For those who enjoy: crazy narratives screaming at RNG lovable side characters bawling your eyes out at the credits existential crisis subplots
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon! The best Pokémon spin-off series! Transformed into a Pokémon (and with amnesia to boot!), it's up to you to solve the mystery of how you ended up in the Pokémon world, and probably save it from an untimely fate in the process! Charming characters and goofy moments are balanced out by attempts at genuinely emotional storytelling. I played the first game when I was nine years old and ever since I've been fruitlessly trying to quantify the impact these games have had on me.
The start of it all, released for both GBA (Red) and DS (Blue). It's lacking the polish of its sequels, but it's still a charming game--I hold a special place for it in my heart as the first one I played (and the one I've definitely played the most!).
Hands down the best PMD game of the bunch, full of memorable characters and one of the most impactful narratives I've ever experienced at the grand old age of eleven years old. Explorers of Sky is the definitive version of the game, with added content over Time and Darkness, but the core of what makes the games great is present in all three.
Often considered the weakest link of the series, and, uh... yeahhhhhh. It's an impressively tedious game. The characters are some of the best in the series and once the narrative figures out what in the world it's trying to do, it gets pretty engaging, but you have to trudge through a lot of nothingness to get to that point. I would recommend the game only for those who are already wholeheartedly devoted to the series.
The last new PMD game in nine years. It definitely feels like a culmination of the entire series, featuring all Pokémon up to Gen VI and being chock full of references to previous games. 'Tis a good game! Maybe I'll have more to say after I replay it (I'm on a bit of a series marathon right now, and this game is up next on the chopping block!).
A remake of the original games conveniently tossed onto Switch. It irons out the kinks and brings the experience up to speed with modern expectations (lots of quality-of-life changes!), so I'd say that unless you carry some heavy nostalgia for the sprite-based aesthetics of the GBA era, then this is the definitive way to play the original PMD, without a doubt.
Let's see, what else do these games have? ...Epic music! The soundtracks for all games are fantastic (for Gates to Infinity in particular, the soundtrack literally carries the game--I don't think I could tolerate slogging through the dungeons if the music wasn't there as motivation). I'll leave most of it for you to search up yourself, but I'll at least take the opportunity to chuck out a couple arrangements I made for funsies (made possible thanks to Some Body's amazing PMD transcription project!)
A small thing I've always found really appealing about PMD is that each game has a short personality test at the beginning to determine which Pokémon you become. Well... every game except for Gates to Infinity (this is honestly a major reason I never bought the game for so long...). But fear not, for I have addressed this major flaw! That is to say, I cobbled together my own little makeshift personality test for the game, styled after the tests from PMD1 and 2, that you can find here. Enjoy!