Thursday, February 21, 2013

Mystery Dungeon 2 is the king of spin-offs!

Can't say I'm surprised. The battle really was MD2 vs. everything else, and it fell just short of getting a majority (108 votes out of 219). The weird thing is, critics hated this game so much, and we Pokémon fans consider it the high point of the franchise outside of the main series (and maybe even including the main series).

Conquest finished a very, VERY distant second with 35 votes, and I'd like to say I expected much more of a fight out of it, but after conceding so many votes to MD3 in the gen 5 poll, it was clear it wouldn't be in contention. Nonetheless, I think it's the second choice of most MD2 voters (myself included), and Ness Prower explained why perfectly in the comments of the gen 5 poll:

It is a fantastic game despite being THE most outlandish crossover ever. We in America were asking ourselves, "I would not have seen this coming! Will it be any good?" Then it came out in Japan, and that was replaced with, "This game sounds awesome! When are WE going to get it?!" We got it, we loved it, and you know the rest...

It's true that Pokémon Conquest has the most screwed-up family tree out of any game. It's a crossover between Pokémon and Nobunaga's Ambition (two franchises that have absolutely NOTHING in common), with clear influence from Samurai Warriors which is itself a spin-off of Dynasty Warriors. What.

The two "console series" titles present in the poll fought fiercely for third, with XD just barely edging out Stadium 2 25 to 24. And then it was a frantic rumble between the other three games to NOT finish last... a dubious honor that went to Snap with 8 votes, just behind the TCG with 9 and MD1 with 10. (Really? 10 people like MD1 over MD2? I'd LOVE to see the reasoning.)

21 comments:

  1. I keep hearing that MD2 is really good, and the fact that it beat Conquest (which I voted for) on the poll pretty much proves that. I gotta ask though, how much better is it compared to MD1? I played MD1 and I honestly didn't like it that much

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  2. MD2 is miles better than MD1, especially Sky. Also probably has the best music of any Pokemon game. I'm just hoping MD3 isn't as bad as people are saying it is at the moment.

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    1. It is. Between the fact that only 144 Pokémon are available and the notion that much of its gameplay is centered around crappy AR gimmicks, you'd better just stick with MD2.

      But yeah, MD2 does away with all the annoying stuff MD1 had. Just the fact that you can recruit as many Pokémon as you want in a single runthrough of a dungeon is huge. Then there's the removal of Friend Areas, allowing you to bring four Pokémon (as long as they're small enough, of course) to a dungeon (aside from your first time in many of them) and so on. That was why I asked to know the logic according to which MD1 was better, because the notion is utterly ludicrous.

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    2. Ok, that all makes sense. I was just confused by how many people liked MD2 when I found MD1 to be an overall mediocre game (this is just my opinion), but now I have a better idea as to why MD2 is so popular. I might give it a try in the future if I ever have the chance

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    3. It really sounds like you did'nt particularly care for the new md3 or any of the GameCube pokemon games, personally I would love to see you do a write up explaining in more detail why you dislike them :D

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  3. Speaking of Conquest, I think I'll restart playing it now. I'm trying to complete my post-game team to finally finish White 2's Challenge Mode, but I'm WAY too meticulous for my own good. Now, I've gotten myself into grinding BPs to get a Power Anklet because I accidentally got 2 of the species of my planned team members with perfect Speed IVs, but crappy everything else and I can't get myself into letting it go to waste. However, when I first tried the Battle Subway with my in-game team for buying the U-Turn TM, everything went very smoothly. But now that I'm actually serious with actual competitively-viable Pokemon, the game decided to kick my ass up to oblivion.

    TL;DR : I've let myself run out of patience, I need a little break from White 2 and I'll play Conquest instead.

    By the way, did you know there was a sub-quest involving the Celestial Tower in the post-game ? None of the websites I regularly check ever mentioned it, so I was wondering if you knew.

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    1. That subquest was actually pretty unusual.
      I really liked it.

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    2. Yeah, I knew. Maybe no one mentions it because it's just dialogue.

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    3. What sidequest with solely dialogue are we talking about here?...

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    4. Take your copy of BW1, go to the top of the Celestial Tower, and read the dialogue. This is what we're talking about.

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    5. I just did the sidequest. 'Tis merely Alder telling you to be strong while moping about his anonymous starter...Pointless, really...

      I have an idea for a good mechanic. After you beat the rematch Elite Four in X and H, what if you were able to accept challenges for the Champion role. You could go to the League to battle the challengers. Their strength would depend on the team you used to beat the Elite Four last (the one recorded in the Hall of Fame for the rematches). You will still be able to beat up the Elite Four and the other champion as much as you want when one of these challenges are not active...Stupid idea, I know. It would require a phone or something that the League would use to call you and ask if you can accept the challenge...

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    6. No, that's not the one I was talking about. I was talking about the one you can activate by talking to a couple in Humilau City. I never bought Pokemon White, so I didn't have access to the Memory Link feature.

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    7. According to Marriland, there is one where you fight four high-level mono-type trainers in Celestial Tower and get a Revive. Is that the one?...

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    8. Where is it on Marriland ? I can't find it... I was kinda taken by surprise there, because I had brought a Gengar I found as a Ghastly in the Dream World to EV Train it, so when I saw they were actually serious with this, I wasn't prepared at all. Luckily, I had Octillery with me at the time, so the first trainer didn't cause any problem because it was the Fire Type one.

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    9. ...I just searched for the sidequest on Google and found a forum topic on Marriland...

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    10. Oh... I was looking for it on Serebii, Psypoke and Marriland, but didn't think Google would give me better results. I usually dislike going on forums too. I tend to attract too much hate on those.

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    11. By the way, if you wonder how that Fire type trainer might have given me any trouble, don't forget I'm playing on Challenge Mode and they were all Level 65 instead of 60.

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  4. To be fair, I also read of it on the Bulbapedia article for Celestial Tower to confirm it...

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    1. Probably should start looking on that website more often then... I find the navigation very awkward there, but if it offers more detailed info, I'll have to get used to it, I guess.

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  5. By the way, it really was MD2 to be first, Conquest to be second, and everything else to be in a battle for third...

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