Pokémon Scarlet/Violet: The Teal Mask first impressions

The mainline Pokemon games — even those that try to break the mold a little, like Legends Arceus — all follow a common theme: you come to a new area and you meet your new rival who is conveniently easy to beat with whatever you have at hand. There is a new Pokedex for you to fill, and the Legendary mons to pursue, and at the end you battle to become the champ.

The DLC for a game is not going to change things up.

“The Teal Mask” is the first half of a two DLC mission called “The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero”, which will continue in 2024 with “The Indigo Disk”. Anyone who doesn’t think that the hidden treasure is yet another Pokemon will have to stay after class to clean the erasers. (Especially since we are told outright at the beginning that the treasure is, in fact, the Pokemon responsible for the Tera energy that transforms mons in the games.)

With those mysteries out of the way…

In the Teal Mask, you have been randomly selected to go on a field trip with several students you have never seen before and will never see again to enjoy a festival in the region of Kitakami, where you will immediately meet your new rivals from Blueberry Academy, which we will visit in the second expansion.

The Festival of the Masks is held each year to commemorate the three legendary Pokemons that laid down their lives to save Kitakami from the cruel ravings of an evil ogre. This ogre possessed four masks that allowed it to control plants, water, rock and fire (if I remember right). The legendary trio were able to wrestle away three of the masks, leaving the fourth, the one that controlled water, in the ogre’s possession. The ogre was forced to retreat, the legendaries died for some reason, and the villagers celebrated their rescuers by donning masks each year and visiting the area shrines devoted to the mons.

And… anyone thinking that the real story isn’t actually missing some important details… hasn’t played a Pokemon game. We have already learned that the “ogre” is not only not dead, but probably not even hostile.

I’ve been told that the only way to really approach a Pokemon DLC is by using only the mons you find there. I didn’t really do this when the Pokemon Shield DLC. For Pokemon Violet, I have a whole crew of max level Pokemon built for raiding, and using them would make the Teal Mask a cake walk. So I’m going with the flow and only using Pokemon caught in the expansion.

This turned out initially to be a terrible idea, as all the other trainers had mons of a slightly better level than the ones I’d caught, and so each battle was a near thing. I nearly lost my first battle with Rival No. 2, Kieran (Rival No. 1 being his sister, Carmine, both with annoying hang-down bangs that hide how wide apart their eyes must be). So, I took my raid crew and did a few Tera raids in the new area to build my new team, although looking at what I ended the night with, I only have two raid bosses on the team, Mienshao and Morpeko, and Morpeko is only level 45. All the others were caught in the wild and mildly leveled to make them competitive.

Mienshao, current lead mon, is a fighting type initially seen in Generation V games. All the Pokemon I’ve met so far have been seen before in other games, most recently, for me anyway, in Arceus, which will make completing the Kitakami Pokedex a little easier. I think I read that we will eventually be meeting the Generation I starters, but that hasn’t yet happened.

I enjoyed Pokemon Violet. It had an open world style that I really appreciated, and appreciate even more now as I play through Pokemon Brilliant Diamond, which is far more traditional in locking down the experience. While not approaching the heights of Pokemon Legends: Arceus, I did like how the game modernized the setting.

The Teal Mask doesn’t look like it will change the game that much, certainly not to the extent that the Crown Tundra expansion for Pokemon Sword/Shield did, with the introduction of the Ultra Beasts, reimagined legendary birds, and the cave crawl game mode.

But, I am only three hours in, and the DLC still has plenty of chances to make itself more memorable. Here’s hoping!