Yes.
If you enjoyed Pokemon Scarlet or Violet, why wouldn’t you want more?
New outfits — you can get a variety of festival jinbei outfits and monstrous masks to change your look up from the boring school uniforms. And buying the DLC gives you alternates for those, in case you don’t want to get too into “loner kid who doesn’t fit in” territory.
There’s a new minigame, where you ride your Miraidon or whatever the Scarlet one is called and pop balloons. I wasn’t a fan, really, but it’s there. The minigame gives four tables on which you have to put tasty treats of various colors and various numbers in order to clear the level. These treats are found by popping balloons of various matching colors. While you are off collecting treats, sneaky Pokemon are sneaking up to eat those treats, thus requiring you to continually return to scare them off. And, of course, there is a timer. So, I’m not a huge fan.
A lot of Pokemon from previous generations finally make their way to Kitakami to be caught, as well as new regional variants of older mons, and the four legendaries that drive the plot.
The plot is fun; siblings Carmine and Kieran are your rivals through the DLC, each taking turns to check out how your team is coming along. Kieran’s character arc from an ogre-loving kid to an obsessed stalker who only wants to beat you into the ground is fun, and we expect him to be the main crazed villain in the second half of the DLC, The Indigo Disk.
The legendary bully Pokemon fights were somewhat challenging. Actually catching them in the post-game content was another story entirely. They had a lot of fun killing my entire team as I was forced to keep them alive as I sent dozens of Ultra Balls bouncing harmlessly off their noggins. One of my team was fairly resistant to their attacks, and that really changed things up once I found it. (Shiftry could block almost everything the monkey threw at it). I’d turned off auto-saving so that I could quit the game and restart if I accidentally killed the legendary.
The highlight was the final fight of the main plot. Once Ogerpon is given all four of its masks, they insist upon fighting you to see if you are worthy enough to become its partner.
Similar to Arceus, Ogerpon can change their type based on an item they hold. They always have their teal mask available; this makes their type Grass. The other three masks give it the power of Fire (the best, obviously), Water, and Ground. Again, as with Arceus, they have a power (Judgement for Arceus, Ivy Cudgel here) that changes to be the type of their mask. They also get a 20% bonus to damage when in Terastallized form. I could see Ogerpon being built for raiding, but with Arceus able to hit all sixteen types rather than Ogerpon’s four, Arceus is still likely a better choice.
Aside from a little bootstrapping to build a Kitakami team, I used mons I caught in the DLC exclusively, and I added the legendary mons to my team as I caught them.
This really got me out of my comfort zone, where I might have used my raid-leveled Pokemon exclusively. I found some new favorites.
I am not yet sure if I can replace Iron Hands with Mienshao in raids. Iron Hands is just so bulky. Mienshao came with a perfectly useless ability, Reckless, which powers up moves that give recoil damage. I could find no move in his moveset or given via TMs that had recoil damage, so I had to use a precious Ability Patch to change the ability to Inner Focus, which makes it immune to flinching and intimidation. I might be able to overcome its lack of Belly Drum (max attack but cut own HP to half) by maxing its Speed and using Focus Punch for the same end, but I’ll have to see if that works. The real problem is that since Iron Hands is in the meta, when people see it on the party screen in fights where that would be the best option, they know they can rely on support and heals as Iron Hands has the damage covered.
I’ve already mentioned that Arceus still outclasses Ogerpon.
Of the Loyal Three, it looks like Monkidoki might be the real catch when facing critters weak to Poison and Psychic attacks, especially when equipped with a move that will attack those immune to its other attacks. Okidogi looks useful as well.
Likely the best raid mon coming out of the DLC is Bloodmoon Ursaluna, whom you meet once you have captured 150 Pokémon in the Kitakami Pokedex. I don’t yet have that one; it’s claimed to be a replacement for the old standby of Iron Hands.
So, looks like my journey in The Teal Mask isn’t quite done. I only have 139 mons in the Kitakami dex, even though I’ve spent a lot of time hunting. Time to stop hunting and start evolving, probably. Also, there’s the random Sinnoh starter to hatch as well.
Keep an eye out for Bloodmoon Ursaluna news, once I find it and try it out in a few raids. I have also started on Baldur’s Gate 3, so… more news on that when I find something interesting. Thanks for reading!
