Let's Play Mystery Dungeon DX, Part 8: Damn Dirty Apes

 After doing some more missions, I, the isekai'd Mudkip, get another dream with Gardevoir. Gardevoir identifies herself as being an agent of the spirits now, and notes that because a Gardevoir's role is to guard and protect their trainer, she's not even angry at the still-mysterious human that abandoned her before. It's supposed to show how selfless and kind Gardevoir is, but I dunno, the game has been making a very valid point at what a complete and utter dipshit the asshole that abandons her is. That's why I'm a human and not a selfless Gardevoir knight, I guess. Gardevoir drops some cryptic hint that I was brought into this world for a mysterious role...

When an earthquake shakes me awake from my dream! At least there's an actual reason this time instead of just vague dream logic waking me up. The citizens are a bit shaken by the earthquake, with Shiftry in particular mumbling that Team Alakazam isn't back. Poor Whiscash, a catfish, is super-sensitive to earthquakes and is panicking over the fact that he can detect many, many more quakes coming soon. 

And then a pair of kooky fun guys show up... Wynaut and Wobbuffet! Wynaut and Wobbuffet's names are puns in Japanese (which is why in the anime Team Rocket's Wobbuffet often pops up at inopportune times; in the original audio he tends to act as a literal punchline to jokes). The localization doesn't really try to translate any of the puns that zoom into Wobbuffet yelling his name out loud... which leads to the scene being a bit of a non-sequitur since Wynaut just looks like a regular guy, and Wobbuffett is just yelling a lot; when presumably the original Japanese script has them give us more puns. 

Their commission is to go into Uproar Cave, where a bunch of Mankeys has been causing a lot of havoc and terrorizing nearby Pokemon including them... so the Rescue Teams just went from helping fainted Pokemon or looking for missing items to... just a bounty hunting board? Although considering the entire Rescue Team organization just ganged up to hunt Fugitive Mudkip down, I suppose it's to be expected. Anyway, with a gang of Mankeys to dismantle, I head off to Uproar Forest... and got absolutely humbled by the level differentials as two Nuzleaf with their Razor Winds wipe my party. 

Razor Wind, by the way, is a shitty two-turn move in the game. In Mystery Dungeon, the turn taken to charge is compensated by Razor Wind hitting the entire battlefield. Taking a turn to charge isn't that debilitating in Mystery Dungeon either since sometimes I need to spend turns to move! 

A couple of training sessions in the Makuhita Dojo later for Mudkip, Bulbasaur and Absol, and a couple of runs through some of the newly-unlocked dungeons, and some consumption of vitamins and supplements and some TMs (Ice Beam and Shadow Claw for Mudkip and Absol respectively), and I head back into the Uproar Forest. 

Anyway, my second foray into Uproar Forest has me meet my first 'Monster Houses', where a room full of items suddenly has like a half-dozen Pokemon jump down from the ceiling. This happened twice in the same dungeon run! Fortunately, the game gods were merciful and it was mostly Venonats and Aipoms, which are a lot easier to handle. 

Turns out I might have been a bit too panicky, because even with the Monster Houses my second run through it was very easy. Some new faces, of course -- Venonats, Aipoms, Roselias -- and I make a point to avoid the Nuzleafs as much as I can... until I see the three Mankey at the end of the location. The Mankeys are idiots and get angry after looking at us, and there's a boss fight! I like the hilarious mechanic of Seismic Toss, where the Mankey would actually toss people -- including their fellow Mankeys -- into the air and have them land elsewhere on the battlefield.

After beating the Mankey and returning to our base, Wynaut and Wobbuffet give us... a peeled chestnut. Not a chesto berry, a chestnut. Because they're poor, but they didn't think to mention it at the beginning. You know, it's one thing if it's an emergency like saving a lost baby Caterpie or something, but you guys put out a hit and didn't even have the money to pay? Assholes! These guys are the scum of society, and I refuse to entertain them. Charity is one thing, kindness is one thing, but falsely tricking someone to do free work for you is a whole complete other ball game entirely. 

The Mankeys actually rush and want to attack us. Which is fair enough, we did run into their forest and beat them up for no reason. Before a full gang war can happen, however, the Mankeys take a look at the chestnuts I have, and ask for it. They note that hostilities will end if we give them the chestnut... but also no, these guys are also the scum of society. That's just daylight robbery with some extra steps! I'm not doing anything with the chestnut, but it's the principle of the matter. 

Bulbasaur suggests we just give the chestnut, but I actually get a choice and refuse. The three Mankeys become enraged and actually attack us... but as the narrator informs, "the Mankey are weak" and gets defeated offscreen by Mudkip and Bulbasaur. This time, the conversation diverts to whether the Mankey could help us with some physical labour. I don't know Bulbasaur, these Mankeys seem kind of flaky... but Bulbasaur manages to convince the Mankey to work with the promise of chestnuts, renovating our Rescue Team Base. I think the base -- which also doubles as my house -- is fine the way it is, thank you very much.

But then Wynaut and Wobbuffet decide to chime in, noting that they could also help by giving free labour (no doubt seeing first-hand what we did to the Mankey gang sobered them up from their freeloading behaviour) and baby Caterpie even shows up offering the services of his silk to help renovate our base. Okay, fine, fine, renovate it if it makes you guys happy...

...and the very next day, we have a strike because the Mankeys are bored. Fucking pig monkeys. I'd just ignore them, but they've already torn down the walls to my house and covered it with ugly scaffolding and construction tarp.

See, this is why we don't outsource work to shifty workers with poor ethics. The Mankeys will only properly fix our base if we give them more chestnuts. Apparently, after the whole epic about learning our isekai backstory and beating the three legendary birds, this is... how we progress our main quest? Really? This really feels like a side-quest that would be introduced in the first two hours of gameplay. 

So yeah, that's... that's a whole load of weird side-questing. I guess it's to show that life is kind of getting back to normal after the fugitive arc, but it also really kills the momentum from the back-to-back plot-heavy revelations. At least show more earthquakes happening, y'know? Let the citizens discuss more things going on in the background. Even the mail delivered by Pelipper are all gossippy things that don't really matter because they're not even about NPCs we can meet. 

Anyway, I believe next up is when we finish our main story, so I'm off chestnut-hunting for the lazy monkeys. Three Chestnuts later, and the Mankeys finally get off their butts and complete my rescue base. The completed base is pretty cool, being shaped after a giant Mudkip head with a cool flag. As everyone is celebrating, the asshole Mankeys realize that with the building complete, they're not going to be paid in Chestnuts anymore. The lazy bums, instead of trying to join my party or something, decide to... attack and attempt to wreck the base so they can get paid to rebuild it? That's crime! That's probably a plot in a Yakuza sidequest or something! Mudkip and Bulbasaur beat up the damn dirty apes once and for all, driving them away. 

Anyway... yeah. Not the most interesting part of the game. Mystery Dungeon, so far, has been living up to the hype it had back in the GBA years, but this part of the game... which is mandatory, by the way, to complete the main story, is not it, chief. 

Random Notes:

• I do like the brief foreshadowing of Wobbuffet and Wynaut, with a random letter from Pelipper telling us the news that the two of them have been rescued by the completely offscreen 'Team Hydro'. 
• Also in the news given to us by Pelipper is a little speculation column wondering if the elder Kecleon sibling goes into dungeons and salvages items to sell in his shops. That does kind of feel like a 'RPG setting' thing to do, and Kecleon in particular has been proven in-game to be quite powerful combatants, able to summon their whole extended family to beat you up. 
• Dittos have started popping up, and I'm not sure if this happens every time they transform out, but the Pokemon around the Ditto is confused for a turn, seemingly out of shock from seeing the Ditto change. That's cute, actually. 
  
• There is a weird 'random event' that happened during one of the walks through the town, where a Munchlax walks around and drops apples, and we can return it to Munchlax. Munchlax thanks me for it, and gives me a unique held item. That's nice. I know this is a bit of an older game, but I really wished there were more of these 'town' events. 
• I remembered during the slow drip to Generation IV -- when 'slow drip' actually meant anything -- Munchlax, Bonsly, Mime Jr and Weavile appeared in so many of the side projects as cameos. 
• The Seedots in Uproar Forest have Bide. I'm not going to life, I've lost a bunch of Pokemon to Bides in my early Nuzlocke attempts back in the day, and I still have a bit of a visceral reaction to that move. 
• Moves like Seismic Toss and Razor Wind that are literally useless in the base mainline games giving some life in the spin-offs is one of my favourite tropes.