Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: The Teal Mask: A Lackluster DLC

In a way, DLC is nothing new to the Pokémon franchise. As long as the franchise has been around, there has been an enhanced third version of any mainline game that comes along at full retail price that adds some additional part to the story. Ruby and Sapphire had Emerald which expanded on the main conflict and made Rayquaza integral to the plot. Gold and Silver had Crystal which added a plotline that involved Suicune. In a way, the move to DLC is better for the player for Pokémon games since they’re getting basically the same amount of content added in as a third version would provide without paying the full retail price and having to play through what is mostly the same narrative to get to that add-on. That said, The Teal Mask is the worst of the three DLC packs to be released (two prior were released for Sword and Shield) with marginally interesting character work being overshadowed by inadequate graphics, a short story, a lackluster monster selection, and a boring new region that lacks area variety.

***Slight note going forward based on what progress point my game was in when I stepped into the DLC. This is important because apparently the player can go to the DLC area earlier in the game depending on progression, however, this playthrough came as a result of playing the DLC after completing the main narrative including Area Zero and completing the Paldea region Pokedex. Going into the DLC, the opposition teams were between levels 60 and 80 and the regional dex for the new region was about half complete.***

The Teal Mask picks up as the player is invited to travel from Paldea to Kitakami, a new island region through a study abroad program with the player’s school’s sister academy in Unova. On the island, there is a festival going on to honor three Pokémon who scared off an ogre who was threatening the inhabitants. The player has to team up with two students named Carmine and Kieran to find out what really happened all those years ago.

The only real positive to this DLC is that Carmine, Kieran, and Perrin from the Bloodmoon Ursaluna side-quest are fun additions to the Scarlet and Violet story with a surprising amount of depth. A good amount of characters in Pokémon games tend to be a little one-dimensional, but considering how much time the player has to spend with these characters, they develop some nuance to the point where they feel more deeply fleshed out than characters like Nimona in the base game or any of the protagonist’s friends in X and Y. Hopefully this carries over into the future, however that is probably unlikely.

The biggest issue is the lack of content in the pack. The regional dex for Kitakami only has 200 monsters and of those about half are in the main game and five are event-driven encounters. Considering the fact that Kitakami is not exactly biome-diverse, there is not a ton of creature variety. It also unintentionally proves the point that trade evolution mechanics are outdated at this point considering the final form of trade evolutions introduced in this pack like Golem, Politoed, and Dusknoir can be caught either in raids or rarely in the wild. It is also an odd choice that there are no new Paradox Pokemon considering how big they are to the story of this game and it appears only two or four will be added in during the second pack, all of which are legends. The story itself is incredibly short as well and, even if one goes out of their way to do the side-quest for the Blood Moon Ursaluna, they can probably still complete the entire pack in one sitting.

Probably most egregious was the fact that, as bad as the visuals were in the base games, they are worse here. The pop-in, the framerate drops, the physics bugs, and more all reoccur to a worse degree where it is visually painful to play. Coming off the complaints of the base game, one would assume they put more effort into making the game look better but it just highlights the issues.

Time will tell if The Secrets of Area Zero as a whole is worth paying the full $35 for considering that part two is coming out this winter, and it is also worth noting that The Isle of Armor was weaker than The Crown Tundra for Sword and Shield so it is possible that the second half (The Indigo Plate) will be better but, considering it is also building a whole new environment and doing its own new story, expectations are now lower going into that pack.

Final Rating: 5/10