Gen IX DLC Thread

[Negrek]

The first of the Gen IX DLC additions has been out for a couple weeks now, and I thought it would be nice to have a place to discuss it, as well as the upcoming part two. Feel free to share your thoughts on the DLC, show off any impressive catches or other findings, or speculate about what's coming next! Note that there will be spoilers all throughout this thread.

I'm not done with Teal Mask myself, although I've completed the main storyline, and overall I enjoyed it quite a bit! There was more new content than I expected, and playing with a low-level, rotating team made completing the story mode a fun challenge. Turns out yanmega's kind of scary if it's 15 levels higher than your team and you don't have anything resistant to all its attacks. More than anything else, though, Teal Mask got me interested in where they're going to take the storyline in Indigo Disk. I'm really intrigued by the implication in Teal Mask that tera crystals may be able to revive the dead in particular... seems like that would have some wild implications for the main SV storyline, heh. Chances are good that the worldbuilding's going to ultimately be disappointing and/or incoherent, but they've managed to get my hopes up for sure.

My other big hope for Indigo Disk is that there'll be some kind of battle/challenge facility, given that it takes place in a school that supposedly specializes in battles. I think the chances of this happening are very low, given that GF has put less and less effort into making these over the years, but that's my specific pipe dream, heh.

Overall I've had a lot of fun with the first DLC release and am looking forward to the second!

 

[Seren]

Turns out yanmega's kind of scary if it's 15 levels higher than your team and you don't have anything resistant to all its attacks.

If the yanmega in question had tinted lens rather than speed boost, even resistances aren't gonna help you.

I'm really intrigued by the implication in Teal Mask that tera crystals may be able to revive the dead in particular...

Hm, maybe I missed this, but where was that implied?

If it's in relation to Kieran and the Loyal Three, I'm not sure where there was a tera crystal involved there. (This is in relation to that screenshot of Kieran's fist with the purple aura.)

ANYWAY. I've posted my own long-winded ramble on the discord, but tl;dr...

I have numerous problems with Kieran's character (although this seems to be largely due to some uncomfortable irl comparisons, as the vast majority of people are actually really sympathetic to him, and leaves me going very ??? most of the time). Carmine grew on me the longer we hung out. I really enjoyed Perrin's character, I do hope we get to see more of her in wave 2, but her side quest was... really short and really simple. Would have liked for that to have been expanded upon a little bit. (As it is, the DLC I thought was a little sparse considering the price, so hoping wave 2 helps justify the cost. I guess it was still full of more plot than just "go catch all the legends we've re-introduced" though.)

Honestly I'm really intrigued by how they're going to justify paradox raikou. Are we going to get paradox pokemon appearing outside of Area Zero/inside Blueberry's biomes? Because that throws a big wrench into the popular "they're just the professor's imaginary creations come to life" theory. Maybe they're also more to do with the tera crystals than we think? (But then, we didn't see any paradox 'mon at the Kitakami lake, and you know that would have been a huge selling point for the DLC, so...)

 

[Negrek]

Hm, maybe I missed this, but where was that implied?

On the sign at the Crystal Pool--it says something along the lines of stories having it that people could see visions of departed people in the waters. I'm curious whether it might have something to do with the Loyal Three getting revived... Kieran had Ogrepon's mask at the time he punched the shrine's sign, right? And the mask is covered in tera crystals. But it's a bit of a stretch, no question! I hope we'll get some comment on why the Loyal Three popped back to life for no apparent reason eventually; maybe they were just responding to ~the darkness in Kieran's heart~ or something, idk.

I have numerous problems with Kieran's character (although this seems to be largely due to some uncomfortable irl comparisons, as the vast majority of people are actually really sympathetic to him, and leaves me going very ??? most of the time). Carmine grew on me the longer we hung out.

Yeah, I saw that discussion. :P I don't find it odd that you'd find Kieran annoying or unpleasant--he definitely exhibits some pretty standard preteen behaviors that a lot of people will find kind of obnoxious. The plotline did a lot of work to try and make players sympathetic to him, but it stands to reason that not everybody's going to end up liking him. I'm intrigued that it looks like they're taking a villainous angle with him going forward... definitely curious to see what happens with him in the next DLC. (Although sorry that you're presumably going to have to put up with him more then, heh.)

I really enjoyed Perrin's character, I do hope we get to see more of her in wave 2, but her side quest was... really short and really simple. Would have liked for that to have been expanded upon a little bit. (As it is, the DLC I thought was a little sparse considering the price, so hoping wave 2 helps justify the cost. I guess it was still full of more plot than just "go catch all the legends we've re-introduced" though.)

Perrin's quest definitely ended up shorter/simpler than I expected, but I figure we're bound to see her again in the next DLC, so I'm looking forward to that, at least. Curious whether we'll also get an Irida relative, or if Adaman is just overwhelmingly more popular so they'll only bother with Diamond Clan.

I was pretty okay with the amount of content provided for the price, considering it should be about half of what we're getting, but I'm also the slowest at video games, so it provided me with a reasonable number of hours of entertainment. :P

Honestly I'm really intrigued by how they're going to justify paradox raikou. Are we going to get paradox pokemon appearing outside of Area Zero/inside Blueberry's biomes?

Definitely curious to see where they go with this as well! Briar obviously has a big interest in bringing terastral energy phenomena to life outside of Paldea, so maybe she's going to set up her own paradox generator in the biodome or something, heh.

At this point I think I'm basically done with the DLC aside from filling out the rest of the pokédex; wrapped up the Bloodmoon Beast sidequest and rambled around the parts of the map I hadn't been to. I happened to find a random shiny slugma oozing around by the Crystal Pool, so at least I can join the ranks of people with a DLC shiny! All in all pretty pleased with the DLC experience; looking forward to a release date for the next half.