1st Game Completed in 2024
This is a cumulative review of Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra, both expansion DLCs for Pokemon Sword and Shield.
Lemme tell you about the friggin odyssey I went on just to play this thing... I refuse to pay $40 for DLC. That is utterly insane. But the steep $120 for the complete edition of Sword/Shield was pretty egregious in itself, especially considering that most games would re-launch a complete edition for the same price as the standard edition. Except Nintendo, apparently. So I waited and waited for the DLC to go on sale... Never happened. Still hasn't ever happened. Waited for a used copy, and saw it for $90 used a few times. Still kinda high. But then my brother told me he could get Japanese copies in Japan for under $60, so I went that route instead. Paid $57... And when it finally got here, the game wouldn't boot. 😭😭😭 First Switch game I ever bought where I had to clean the pins, but it worked just fine afterward.
So for the quality and content of the DLC itself... It's FINE. It's perfectly adequate. The story content on display here is incredibly sparse and limited in scope, but I actually really enjoyed it for what it was.
Isle of Armor introduces a new island area to explore, and centres around a dojo and its exploits. The rival character in the Sword version of the DLC, Klara, is the best rival Pokemon has ever written. Full stop. I LOVED her writing, her mannerisms, her conniving and condescending affect that totally works for a Poison type rival... She was GREAT. And not gonna lie, I am normally not the sort of person to crush on video game characters, but Klara is honestly exactly the type of woman I would fawn over in real life, and I was just like, "Please God let me meet her. 😍" I enjoyed the dojo journey for what it was, and even though Kubfu and Urshifu are kind of lame, I did enjoy being in that ride.
Crown Tundra is actually a bit of a step up. The core story centring around Calyrex, while short, is exactly the kind of storytelling I want to see from Pokemon. It focuses on this isolated village and their local diety, whose power has begun to wain as the people have forgotten he exists. So your tasks are basically to help Calyrex find his power again, and it was actually really, really good! This DLC also features shorter campaigns where you're tasked with catching the Regis, culminating in a choice between Regieleki and Regidraco, and then tracking down the Galarian variants of the Legendary birds. It also adds a new game mode called the Max Lair, where you can catch legendaries from older generations pretty dang easily. And I really enjoy this mode a lot, it's a great addition I hope returns for the ScarVi DLC.
Overall... I'm glad I played these DLCs. Thing is though, they're not substantial enough to feel like they couldn't have been included in the price of the base game, and that's kinda my biggest gripe. It really feels like you're mostly paying $40 to get free legendaries, and that kinda cheapens the experience for me. At that point, it starts to feel like buying legendaries on eBay, and while it's obviously a big step up from that, it feels like Pokemon during the Switch generation has been designed to siphon as much money from players as possible to catch 'em all.
You're paying $80 for the base game, $40 for the DLC, or $120 for the complete edition, plus $25 a year for Pokemon Home. It's pretty egregious. It's some of the most aggressive monetization in the industry, but Nintendo seems to get a pass where Activision and EA don't.
