edit: ok this review sucks now but im not changing it, tldr story is cool but it sucks ass to play, if they remake it with the new engine it's probably like an 8 or 9/10 but as it stands don't bother

Buckle up, this is gonna be a long one.

This game makes me sad. The story can reach narrative peaks as high as the Explorers games (and arguably does some things even better than them), but I don't think I can recommend this one due to how terrible the actual experience of playing it is. Nearly every aspect of gameplay was made worse from previous games in the series, and it just kind of makes me upset how so great a story is blocked behind a game that is unfathomably painful to get through. I know a lot of want an Explorers DX, but I think this game could benefit from a remake far more. So many of the issues in this game could honestly be fixed with a damn rom hack, and a remake could easily skyrocket this game up to one of my favorites of all time.

If these things were remedied, this game would be a 9/10:
- Text speed is WAY too low. You think it's not a problem until you have to sit through 5 seconds of spamming A anytime a single person in your party levels up, and navigating shop menus quickly becomes a sluggish hell.
- Constructing shops and stuff in Paradise? Get rid of it, or make it so that the buildings can actually do something useful. Literally the only one I used consistently was the Oran Berry field, and even then, 2 in game days to get 2-3 Oran Berries???
- Let me take more than one job request at a time. Why was this even changed?
- Expand the starter selection. I'm not usually one to care too much about this kind of thing, but really? You have to pick 2 choices out of 5, and one of the 5 is Pikachu?
- Some of the music choices are... bizarre, to say the least. I'm not saying that none of the music in this game is good, all I'm saying is that some of the ost really falters in comparison to its predecessors. I recall there being a part in the game where an area that, tonally, was supposed to be very tense was accompanied by something that sounded exactly like circus music.
- Ditch gold bars as a concept. They drop way too rarely and are not nearly useful enough.
- Fix dungeon generation. This game generates a lot of long, windy, corridors that lead to a LOT of dead ends that make using the run button pretty terrible since you have to retrigger it every time you turn a corner or enter a room. Also, get rid of the random rocks in the middle of rooms that just get in the way.

I think if you're ok with suffering though 30+ hours of pain for a pretty good story then go ahead and play this, but I know I probably won't ever be picking this up again. And if you're new to the series, just play Explorers. It's a much more palatable game that still has the "Epic Good Story Moments."

Story - 9/10
Gameplay - 2/10

If you can get past how repugnantly slow text scrolls, since there’s no speed option when playing natively, and even holding B to auto scroll it is still slow, which bogs the unusually tutorial infested earlygame down (seriously, there is a tutorial for getting sand tombed in this game), or how the game’s mechanics are simplified a lot, what with no IQ skills or hunger, as well as its reduced roster of Pokemon, which repeats quite often early on, there is a beautifully heartfelt story here. I think in spite of it being my least favorite PMD to play through, it has one of my favorite casts. The dialogue is extremely charming, and the cast on the whole feels like a large family who are consistently active in the story. There isn’t a single one who’s shafted narratively, and I really appreciate that. And though this plays the weakest, I think the PMD gameplay loop is fundamentally so solid that there’s no way I could dislike the game. It’s just. Terribly tough to sell someone on the earlygame, which is everything people accuse Gen 7 of being, and then some. And yet, once you overcome that hurdle, you’re rewarded with such a brilliant cast. I’m just not sure how to sell someone like that. “Keep playing bro, it picks up 1/3 in” is a tough thing to say, especially when the gameplay remains fundamentally simpler to other entries, and you will notice enemy repetition. But beneath that, you do have a beautiful story and cast elevated by a leitmotif-imbued soundtrack that pulls at your heartstrings. The replay made me like this game more. I understand its status as the “worst” PMD, and am generally inclined to agree outside of the original Rescue Team’s jank, but I’ll also call this game worth your time, just probably if you mod a text scroll fix.

God, this game... is a sad tale. Explorers was a hard act to follow, and this game was definitely going through some new engine and new console growing pains along with everything else new it was trying to do. I honestly don't remember much of the gameplay itself, because I played it an absurdly long time ago, but oof. Removing the personality quiz and only giving you five starter choices wasn't great!

With those criticisms given, I actually really dug the story and characters. It wasn't as good as Explorers, but it was definitely good in its own way, and the cast was genuinely pretty good. I think the biggest problem I have with the story itself is that you could make it any other kind of isekai and you wouldn't really have to change anything. It feels like a game that happens to have Pokemon in it rather than a Pokemon game.

Alright, so I came to this game really late, early this year, while I was doing a binge of all the mystery dungeon games, and I don't know exactly why, but this is by far my favorite of the PMD games. One of the biggest reasons is the music. The music in this game hits me so hard and no other Pokemon music holds a candle to it. I'd even say that the Explorers music is not as good. I believe many more people like Explorers than Gates because of how 'eh' the gameplay is in Gates compared to Explorers. In Explorers, you can be far more Pokemon (compared to the limit of five in Gates), and there's basically a second or even third games' worth of content both post-game and in the side stories (compared to like literally nothing in Gates). But to me, the Gates story hit me harder. Like yeah, the twist around the middle of the story wasn't as good as Explorer's and generally side characters weren't really as likeable in Gates, but I still enjoy the Gates story more. If I was to specify why I like this game more, it'd honestly probably be the music, but still, I enjoyed this the most out of the Mystery Dungeon games although others will likely enjoy Explorers more.

Focused on its childish delivery of dull themes, the game lacks the more engaging plot of the previous installments, but remains pretty charming thanks to its earnest emotional edge and likable cast. Gameplay-wise, healing items are now too easily obtainable, particularly through the new town-building element which offers too little, shallow content to be truly interesting. That, coupled with the removal of the hunger mechanic and less Pokémon species to interact with makes the already tremendously repetitive Dungeon-Crawling experience too tedious to entertain anyone but die-hard fans.

[Dammit Larry, You're Hard to Love, But You're Harder to Hate]

Gates to Infinity is definitely the weakest game in the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon franchise due to its inconsistency in quality save for one notable aspect. Does this make it a bad game? Well, yes and no. For every good thing I can say about Gates to Infinity, I can point to an equally opposite bad thing.
- "Oh cool, the graphics are in 3D!"
- "But this makes the dungeons feel far less distinct, and characters far less expressive".
- "I love the fact that I don't have to worry about hunger in this game!"
- "But I hate having to navigate the dungeons in this game because the hallways and floors are much less interesting to explore."
- "I love that my party members get experience and eventually level up even if I don't bring them along on missions!"
- "But combat in dungeons is so awful because of the zoomed in camera that I can never even try to generate strategy when I approach a given room in this game."

Every time I think I can award points to Gates, it finds a way to immediately earn a demerit, but every time I think the game does something really really bad, I'm surprised at a cool decision the designers made. The plot is overly simple and reductive in its simplifications of tropes about friendship and trust that we've come to expect from the first two Mystery Dungeon games, but then it uses those predictable tropes to create a plot twits that genuinely surprised me. The dungeons presented a really interesting way to break up the pace of the mystery dungeon layout with the overworld floors, but then these same floors provided little to no challenge and were more or less abandoned beyond one or two dungeons late in the game (not that I particularly enjoyed these breaks in the gameplay, they really didn't fit with the gameplay loo I came to expect from mystery dungeon). The Paradise was ultimately an overcomplicated hub zone that I didn't find myself developing whatsoever just because the game made it nearly impossible to efficiently complete missions, but Post Town, despite being nearly pointless beyond flavor reasons, won me over as a genuinely comfy spot in a video game. And speaking of missions, I found myself really frustrated that I couldn't select many missions at once in the same dungeon (a clear attempt by the game to not allow you to grind), but then at the same time, I found myself feeling relieved that I was finally done with a single mission after 4-6 floors because I really really didn't enjoy the dungeon crawl with more than two party members (but also the game was definitely balanced around you having four party members at once which is cool UNTIL THEY START RUNNING OFF AGAIN). So between all these positives and negatives I sit here struggling to consider how I really feel about this game.

At this point in time, the only part of the game I can unequivocally vouch for is its soundtrack. Almost every piece of music in this game after the first few dungeons is simply perfect for its respective application. Dungeon themes are filled to the brim with explorative passion and capture the exact feelings of excitement, anxiety, determination, and dread one might feel when exploring places named "Forest of Shadows" or "Great Glacier". I am particularly fond of the musical leitmotif that carries through each Magnagate dungeon (Telluric Path, Kilionea Road and Tyrian Maze) as the same musical notes carry through each piece representing the mysterious ability to travel through the ley lines of the planet. Keisuke Ito absolutely knocks this soundtrack out of the park and makes even the most grueling, unpleasant dungeon crawls slightly more manageable. I had heard the soundtrack long before playing the game, and I found myself struck at just how much I could still enjoy the game having listened to the official soundtrack in a vacuum. There was nothing quite like being ejected from the mysterious Kilionea Road and finding myself potentially without a single reference point in the forest of Shadows, having only my instincts and the music of "Forest of Shadows" playing. What a great feeling.

I struggle to outright recommend this game to anyone beyond those who would care to play every mainline Pokémon Mystery Dungeon game. It has the weakest gameplay loop by far, and its story takes a lot of effort to really take seriously. While it might be the case that I am just too old for what is essentially a YA-literature piece, I just couldn't make myself care about the plights of Emolga and Dunsparce. But then again, I found Virizion's arc to be pretty interesting and I really enjoyed Espeon and Umbreon as characters, as simple as they were. Once again, the duality of Gates rears its two-faced visage. For every good there is a bad, and for every bad, there is a good. This is the Gates to Infinity experience.

TLDR: It's kino and you're all wrong

I'm not a big review guy, but I feel like I must speak up about this game
I will start by saying that I won't excuse the lazy game design, but not because it's bad, but because it's not innovative enough to be a sequel

The game hitting you with something so hard like the Gurdurr arc in the first two hours was the best red carpet for what was going to happen next. You building Paradise with your friends, and then just getting to know everyone important to you and seeing their lows and downs, like Virizion's insecurity and self-sheltering and Dunsparce gaining heart after spending more time with your party, Emolga purposefully sending Dunsparce to the Great Glacier when he also wanted to go to that adventure, Espeon breaking up in front of the square because of the guilt of leaving something as dangerous as the Entercards with Swadloon, the plot twist with Munna and Hydreigon, everything was so soulful and so human, I was immersed completely that I didn't even care about mashing A (even though I got around using the cheat later) to see more of the dialogue
The themes of hope, despair, the world going to shit and whatever were so powerful, there are like a million scenes where your partner stands up against all of this because everyone being bad doesn't mean you have to be, and the build up until the last chapter where everyone loses hope but gains it when they see the Rainbows, thinks of the future and how they want to change for the better was MASTERFUL, when even the team was considering just letting it all to Kyurem and die in hopes the new world was better than this one. The game handles getting people out of their insecurities and getting to trust people again so well, even I was inspired by all of this. It just hits different when every character is a thinking and emotional being that learns from their mistakes and betters themselves into a better person, like Virizion and Dunsparce

The ending is just another thing that made this game an easy 5 for me. I don't really think I have to say anything as an argument other than that Frism message, which was a powerful testament of how you built your relationships with everyone, even that one Patrat from Post Town, how you saved everyone and how everyone feels about your friendship, even saying they won't ever forget you even if the world makes them.

Sky was the last good one? I don't think this one is bad. I'm not saying I like this one over Sky which is a masterpiece all of its own, but whenever people say this flopped or whatever, it's sad to think they never played it, or that they left it halfway, or that they simply didn't read the text, because this game's story is powerful, is inspiring, is endearing, with colorful and fleshed out characters that just trascend beyond the bad inclusion of Paradise or that they didn't add anything new other than the Team Attack

I absolutely love this game, I encourage everyone to play it again and pay attention to how it builds up every moment, how it presents its characters and world and more importantly, how it all ends with you having a successful and strong bond with everyone in your party. It's disappointing how people don't see this beyond the gameplay aspect.

This was my first exposure to the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series and I adored it. Imagine my surprise then, when I found out that it was hated online (at least within some corners of the fandom). I've read most of the common complaints against the game: small dex size, small post game, the inability to complete more than one mission at once, lack of a hunger mechanic, etc; but what has always confused me about the hate is that it seems sort of disproportionate to the amount that these flaws actually detract from the gameplay experience. For sure, the game is mechanically regressive (I know it sounds bad but bear with me here) from the previous entries, and I will admit to being a tad biased, but having gone back to this game after playing Explorers of Sky, these missing features have never amounted to more than minor gripes for me. Honestly, when viewed in isolation from the rest of the series, the only one of these criticisms that still really stands is the inability to take on multiple missions at a time.

Gates to Infinity, when taken on its own merits, gets a ton right in my book. The story and characters are great, with pretty much all the major side characters having their own arcs along with you and your partner, and the story having a good handful of fun twists (though I will concede that I'm not a lover of how the final boss was handled); the dungeon crawling is a ton of fun, and of course the soundtrack is excellent. I'm also a fan of how you can customize your Paradise area with various stat-boosting facilities and minigames to earn items; it's just a little touch of personalization that I appreciate.

All in all though, come on guys, the quality-of-life improvements alone are enough to put this over the original Rescue Team games.

honestly, the only issue i really had with this game was how easy it is, even though previous PMD games were kinda tough i think Gates just makes it way too easy with it's changes. Aside from that, it's mystery dungeon, you know, if you don't enjoy this kind of gameplay you should be playing other stuff. A good point in this entry was the huuuuge improvement on the cast compared to the DS titles, man Explorers' characters were annoying sometimes, but on Gates the characters are really nice overall. Also there are less pokemon to choose from and less to fight with, which surprisingly didn't bother me too much, even though having more variety is always nice. This game like many other entries on the PMD series don't deserve all the hate they get, they're fairly enjoyable if you like this kind of gameplay.

By the end of the day Gates just need some rebalancing to it's gameplay to be a more enjoyable entry, and i hope it may get via romhacking in the future (and of course faster text messages too)