Nintendo and ChunSoft also didn't do much to spruce up the game's production values. Not that any Pokémon game has ever pushed a system's hardware, but the graphics and audio in this one fall somewhere between the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance in terms of quality. The small overworld village and friend areas, where you spend hardly any time, are lush and colorful and flaunt animated water and haze effects. By contrast, the dungeons, where you languish for dozens of hours, are put together with repetitive tilesets that employ barely any color or animation. The Pokémon themselves aren't very animated, except for footsteps and some choppy attack motions, but at least they're colorful and cute. As for the accompanying audio, it's nothing special. The different tunes are upbeat, but they loop incessantly, and the sound effects and Pokémon cries have a static buzz that makes it seem like they were ripped out of the original GBC Pokémon games. About the only thing developers got totally right in terms of production value is the story, which is charming and mushy like Pokémon stories are supposed to be. On the whole, the game feels dated. Worse, since the DS version contains all of the same graphics and audio as the GBA game, it seems downright ancient compared to games that have been developed exclusively for that system.

A human has been transformed into a Pokémon.

As it often does for Pokémon games, Nintendo has produced two corresponding versions of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. This time around, however, one is available for the Game Boy Advance, and the other is available for the Nintendo DS. The story and characters in both games are identical, although each version contains a half-dozen Pokémon that aren't readily available in its counterpart. If you plan to get the game and have a choice of Blue Rescue Team or Red Rescue Team, you should opt for the Blue Rescue Team version on the DS. It doesn't look or sound any better than the GBA game, but the system's twin screens and touch-screen capability make it easier to stay informed and navigate the various menus. Health, status, and item indicators are constantly visible on the DS's top screen, while the lower screen displays the same top-down dungeon viewpoint and map overlay as the GBA game. The DS game also lets you open menus, make choices, and select enemies simply by tapping the stylus in the appropriate spots on the touch screen.

Two features exclusive to the Nintendo DS version are the dojo visit and the unknown dungeon modes. The dojo visit mode takes advantage of both cartridge slots in the DS to let you import the team from Red Rescue Team into the Blue Rescue Team version for battles at the dojo in the village. Unfortunately, this isn't a true multiplayer function, as the CPU controls the visiting team. The other DS-exclusive mode is called unknown dungeon. It works just like the bark mode in Nintendogs. Selecting the unknown dungeon menu item will place your DS into a low power state and have it search for other Blue Rescue Team games nearby that have also been put into the unknown dungeon state. When your DS gets close to another DS containing the Blue Rescue Team game, your Pokémon will automatically visit dungeons in the other person's game and bring back rare items.

Instead of capturing monsters, you recruit them by defeating them in battle.

Nintendo, of course, would prefer that you pick up both versions or convince one of your friends to pick up the version that you passed on. The incentive is that people with both games can take advantage of various connectivity features, such as the ability to share items and trade missions that unlock the few Pokémon that are normally exclusive to a particular version. The only way to recruit all 387 pocket monsters is to trade between the two versions. You can also call a friend for help or answer your friend's call for a rescue. Indeed, when your team is knocked out in a dungeon, you have the option to send a rescue request to your friend. If your friend accepts the request, he or she can journey to the corresponding spot in his or her game where you were knocked out and revive you with all of your loot intact. After the rescue, your friend can even choose to give you a Pokémon to fortify your squad. Friends can send and receive rescue requests and items in a myriad of ways. Two copies of the DS game can initiate a wireless link, two copies of the GBA game can initiate a cable link, the DS and GBA games can share data when both versions are plugged into a single DS, or you can use passwords to send items and requests between any two versions of the game. Passwords are a pain to input, though, since they're a whopping 54 characters in length. Sadly, the game doesn't appear to interface with any other Pokémon games.

No matter how much you claim to love Pokémon, you should probably skip Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. It may contain plenty of recognizable Pokémon creatures and incorporate some of the franchise's key concepts, but it's nowhere near as diverse, slick, or fun as the canonical Pokémon role-playing games produced by Game Freak. Odds are that even staunch fans of the dungeon hack genre will find this game far too simplistic and repetitive for their tastes.