The Mystery Dungeon series from Chunsoft has been catering to fans of two-dimensional role-playing games for years. The games offer random dungeons, plenty of items to collect (though rarely enough space to carry them), clumsy turn-based combat, and a degree of challenge that often forces you to retry the same levels over and over again before you’re successful. With Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness and Explorers of Time, the Nintendo DS is getting two versions of its second Mystery Dungeon entry this year. Although these offerings take steps to make the dungeon-hack trappings more accessible than last month’s Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer, they still feel monotonous and are too similar to 2006’s Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games to warrant much attention. Read the rest of this entry »