Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky (Hands-On) (Nintendo DS) Preview

The game's core mechanics and plot haven't undergone any significant changes. Players will once again find themselves in the role of a human being who has been mysteriously transformed into a Pokémon, although the selection of available starting Pokémon has been bolstered with newcomers such as Evee and Vulpix. In fact, the total number of Pokémon in the game now exceeds 490, with 19 of those being directly playable. The game's story will also be bolstered with a series of 'Special Episodes' that aim to delve into the background of several supplementary characters from the original duo of games, such as Wigglytuff and Sunflora.

None of these extras, however, were demonstrated in the game's E3 demo, which consisted of nothing but a single dungeon to wander through. While the Mystery Dungeon franchise is hardly known for reinventing it's central gameplay mechanics, Explorers of Sky is literally indistinguishable from its sister titles. The mix of apparent real-time actions and turn-based combat makes a return, you're once again joined by a Pokémon companion, and controls are as they ever were. Developer Chunsoft has done nothing to fix what isn't broken, then, but it's also done nothing to entice players previously turned off by the polarizing Mystery Dungeon formula.