For starters, the story mode took me just under 35 hours to complete, partially due to the pacing towards the beginning, but nonetheless a 35 hour story mode is a plus in any game, not to mention that as soon as I finished that story mode, I still had only managed to recruit 80 of the 720 available Pokemon onto my team, so the work is far from over.
As for the plot itself, I largely enjoyed it. It's your traditional human into a Pokemon scenario with a few twists here and there, including some major plot twists at the end of the story which I will spare you all in case you have not yet gotten there. The Pokemon characters in the Mystery Dungeon series are always very emotional and its always nice to see this as opposed to their metallic cries in the main series, but especially in this game, emotions run high as the Pokemon world has never been so close to utter destruction.
Moving on to some of the smaller aspects of the game, the music is fantastic as always, and although nothing in the jukebox can compare to Aegis Cave from Explorers of Sky, it was still very good.
The Graphics look nice, and if you're one of those people who is afraid to switch from the old games into this new 3dish style, then this is certainly not a bad way to enter that.
Controls are what they always have been, I love the quick menu that pulls up all of your moves and the new alliance attacks are pretty fun to pull off, although I never did too many of them.
Rescuing friends is still around, although anymore I find that I mainly rescue myself, (because you can do that now) which is hugely helpful for those normal people that don't constantly play their game whilst being surrounded by their friends, ready to rescue at their command. This is by far one of the best new additions into the series, as well as the elimination of IQ from your team's Pokemon. IQ was just tedious and frankly an annoyance, but thank goodness its gone.
Now for the negatives. After playing through the story mode, I can say that there are some times in that when the dialogue will drag on and on and on for an eternity while the player just has to hold down B and wait for everyone to shut the hell up.
The only other negative that I can think of is the insane difficulty spikes that pop up every now and then. The earliest example I can think of is early on in the connection web when you have to go battle a level 50 Salamence as a level 15-20 Pokemon. This happens several times throughout the story with a boss enemy having dozens upon dozens of levels on you, which then you have to resort to Blast Seeds and Quick Orbs, but no matter.
In summation, Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon is a must-have for any Pokemon fan that already has a 3DS system due to its endearing charm and lengthy adventures. The cooperative aspect of the game is still there too, in case you and your siblings are on a long car ride or hanging out somewhere. All in all, its a brilliantly crafted game that stars all 720 Pokemon, a massive over world, and some catchy tunes. What else could you want?
