Pokemon Scarlet and Violet have its massive slew of issues. A lot of bugs, performance issues, and just a lot of other things that keep them from being as good as they could be. Even then, I thought Scarlet and Violet were pretty solid games aside from their issues, with great story, music, and characters. This is to say, of course, my autistic ass was assuredly going to play the DLC, Pokemon has been a major part of my life, and it won't stop yet. Overall though, much like the base game, it still contains some issues that I can't neglect.
Especially since this DLC released only a couple days ago, I'm not going to talk about the story in much detail. But it's a pretty nice story all things considered. It's not the most complicated, but through that less complication, there's some fun antics to be seen in it. And at the same time, I really like the new characters they introduced, and I'm curious to see how they continue in the second half of the Expansion. The ending to the main story of The Teal Mask, and a specific fight in it was super cool to me, and was probably the highlight of the DLC I was say.
Kitakami obviously isn't as large as Paldea, and that's to be expected for a DLC Expansion, and ultimately I feel mixed on it. When you're in an actual named location like a forest or a mountainous path, there's some really nice stuff to be seen! But there's also just really empty spaces at the same time, and while I get that they're meant to be "Kitakami Wastes", I wish that there was ultimately less of what felt like empty space. Especially cause the places that are filled are really neat locations.
The new pokemon introduced in the DLC are cute. I love Ogerpon, I think it's a silly pokemon, especially as seen through playing the DLC. The other legendaries I don't really have a strong opinion overall, but their names are really silly, I can't get over Okidogi particularly. And the couple additional pokemon they introduce are really nice, but I'm uncertain if those were the pokemon they needed to spotlight first.
But god, the one thing that kept me from really enjoying the DLC to the fullest was the performance. I may be worse than the base game's performance issues. The game had frame drops so often, both in docked and handheld mode. I remember a time where the game just freezed for a couple seconds, and I was worried the game had crashed. While I'm fine with the occasional frame dip, it was so bad here. And I'd argue even more inexcusable here than in base game. Though keep in mind, I don't blame Game Freak for this, as yearly release schedule for games with this much ambition behind them is bound for issues like this.
Yet again, I found the Teal Mask DLC to be quite nice. Though until I see what the Indigo Disk DLC offers, I don't think it's worth the $35 dollar price tag just yet. It's nice for what it is, with a good story, characters, and pokemon. But since this is only half of the total, the quality of the other half will determine its overall worth.
Especially since this DLC released only a couple days ago, I'm not going to talk about the story in much detail. But it's a pretty nice story all things considered. It's not the most complicated, but through that less complication, there's some fun antics to be seen in it. And at the same time, I really like the new characters they introduced, and I'm curious to see how they continue in the second half of the Expansion. The ending to the main story of The Teal Mask, and a specific fight in it was super cool to me, and was probably the highlight of the DLC I was say.
Kitakami obviously isn't as large as Paldea, and that's to be expected for a DLC Expansion, and ultimately I feel mixed on it. When you're in an actual named location like a forest or a mountainous path, there's some really nice stuff to be seen! But there's also just really empty spaces at the same time, and while I get that they're meant to be "Kitakami Wastes", I wish that there was ultimately less of what felt like empty space. Especially cause the places that are filled are really neat locations.
The new pokemon introduced in the DLC are cute. I love Ogerpon, I think it's a silly pokemon, especially as seen through playing the DLC. The other legendaries I don't really have a strong opinion overall, but their names are really silly, I can't get over Okidogi particularly. And the couple additional pokemon they introduce are really nice, but I'm uncertain if those were the pokemon they needed to spotlight first.
But god, the one thing that kept me from really enjoying the DLC to the fullest was the performance. I may be worse than the base game's performance issues. The game had frame drops so often, both in docked and handheld mode. I remember a time where the game just freezed for a couple seconds, and I was worried the game had crashed. While I'm fine with the occasional frame dip, it was so bad here. And I'd argue even more inexcusable here than in base game. Though keep in mind, I don't blame Game Freak for this, as yearly release schedule for games with this much ambition behind them is bound for issues like this.
Yet again, I found the Teal Mask DLC to be quite nice. Though until I see what the Indigo Disk DLC offers, I don't think it's worth the $35 dollar price tag just yet. It's nice for what it is, with a good story, characters, and pokemon. But since this is only half of the total, the quality of the other half will determine its overall worth.
The world design is a big step up from SWSH's DLC. New legendaries and clothes are neat. Story, characters, and otherwise worked but I hope the second part of the DLC has more to offer for the price tag.
Ogrepon is adorable. Appreciate a different way to get herbs. Happy my favorite, Hoothoot, is in the game now. Carmine and Kieran need to go to therapy.
Decent expansion that offers more of the same content in a smaller package.
+ sweet character-driven plot involving a cute legendary
+ pretty new map with slightly interesting lore
+ sizable number of older Pokémon added
- very little improvement to the technical issues
+ sweet character-driven plot involving a cute legendary
+ pretty new map with slightly interesting lore
+ sizable number of older Pokémon added
- very little improvement to the technical issues
carmine
The DLC is great. Story and Character progression is great. The Map looks better than the main game but i would have loved if the City in Kitakami would be more dense. The houses area bit far seperated but what do i know ive never been to a japanese village. The performance suffers in those more intense areas though so keep that in mind. Overall a good addition to the main game.
Lovely DLC weighed down by the same technical issues and lack of polish that plagued the main game.
Carmine and Kieren were extremely fun to battle and it makes me hopeful that Indigo Disk's more battle-focused setup will be even better.
Carmine and Kieren were extremely fun to battle and it makes me hopeful that Indigo Disk's more battle-focused setup will be even better.
The frame rate was god awful and the DLC was too short
I realise I completely forgot to write a review for this months after finishing. Truthfully, I have little to say. Many of the problems that plague the base game are even more noticeable, such as unacceptable and insulting performance. That alone has doomed this DLC to be nothing more than extremely mediocre. While we have some neat things, such as fun characters with an actual story to follow (the bar really isn't high here), there are few things this DLC does we haven't seen before. The area we get to explore is painfully dull, only made slightly interesting by the giant mountain its centre that we can travel through.
I do hope the Indigo Disc is better. This franchise needs to be better than the horrible state it currently is in.
I do hope the Indigo Disc is better. This franchise needs to be better than the horrible state it currently is in.
BOOORING except i liked ogerpon.
Unironically run better than the base game but its no surprise since its empty af, music isnt as good as base game too and same goes for the story. (I just want to see Arven and Rika again please)
This alone already felt more substantial than both of SwSh's DLCs combined, and I've not even gotten to the post-story content yet. Still could've been better given the price of admission, but at least there's more on offer here than just one legendary and Slowpoke form. Looking forward to part 2, actually.
At first I honestly didn't think the DLC story was much impressive, but by the end it's evident that this is a bit of a set up towards DLC part 2 and it's done well! Perrin's quest was definitely my favorite part and I hope we see more of her in DLC part 2!
Overpriced for the tiny amount of content added and worse than the base game.
It's still ugly and the best part is a callback to Legends Arceus. It's lucky to still have the good gameplay of ScarVi but the story is lacking and the new region is barely anything, especially since it's so small and what's there looks like hot garbage.
For reasons unknown to me I didn't sit down and review this when I actually played it so my thoughts are going to be a less detailed and organised than I'd like. Nonetheless, I'm quite impressed by this DLC. The writing continues to resonate, there are some seriously challenging battles in the post-game difficulty mode, and it makes me really excited for the Indigo Disk. My only complaint would be that it's a bit short, but since it's part of the same purchase as its other half, it works fine as a set-up and teaser, as long as Disk continues to impress.
Cute little story with an interesting ending. Ogrepon is so cute and I refuse to believe the villagers were afraid of it back then.
Kieran is dangerously close to inciting Third Impact in the next DLC wave
Same frame rate issues, better story. The story was so much better here as it was linear compared to the 3 branching paths. The returning and new pokemon are nice to see always loved sentret and Ogrepon is incredibly silly. The soundtrack from what I had heard was amazing with the one playing in Keirans battle being my favourite this time round. Overall this dlc was great with only one area I have been to so far being the apple orchad place having the frame issues so I think the smaller map helped here can't wait to try dlc 2 to find out more about the story and about Carmine and Keiran.
BRING BACK POKEMON SNAP
I will defend Ogerpon with my life
This review contains spoilers
Before I start this review I’m gonna go on a somewhat unrelated tangent: for the love of all that’s holy, do NOT under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES buy anything digital from Best Buy. I am warning you now for your own sanity. Buy physical media there all you want, whatever, that’s well and good, but DO NOT buy any digital products from them whatsoever. So, here’s a fun story, just kidding it’s actually incredibly aggravating, but my sister got me the DLC for Pokémon violet for my birthday recently. She purchased the card from Best Buy and the receipt contained the online code to download said DLC, otherwise the card itself it a useless hunk of plastic. Here’s the thing though: she never got the code. Ever. It was never on the receipt and we checked her junk or spam in case it got lost somewhere: nothing. There was no code to be found anywhere, either on the receipt she received or in any section of her junk or spam email. So, I took this up with Best Buy and the best they could do is shrug their shoulders and go “Whoop, sorry! Nothin’ we can do about it!”. The card was effectively worthless. To make matters worse, we had to wait an entire MONTH for our bank to process a refund for the stupid thing. After the refund was processed, I decided to purchase the DLC myself using the same card my sister bought it on, this time making sure the receipt would be sent to my personal email so I have full control over viewing what comes in. I purchased the card, and…nothing. No receipt was even sent my way. Went to talk to Best Buy about this once again and once again they were all like “Whoop, sorry! Nothin’ we can do about it!”. I was flabbergasted. I eventually got so frustrated that I gave up and after refunding the product once again, I purchased the product from GameStop instead, and what do you know? They provided a PHYSICAL RECIEPT this time, and not only that, but the receipt HAD THE CODE PRINTED ON IT FRONT AND CENTER FIRST TRY!!!!!!! Who would’ve thought that would work huh? So yeah, don’t buy anything digital from Best Buy. Save yourselves the headache and just get any DLC from games like these from other local game stores, I’m begging you. Now that my tirade has gone on long enough, I guess it’s time to actually TALK about the DLC itself, yeah?
If you haven’t already read my Backloggd review of Pokémon Violet, I’ll give you a basic cliffnotes version. I still maintain that the game is fun and has the potential to be something truly great: The characters are outstanding. I still love all of your classmate friends Nemona, Penny and ESPECIALLY Arven and the relationship they all share with each other and the protagonist. The story is really well done, the game truly gives you the freedom to progress the way you want to progress, the new Pokémon are almost all winners, Terastallizing is quite possibly the best gimmick Pokémon has introduced thus far, the list goes on. There’s just one problem that compromises everything I just mentioned: the games are blatantly unfinished. They look like crap, run even worse and are filled to the brim with bugs and glitches. I’m not even exaggerating when I say that this is probably the one of the worst performing Switch games ever released, if not THE worst. Even worse is how this was sold at full price with a $60 tag in spite of all of this. With how shockingly awful the presentation is and how putrid the performance is, what should be some of the best games in the franchise get dragged down to the status of “pretty good with a HUGE asterisk at the end”, which is a damn shame. I’d still play this any day of the week over Sword and Shield and, heck, even Legends Arceus didn’t really do a whole lot for me after I beat it. But in its current state, no matter how much I sing its praises, I can’t recommend it to anyone with the amount of issues it has with that kind of price tag. The games were so unfinished and bug riddled that Nintendo themselves offered a public apology stating that they would eventually improve the game’s problems. However, despite this claim, here we are with the first official DLC release and…that hasn’t happened yet. In fact, to jump the gun here a bit, this DLC somehow, beyond all reasonable possibilities, performs even WORSE than the base game. I wish I were making this up; a huge chunk of my Violet playthrough felt like I was walking through molasses, sections constantly dipping under 20 fps and making the game essentially play in slow motion for most of it. In the Teal Mask however, it’s pretty much runs like this throughout THE ENTIRE DLC. I don’t think it ever once lets up or improves which is…admittedly pretty impressive. I didn’t think it was possible to make this game perform even worse but here we are I guess.
Anyway, on to the DLC contents itself. Sadly, to my disappointment, Nemona Penny and Arven are not in this DLC in any capacity which sucks. Hopefully they’ll be in the next part. For this field trip you get a bunch of no name personality-less NPC students to accompany you to the land of Kitakami, a region inspired by rural Japan. As someone who recently took a trip to Japan last summer, I appreciated what they were going for with this region and I did enjoy the land’s aesthetic. I also appreciated the new outfits that came with the DLC, the jinbei you wear is cute even if it kinda murdered my character’s hairstyle and I had to travel back to Paldea to restore her hair to what it originally was lol. The new outfits outside of that are limited but also pretty good. The main objective I would want out of a DLC expansion for Pokémon Violet, an objective I would set before playing this mind you, would be to create a brand-new experience while still retaining everything that was good about the base game: that being a great story, great characters, freedom to do whatever you want with a variety of things to do, and a ton of new Pokémon to catch. Unfortunately, this DLC just feels so much lesser than the base game in each of these individual areas. We’ll start with the new characters and story: we have 3 new characters, 2 being the “main” characters/rivals accompanying you with one being available in an optional side mission. The rivals you get are siblings Carmine and Kieran, students at the blueberry academy (which we’ll get to in the next part of the DLC) and natives to Kitakami. They were…fine, I guess. Carmine is the typical hotheaded jerk rival that eventually befriends you at the end, although she isn’t really rude or aggressive towards you per say, she’s more standoffish like Arven though on a higher level. She does have reasonings for why she is the way she is and eventually realizes the error of her ways. She was fine; the one thing I didn’t like about her was how…aggressive she is towards her little brother. Granted most of it feels like typical sibling bickering but there’s a lot of moments that feel downright kinda uncomfortable, both with her suddenly snapping and Kieran’s response afterwards. Speaking of Kieran, he started out pretty good. He’s this super shy socially awkward kid that slowly befriends and forms a bond with you with how outgoing you are, but eventually situations unfold that feel very forced, and he instead does a heel faced turn and becomes extremely jealous of you and super self-doubting of himself. Maybe these plot threads will tie up in the second part of the DLC but first impressions of these characters so far are not exactly the greatest. They aren’t Nemona Penny or Arven that’s for certain. Perrin was cool though. I liked her story and personality/backstory quite a bit, and her survey minigame was cute as well. That being said needing to catch 150 Pokémon to get to that point is more than a bit tedious, I only ended up doing so out of morbid curiosity.
The story also just kinda exists. Again, it’s mostly centered around Kieran, Carmine, and the local legends of Kitakami, how the legends aren’t “exactly as they appear”. And while it was fun to listen to them and to have revealed the true story of really happened, that’s really all that ends up happening in this entire story. The Loyal Three show up for a bit to cause trouble, they’re swiftly dealt with, and that’s about all that comes from it. The main bulk of the story is mostly dealing with Kieran’s shenanigans. Again, the second part will probably expand more on this plot point so it’s likely to be still ongoing but the first part didn’t really “hook” me so to speak. That wouldn’t be so bad if I felt that there was more stuff to do in the story but there just aren’t. The region of Kitakami is much much smaller than Paldea, which makes sense I suppose but I also feel there’s nowhere near as much to explore and experience with this region outside of the main campaign. There’s this one minigame you can play at the festival that I played once and didn’t really feel the need to play again. That’s really about it. Again, Perrin has a pretty neat side section but it’s fairly short and you need to grind 150 Pokédex entries in order to access it at all. There’s not really any new Pokémon to speak of outside of Ogrepon, who is pretty cool, and the Loyal Three, who are imo very bland, same-y and uninteresting in design. There are a lot of returning mons from previous gens, and while I do love me some Yanmega and Staraptor, there’s a reeeeeeally high amount of flying Pokémon hanging around Kitakami from my experience. So much so that for a bit, when I crafted a new team from scratch, 5/6 of my party consisted of nothing but part flying type Pokémon. Applin got a new evolution (not really something I care for since I don’t like the Pokémon in general or any of its evolutionary lineup) and Polteageist got a new regional form (I know it’s technically a separate species according to the Pokédex but still, eh. Not super invested in that lineup either). The music was really good at least, glad they kept to that tradition from Violet.
At the end of the day, I didn’t necessarily HATE my time with the Teal Mask DLC, I just wasn’t that impressed with what I managed to experience. It’s fine, but that’s really all I can say about it to be honest. It doesn’t play into the strengths the base game had, and the new stuff it accomplishes is, as I’ve reiterated repeatedly throughout this review, fine. Nothing more, nothing less. Hopefully the second part will offer more exciting content to delve into.
If you haven’t already read my Backloggd review of Pokémon Violet, I’ll give you a basic cliffnotes version. I still maintain that the game is fun and has the potential to be something truly great: The characters are outstanding. I still love all of your classmate friends Nemona, Penny and ESPECIALLY Arven and the relationship they all share with each other and the protagonist. The story is really well done, the game truly gives you the freedom to progress the way you want to progress, the new Pokémon are almost all winners, Terastallizing is quite possibly the best gimmick Pokémon has introduced thus far, the list goes on. There’s just one problem that compromises everything I just mentioned: the games are blatantly unfinished. They look like crap, run even worse and are filled to the brim with bugs and glitches. I’m not even exaggerating when I say that this is probably the one of the worst performing Switch games ever released, if not THE worst. Even worse is how this was sold at full price with a $60 tag in spite of all of this. With how shockingly awful the presentation is and how putrid the performance is, what should be some of the best games in the franchise get dragged down to the status of “pretty good with a HUGE asterisk at the end”, which is a damn shame. I’d still play this any day of the week over Sword and Shield and, heck, even Legends Arceus didn’t really do a whole lot for me after I beat it. But in its current state, no matter how much I sing its praises, I can’t recommend it to anyone with the amount of issues it has with that kind of price tag. The games were so unfinished and bug riddled that Nintendo themselves offered a public apology stating that they would eventually improve the game’s problems. However, despite this claim, here we are with the first official DLC release and…that hasn’t happened yet. In fact, to jump the gun here a bit, this DLC somehow, beyond all reasonable possibilities, performs even WORSE than the base game. I wish I were making this up; a huge chunk of my Violet playthrough felt like I was walking through molasses, sections constantly dipping under 20 fps and making the game essentially play in slow motion for most of it. In the Teal Mask however, it’s pretty much runs like this throughout THE ENTIRE DLC. I don’t think it ever once lets up or improves which is…admittedly pretty impressive. I didn’t think it was possible to make this game perform even worse but here we are I guess.
Anyway, on to the DLC contents itself. Sadly, to my disappointment, Nemona Penny and Arven are not in this DLC in any capacity which sucks. Hopefully they’ll be in the next part. For this field trip you get a bunch of no name personality-less NPC students to accompany you to the land of Kitakami, a region inspired by rural Japan. As someone who recently took a trip to Japan last summer, I appreciated what they were going for with this region and I did enjoy the land’s aesthetic. I also appreciated the new outfits that came with the DLC, the jinbei you wear is cute even if it kinda murdered my character’s hairstyle and I had to travel back to Paldea to restore her hair to what it originally was lol. The new outfits outside of that are limited but also pretty good. The main objective I would want out of a DLC expansion for Pokémon Violet, an objective I would set before playing this mind you, would be to create a brand-new experience while still retaining everything that was good about the base game: that being a great story, great characters, freedom to do whatever you want with a variety of things to do, and a ton of new Pokémon to catch. Unfortunately, this DLC just feels so much lesser than the base game in each of these individual areas. We’ll start with the new characters and story: we have 3 new characters, 2 being the “main” characters/rivals accompanying you with one being available in an optional side mission. The rivals you get are siblings Carmine and Kieran, students at the blueberry academy (which we’ll get to in the next part of the DLC) and natives to Kitakami. They were…fine, I guess. Carmine is the typical hotheaded jerk rival that eventually befriends you at the end, although she isn’t really rude or aggressive towards you per say, she’s more standoffish like Arven though on a higher level. She does have reasonings for why she is the way she is and eventually realizes the error of her ways. She was fine; the one thing I didn’t like about her was how…aggressive she is towards her little brother. Granted most of it feels like typical sibling bickering but there’s a lot of moments that feel downright kinda uncomfortable, both with her suddenly snapping and Kieran’s response afterwards. Speaking of Kieran, he started out pretty good. He’s this super shy socially awkward kid that slowly befriends and forms a bond with you with how outgoing you are, but eventually situations unfold that feel very forced, and he instead does a heel faced turn and becomes extremely jealous of you and super self-doubting of himself. Maybe these plot threads will tie up in the second part of the DLC but first impressions of these characters so far are not exactly the greatest. They aren’t Nemona Penny or Arven that’s for certain. Perrin was cool though. I liked her story and personality/backstory quite a bit, and her survey minigame was cute as well. That being said needing to catch 150 Pokémon to get to that point is more than a bit tedious, I only ended up doing so out of morbid curiosity.
The story also just kinda exists. Again, it’s mostly centered around Kieran, Carmine, and the local legends of Kitakami, how the legends aren’t “exactly as they appear”. And while it was fun to listen to them and to have revealed the true story of really happened, that’s really all that ends up happening in this entire story. The Loyal Three show up for a bit to cause trouble, they’re swiftly dealt with, and that’s about all that comes from it. The main bulk of the story is mostly dealing with Kieran’s shenanigans. Again, the second part will probably expand more on this plot point so it’s likely to be still ongoing but the first part didn’t really “hook” me so to speak. That wouldn’t be so bad if I felt that there was more stuff to do in the story but there just aren’t. The region of Kitakami is much much smaller than Paldea, which makes sense I suppose but I also feel there’s nowhere near as much to explore and experience with this region outside of the main campaign. There’s this one minigame you can play at the festival that I played once and didn’t really feel the need to play again. That’s really about it. Again, Perrin has a pretty neat side section but it’s fairly short and you need to grind 150 Pokédex entries in order to access it at all. There’s not really any new Pokémon to speak of outside of Ogrepon, who is pretty cool, and the Loyal Three, who are imo very bland, same-y and uninteresting in design. There are a lot of returning mons from previous gens, and while I do love me some Yanmega and Staraptor, there’s a reeeeeeally high amount of flying Pokémon hanging around Kitakami from my experience. So much so that for a bit, when I crafted a new team from scratch, 5/6 of my party consisted of nothing but part flying type Pokémon. Applin got a new evolution (not really something I care for since I don’t like the Pokémon in general or any of its evolutionary lineup) and Polteageist got a new regional form (I know it’s technically a separate species according to the Pokédex but still, eh. Not super invested in that lineup either). The music was really good at least, glad they kept to that tradition from Violet.
At the end of the day, I didn’t necessarily HATE my time with the Teal Mask DLC, I just wasn’t that impressed with what I managed to experience. It’s fine, but that’s really all I can say about it to be honest. It doesn’t play into the strengths the base game had, and the new stuff it accomplishes is, as I’ve reiterated repeatedly throughout this review, fine. Nothing more, nothing less. Hopefully the second part will offer more exciting content to delve into.
It's very fine. If you like Scarlet and Violet it's basically more of that, just a dumbed down version of what a Pokemon game should be. The new Pokemon are all great (I love you Ogerpon) but it's so disappointing this game still runs miserably. Fun to play with friends but I can't imagine having much fun outside of that.
So I never played the DLC for Sword and Shield, meaning this is my first experience with mainline Pokemon DLC. It's split into two parts and, for $35, I can't say that it's less appealing than a "brand new" game in the same time period. This series has had it bad lately and DLC seems like a decent way to slow things down to focus on quality...
That being said, this left a lot to be desired. It was cute, but really not anything special. It's interesting only so far as it is just more of the thing I like.
See, I'm deeply fucked in the head, so I of course completed the Kitakami dex and will likely do the same for the second half of the DLC, but I didn't do it because it was fun or because I liked the expansion all that much. I'm just a feckless little fanboy that still buys these unfinished games, so it's not like my opinions mean much in this instance.
If you're not huge into Pokemon, this DLC probably isn't worth it. We'll see how the bluray disc or whatever the second half is called goes, but I doubt it will be enough to justify such a lackluster opening act.
That being said, this left a lot to be desired. It was cute, but really not anything special. It's interesting only so far as it is just more of the thing I like.
See, I'm deeply fucked in the head, so I of course completed the Kitakami dex and will likely do the same for the second half of the DLC, but I didn't do it because it was fun or because I liked the expansion all that much. I'm just a feckless little fanboy that still buys these unfinished games, so it's not like my opinions mean much in this instance.
If you're not huge into Pokemon, this DLC probably isn't worth it. We'll see how the bluray disc or whatever the second half is called goes, but I doubt it will be enough to justify such a lackluster opening act.
All the great parts of Scarlet and Violet but more focused. Very good story.
man this is infinitely better than the base game
way more focused, story is actually somewhat engaging
battles are harder (still pretty easy tho)
huge step in the right direction
way more focused, story is actually somewhat engaging
battles are harder (still pretty easy tho)
huge step in the right direction
It's a fun DLC, I probably liked it a bit more than Isle of Armour in SWSH. Region has lots of fun nooks and crannies to explore, but still suffers from the same issue as the main game with a lot of... bland areas. The story is nice and I like Ogrepon, so adorable! Though it does feel like setup for part 2 DLC overall, which I expect will be a big step up like Crown Tundra was. I did basically everything (including finishing the Pokedex) other than grind up 1M pokebucks, and it all felt worthwhile, I thought it was clever where they hid some of the ogre clan members. Unfortunately the performance is pretty bad, there's some really shocking framedrops in areas that remind me of the base game at launch, which is very disappointing (and why I'm leaving this unscored).
Also man, that Legends Arceus fanservice went way harder than I expected, I can't believe I already feel nostalgia for that game
Also man, that Legends Arceus fanservice went way harder than I expected, I can't believe I already feel nostalgia for that game
Pretty weak compaired to the main game. Again, Pokemon is like Pizza, no matter how underwhelming it is, its still Pizza so its good. I like going for the more traditional Japanese festival style, having been to Japan alot of the small details like the booths outside the shrines where you would buy things felt very nostalgic. Its just, like the main game, everything feels half baked. Pokemon is just not a series that gets remotely the same amount of care and attention that 90% of RPGs actually do, which is a shame.
Enjoyable. I'd say the only thing that brought it down for me was that the performance was somehow worse than the base game, but for what it is it's good
Is it lackluster, sure is. But did i enjoy it all the same as S/V, of course. Fun stuff but you can finish everything included in less than a day. Needed more content for sure but still fun.