Introduction
Pokemon Fushigi no Dungeon is the latest game to be based upon the dungeon exploring concept of Fushigi no Dungeon by Chun Soft. All the Fushigi no Dungeon games take popular gaming franchises, including Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, and adapt them to the RPG formula made successful by Chun. This particular Fushigi no Dungeon game was recently released in both a Red/GBA and Blue/DS version.

In Japan the Fushigi no Dungeon series continues to receive consistently great reviews and yield good sales yet none, other than a select couple, of the past Fushigi no Dungeon games have seen a release outside of Japan. This is supposedly because the developers at Chun Soft feel that Western markets would not take to their dungeon exploring RPG formula. This is pretty ironical considering the entire concept seems pulled from an array of Western style games like Diablo and the many Dungeon and Dragons based games. Hopefully the universal appeal of Pokemon will finally convince the people in charge to bring this title to the US and future Fushigi no Dungeon games.


Import Friendly?
When I first received it and played the game the first thing that struck me, besides the incredibly shiny box and cartridge, was that this game is definently going out of its way to reinforce itself as a Japanese only series. Other Japanese titles tend to have some aspects of the game translated to English or explain things with pictures if only to improve the overall presentation of the game. Pokemon Fushigi no Dungeon does not even have the title written in Enlgish let alone any English word or a helpful diagram.

Knowing absolutely no Japanese I suspected I would be in for a lot of trouble trying to play the game. In some ways I was right but after the first 2 or 3 dungeons everything about the game play mechanic’s had pretty much fallen into place. However there are still huge portions of the game play that are basically inaccessible to anyone without some simple knowledge of Japanese, such as the vast variety of items you pick up in the dungeons. I have come across hundreds of completely different items yet know only 2 by sight, which happen to be an apple and healing potion. However items are not totally important as whenever you fail in a Dungeon you get stripped of everything you own anyway and your inventory only holds about 20-30 items.

Another aspect that importers will miss out on is the entire story other than the very simple to grasp premise that your goal is to rescue Pokemon from the bottom of dungeons. Still persistent importers should eventually grasp the basics of the game play needed to get through the game and I’m hopeful that there will eventually be a few walkthroughs up that can help with the more specific problems.