Last month, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company launched the first half of the DLC pack, The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero titled The Teal Mask. The DLC adds a new storyline, new locations, new Pokémon, and more to Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet. In The Teal Mask, Pokémon trainers will find themselves on Kitakami on a field trip with a select few other students. It’s been interesting to play through and Nintendo was kind enough to provide me with a code so that I could review it. All thoughts below are my own personal opinion though. You can purchase The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero which includes The Teal Mask as well as the yet to be released The Indigo Disk from the Nintendo eShop or select retailers including GameStop (affiliate link).
Adventure beyond the Paldea region in The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero DLC for the Pokemon Scarlet or Pokemon Violet game. Even more Pokemon, places, and stories await in this 2-part DLC* for the Pokemon Scarlet or Pokemon Violet game! In Part 1: The Teal Mask, join a special school trip to the land of Kitakami. In Part 2: The Indigo Disk, study abroad at Blueberry Academy! Encounter the newly discovered Legendary Pokemon Ogerpon and Terapagos as you broaden your horizons beyond Uva Academy and explore even more of the Pokemon world.
Before I dive into reviewing the story for The Teal Mask, let’s talk about more technical aspects. While I played through the DLC, I didn’t have any problems with my game crashing like some did when Scarlet and Violet launched so it seems a bit more stable at launch. That said, there are still performance problems including drops in frame-rates and general sluggishness. I even found that the controls didn’t feel very responsive in menus. Of course, this isn’t really anything new to the DLC as the base games are also plagued with these issues.
There are a good number of new and returning Pokémon thanks to The Teal Mask. There are 109 returning Pokémon including personal favorites like both versions of Sandshrew and Sandslash (you have to transfer from Pokémon HOME to get the Alolan forms), the Kommo-o line, the Vikavolt line, and even the Diamond and Pearl starters. In addition, there are 8 new Pokémon: Dipplin (a new evolution for Applin), Poltchageist and its evolution Sinistcha, Bloodmoon Ursaluna, a new Legendary Trio (Okidogi, Munkidori, and Fezandipiti), and the main Legendary Pokémon: Ogerpon. Ogerpon even has four different forms depending on which mask it’s wearing! Out of the new Pokémon, I think Ogerpon is my favorite design although I’m sad that it and the other legendaries are shiny-locked.
One other area I want to discuss is the frustrating nature of adding a new area almost a year after launch. Due to the Terra Raid events, many players will have level 100 Pokémon. This is something that these events require and I do not begrudge anyone for having level 100 Pokémon, I have several myself. However, this means that unless you self-impose limits the DLC will be a walk in the park as the strongest Pokémon you’ll encounter are somewhere between level 70-80. My frustration extends also to the wild Pokémon who start in the high 50s but are for very basic Pokémon like Spinarak and Pichu. I don’t have a solution that feels right and I’m sure that the developers struggled too and that’s why we got what we did. You want to keep things challenging, but don’t want to isolate people who maybe haven’t been playing since launch or aren’t participating in Terra Raid events who may not have level 100 Pokémon. Then, for the wild Pokémon, you don’t want them to feel too puny, you need them to be high enough to help level up your team to be competitive, etc.
My solution to the above conundrum was to slowly replace my team (except my starter) with new Pokémon to use for the expansion. This let me have lots of fun with the new/returning Pokémon and feeling like there was some challenge. That being said, I did struggle because I didn’t want to spend a ton of time grinding and so several of my team members were still underleveled by the time I finished the story and I relied a lot on my level 100 starter.
Okay, now it’s time to talk about the story a bit. If you’re worried about spoilers, I’ll do my best to keep them to a minimum but just know that it’s an okay story in my opinion. It’s not great, but it’s not bad and it’s hard to judge because this is only about half of the story as it will be continued in The Indigo Disk.
#TEAL #MASK #Fun #Expansion #SCARLET #VIOLET #GeekTyrant