I often wonder what would have happened if Pokemon had picked Rattata or Pidgey as its mascot instead of Pikachu. Pokemon is a megalith of popular culture these days, with the electric rat adorning everything from clothes i𝔉n Primark to packs of cards stocked in just about every supermarket. You can’t go a few minutes in the modern world without bei♑ng reminded of the existence of Pikachu, but what if, instead of an adorable yellow guy, it was just a rat or a pigeon?
In all likelihood, the franchise would be a lot more boring and a lot less popular. Pikachu’s round face forces you into involuntary “awwws” whether you know anything about pocket monsters or not. Rattata, on the other hand? Maybe not. And yet, the main draw of Pokemon Scarlet & Violet’s Teal Ma🦄sk DLC is Ogerpon, a weird little bunch of leaves on legs that iಌs neither adorable nor interesting. It’s one of just eight new additions to the PokeDex in Scarlet & Violet’s first expansion, and doe♓s absolutely nothing for me, despite an entire narrative intended to make me feel sorry for it.
The story of The Teal Mask is simple: you’re essentially an exchange student exploring the mythology of a foreign country, and t𓄧wo Kitakamian born students interfere with everything. One of th🍌em is a lonely kid whose own grandparents mock him for not having any friends, and the other is a self-absorbed know-it-all. It makes a change from the eternal optimism of Hop and Hau, but they’re hardly engaging.
Kiওeran, the young loner, relates to the misunderstood Ogerpon, both of whom spend most of the story moping. You’re sent to the far ends of Kitakami (about five minutes’ ride by Miraidonbike) to uncover the story of the three saviours of the land, which turns out to be a lie anyway, and nothing else interesting happens.
168澳洲幸ꦡ运5开奖网:Pokemon Sword & Shield’s DLC was great, introducing grand new areas with multiple biomes and some s🔴tellar new monsters. The Tꦫeal Mask is let down by its base game, but adds little to Scarlet & Violet anyway. This is never more true than in the new monsters.
The eight new Pokemon are on a par with numbers seen in previous DLC, but when half are Legendaries with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:frankly terrible designs, onꦉe is an unnecessary Applin evolution that is worse than the two existing options in every way, you forget they’re even there. I’ll admit that a matcha-based regional form of Sinistea is clever, if funny looking, and th𒆙e cursed werewolf Ursaluna form is excellent, but that’s about it.
I was going to make a new party of DLC ‘꧑mons, but it just wasn’t feasible. I grabbed Sinistea off the bat, persevered with Dipplin for a while, and then what? You can’t unlock Ursaluna until you hit 150 in your Kitakamian &lsquo🎀;dex, by which time I’d finished the story. The chance to catch Legendaries comes even later, and it turns out the bird isn’t even a Flying-type.
The only ray of light among the s🥀torm is Ogerpon’s masks, which are interesting held iꦚtems that impact Terastalisation in unique ways, with impressive stat buffs, type changes, and bespoke crystal mask designs making it interesting both mechanically and aesthetically. I’ll be using it on the ranked ladder, if nothing else.
There’s basically two new Pokemon to catch and the story is dull, but at least the new region’s great, right? Wrong. It’s small and uninteresting, travelling across it is boring, and there are no iconic locations. The twin fighting dojo of the Isle of Armor were great, as were the warrenous caves of the Crown Tundra. There’s one magical, glowing pool that is close to greatness in The Teal Mask, but it 💜suffers from the same issue as Area Zero in the base game: I walked throu𒊎gh saying, “imagine if this game looked good”.
Ultimately, that’s The Teal Mask’s biggest failing. It’s building on a flawed project,🌄 and can’t escape the terrible hand it was dealt. The textures still look terrible, the framerate 🦂still tanks if there’s more than three things going on, and the pop-in is unforgivable for a game of this scope and budget. You can hardly blame The Teal Mask for Scarlet & Violet’s failings, but the DLC adds nothing to justify its price or existence.
But theꦫre is room for hope. The Crown Tundra was better than the earlier Isle of Armor. It introduced the Dynamax Adventures, a far better story, a🥃nd some instant classic monsters. Unfortunately, Kieran and Carmine seem to be returning, but the little Tera-turtle Pokemon looks more interesting than most of the additions in the Teal Mask. Will one little guy be enough to save the series? Terapagos has a lot going for it in the Indigo Disk, and at the very least, it’s got a better chance of doing so than Dipplin or Rattata.