Often hailed as the worst Pokémon Mystery Dungeon game, there’s certainly plenty of reasons why, the most apparent being the core gameplay itself. Gates to Infinity does little to really spice up the Mystery Dungeon formula, but it manages to make everything so much more tedious. Dungeon layouts are atrociously generated, snaking out with corridors leading to rooms in all directions, the principle flaw being that none of these rooms are nearly as well interconnected as previous games, so you’ll find yourself retreading old ground after running into dead ends. The early game is particularly frustrating, as you’ll find yourself having to sit through a lot of dialogue that crawls across the screen at a snail’s pace (with absolutely no way to speed it up!) and will hit an hours-long stretch not far from the opening where you’re required to complete standard missions day after day. Completing countless missions one at a time (notably, the request system has seen a massive downgrade from the previous games for seemingly no reason) in the same handful of dungeons that all feel the same because they’re full of mostly the same annoying enemies (seriously, String Shot, Minimize, Pluck, you’ve got to be kidding me) all while the game every once in a while tosses out tiny little breadcrumbs of plot progression just to remind you that the game even has a plot to keep you invested starts to degrade one’s sanity a little. Pacing is poor, and while I hate to bash games by comparing them to their predecessors, I couldn’t help but think to myself, “PMD1 and 2 only ever had me do one or two days of standard missions at a time.” Honestly, the number one thing keeping me going at that point was the promise of such an outstanding soundtrack (seriously, it carries the game at times. Just felt I had to toss in a mention of the music somewhere, because it’s genuinely fantastic).
I can only imagine that the reason Gates to Infinity does this is to give the player time to engage with the town-building aspect of the game. A significant chunk of the game revolves around building your own “Pokémon Paradise”, and as you get materials as rewards from doing requests, you can develop the land surrounding your house and build a variety of shops there. It’s a novel concept that caught me off guard and got me a little excited when it was first introduced, though in practice, it doesn’t fully live up to its potential. The progression for which areas of land you can develop and what you’re able to turn them into is rigid enough to where I bet that if I compared my Paradise with that of another player who’d just beaten the game, they’d look pretty similar. It’s a good idea with a lot of potential, just could see a little more development in order to be something really special.
I feel the same way about the game’s narrative—it has so much potential that it just barely misses fulfilling. The early game can once again be pointed to as a sore spot in this regard—there’s a handful of different plot threads introduced, but the narrative seems to forget one in order to bring up another and ends up feeling incredibly aimless. Of course, everything is eventually addressed by the end, but it doesn’t quite have that satisfying sense of culmination as if everything had been leading up to the ending... rather, it feels almost as if the game was confused as to how to get where it was trying to go.
That final destination left me feeling that playing the game was ultimately worthwhile, though. In the final act, the plot suddenly gets its act together and the game becomes incredibly well-written to make for quite the engaging climax. The characters really shine in this game—the core cast feels like they have more depth to them than most PMD characters (there’s even some solid character development sprinkled in! Crazy!), and even the player character themselves is chattier here than usual, blurring the line between being a stand-in for the player and a character in their own right. The narrative tries to touch on some deeper themes that appeal strongly to my own ideals, and while it’s bound to be cheesy by nature (yes, this is a kid’s game), certain parts of it I found pretty touching. The ending manages to be just as crushing as any other PMD game, though it’s accomplished in a unique way, and while postgame content is criminally lacking, the short narrative continuation present there is appreciated for what it adds. There’s so many good ideas present in Gates to Infinity’s plot, but not all of them are explored fully, and the fantastic final act only comes after hours of narrative aimlessness. Polish it up a little, smooth out the rough edges, and I’m sure there’s something special to be found in Gates to Infinity.
In truth, this feeling of potential lying under the surface extends out to all of Gates to Infinity. Certain story dungeons are broken up by overworld gameplay segments, another fantastic idea that the game never developed to its full potential (and one of the reasons I’m glad I went into the game blind was just to be surprised by features like this). The concept of Mystery Dungeons themselves are delved into a little bit, with them being characterized as these sort of crazy natural phenomena—explanations of ley lines and Entercards provide a certain amount of worldbuilding that leaves me craving more. Gates introduces so many concepts that I would love to see the series develop further, but unfortunately, that’s not what happened with the majority of them...
I find it hard to argue that Gates isn’t the worst PMD game given my experiences with all the others... but I think wholly discarding it would be an affront to all the magical things it gets so right (or in most instances really, comes so close to getting so right). With how tedious it is, I’m not sure that I’d feel inclined to give it a strong recommendation to anybody but those who are wholeheartedly devoted to the series, but I can’t help but wish that all of Gates’s strong points could someday be iterated upon to create something truly great... Hopelessly flawed but dripping with potential, Gates is exactly the kind of game that begs for a reimagining.