While this may seem bizarre to some stalwart Poke-fanatics, it makes much more sense to those familiar with the development house, ChunSoft. ChunSoft has made a name for itself in Japan by making relatively simple dungeon crawling games using popular licenses that have been pimped out to them by their owners. Those who played Square's Chocobo's Dungeon 2 or Enix's Torneko: The Last Hope for the Playstation will be immediately familiar with Pokemon Mystery Dungeon's gameplay. And while Chocobo's Dungeon and Torneko were both panned ['buttraped' is really the more accurate term - ed.] by critics because of this gameplay, said gameplay seems to function much more successfully within the world of Pokemon.

Pikachu, use your Colon Yanker move!

   Let's not try and kid ourselves, as much as Pokemon touts itself as being about doing your best and standing by your friends, the reason kids love it is because it features cute little critters pounding the crap out of each other in rather brutal fashions. And there's certainly plenty of that in this game. However, unlike Pokemon games of yore, this time around you'll be able to see your foes as you shuffle about getting lost in caves millions of miles bellow the Earth's crust. While it may seem like your dudes can wander around freely within dungeons, the game is turn based, and that becomes very clear as you begin to close with an enemy. After your guys take a step or perform a move, your foes will have a chance to do their thing before you can act again. Though this will often result in battles similar to any other Pokemon game, with combatants going back and forth exchanging blows, distance still factors into the equation. Some moves will allow a Pokemon to defeat foes way before they even get near enough to land a blow. Also, there are a number of specialized projectile weapons [ready, set, vomit! - ed.] which can be found or purchased, thus allowing all of us to live out our fantasies of stoning Mr. Mime to death.

   While you have direct control over the leader of your party, any other Pokemon in your group of up to four is controlled by the computer. You do have significant say in what the computer tells your guys to do, as you can tweak their A.I. to behave a certain way, or only utilize select moves. It never feels quite as comfortable as just having direct control, though, since you're unlikely to want to tweak your teammate's AI for every enemy you encounter.

   Some aspects of battle have remained essentially unchanged, such as Pokemon being only able to utilize four moves and for those moves to have a limited number of uses. Similarly, the various elemental strengths and weaknesses of the Pokemon are also still intact, although my experience is that they're significantly less important.

He took one right in the Poke-balls.

   While the focus has shifted more towards the dungeons, you can still "catch" enemy Pokemon, although the method is very different from earlier games. Instead of having to weaken an enemy and then tag them with a Pokeball, you simply defeat them and hope for the best. There is a chance (usually about the same likelihood as that of a Pokemon player landing a hot date) that any defeated Pokemon will request to join your team. If you accept, that Pokemon will then be useable on any future dungeon adventures. This is neat, and made significantly more so by the fact that ALL Pokemon from past Pokemon games can be obtained (I think there's something like 380 of the little bastards now), but a few things do hamper the enjoyment a bit.

   First off, you only have a chance to obtain a Pokemon once you've acquired its Friend Area. This is the place that the Pokemon hangs around when he's not tromping through dungeons with you, and Friend Areas can only be gained by either completing special missions or by buying them from Wigglytuff. And let me tell you, the bastard does not let those things go cheap. [His farts can be had for mere pennies, on the other hand - ed.] Better get something firm to bite down on, if you know what I'm saying. There's no real reason for this either, as most Pokemon have a pretty slim chance of joining you anyway. It doesn't really feel like the game needed anything to make it more complicated.

   The Friend Area aspect also compounds its annoyance factor by making party selection extremely tedious. In past Pokemon titles all you did was go into a Poke-center and you could swap guys in and out of your party from a single menu. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am. Now, though, you have to drag your scrawny ass out to the Friend Area for each Pokemon you want to put in your party. And since your party automatically disbands at the end of each mission, you wind up dragging your scrawny ass to the same Friend Areas again, and again, and again over the course of the game. Which really wears out your already scrawny ass after a while. And while it may make your party members feel special that you visited them at home, it's high time they dealt with their self-esteem issues and got with the *^*$ing program and showed your scrawny ass some respect. Scrawny ass!!!! [To join your local chapter of 'Scrawny asses for Jesus', email your local Republican senator. - ed.]

You teach me and I'll teach you!

   The game's biggest boo-boo, though, is the fact that you're not really getting the full game until after you finish the central story. Half the dungeons, half the Friends Areas (and thus over half the Pokemon), evolution (a staple of all past Pokemon games), the ability to allow other Pokemon to lead your party, and a host of other features are not available until after you've pounded the last boss into the ground like a tent stake. The story will easily set you back twenty hours, and some of the middle section is brutally difficult, so it goes way beyond being just a long tutorial.

   While this is the thing I personally found the most vexing, there is a whole laundry list of other problems: the graphics and animations are pretty mediocre; the music, though perky, repeats far too much; the difficulty is uneven; you lose all your money and most of your items if you die; if one of your party members is wiped out the whole team is defeated, and so forth. And yet, despite these myriad flaws seemingly designed purely with the intent of frustrating gamers, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is still incredibly addictive. Continuously sending your stalwart little team of adorable warriors into dungeons to get more items, money, and allies is an extremely powerful draw. It's so powerful in fact, that it will likely allow you to put up with problems that, in any other game, would cause you to grind up the cartridge, mix the powder with bleach, inject the resulting substance into a leprous hyena, and drop the hyena into an active volcano. And then maybe test a nuclear bomb on the island that housed said volcano. The bottom line is that sometimes this game will make you want to take your baseball bat to GameStop in a quest to redeem your $30, while other times you'd gladly trade your children for a few more minutes of play. [We'll let you decide which extreme you want to give in to. Either way, it will likely result in a forced colonoscopy at your local penal colony. - ed.]

Everybody Poke-rap!

   If you've got a group of friends who all are into Pokemon (you'll henceforth be referred to as "The Cool Crew") there is loads of stuff you can do together in the game. Apart from the basic trading of items you can also rescue a friend who has been defeated in a dungeon. When beaten to a bloody pulp your friend can choose (instead of conceding defeat like the wimp he is) to send an SOS mail. You can then respond to the mail by connecting wirelessly or by inserting both a DS cartridge and a GBA Mystery Dungeon cartridge into the same DS. Then you can go down to where he was killed and save his sorry ass. Whoopee!!! Or if you're lazy (and we know you are lazy!), you can just send one of your Pokemon to help them out instead. Though if that friend of yours didn't warp out of a dungeon after he used his last Reviver Seed he totally deserves to rot down there. There, I said it.

   While this game is definitely not the Second Coming of Poke-Jesus, its horrifically addictive nature should be enough to carry dedicated Poke-maniacs until the much-anticipated release of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, both of which have been out in Japan for almost two months now. What's the matter, Japan? Isn't our American money good enough for you? Isn't it!?

       ... Mike Zeller