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Rating: 92/100
These days, when you ask people what the best Pokemon spin-off games are, the go-to answer is usually Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky. The first Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, Rescue Team, were pretty well-liked when they first came out, even getting a remake for the Switch in 2020. But during the Nintendo DS era, the series got a sequel in the form of the Explorers games, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time and Darkness, both of which improved on the first games in every way possible. It even got a third sequel, Explorers of Sky, which many hail as the absolute best iteration as it expands on them further. Replaying it recently thanks to having bought Sky on the Wii U eShop before its closure, the Explorers games aged a lot better than one would think, and it's very easy to see why people continue to hail them as the gold standard for Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games to this very day. Yeah, I'm in agreement that Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky are the best PMD games, no cap.
Similarly to Rescue Team, Explorers has the protagonist living in a world solely inhabited by Pokemon. This time, the player character washes ashore of a small, bustling village called Treasure Town after a storm, with no memories of what happened to them or how/why they've been transformed from a human into a Pokémon. They befriend a timid young Pokémon with a mysterious artifact, and said Pokemon dreams of joining what's known as an exploration team, a group of Pokemon who get to traverse the world, find treasure, and help others in need. Together, the two Pokemon join the Wigglytuff Guild to train as an exploration team, exploring the strange, randomly generated "mystery dungeons" that have been showing up in various regions lately. Along the way they learn that a mysterious Pokémon has been reported stealing very important artifacts called Time Gears, and ultimately get swept up in a quest to save the world before time grinds to a complete halt.
The graphics are the same as the Rescue Team games, just adding the generation 4 Pokemon this time around. Cute, lively sprites against vivid, colorful backdrops make this world feel rich and interesting, and the different varieties of dungeons and locations make it much more expansive and wondrous than Rescue Team's setting. With the introduction of Gen 4 Pokemon, there's much more variety in building your parties. The first two Explorers games already had a robust selection of player and partner Pokemon, but Sky takes it a step further by adding in six more Pokemon choices. I always stuck with Pikachu being one of the two in my playthroughs, but I won't deny I liked evolving my Eevee MC into an Espeon. Speaking of expansion, the game's soundtrack retains the composers from Rescue Team, but most PMD fans find the music in Explorers is far more memorable, with some bosses even having their own unique themes this time around. Seriously, I can't tell you how many different, fanmade remixes I've seen for Dialga's battle theme in particular, and that just goes to show how well-loved the soundtrack is in general.
The game mechanics from the originals are expanded upon here as well, with Explorers even fixing some issues Rescue Team had. Remember how in Rescue Team, you weren't allowed to recruit beyond a certain number of party members if your slots were full, and that you weren't allowed to get rid of party members without permanently releasing them if you wanted to recruit more? Explorers nixes that mechanic and allows you to send party members to the guild if you want to recruit beyond your threshold, and you don't risk losing the new recruit if they faint before you complete a mission. This is a very welcome change that many fans appreciated, me included. Sky in particular introduces a new location called Spinda's Cafe, where you can turn food into drinks that'll increase your stats (Only if you use gummis), or trade in useless items for better ones or prize tickets to win something better. Later on you get access to new dungeons that can only be unlocked from the Café, and the NPC's that hang around in it are fellow explorers who discuss their recent explorations, or Pokémon who have mission requests. I will admit, one thing I don't like about Sky is that the method to unlocking certain hidden dungeons is made harder with having them be exclusive to Spinda Cafe, but that's a minor gripe at best. The Explorers game even introduce a butt-ton of new items, particularly items exclusive to each individual Pokemon, all with their own uses and benefits for said Pokemon. You have to put in a lot of work to get them, but a lot of these species-exclusive items can really save your ass if you know how to use them and in the right circumstances. Explorers also introduces a new aspect to exploring. You don't just rescue Pokemon in distress, find lost items, or escort Pokemon through dungeons, Explorers introduces arresting outlaws and criminals as part of the gameplay. Whether they're stationary or requiring you to chase them before they reach the stairs, fighting criminals also gives you more reason to explore dungeons and reap the rewards, which I'm sure PMD fans very much appreciated, me included.
But the thing about the Explorer games that really spoke to PMD fans are the story and characters. Rescue Team was a cute, fun game series, but many found the story and characters to be a little bland, and the side characters don't get much in the way of development. Rescue Team's main plot just consisted of dealing with natural disasters. The team behind the PMD games seemed to realize this and addressed all of those problems with Explorers. Not only are the characters (Both the main and side characters) much more developed and fleshed out, all with their own unique and endearing personalities, goals, strengths, and weaknesses, the story is much stronger, tighter, and has higher, more personal stakes, along with having the MC's past as a human made out to be much more important to the plot. It also has a VERY robust post-game, and again, Sky takes all of this several steps further by adding five side stories that you unlock as you progress through the game, where you play as different characters and go through their stories from their points of view. It's not on the level of Naoki Urasawa or anything, but before Pokemon Black and White came along, Pokemon games didn't exactly consider having engaging stories and multidimensional characters to be a priority. You could argue that the Explorers games didn't need to go this far, but the fact that they did shows that the devs really put a lot of thought and care into making a fun, engaging spin-off game with stories and characters and succeeding in making you care about them. Also, full truth, Explorers of Sky is the second video game to ever manage to make me cry. You can thank the fifth and final side story for that, and I doubt I'm the only one. That should tell you how much the devs succeeding in creating fully fleshed out, well-realized, three-dimensional characters, and in a Pokemon spin-off game, no less! Oh, and if you're worried that the character of Shaymin would have the same annoying, irritating personality it had in the Giratina and the Sky Warrior movie, don't worry, the Shaymin in Explorers of Sky is far nicer and nothing like the Shaymin in that movie.
I don't really have any issues with the Explorers series, other than that one foible with the Spinda Cafe. I'm not gonna gripe about Chatot's actions towards the hero and partner in regards to the Perfect Apple incident because everyone and their mother has done that already, though I also hated that. But yeah, Explorers are definitely the best PMD games by far, and Sky in particular became one of my favorite games of all time. Later PMD games haven't been able to reach Sky's level of quality, with Gates To Infinity really dropping the ball. Yeah, I didn't like Gates To Infinity and feel it's the worst PMD game out of all the ones that came out in the US. Super Mystery Dungeon was marginally better, but it made really baffling decisions in regards to getting rid of certain well-established mechanics. You can't even give nicknames to any Pokemon you recruit in that game, for God's sake! Is it any wonder Explorers' reputation only got better as more PMD games came out? I loved Explorers when I first played it as a kid (Still own my DS cartridge of it) and I still love it as an adult. I'd gladly recommend people play this if they want an amazing Pokemon game, but actually doing so is gonna be a challenge. The Wii U eShop shut down in March 2023, so you can't get it off there anymore, and good luck finding a cheap second hand copy of the original DS cartridge, as those usually go for over a hundred bucks nowadays. Seriously, how is it that demo carts for Sky are cheaper than the actual game itself?! Well, considering Rescue Team got a remake for the Switch in 2020, here's hoping a potential remake for Explorers is in the cards. But even in their original format, PMD Explorers are wonderful, fun, engaging Pokemon games that have absolutely earned their popularity and high reputation, and more Pokemon games ought to be more like them!
