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.