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Chunsoft games get way more credit than they deserve from a writing standpoint. It was okay. The main plot was standard stuff, albeit decent, and the characters were, for the most part, flat. Sky's specific mandatory additions like Spinda's Cafe and Shaymin Village break the mood that was established in T/D, especially the former with the NPCs' dialogue being completely unfitting to the situations at hand, and said NPCs never doing anything outside of the Cafe. The first two Special Episodes were pretty good, as it helped establish Bidoof and Wigglytuff, two of the few Guild members to have any sort of character, more and give them extra personality. 3 and 4 didn't do much to make Team Charm or Sunflora and Loudred any more likable, and 5 was nice all up until the ending, which completely ruins any sort of sacrifice the future cast had to make.
Gates gives the major characters more of a personality overall, but many people skip over the title because of its shortcomings gameplay-wise. Super does a better job at establishing the cast in the first portion of the game, but it quickly goes downhill once you hit Lively Town, as the entire cast is reset and replaced with a Wigglytuff's Guild reference.
>It's been 10 years since Explorers of Time and Darkness
