(This review may or may not count as spoilers? I'm not sure. Read at your own risk though, but I don't flat out say anything big. But there is a part where it does become straight-up spoilers, so watch out for that. I put a warning before the spoilers, though.)
I didn't actually play this game until recently, mid to late 2016 or so. So I can assure you that I am not speaking from nostalgia for this review. So...
Let me just say off the bat, the gameplay is most certainly not for everyone. Including me - I wasn't a fan of the gameplay at all. This game is a sluggish grindfest. So keep that in mind if you decide to play this. If I wasn't playing it on an emulator I don't think I would've gotten past the midpoint, this game gets extremely unforgiving. It doesn't help that you're punished for dying by losing items and money. However, save states are a blessing. Despite save states, I still wasn't able to get past the first boss of the postgame. This game, similarly to the mainseries Pokemon games, relies heavily on luck. Better hope that attack that the final boss uses misses or doesn't crit or you're likely dead in one hit.
However, this is a movie site so I'm gonna review this for the story. And it's unexpectedly the best thing about this game. Yes, a Pokemon spinoff game, one with mediocre gameplay that only got a slightly higher score than Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back on IGN, has one of the best stories in video game history. One word to describe this game's story would be emotional. You wouldn't expect a game like this to have deaths, but it does. To characters you would not expect, coming from a kids game like this. Even despite the gameplay, the story kept me going. I haven't played many games so maybe I can't say much, but this is the best story from a game I have ever seen.
Also, the soundtrack is phenomenal. If you don't think you'll check this game out for the story at least check out the music, especially the final boss theme. The final boss theme is the first thing I ever heard from this game and it's so good that it made me decide to play it years later.
!!!THIS IS WHERE SPOILERS START!!! However, it does have some minor problems. Being about time travel, it's bound to have some small plot holes. 1. Player is from the future, but then the future gets changed due to restoring the Time Gears to their rightful place, and thus as the dark future slowly starts to change, the player slowly disappears, and stops existing. This is fine, if a new version of the Player was born in the new future then it makes sense this 'old' Player would stop existing since that future now never existed. But... How can anyone from the past remember the player?! After the Player is erased from time, you know, it should be as if they never existed right? So no one should have any memory of them since they never existed? But no, they remember the Player perfectly after their disappearance. I never see anyone bring this up but this is a huge thing in my opinion. I don't think they specifically say the Player stopped existing or never existed or anything but isn't that basically what happened? Like even if they don't explicitly say it that's the only thing that could have caused the Player to disappear. But then they don't follow up on that logic. 2. Dialga brings the Player back to life. How and why? I guess the 'How' can be explained by Dialga bringing back a past version of the Player just before they died to the present, but then why? I mean yeah, Dialga's motives for doing this is fine enough, but I feel like doing that would just not be healthy for the time-space continuum? He probably destroyed a timeline by doing that. Actually since when is Dialga able to copy-paste people from the past to the present anyway? I would've also put the thing about the Player being apparently the only human and not being explained why we never see any others, but that might be explained in the other Mystery Dungeon games. I haven't played them. !!!SPOILERS END!!!
Okay but yeah, those problems can't discredit the story of emotion, passion and determination that this story tells. I probably sound repetitive at this point but go play it, see for yourself. Or if you aren't patient enough to play it, check out the cutscene movie series by Theaggyyu on YouTube.
!!!THIS IS WHERE SPOILERS START!!! However, it does have some minor problems. Being about time travel, it's bound to have some small plot holes. 1. Player is from the future, but then the future gets changed due to restoring the Time Gears to their rightful place, and thus as the dark future slowly starts to change, the player slowly disappears, and stops existing. This is fine, if a new version of the Player was born in the new future then it makes sense this 'old' Player would stop existing since that future now never existed. But... How can anyone from the past remember the player?! After the Player is erased from time, you know, it should be as if they never existed right? So no one should have any memory of them since they never existed? But no, they remember the Player perfectly after their disappearance. I never see anyone bring this up but this is a huge thing in my opinion. I don't think they specifically say the Player stopped existing or never existed or anything but isn't that basically what happened? Like even if they don't explicitly say it that's the only thing that could have caused the Player to disappear. But then they don't follow up on that logic. 2. Dialga brings the Player back to life. How and why? I guess the 'How' can be explained by Dialga bringing back a past version of the Player just before they died to the present, but then why? I mean yeah, Dialga's motives for doing this is fine enough, but I feel like doing that would just not be healthy for the time-space continuum? He probably destroyed a timeline by doing that. Actually since when is Dialga able to copy-paste people from the past to the present anyway? I would've also put the thing about the Player being apparently the only human and not being explained why we never see any others, but that might be explained in the other Mystery Dungeon games. I haven't played them. !!!SPOILERS END!!!
Okay but yeah, those problems can't discredit the story of emotion, passion and determination that this story tells. I probably sound repetitive at this point but go play it, see for yourself. Or if you aren't patient enough to play it, check out the cutscene movie series by Theaggyyu on YouTube.
