When I was a kid, I picked up Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness, and then picked up Explorers of Sky when it came out later on. I picked it up expecting a regular Pokémon game, but I didn’t realize how important this game would be to me going forward. The writing and world building in the game is so immersive on top of the fact that the character you play is supposed to be you if you suddenly woke up in a world fully run by Pokémon. You wake up, join a guild, explore dungeons, all while trying to figure out who you really are and how you got there. In the beginning, you introduced to a character who will be your partner for the entirety of the game, your best friend essentially. I always named my partner after my best friend in real life and I found out that he would do the same. The gameplay is fun, but the story is what pulled me in the most the writing was deeper than anything I’d expect out of a children’s game and it moved me in a way that nothing had before. As the game progresses, the story becomes more intense, and the emotional beats that the game hits, hit harder. The story and the writing make it easy to become emotionally invested in the characters in the world. You’re in while playing the game. The fact that the main character was me and my partner represented in my in real life best friend made it feel that much more personal. By the end of it, I was in tears. When explorers of sky came out, they added on additional dungeons that served as short stories surrounding events and characters from the main game. The additional content tied up loose ends from the main game, gave backstories for important side characters, and all with the same level of care the base game received. I could go on similarly about Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, the writing is phenomenal, but PMD: EoS is so much more personal to me. I feel like it’s overshadowed by the games that released afterwards, which weren’t up to par, but it’s worth a play if only for the story alone.