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Off-topic discussion is allowed, but spam is not; please make sure all your messages are of substantial meaning that at least somebody would be interested in reading and responding to. That being said, obviously I appreciate comments relating to The Cave of Dragonflies, whether they are error reports, questions, suggestions or whatever else you might want to get across.

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15

Sorry if I'm really blunt in my comments and I apologise in advance if something in this is overly offensive.
Also note that a large amount of my comments are more opinions than factual errors.
Comments or questions in response to specific sections of the review
Intro: Reviewer made claim "they are supposedly exactly the same aside from some obtainable Pokémon and items. Therefore, this review should be entirely applicable to Darkness as well, but I call it a review of Time anyway since that's the game I played."
Response to claim: I agree with the claim made, that the review can easily enough pass for a review of Explorers of Darkness. Chances are that the recruitable Pokémon would likely not be used for much due to the nature of the game, which introduces severe level gaps in player-partner-only arcs. However, as it appears that you are a Mudkip starter, there are a couple of differences that may apply to you. A source claims that the Blizzard TM is exclusive to Explorers of Time and the Swagger, Substitute, and Water Pulse TM's are exclusive to Explorers of Darkness. (there are also other version-exclusive TM's, but I believe that these would likely be the most relevant ones on Mudkip). Both versions' Mudkip have their unique strengths, with Explorers of Time getting a move that targets the entire room allowing the player to be able to clear Monster Houses and the Darkrai bossfight relatively easily. This is what happened in my Darkrai bossfight, which made it very easy. Substitute is a weird move that makes the enemy targeted move weirdly and makes other enemies target it or something like that. And then there's Swagger, a confusion-inducing move. I feel like confusion is better than sleep in this game because of the nonsleeper IQ occuring in some of the lategame enemies. In general, I believe Time as opposed to Darkness gives you some AoE power as opposed to some status's.
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Reviewer's statement: "there is something unnerving and nightmarish about the time-stopped areas that makes it fall under the Rule of Cool to some degree"
Responder's question: What is the Rule of Cool and what causes the planet's paralysis to fall under that rule?
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Reviewer claim: "Even the standard, randomly generated missions are more interesting and varied: there is less emphasis on rescuing and more adventurous Pokémon who want you to escort them to treasures, as well as an entire class of missions that revolve around catching rogue Pokémon by fighting them on a certain floor of a particular dungeon."
Response to claim: I strongly agree with this claim that escort missions and outlaw missions added depth to the game. Let us take the example of escort missions first. Firstly, escort missions tend to be annoyingly hard, with the necessity to protect one's level-1 escort from the slightest attack. I agree that this can introduce a somewhat large challenge into the game, although it can often get close to too challenging. It is also notable that because of this, escort missions tend to be one level above rescue missions on the same floor, resulting in better rewards. Better rewards + harder mission = more satisfaction (in my opinion). Escort missions seem even more fleshed out by escort A to B missions, prospect missions, and Golden Chamber missions, which I strongly agree show how much it was fleshed out. My opinion on outlaw missions is a bit weird. I feel like they are essentially bosses, but that they encourage inflicting status-conditions and overleveling, which I believe may limit playstyle and put too much focus on metaprogression. However, the may is notable, as it could also possibly be defeated when not overleveled with heavy use of items. And then there's the "Steal from Aftermath pokemon" missions, which require that you get rain set, damp, covet, or something of the sort, which forces the user to think creatively, which is interesting.
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Reviewer claim: "I had the misfortune of being a Mudkip, which I have begun to suspect may be the absolute worst Pokémon to be in the entire game. Until I hit level forty-two and learned Hydro Pump, my best attack was Water Gun. Eventually I gave up and taught myself both Dig and Rock Slide, but I still had no convenient status-inducing attacks like I did as a Bulbasaur."
Response to claim: Strongly disagree. I do agree that Mudkip is a very vanilla starter. However, I do not believe that it would be "bad" in many ways. First things first, there was the claim that Water Gun was your best attacking move until Hydro Pump. I agree with this claim, but disagree that Water Gun is anything of a bad move, as it can cut corners, gets reasonable PP and STAB such that I feel like it should be treated as at least a decent move and may be effective as a secondary attacking move (maybe with Tackle acting as a primary attacking move).
Dig is interesting because although it is a charge move, I believe it has a double damage multiplier (I could be wrong on this), which may make it viable on enemies a tile away from you, especially with type weaknesses. Rock Slide seems like an unusual choice, but it may be because of PP for more attacking moves (leading to your later argument that moves are important and that PP could be maximised), or maybe for coverage (if I recall correctly I saw a source claiming that STAB is better than coverage unless it is a double weakness/resistance. However, it may make sense as double weaknesses/resistances to rock seem relatively common with the number of Bug/Flying types.) However, I am unsure about your decision of using this move as opposed to Mud-slap, which has more PP. Is it because of the cringe chance? If so, how well did it work for you, as an extra turn to move can be quite helpful at a good amount of situations.
Despite Mudkip not learning moves that inflict status ailments on the opponent, Mudkip does learn Protect at 37, which may be helpful. Although it is less accurate than moves like Sleep Powder and Supersonic, I still believe that it can be helpful and is probably better than nothing. As a side note, I had a Mudkip partner and Protect helped me cheese the Dialga bossfight, although a few reviver seeds were consumed from misses. I agree that Protect is outclassed by other more versatile status moves, such as Munchlax's Amnesia and Stockpile, Chikorita's Synthesis, some Fire-types' SmokeScreen, and possibly, as you mentioned earlier, Bulbasaur's Sleep powder. However, I still believe that Protect can still be useful in a large amount of circumstances. However, I think that there are worse starters, for example, Meowth does not get many helpful status moves (since it's mainly a physical attacker, nastyplot is not that helpful), and despite it having the overpowered ability Technician, its only two technician-boosted moves are both EoD-exclusive TM's.
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Reviewer claim: "depending on which Tactic I made him act on, my partner Charmander was either completely unhelpful or would run off and get himself into trouble while I was stuck dealing with some other Pokémon."
Response to claim: Agree, I'm not really a fan of the partner mechanic to this extent. I prefer to solo when I'm allowed to unless I feel like micromanaging set moves (mentioned in later section of your guide). I was under the impression that Charmander was one of the better pokemon for this, as it gets corner-cutting moves like Ember and the almighty SmokeScreen. ('mons with attacks that go in front of in front are even better partners (like quick attack), but I don't believe that partner Charmander would be as bad as, say, partner Munchlax or something because even in Let's Go Together, partner Charmander would still be able to do something in the case of rooms or corners, which, while not amazing, might be something. There's the possibility of switching with the partner, which may or may not be worth the partner taking a hit depending on the enemy and depending on the partner. However, I strongly agree with you on the partner system comment.
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Claim by reviewer: "Fainting in a dungeon gets you into a vicious cycle: you lose all your money and around half of your items (I believe it's just that each item has a fifty-percent chance of being lost; I have ended up with only three items left, but I have also kept just over half of them), which means you lose your Oran Berries (which means you can't heal yourself in a dungeon) and whatever else useful you might have had and can't buy yourself Reviver Seeds when you happen to come across a Kecleon shop, which means you'll almost definitely faint if you try again, too; all you can do is make futile attempts until you happen to have leveled up enough to get there. Or go all the way back to Treasure Town, do a bunch of missions to earn yourself some money and items, and then go through all the previous parts of the dungeon you were trying to get through."
Response to claim:
Somewhat disagree: Mystery dungeon games are like the weird hybrid between roguelikes and RPG's that remove of permadeath in exchange for metaprogression. And the metaprogression is strong in this entry, with the huge duskull bank, the farming of items, the ability to keep items when you die in a dungeon, and so forth. (I'm not sure about the 50% thing because I don't recall keeping more than half. However, I'm not a reliable test subject because I rarely check my inventory). Metaprogression can result into grinding. Depending on how likely I am, I choose between the grinding approach or simply re-attempting the dungeon, as you mentioned; the former if I wouldn't be able to survive without the items, or the latter if I simply got unlucky (as you have addressed later in your review). The game seems to encourage grinding, with the extra empty days to grind for items and do jobs (and probably end up with a sizeable collection in storage) may prevent the grinding from happening after a defeat, as items can be taken from the copious storage built from large amounts of items stored from missions. I tend to have a huge amount of surplus useful items, such as oran berries, apples, big apples, and grimy food, in my storage, which is usually the result of required mission days or external grinding, which may make grinding at the time of the dungeon less crazy. However, note that the future dungeons and Spacial Rift don't let you go back to treasure town, which may pose problems if you have not filled up your storage, which I believe can be a gameplay flaw. However, in other cases, where the player is simply unlucky, the player would probably be able to clear the dungeon given that the player doesn't get unlucky with problematic enemies, so I wouldn't classify those as always futile.
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Claim by reviewer: "The fundamental issue behind what makes the gameplay of Mystery Dungeon so irritating is the fact that moves - in general - are vastly overpowered. You see, in the Mystery Dungeon series, Pokémon don't always use moves - they also have a "standard attack". However, as it happens even a move like Tackle is greatly superior to the standard attack in terms of damage, and as if that weren't enough motivation to use moves almost all the time, you get more experience for beating Pokémon with moves than without. Now, you would run out of PP (a precious resource in these games) way too quickly if you had to waste a whole bunch of moves on every Pokémon you fight in every dungeon, so they made it so that moves will generally beat any Pokémon around your level in two or three hits."
Response to claim: Somewhat agree. I'd like to make an analogy to competitive Pokémon, in which PP-stall using things like stall and pressure can hurt normally-good low-PP moves like espeed or other 5-PP moves and encourage use of moves with more PP. Something similar may be the case. Something that may be of note: I believe that most moves (except for the multiplier ones) are similar in power with one another because of base power being additive and evening out as levels get higher. (I'll look for a source on this). I tend to use a single move and then regular attack for enemies because of the sheer power of moves, which usually ends up 3HKOing the enemy. However, it is probably of note that I tend to be 5-7 levels overleveled. I'm not sure whether you tend to be more on-level than I do, which may be contributing to the necessity of using more than one move or the often getting 2HKOd. As a munchlax starter, without using stockpile, the main 'mons that had reliably 2HKOd me were Combusken, Monferno, a good amount of 'mons from Mt. Travail, and a reasonable chunk from Mt. Bristle. (without application of Stockpile). However, again, it may simply be because I tend to be overleveled. I was going to make a separate section about this, but it flows into this, so I strongly agree with you on multi-hit moves being luck-based and possibly annoying when enemies land multiple hits. This also applies to my personal pet peeve, Perish Song.

Your next paragraph contains a good amount of repeat from earlier paragraphs, so I won't address issues separately, but I also view SOS mail as painfully long and time-consuming to put in. As about people rescuing, there seems to be a reasonably large rescuing community for the Explorers games, which is aided by backwards compatibility from Sky allowing EoT players to rescue not only EoD players but also EoS players. I tend to micromanage my partner, as it seems required in certain circumstances. However, I do not view it as extremely tedious. However, that is really a matter of personal taste.
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General Questions/Comments
1. The belly system in the Mystery Dungeon games seems like a somewhat divisive factor. Where do you fall in the spectrum?
2. I noticed that you did not mention Aegis Cave, in my opinion the most infuriating dungeon in the game because of requiring RNG to progress. Why is this, and what are your views on the dungeon?
3. There is a set of level-reset dungeons: Zero Isle East, Zero Isle West, and Zero Isle South such that they reset your level to 1 and reset your stats so that you need to gain experience in the dungeon. I like to compare these dungeons with competitive Pokémon when the non-levelreset dungeons are likened to standard pokemon because I believe that the level-reset dungeons have more strategy involved because of the use level-up stats and movesets and because of the fact that your level is limited to be somewhere near that of the opponents, and I find it fun to attempt it with different Pokémon. On the flip side, there's more dependence on RNG to give the player Big Apples and Max Elixirs. What is your view on these dungeons? Do you like them or dislike them? Why is that?
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Thank you for reading this response. I'm sorry if some part was offensive. Please note that a large amount of the response included my opinion and is not strictly factual.

[19/10/2020 22:39:01]

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