaches 0 you die and are quickly teleported out of the dungeon and get hit by the death penalty which is you half of your items and gold that you are carrying. When you "die" you are given an option to be rescued and continue where you left off where you "died" and rescuing works either two ways option 1) Post a rescue request on Nintendo Wifi where someone can accept the request and attempt to rescue your team 2) give a friend who has either version of the game a 32 character password and initiate a rescue that way, in the manual it tells you that you can also send a rescue request from the game to someones cellphone or email but I never got to test this so I don't know how it really works. If a rescue has successfully been completed it's like you have been revived and dodged the death penalty bullet.

On the technical side this game isn't really impressive save for some few beautiful cutscenes. The presentation feels like it was a early DS game or a GBA game, the top screen gives you an option to display the game's control configuration, a map (it shifts a semi transparent map from the bottom screen to the top screen to reduce clutter), a HP status screen of your whole party. So basically the top screen is essentially treated as a supplementary information screen while all the action happens on the bottom screen. While the whole game can be played with the stylus and touch screen it's really easier just to use the Dpad and buttons. The wifi in addition to rescues you can post wonder mails, the wonder mail basically gives a team more jobs and when they are completed it gives the player access to some of the rarer items and/or Pokemon in the game.

Pros/Cons (+ denotes pro - denotes con)

+ Stays true to the Mystery Dungeon core gameplay
+ Addicting game play
+ A good starter game for the Mystery Dungeon series because of the easier difficulty and Pokemon brand recognition

- Dated graphics
- Gameplay mechanics of the mystery dungeon series can feel dated to today's standards
- Compared to other Mystery dungeon games this one feels shallow
- Sometimes cheap deaths may occur so luck is a factor

Final: TRY IT