While the 3D and graphics look fantastic, this is by far the worst Mystery Dungeon game. At first, you're stuck in a village and have to attend school. Eventually you start taking on rescue missions, but you haven't become a exploration team yet. It takes half of the game (about 10 hours) to move on the next town and join the guild, and by then, the game is mostly over. The story starts slow (as you're stuck going to school in that village), but when you get to the guild, it starts to get interesting. However, it's way too short, and, as a result, has no time to develop. The plot twists are okay, but, as the story is short, they don't affect you as much as they would have if you'd had more time to connect with the characters.
Unlike previous games, to do missions in certain dungeons, you have to travel to the continent where that dungeon is. Each continent looks almost exactly the same, and it's annoying to have to travel to each of them.
After you reach the guild, the missions ramp up in difficulty, and take you to the most difficult sections of the game way before you're ready. You don't have to do these missions, but the way the game gives you rescue missions means you'll have to do them eventually where in previous Mystery Dungeon games the missions are randomly generated. In some cases, the only missions you'll have available are the ones you won't be prepared for, even if you have team members who are high leveled which leads me to another thing I dislike about the game.
Whenever you complete missions, you get a new team member, usually the one who requested the mission. The Pokémon you get are varied in level and many are a higher level than you. There was many a time when I had to make my team nothing but level 50 Pokémon, and I still wouldn't be able to complete the mission. This is very frustrating as I would attempt one mission multiple times with varying teams and continuously fail. Every member receives experience even if they are not a part of the team that completes the mission, but the annoying thing about this is that whenever they level up and learn a new move, that new move is automatically learned and replaces another move. This is often annoying as you have no way to protect a move from being deleted and replaced with a dumb one. Thankfully, you can remember moves for free, but it is really annoying to have to check through everyone's moves (at least for the Pokémon that you're going to take with you) and decide which moves to remember.
All in all, the story was okay, but short, and the graphics are fantastic, but this is the worst Mystery Dungeon game out of the bunch. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon 1 and Explorers of Sky (Time and Darkness are acceptable too although Sky is the best version) are the ones you should play.