## 2025-05-31 I remember quite like **Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red/Blue Rescue Team** as a kid. It was one of the first DS games I ever played, even. So it was nice to finally get around to **Explorers of Sky**, but having finished it I feel like my expectations ended up being a bit too high. That’s no one’s fault but my own, I suppose. So many people have told me how it’s one of the best Pokemon games ever, and how it was going to make me cry like a baby, and so on and so on. It isn’t, at least to me, and it didn’t, but I did enjoy it overall. I think it’s a very well written game…for a Pokemon game. Which is high-praise, but it didn’t make me lose my mind or anything. Honestly sometimes the emotional gut-punches were a little too telegraphed. Or like the team was pointing a sadness gun at my Partner Pokemon and staring me down, almost challenging me to feel bad about what I was seeing. I feel bad, because I’m sure part of that is just being old. I’m definitely more emotionally empathetic than I was as a teen, but I feel this game’s story would have hit me more as a nine or ten year old. With that said, if the plot isn’t hitting me then all that’s left is the gameplay, and while I love me a good mystery dungeon, this game is pretty repetitive and long in the tooth. I completed the main campaign, but when I saw what I’d have to do to get to the “true ending,” I am not ashamed to admit I just watched the rest of it on YouTube. So yeah, not a bad game at all! But I kind of wish I didn’t spend so many years anticipating it. Is this how people who were late to **Undertale** feel?