WTF? Frank Provo, find a good analist.
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon tells the story of a human that suddenly is transformed in a Pokémon (the species you transform into is selected in an interesting personality quiz in the start of the game) and leaved in a distant land. Another Pokémon finds his/her unconscious in a forest and be friends with the human. Shocked with the situation, the Pokémon and his/her new friend discovers that a Caterpie is lost in the forest, and his mother Butterfree will reward you if you rescue him. After a little mission for introducing the game's basic mechanics, you find Caterpie and save him. The human's new Pokémon friend tells him/her that they did a great job rescuing the Caterpie and that they should start a business as a Rescue Team. After a time, the citizens of the local village discovers he is a human, and, unluckily, at the same time a respected rescue team came to the city and told everyone that an ancient prophecy tells a human will destroy the world. Furious, the citizens attack and ban the human and his friend form the city. The story then circles in the human trying to prove he is not bad and he's not going to bring problems to the village.
The game is a interesting mix of the Pokémon mechanics with ChunSoft's "Mystery Dungeon" mechanics. Basically, you have your "rescue team" of Pokémons, a group that helps Pokémons with problems - which vary between each "missions", such as "rescue me form a dungeon" or "escort me to my friend in the dungeon because I am too weak to go alone". Then, you must go to the indicated dungeon and complete the mission for being rewarded. There is also a grade for each missions - E, D, C, B, A or S, that indicate the difficulty and the level of the rewards.
The dungeons are different form the common RPGs out there, thanks to the "Mystery Dungeon" mechanics. In a dungeon, you need to explore each of it's floors in order to complete missions - which are based on the floor number. For example, when you need to rescue a Pokémon, the floor in which the Pokémon is stuck in will be informed in the help call. The special thing here is that the dungeon's architecture, item positions and paths are automatically generated when you go up or down stairs. This opens the deck of possibilities in the game - you never know what awaits you in the next floor, and the only hints you have are the dungeon's thematic: a dungeon in a volcano will not have grass or ice type Pokémons, only fire and rock ones. This is mixed with the classic Pokémon turn battles and match-up type moves and attacks. The greatest difference here is that the Pokémons now have 8 different directions for looking or aiming at - you need to aim the attack in you enemies in order to hit them, and vice-versa.
The Pokémon mechanics such as levels, moves and stats are here, too, and they grow the same way as they do in the standard Pokémon RPGs. The greatest difference is that now the stats interfere much more in the Pokémon's overall power than the moves the Pokémon have - the greatest importance in the moves now are their effects. A move that is sightly lower powerful than other but can attack Pokémons in distance is a lot more useful than a move that is very powerful but can't hit anything that is not right in front of the Pokémon.
You can explore a dungeon with up to 3 Pokémon at the same time (including you). The support Pokémons will stay in you side and try helping you beating enemies and collecting items, and they have a surprisingly good artificial intelligence. You can set the Pokémon's tactics - such as telling him to go alone and try to kill all the Pokémons it finds for clearing the floor while you try to find the stairs or items, or tell him to be in a defensive position, staying with you and trying to attack or be exposed the less possible, and set the Pokémon's IQ (his own intelligence) like "try attacking enemies with low HP" or "try attacking enemies with type disadvantage". The types of commands and settings are very varied and in the most situations they can help a lot to successfully completing a mission.
You can also recruit new Pokémon for your Rescue Team, by beating Pokémon in dungeons. However, the chance of recruiting a Pokémon is determined by the Pokémon's level and the Rescue Team's rank - which shows the quality and experience of the team and grows a little in the finish of each mission - and you've got to have access to the wild Pokémon's "Friend Area", a place where you can left the recruited Pokémon while he is not in use.
The exploration is not monotone at all, and the constant surprises the dungeons got make encourage you for continuing and visiting the same dungeon more than one time. And the dungeons you unlock in the game's progression are always bigger and harder: when you hit a certain part of the game, the difficulty gets so insane you can visit dungeons with 99 floors, where you start it temporarily in level 1 and with no Pokémon recruits for help and no items.
Between each mission, you have the chance to go to the Pokémon Block, where you have the chance of buying, selling or storing items, storing money in a bank, paying for having access for friend areas, training, check for new missions, help friends with the Friend Code mechanics, preparing your team for a mission or evolving them by going to a specific place in the city where Pokémons that are prepared for evolution (have the enough level or a specific item, just like in the standard Pokémon RPGs).
Criticizing Frank again, his review not even mentioned the constant number of different missions the game have - which are always different form each other, not only by the objectives' nature that hardly differs between each mission, but the dungeons and it's Pokémon that crucially change the nature of the floors you go to, even with an aleatory order and form. More important than all, he considered that the story finishes in the point you beat Rayquaza - while this is not even a quarter of the game's weight, as you will have an infinity of bosses and dungeons for going to - all the legendary Pokémons until the 3rd generation are bosses in the game, and there's easily more than 50 or 60 different dungeons, each one with it's characteristic style and Pokémons. And I really left out a big laugh when I read "Nothing more to do than sleeping or shopping". Maybe because the city is nothing but the place where you prepare yourself for the dungeons?
The graphical experience is really great, and, with other beautiful GBA games such as the Metroids and the Castlevanias, it shows how the portable can make great, clean 2D graphics as good as or better than consoles, such as Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis.
Finishing, PMD Red is one of the best RPGs on the console, and it is great to see a great game like that in a time where Nintendo and the third parties just want to make DS games. Being a long time Pokémon fan, I can say that other fans of the series will find very good time here, as well as new mechanics that send the series to fantastic new ways. I can also say it is the best Pokémon spin-off to appearing a long time, and if you have a GBA, like RPGs and you want a new game for your now old portable, you should totally pick it with all you heart.