A remake of the original Pokémon Mystery Dungeon will be out this March, but you can play a demo of it right now on Nintendo Switch.
Today’s Nintendo Direct may have been mostly about the Pokémon Sword and Shield expansion pass but it opened with something different: a remake of 2006 Game Boy Advance and DS game Pokémon Mystery Dungeon.
Mystery Dungeon is a peculiar crossover series that started way back on the SNES and has teamed up with everything from Dragon Quest to Final Fantasy and Etrian Odyssey. Plus, there’s also sub-series Shiren The Wanderer that features its own original characters.
As you’d expect though, it’s the Pokémon games that have been the most popular, starting in 2006 and totalling five different games, many with multiple versions.
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX is a remake of the first game though and features a brand-new hand-drawn art style that is the best a Pokémon game has looked in a long time.
The gameplay seems to be largely the same though, albeit with a few new conveniences to help automate combat and, because you can have up to eight pokémon travelling with you, recover from fainting.
The idea is that you play as a pokémon itself, rather than a trainer, but despite having all the trappings of a regular Pokémon game it’s still a fairly hardcore roguelike underneath – which is always an acquired taste.
Luckily though there’s a free demo that’s been released today, so you can try it yourself. Any progress you make can be carried through to the final game too, which will be out on 6 March.
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