SPOILERS! Scarlet & Violet: The Teal Mask

[Coronis]

I actually see it on other way around, it's more likely that in a casual playthrough Yanmega will be faster anyway (95 speed is not exactly slow, and it can have the advantage of 31 IV / 252 EV if they really want over just regularly in-game caught ones).

Source: the fact Yanmega actually outsped and brutally murdered all of my "casual playthrough team" (which i had kept in the boxes after beating the main story) except Meowscarada

Idk usually teams are overleveled and rivals aren’t optimised (no idea if Kieran is) - did you do the Gym/Star rematches and the Academy Ace Tour with the casual playthrough and then all of TM until the battle with Kieran (Loyalty Plaza is iirc when he first has Yanmega - no Ancient Power though, probably a leftover from having Yanma in that matchup pre-postgame)? If so damn I’m surprised, you must be using some pretty lowspeed Pokemon or you’ve been using more than 6 and aren’t overleveled (I know a lot of us have done this but a “casual” player will probably end up using only the 6)

I might also be underestimating its speed just because generally in my ingame teams I like to use fast Pokemon - plus when I did play comp back in Gen 4 (wowee thats a long time ago, unless you count randbats) its speed was never that notable.

 

[Worldie]

Idk usually teams are overleveled and rivals aren’t optimised (no idea if Kieran is) - did you do the Gym/Star rematches and the Academy Ace Tour with the casual playthrough and then all of TM until the battle with Kieran (Loyalty Plaza is iirc when he first has Yanmega - no Ancient Power though, probably a leftover from having Yanma in that matchup pre-postgame)? If so damn I’m surprised, you must be using some pretty lowspeed Pokemon or you’ve been using more than 6 and aren’t overleveled (I know a lot of us have done this but a “casual” player will probably end up using only the 6)

That team got benched the moment i beat the Area Zero segment. Intentionally, as it was my plan to use that team for the DLCs seeing how it went off in SwSh.

If you're curious, the team was Meowscarada, Azumarill, Kilowattrel, Gallade, Revavroom and Corviknight, most of them around lvl 63 at the start with exception of Azumarill which was level 70 for not sure which reason.
They barely had any TM move taught as well, as during the story i wasn't exactly vomiting materials.

 

[R_N]

If you're overleveled (note: I was but Kieren's battle still took a fair chunk out of me) and outspeeding Yanmega to begin with, then speed boost is going to be irrelevant anyway. You either kill it in one shot, or you're going to tank one extra attack that depending on the situation probably will not kill.

 

[doipy hooves]

I noticed that in the 4-phase Ogerpon battle, turns where you defeat Ogerpon don't seem to cause end of turn effects to occur and things generally still count as the turn you were on before. I mainly noticed this when a Quick Claw proc persisted after a kill and still allowed Azumarill to outspeed Teal Mask Ogerpon on the next turn with no other explanation, but this also keeps Grassy Terrain active slightly longer which is more visible in the status screen, and this random video of the fight shows another example with Haxorus using Outrage for 4 turns with 2 OHKOs before getting confused.

 

[Suspicious Derivative]

I have completed the Teal Mask. Time for a review.

I started playing on September 16th (I never planned to start on the release date), then I beat the Kitakami Mask Festival on September 20th and The Bloodmoon Beast story on September 22nd. I also completed the Kitakami Pokédex on September 27th. Not sure how long all of this took me in terms of in-game time, but I would estimate somewhere around 15-20 hours.

Decided to write a more serious and in-depth review this time as opposed to what I did for the main game. Contains spoilers, obviously.

Expectations and preparations

After playing through the main game of Violet, I found myself liking the game a lot, but it felt “incomplete” in some ways. My general impression was that there was lot of potential to expand on the game with DLC. I really enjoyed the DLC for S/S, and I was hoping they would make DLC for ScaVio as well. When the DLC was announced back in February, I got really excited!

For the first part of the DLC, I expected something similar to the Isle of Armor. New areas to explore, more Pokémon (new and old), some gameplay improvements, and more content. Looking back now, that’s exactly what we got, so that’s all great. But I’d say it was even better than I expected. I am a huge fan of the DLC for S/S, but I think the Teal Mask is way better than the Isle of Armor. Maybe even better than both the Isle of Armor and the Crown Tundra. The Teal Mask has convinced me even more that DLC is the right way forward for Pokémon when it comes to expanding on existing games.

I expected the DLC to be fun and enjoyable, which it was. I didn’t expect a masterpiece like the DLC for the Xenoblade games. I played through Future Redeemed when it was released earlier this year, and it was EPIC. The Teal Mask is not on the same level, but it got closer than I expected, which is a good thing.

Before I started playing the Teal Mask, I had planned and prepared a new team that I was going to use for it (details can be found further below). I had done the same thing for both DLCs in Sword, and since it was really fun to make new teams for the DLCs there, I decided to do the same thing here.

Since I didn’t want to be either over- or underleveled when I started on the Teal Mask, I only trained my new team to level 20 to start with (except one team member which was at level 60 when I got it). After the Teal Mask had been released, I learned that if you play through it after having beaten the main game, the levels of opponents would start at around level 60, similar to how it was for the Isle of Armor. Which meant that it was grinding time! I spent 3 days training the rest of the team to level 60, then I could finally start. It happened at the weekend, just as I had planned.

Gameplay and content

Upon arriving at Kitakami, I was a bit annoyed at how you couldn’t ride Miraidon until after entering the village. I thought about it and realized that they probably didn’t want you to “break” the DLC by exploring everywhere before you could start the story for real. And that’s understandable. But I could ride Miraidon once I had been to the village, which was great. One thing I liked about exploring this time around was that I could explore everywhere and anywhere right from the start since I already had all upgrades for Miraidon.

I noticed one thing about the controls in the game. When you jump into the water with Miraidon, there’s a bit of input delay. It also felt hard to control it in the water. At first, I thought this was something that happened only in Kitakami, but after checking the main game, it happens in Paldea as well. I don’t remember this from when I played through the main game (which was in December-January), but I guess it has always been this way. Not sure if they intentionally made it harder in order to make it more realistic, or if it just another example of bad game physics. Either way, I find it annoying.

The overall performance of the DLC is the same as in the main game. Bad and notable, but it doesn’t really bother me. It can feel a bit jarring since all other Switch games I have played have pretty much perfect performance. Recently, I have been playing Persona 5 Royal, and it flows perfectly 99% of the time. Violet is really bad in comparison. But even so, it is something I can live with because the game is just so much fun to play!

The DLC added some nice QoL improvements. I really like how you can now lock the mini-map so that it always has north pointing up instead of constantly rotating as you walk around. Another thing I really like is how the Pokédex now “saves” where you last looked instead of always going back to the beginning every single time you open it. This was something that really annoyed me in the base game, I’m so happy they fixed it with the DLC!

Exploring Kitakami was really fun. It feels big, a lot larger than the Isle of Armor. The environments were quite different as well, with a huge mountain, some fields, rivers, a forest and even a crystal pool. I’m very fond of Apple Hills for some reason. There are a lot of hills and slopes which meant that you go up and down a lot, which was even mentioned by an NPC. When I played, I decided to explore very thoroughly, I tried to find every single item and trainer. In comparison, I wasn’t nearly as thorough when I played through the main game. To this day, I still find random trainers I haven’t battled or items I haven’t picked up when I am in Paldea. Though I never planned to explore Paldea to 100%, and since I didn’t have all the upgrades for Miraidon right from the start, I couldn’t explore everywhere either.

The negative about exploring Kitakami was that there are many tiny Pokémon on the overworld, some are even hidden in the grass. I often got into accidental battles against them. This led to me using the Let’s Go feature a lot, even if I should have used it even more than I did. I love encountering wild Pokémon on the overworld, but I wish there was some way to avoid them completely, like using Repels or something with a similar function.

I like how there are many warp points (fly spots) on the map, it made it even easier to explore. I just wish there was one in the northeast part of the map, somewhere in the Timeless Woods. That would make it a lot easier to get there. But it still works.

Kitakami is mostly open, just like Paldea. The beginning (before you enter the village for the first time) is the only part that is locked, but once you are done with that, you can go wherever you want. After playing through the Teal Mask, I have realized that non-linearity (Kanto/Johto) doesn’t really work for Pokémon, but an open world (Paldea and Kitakami, Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra to an extent) works. Even if it should be both pointless and harmful in theory, it still works out very well in practice. Though my personal preference is still a linear open world like Hisui.

I really like how there are regular trainers in Kitakami. This was something I missed a lot in the Isle of Armor and the Crown Tundra, and the regular wild area in S/S for that matter. I’m glad to see that they have been included this time around. I hope they will exist in the Indigo Disk too. I noticed that some trainers use regional variants of Pokémon, I recall meeting one trainer who used an Alolan Sandshrew. That was pretty cool.

I liked encountering wild Pokémon that weren’t in the main Paldea dex, I caught all of the ones I met as I was planning to complete the Pokédex later on, might as well start early. I also like the high levels of the wild Pokémon. I have seen some wild Pokémon in their late 60s, some in their mid-70s, there was even a Terastal Lampent at level 86! This is amazing as it will make for some great training spots. I also like how the Exp. Charm is back, it will make all future training even easier.

I saw that new TMs have been added with the DLC, and that’s cool. I scrolled through the list but there was nothing that really caught my eye, feels like most of the useful moves from an in-game perspective already existed as TMs in the base game. Though I guess many of the new TMs will make an impact on the competitive scene, notably the return of some old fan favorites like Scald, Knock Off and Toxic.

The music is great as usual. My favorite track is Carmine’s battle theme.

It somehow reminds me of the music in the Shantae games. Not sure if it is because of the melody, the instruments or something else. Either way, I like it a lot.

I have tried the Ogre Outstin' minigame a little and I think it is pretty fun. I have beaten it on Easy, but I will try to beat it on Normal and Hard as well. I like the Mochi-items which raise or remove EVs from a Pokémon, though I kind of wish the Fresh-Start Mochi could be obtained through other means than by beating the minigame. But at least getting it this way is better than nothing.

The Teal Mask have several minor sidequests, and I think they seem pretty fun. I have started on most of them. I avoided the Ogre Clan at first since they seemed strong (black text boxes), then I tried fighting one of them but it was tough as I was seriously underleveled (68-70 against 75-77). I later beat two more of them but I still have the rest left. I have also started on the Glitterati quest, and donating money at Kitakami Hall to restore the shrine at Loyalty Plaza. I’ll try to get it all done eventually.

I met Jacq and got a random egg from him, which was unexpected. Mine hatched into a Turtwig. It seems like you get one of the Sinnoh starters at random, which is nice. But the best thing about this is that all of the Sinnoh starters have been added to the game! I decided to send over the ones I used on my teams in L:A now that I finally could. As well as my Yanmega and Shaymin, since they have been added as well. The only one who is still dexited now is Roserade. I hope it will return in the Indigo Disk. According to the leaks/datamines, it is not coming back. Which is a shame. I really hate dexit. I hope I can send it over to some future game where it is available, so it won’t have to stay in Hisui forever.

The Kitakami Pokédex features 200 Pokémon, and I think that’s a good number for a DLC dex. It is on around the same level as the Isle of Armor and the Crown Tundra, which is good. I like how around half of the Pokémon in the Kitakami dex were new, while the other half can be found in Paldea, it is a good balance. Completing it went pretty quickly, but it was a lot of fun!

Regarding the difficulty of the DLC, I think it was fine. Like the norm for Pokémon games, it was mostly balanced and fair. There were some battles I found a bit difficult, which is good. The Loyal Three were a bit harder than expected, I didn’t think their battles would be similar to the Titan battles in the main game. I won against them, but not without issues. I also had some trouble during the final battles against Kieran and Carmine, they weren’t super tough, but I was a little underleveled and they beat some of my Pokémon during the battles.

The hardest battle was definitely against Ogerpon. I think I was underleveled, and I was not prepared to fight it four times in a row! I didn’t know its type(s) either, it was also faster than most of my team and managed to KO many of them before they could move. I had to use 3 Max Revives to win, and even so, I gambled hard in the end. If Ogerpon had beaten my Cetitan once more time, I would have lost.

I almost never used Terastal during any of the battles here. The reasons being that I often forgot about it, and I rarely needed it in order to win.

Some minor observations I made. When using fly in Paldea, the taxi is carried by Squawkabilly. In Kitakami, it is carried by Noctowl. And when you fly with the plane between the two areas, a Dragonite can be seen flying alongside it! I love small details like this.

I noticed that when Morpeko changes form, there’s a small animation showing it eating or getting hangry. I don’t think was in S/S. Never used a Morpeko there myself, but I never saw it for the ones I faced in battle (like Marnie’s). Either way, that’s another neat little detail. I wonder if the same thing happens for Cramorant? Maybe I should give it a try with the Cramorant I imported from Sword…

I really like the images which show the Pokémon in the Pokédex. One thing I noticed here is that there’s a new image for all of the Pokémon that existed in the main Paldea dex. That’s really amazing. I am definitely going to go through the entire dex and look at all of them.

In Paldea, there’s Paldean Wooper and Clodsire. But in Kitakami, there’s regular Wooper and Quagsire instead. I really like this because it showcases that they are two completely different regions.

The nurse at the Pokémon Center in Kitakami has a different design compared to the nurses in Paldea. And she has a different personality as well. She seems to be a bit more carefree as she’s always looking at her phone when she’s not healing your Pokémon. That’s another cool little detail.

After playing through the Teal Mask, I am starting to like ScaVio and Gen 9 better than S/S and Gen 8, all thanks to this DLC. Though I still like S/S a lot too. And I might be more positive towards Violet at the moment since I have played it recently, while it has been a few months since I last played Sword, and over a year since I last played it seriously. I have planned to go back to it once more later this year in order to complete some thing I never did, will see what my opinion of it will be after that. But from the looks of things right now, there’s a big chance Violet will come out on top once the Indigo Disk has been released.

Pokémon

The DLC brought back several old Pokémon, and added some new ones. Let’s talk about them.

Many of my old favorites are back! Snorlax, Ludicolo, Milotic, the Sinnoh starters, Yanmega, Mamoswine, Shaymin, Conkeldurr, Leavanny, Chandelure, Mienshao, Mandibuzz, Trevenant, Ribombee, Kommo-o and Morpeko. And some of my favorite regional variants as well, Alolan Ninetales/Sandslash/Golem and Galarian Weezing.

I want to talk about the new Pokémon a bit, so have some short words on them:

Dipplin
I never expected Applin to get a third evolution. A Grass/Dragon-type, just like the rest of the family. Unlike Flapple and Appletun, Dipplin looks very similar to Applin itself. And that’s okay. Dipplin seems to be a candy apple, while Appletun is an apple pie, Flapple is a broken apple, and Applin is just a regular apple. Apples apples apples! All with a dragon inside, of course. Or two for Dipplin.

Stat-wise, Dipplin is slow but otherwise balanced. Supersweet Syrup is a very cool signature Ability, an Intimidate which lowers Evasion instead of Attack! It’s signature move Syrup Bomb lowers the opponent’s Speed, not sure how useful that is since Dipplin is quite slow. I also learned that Eviolite works on Dipplin for some reason, which seems to suggest that it will get another evolution in the Indigo Disk? Cool but even more unexpected than Dipplin itself.

Poltchageist and Sinistcha
Convergent species of the Sinistea line. Totally unexpected just like Dipplin, but it’s all good. Just like the Sinistea line, they have two forms which are very difficult to tell apart, and one of them is extremely rare while the other is common. In some ways, they feel like the opposite of the Sinistea line, with Poltchageist being the first stage and Sinistcha the evolution.

I’m honestly pretty tired of Grass/Ghost as a typing, it feels like there have been a lot of those Pokémon ever since it was first introduced in Gen 6. Stat-wise, Sinistcha seems to be a special attacker with average speed. Unlike Polteageist, it doesn’t get Shell Smash, which is unfortunate. Hospitality might be a good Ability for Double battles, while Heatproof is pretty cool for Single (and in general), removing its weakness to Fire. Matcha Gotcha seems like a fun signature move, draining HP and having a burn chance, nice. Pretty cool Pokémon on the whole.

The Loyal Three
The villains in disguise. They all share a Poison-type, the Ability Toxic Chain, and they are all male. They also seem to wear the same kid of purple attachment, I guess this is the “Toxic Chain”?
Okidogi is a dog, but it looks more like a bear/dog/wolf hybrid or something. Pretty cool, at least as long as it doesn’t have its tongue out. A Poison/Fighting-type with high Attack and okay Speed, it seems to have a solid movepool too. I can see it being a good Physical attacker.
Munkidori is a monkey, and I while I’m not the biggest fan of monkeys, I think it has a fine design. It is a Poison/Psychic and its stat spread seems suitable for a fast Special attacker, which makes it my favorite of the three in terms of stats.
Fezandipiti is a bird, seemingly a pheasant. It has a quite neat design. Poison/Fairy, having my favorite type means I might use it on my next team, but that remains to be seen. Its stats are a bit all over the place, with the highest being Sp.def. Unlike the others, it seems to be more oriented towards defense/stall/support rather than offense.

Not sure what else to say, but I like the Loyal Three.

Ogerpon
After seeing the art for Ogerpon, it was obvious that something was hiding behind the mask, and I was wondering what it would look like. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t prepared for this. It is so adorable! Easily one of the top 10 cutest Pokémon ever. Maybe even top 5. I didn’t expect it to be female, I thought it would be genderless. Either way, Ogerpon is easily my favorite of all the new Pokémon/forms from the Teal Mask.

It starts out as a Grass-type, but it can gain an additional type depending on which mask it wears. Its Ability also changes depending on the mask, and I like how it has a unique method of Terastal, allowing it to change into a different type depending on its mask. Plus it gains a different stat boost depending on which type it changes too. The only negative is that it is locked into certain Tera types. Ivy Cudgel is a cool signature move. Its stats seem geared towards a fast Physical attacker, and I think it will be great. I will definitely use Ogerpon on a future legendary team which I’m planning to make after playing through the Indigo Disk.

Bloodmoon Ursaluna
I wasn’t expecting Ursaluna to get a new form. Not to mention a really brutal form like this! But it’s really cool. Same typing as the regular bear, but it has changed into a powerful Special attacker. Blood Moon is a Special Normal-type version of Gigaton Hammer, which is brutal. Mind's Eye seems like an amazing Ability, Ghost-types aren’t safe from the wrath of this bear! I am already using regular Ursaluna on one of my imported teams from L:A, so I probably won’t use this form, but I can’t say for sure yet.

Overall, I am a big fan of the new Pokémon and forms. They are awesome as always.

Story and characters

I want to talk a bit more in-depth about the story this time instead of just saying “I like it.” I had spoiled myself on some things before I started playing, but nothing that ruined my experience.

There are two stories this time around. I played through them one at a time, starting with the Mask Festival and then the Bloodmoon Beast afterwards. Let’s go over them one at a time.

Kitakami Mask Festival

I like the concept of going on a school trip, it feels like a good way to introduce a new area outside of Paldea. I was surprised that they sent three unnamed students to go with you instead of going with some known and named characters, but it’s somewhat paradoxically fine since these new students didn’t play any major role in the story. My guess is that they wanted to focus on the new characters for the DLC and not use any notable recurring characters from the main story.

I like how there’s only one “main” story to follow here, instead of three like in the main game. Having just one story is more suitable for the DLC. It also felt like you had to do everything in a set order instead of being able to do things however you wanted. But I actually prefer having a set order since it means you will always know where to go next, and there’s less of a risk of being over- or underleveled.

I liked the overall story of the school trip, the festival and Ogerpon. The story is first revealed on the signboards, but then it turns out that it was all lies, and the real story is the complete opposite of what the signboards told you! That was a great twist, I didn’t see it coming at all. Before I started playing, I was sure that Ogerpon would be the villain.

One recurring theme in the story is trust and judgment. At the start, the NPCs were rather hostile towards strangers. The most notable being Carmine who had a very negative attitude towards the player and the other students. The same thing happens in Ogerpon’s backstory, the villagers of the past were afraid of Ogerpon and chased it out of the village. The moral of the story is that you shouldn’t act on your prejudices and judge people (or Pokémon) by their appearance or heritage, but rather by who they actually are. That was not a subject I expected to see in this story, but I think it worked very well.

Kieran and Carmine were great characters. Kieran was mostly shy and timid, while Carmine was way more assertive and bossy. I like how both of them changed during the story. Carmine starts out as aggressive towards the player, but gets nicer as the story goes on, while Kieran is the opposite. He starts out as nice but grows colder as the story continues.

Their relation as siblings was interesting. Carmine obviously wanted to protect Kieran from danger, but she didn’t always do it in the right way. I think she was a bit too harsh towards him at times, and I can understand that she wanted to protect him by not telling him the truth about Ogerpon, but I think that might have been the wrong decision in the end. I wasn’t happy about how you were forced to lie to Kieran about Ogerpon. The boy just wanted to meet Ogerpon but didn’t get to do so until later… too late, even.

I felt sorry for Kieran on multiple occasions, especially at the end. The player and Carmine apologized to him, but he still took it pretty hard. I think he was the one who really deserved to be with Ogerpon, not the player. At least Kieran got some serious determination to get stronger, and I hope he will be stronger when we see him in the Indigo Disk. I have seen some theories about how he might become a villain or evil team leader (I hope not) or a Champion (I really hope so).

The Loyal Three were interesting. I liked the small scenes where you could see them talk with each other, making new (evil) plans to deceive people and Pokémon. They felt really evil and manipulative. I saw someone say that they are the first Pokémon in the games which are evil without any trainer influence, which is definitely a first!

One thing I noticed was that apart from Jacq, no other major characters from the main game appeared. Compare this to the Isle of Armor where Hop appears during the post-game parts of it, or the Crown Tundra where Sonia appears regarding the Swords of Justice story. I guess this is because they didn’t want the characters from the main story to interfere with the Kitakami story. If they had sent Nemona, Penny and Arven to go with you instead of the three nameless students, it might have ended up being conflicting with the main story. It might also have something to do with the fact that you need to beat both the main story and this story before doing the Indigo Disk, as that suggests some of the important characters from the main story will appear there as well. I surely hope so.

I’m not sure if I managed to express my thoughts in a good way, but to summarize, I enjoyed this story a lot.

The Bloodmoon Beast

The other story, which was considerably shorter. I started on it right after beating the Mask Festival… because I hadn’t registered 150 Pokémon in the Kitakami dex until that point.

I like how this story had many hints to Hisui, with Perrin being an obvious descendant from Adaman, she mentions that she is from Sinnoh, she has a Hisuian Growlithe and she mentions Hisui several times. I also like how music from the Sinnoh games and L:A plays at several points during this story.

I was surprised to see that the Pokémon Perrin was looking for was an Ursaluna (yet another Hisui reference). Prior to the DLC release, I saw some speculation about how the Pokémon she was looking for might be Shaymin (since it is a Sinnoh Pokémon and was confirmed to be added with the DLC), so I was fully sold on that theory before I learned the truth.

The story was short but enjoyable. I played through it quite quickly. The camera survey was really fun, and it made me realize how little I have actually used the camera function in the game. I mostly just use the screenshot button on my Switch instead. Having a photographer in the game was a good way to remind me that the camera exists, maybe that will make me use it more in the future. Perrin wasn’t quite as interesting as Kieran and Carmine, but I still like her. She got her passion for photography back in the end, and that’s great!

Overall, another fun little story.

In the end, I enjoyed both DLC stories, they were great just like the main game story and have further cemented ScaVio as the Pokémon games with the best story in the series (in my opinion).

New team

Long before the DLC was even announced, I decided that if there would be DLC for ScaVio, I would make new teams for it, just like I did for the DLCs in Sword. Since it became reality, I decided to make a new team for the Teal Mask, and I will make another one for the Indigo Disk later on. There are also a lot of Gen 9 Pokémon I want to use. Plus, it is more fun this way! Either way, I wanted to showcase the team I made for the Teal Mask and I decided to do it here instead of in the in-game team thread.

Regarding the team members, I made sure they all had good movesets, hold items, Abilities and Natures (or got Minted). I didn’t bother with EVs (though I gave them some vitamins), IVs/Hyper Training, or specific Tera Types, they had one of their STAB types just like the members of my in-game team. I wanted to focus solely on Gen 9 Pokémon, I considered new forms as well but none of them ended up on the team. I also wanted to try to use types that weren’t represented on my in-game team. And unlike my in-game team, I decided to avoid using any overlapping types this time around. I also decided to have a good balance between Physical and Special as opposed to my all-Physical in-game team.

I named the team the Magical Mystery Masked Marauders. I wanted a cool name instead of just going with “Teal Mask team” or something along those lines.

Here’s a preview:

And here are the full details:

Quaquaval (F) @ Muscle Band
Ability: Moxie
Tera type: Water
Nature: Lonely (Minted to Adamant)
- Aqua Step
- Close Combat
- Ice Spinner
- Aqua Jet

My second favorite Paldea starter, it was an obvious first member of the team. It is also a Water-type, which is nice as I didn’t use one on my in-game team. I like this dancing duck a lot.

Aqua Step was the Water move I went with, it is a cool signature move which has good enough base power and boosts Speed, which is nice since Quaquaval isn’t the fastest. Other moves like Liquidation and Wave Crash are stronger, but some signature moves are just too cool to pass up on. Close Combat for secondary STAB, it hits really hard. Ice Spinner for coverage, it is helpful against Grass- and Dragon-types. Aqua Jet for priority, it could be used to beat targets at low HP.

There are a few other alternatives. I was considering Swords Dance to boost, but I felt that Moxie would probably be enough. Another idea I had was U-Turn, but I realized that switching out wouldn’t work well together with Moxie and Aqua Step, so I scrapped it as well.

Moxie is the superior Ability since it boosts Attack after beating an enemy. When combined with Aqua Step, Quaquaval can rack up boosts and become really powerful. It works best as a Physical attacker, so I minted it to Adamant to make it hit hard. I gave it a Muscle Band to boost the power of its moves even further.

Overall, Quaquaval was really good. It was useful in many situations thanks to its high Attack and solid coverage, it could also pull off a sweep if it managed to gather enough boosts.

Espathra (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Speed Boost
Tera type: Psychic
Nature: Modest
- Stored Power
- Dazzling Gleam
- Shadow Ball
- Calm Mind

The second bird of the team is one I really wanted to use somewhere, but it didn’t end up either on my in-game or mid-game team. I decided to use it here instead. It is also a Psychic-type, which is great as I hadn’t used one anywhere before on Violet.

Stored Power is the main STAB move, it starts out weak but becomes stronger the more I boost. I was going to use Lumina Crash at first since it is a really cool signature move, but then I managed to get a Speed Boost Flittle through the GTS, which changed my mind. With Calm Mind and Speed Boost, it only takes one turn for Stored Power to reach a base power of 80, and it will only keep getting stronger from there. The only negative is that this means that it pretty much needs a boost in order to hit hard. But it was too awesome to resist, so I went with it.

Dazzling Gleam and Shadow Ball for coverage, they help against Dark-, Ghost- and opposing Psychic-types. Calm Mind since it needs to boost. It has a double purpose here, it raises Espathra’s Sp.att and increases the power of Stored Power at the same time, making it hit even harder!

Psychic and Psyshock are other alternatives for STAB, as well as Lumina Crash which I mentioned. I was considering U-Turn here as well, but just as for Quaquaval, it felt like a bad idea with Speed Boost since it would just lose all of its boosts upon switching out.

Speed Boost is the Ability of choice (and I’m happy I managed to get one), it makes Espathra super-fast and powers up Stored Power even further. A Modest Nature is the best option since it makes Espathra hit even harder, it doesn’t need Timid as Speed Boost makes it fast enough as time goes on. I gave it a Leftovers to hold since it will almost always need to use Calm Mind, meaning it will often take a hit before it can attack. After taking damage, Leftovers can help with recovering HP.

Overall, Espathra was great. If it managed to set up and boost, it could sweep opposing teams. That said, it is rather frail and not super-fast before a Speed Boost, so it often needed a good first matchup in order to win. But if it got that, it won.

Glimmora (M) @ Wise Glasses
Ability: Toxic Debris
Tera type: Rock
Nature: Lax (Minted to Modest)
- Power Gem
- Sludge Wave
- Earth Power
- Spiky Shield

Rock was another type I hadn’t used on any previous team on Violet. Out of the new ones that existed, Glimmora seemed to be the coolest one. It is similar to Nihilego since they are both Special attacking Rock/Poison-types.

Power Gem and Sludge Wave are the obvious STAB moves, Earth Power for coverage. In the last slot, I went Spiky Shield for protection. There are a few other alternatives like Dazzling Gleam, Flash Cannon and Energy Ball, but I didn’t use either of them.

Toxic Debris is Glimmora’s only non-hidden Ability. I am not a fan of entry hazards, but at least it does something, as opposed to Corrosion. I minted it to Modest since it is a Special attacker. I gave it the Wise Glasses to power up its moves a bit.

Overall, Glimmora was pretty good. It could hit hard with its moves, Toxic Debris was useful on a few occasions as well. That said, it was a bit slow and frail. Still solid though.

Bombirdier (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Rocky Payload
Tera type: Flying
Nature: Bold (Minted to Adamant)
- Brave Bird
- Knock Off
- Drill Run
- Rock Slide

Third bird of the team. I wanted to use a Flying-type somewhere. I had previously used Squawkabilly as a reserve member during my in-game playthrough, but since I only used it in one battle, it didn’t really count. It was time to use a Flying-type for real. But which one? I had used Kilowattrel on my mid-game team, and I couldn’t use Flamigo since I already had a Fighting-type in Quaquaval. That left Bombirdier as the only option. Which I’m fine with since it is a cool stork.

Brave Bird for Flying STAB, it hits hard but causes recoil. Knock Off for secondary STAB, it is the best option since Bombirdier doesn’t get Crunch or Night Slash, and Sucker Punch feels a bit unreliable. It gets Lash Out through a new TM in the DLC, but I decided to stick with Knock Off. Drill Run and Rock Slide for coverage, the latter gets a boost from Rocky Payload… which was the Ability I went with since I managed to get a HA Bombirdier from the GTS. I considered some other options like Hone Claws, U-Turn and Roost, but I made it an all-out attacker in the end.

I minted it to Adamant so it could hit harder, but Jolly might have been better since I often found Bombirdier to be quite slow. I gave it a Leftovers to hold since it would take recoil damage from Brave Bird and needed some way to recover. I considered other alternatives like Shell Bell or a Berry like Sitrus, but I ultimately decided that a classic Leftovers was the way to go. Wide Lens would also have been an alternative since Rock Slide missed a few times (as expected, and it was always annoying when it did).

Overall, Bombirdier was pretty good. It could hit hard with its moves and often tank a hit as well. That said, I noticed that it grew a lot slower than the rest of the team, it was often 1-2 levels below them. Which isn’t too strange since it is in the Slow Exp. group.

Cetitan (F) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Thick Fat
Tera type: Ice
Nature: Hardy (Minted to Adamant)
- Ice Spinner
- Earthquake
- Play Rough
- Ice Shard

Ice was another type I didn’t use on my in-game team. I ended up using Baxcalibur on my mid-game team, so that left me with Cetitan and Iron Bundle as the only choices. Since I wanted to avoid using Paradoxes unless it was absolutely necessary, I went with Cetitan.

Ice Spinner is the main STAB move. Earthquake and Play Rough for coverage, they help against Electric-, Fire- Rock-, Fighting- and Dark-types. Ice Shard for priority, it can also be used to pick off targets with low HP. I couldn’t think of any other alternatives than these four moves.

Like the other physical attackers of the team, I minted it to Adamant in order to boost its power a bit, it isn’t super-fast so Jolly wouldn’t have helped that much. Thick Fat is the superior Ability since it removes its weakness to Fire and makes it even more resistant to Ice. I gave it an Assault Vest to make it bulkier, taking advantage of its high HP. It felt like a good idea to have at least one member of the team be a bit geared towards defense since most of the team is heavy on offense.

Overall, Cetitan was great. It could hit hard with its moves, Ice Spinner in particular. It was the slowest member of the team, but also the bulkiest.

Flutter Mane @ Expert Belt
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera type: Ghost
Nature: Modest
- Shadow Ball
- Dazzling Gleam
- Power Gem
- Energy Ball

For the last member of the team, I needed a Fairy-type. But which one? There wasn’t a lot to choose from. The base game introduced 5 new fully evolved Fairy-types. I had already used Dachsbun and Tinkaton on my main game team, then I used Iron Valiant on my mid-game team. The only ones that remained were Scream Tail and Flutter Mane. And on top of everything, they were both Scarlet exclusives! The final alternative was to use something from an older generation. But I didn’t want to do that. Instead, I went with Ancient Missy. It seemed really cool. It is also a Ghost-type, which is nice as I hadn’t used one before, and Ghost is my second favorite type. I got it from the GTS for a shiny I didn’t need, then I was ready to go!

Shadow Ball and Dazzling Gleam are the obvious STAB moves, the latter will be replaced with Moonblast once it reaches level 84… talk about a late level. Power Gem and Energy Ball for coverage. It has several other alternatives like Psyshock, Mystical Fire, Dark Pulse and Thunderbolt, but I did some very serious coverage calculations, and it showed that the two moves I picked gives it the best coverage in conjunction with its STABs. It learns Calm Mind as well in order to boost, but I decided to make it an all-out attacker. Flutter is powerful enough as it is, so it didn’t really need to boost.

Protosyntesis is the only Ability it has, though it rarely came into use, the only time it happened was when I faced the Ogre Clan member with a Sunny Day-themed team. A Modest Nature is the obvious choice since it wants to hit hard, Timid isn’t necessary since it is fast enough as it is. I gave it an Expert Belt since it hits 12 out of 18 types for super effective damage.

Overall, Flutter Mane was really great. It is strong, fast, and had great coverage. Since it was traded from another game, it was also the only member of the team to get boosted Exp, making it grow faster than the others to the point that it was often 1-2 levels above them.

Just for fun, here’s the defensive synergy for the team:

I have two weaknesses to Electric, but no resistances. That’s not good. I also have three weaknesses to Steel, but only one resistance. Apart from that, it is pretty good. I have at least one resistance to all types except Electric.

Pictures

I took a lot of pictures while I played, might as well showcase some of them just for fun.

The start of a new adventure. What will we experience this time around?

Students, assemble!

The story unfolds… or does it? The true story turned out to be quite different from the one told on the signboards.

At the festival. Lots of people, Pokémon, food and activities, lots of fun!

Who’s this strange festival visitor? I don’t think anyone invited her.

During my battle against Kieran at the third signpost, this wild Morpeko just stood there and watched the entire battle. Really neat.

The Loyal Three! …more like the lying three. Or the Lousy Three, as their fan name has become.

I don’t really like being bossed around, but I guess you can’t stop Carmine from doing things her way.

During the fight against Titan Okidogi.

Excuse me… but this much cuteness is not allowed. Someone could die from a heart attack. Maybe that’s Ogerpon’s super-secret special move?

This person is totally correct.

Carmine learned an important lesson about life…

While Kieran got a lot of determination to grow stronger.

Now that would be cool to see.

I don’t think Poliwhirl is cute, but to each their own.

The Bloodmoon Beast appears!

She’s totally right.

Kitakami Dex complete!

National Dex complete… again. Until the Indigo Disk, at least.

This is not the end, but rather the prologue to another new adventure. What will it bring?

Moving on

I have completed the stories of the Teal Mask and the Kitakami Pokédex, but I am not quite done yet. There are still some things I want to do, which are the following:

- Explore some areas of Oni Mountain that I haven’t been to yet (I have explored everywhere else)
- Beat all members of the Ogre Clan
- Complete the Glitterati quest
- Donate enough money to rebuild the shrine at Loyalty Plaza (if I can afford it)
- Try to beat all levels on Ogre Outstin'
- Train my teams a bit more

And maybe more. I think all of this will go relatively fast. Once I am done, I’ll go back to playing other Switch games until the Indigo Disk releases. I should also get back to my Battle Facility project, I have unfortunately lost interest in it (again), haven’t done a lot on it lately… hopefully I can continue with it in October.

I really like how the Teal Mask has some hints towards the Indigo Disk. It feels obvious that Kieran and Carmine will return. I hope Kieran can become a hero, and that I can battle Carmine again so I can hear her amazing battle theme! Briar also mentioned Terapagos at one point in the story, and I am very curious about what “The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero” actually refers to. Guess we’ll find out eventually.

That’s my review of the Teal Mask. To summarize, I found it very enjoyable, and I’m really looking forward to the Indigo Disk when it releases!

 

[pika pal]

In Paldea, there’s Paldean Wooper and Clodsire. But in Kitakami, there’s regular Wooper and Quagsire instead. I really like this because it showcases that they are two completely different regions.

One other detail I like on this front: If you breed a Paldean Form in Kitakami, the offspring are the non-regional form, like Tauros. It's a small touch that plays well into that story bit

 

[Coronis]

I have completed the Teal Mask. Time for a review.

I started playing on September 16th (I never planned to start on the release date), then I beat the Kitakami Mask Festival on September 20th and The Bloodmoon Beast story on September 22nd. I also completed the Kitakami Pokédex on September 27th. Not sure how long all of this took me in terms of in-game time, but I would estimate somewhere around 15-20 hours.

Decided to write a more serious and in-depth review this time as opposed to what I did for the main game. Contains spoilers, obviously.

Expectations and preparations

After playing through the main game of Violet, I found myself liking the game a lot, but it felt “incomplete” in some ways. My general impression was that there was lot of potential to expand on the game with DLC. I really enjoyed the DLC for S/S, and I was hoping they would make DLC for ScaVio as well. When the DLC was announced back in February, I got really excited!

For the first part of the DLC, I expected something similar to the Isle of Armor. New areas to explore, more Pokémon (new and old), some gameplay improvements, and more content. Looking back now, that’s exactly what we got, so that’s all great. But I’d say it was even better than I expected. I am a huge fan of the DLC for S/S, but I think the Teal Mask is way better than the Isle of Armor. Maybe even better than both the Isle of Armor and the Crown Tundra. The Teal Mask has convinced me even more that DLC is the right way forward for Pokémon when it comes to expanding on existing games.

I expected the DLC to be fun and enjoyable, which it was. I didn’t expect a masterpiece like the DLC for the Xenoblade games. I played through Future Redeemed when it was released earlier this year, and it was EPIC. The Teal Mask is not on the same level, but it got closer than I expected, which is a good thing.

Before I started playing the Teal Mask, I had planned and prepared a new team that I was going to use for it (details can be found further below). I had done the same thing for both DLCs in Sword, and since it was really fun to make new teams for the DLCs there, I decided to do the same thing here.

Since I didn’t want to be either over- or underleveled when I started on the Teal Mask, I only trained my new team to level 20 to start with (except one team member which was at level 60 when I got it). After the Teal Mask had been released, I learned that if you play through it after having beaten the main game, the levels of opponents would start at around level 60, similar to how it was for the Isle of Armor. Which meant that it was grinding time! I spent 3 days training the rest of the team to level 60, then I could finally start. It happened at the weekend, just as I had planned.

Gameplay and content

Upon arriving at Kitakami, I was a bit annoyed at how you couldn’t ride Miraidon until after entering the village. I thought about it and realized that they probably didn’t want you to “break” the DLC by exploring everywhere before you could start the story for real. And that’s understandable. But I could ride Miraidon once I had been to the village, which was great. One thing I liked about exploring this time around was that I could explore everywhere and anywhere right from the start since I already had all upgrades for Miraidon.

I noticed one thing about the controls in the game. When you jump into the water with Miraidon, there’s a bit of input delay. It also felt hard to control it in the water. At first, I thought this was something that happened only in Kitakami, but after checking the main game, it happens in Paldea as well. I don’t remember this from when I played through the main game (which was in December-January), but I guess it has always been this way. Not sure if they intentionally made it harder in order to make it more realistic, or if it just another example of bad game physics. Either way, I find it annoying.

The overall performance of the DLC is the same as in the main game. Bad and notable, but it doesn’t really bother me. It can feel a bit jarring since all other Switch games I have played have pretty much perfect performance. Recently, I have been playing Persona 5 Royal, and it flows perfectly 99% of the time. Violet is really bad in comparison. But even so, it is something I can live with because the game is just so much fun to play!

The DLC added some nice QoL improvements. I really like how you can now lock the mini-map so that it always has north pointing up instead of constantly rotating as you walk around. Another thing I really like is how the Pokédex now “saves” where you last looked instead of always going back to the beginning every single time you open it. This was something that really annoyed me in the base game, I’m so happy they fixed it with the DLC!

Exploring Kitakami was really fun. It feels big, a lot larger than the Isle of Armor. The environments were quite different as well, with a huge mountain, some fields, rivers, a forest and even a crystal pool. I’m very fond of Apple Hills for some reason. There are a lot of hills and slopes which meant that you go up and down a lot, which was even mentioned by an NPC. When I played, I decided to explore very thoroughly, I tried to find every single item and trainer. In comparison, I wasn’t nearly as thorough when I played through the main game. To this day, I still find random trainers I haven’t battled or items I haven’t picked up when I am in Paldea. Though I never planned to explore Paldea to 100%, and since I didn’t have all the upgrades for Miraidon right from the start, I couldn’t explore everywhere either.

The negative about exploring Kitakami was that there are many tiny Pokémon on the overworld, some are even hidden in the grass. I often got into accidental battles against them. This led to me using the Let’s Go feature a lot, even if I should have used it even more than I did. I love encountering wild Pokémon on the overworld, but I wish there was some way to avoid them completely, like using Repels or something with a similar function.

I like how there are many warp points (fly spots) on the map, it made it even easier to explore. I just wish there was one in the northeast part of the map, somewhere in the Timeless Woods. That would make it a lot easier to get there. But it still works.

Kitakami is mostly open, just like Paldea. The beginning (before you enter the village for the first time) is the only part that is locked, but once you are done with that, you can go wherever you want. After playing through the Teal Mask, I have realized that non-linearity (Kanto/Johto) doesn’t really work for Pokémon, but an open world (Paldea and Kitakami, Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra to an extent) works. Even if it should be both pointless and harmful in theory, it still works out very well in practice. Though my personal preference is still a linear open world like Hisui.

I really like how there are regular trainers in Kitakami. This was something I missed a lot in the Isle of Armor and the Crown Tundra, and the regular wild area in S/S for that matter. I’m glad to see that they have been included this time around. I hope they will exist in the Indigo Disk too. I noticed that some trainers use regional variants of Pokémon, I recall meeting one trainer who used an Alolan Sandshrew. That was pretty cool.

I liked encountering wild Pokémon that weren’t in the main Paldea dex, I caught all of the ones I met as I was planning to complete the Pokédex later on, might as well start early. I also like the high levels of the wild Pokémon. I have seen some wild Pokémon in their late 60s, some in their mid-70s, there was even a Terastal Lampent at level 86! This is amazing as it will make for some great training spots. I also like how the Exp. Charm is back, it will make all future training even easier.

I saw that new TMs have been added with the DLC, and that’s cool. I scrolled through the list but there was nothing that really caught my eye, feels like most of the useful moves from an in-game perspective already existed as TMs in the base game. Though I guess many of the new TMs will make an impact on the competitive scene, notably the return of some old fan favorites like Scald, Knock Off and Toxic.

The music is great as usual. My favorite track is Carmine’s battle theme.

It somehow reminds me of the music in the Shantae games. Not sure if it is because of the melody, the instruments or something else. Either way, I like it a lot.

I have tried the Ogre Outstin' minigame a little and I think it is pretty fun. I have beaten it on Easy, but I will try to beat it on Normal and Hard as well. I like the Mochi-items which raise or remove EVs from a Pokémon, though I kind of wish the Fresh-Start Mochi could be obtained through other means than by beating the minigame. But at least getting it this way is better than nothing.

The Teal Mask have several minor sidequests, and I think they seem pretty fun. I have started on most of them. I avoided the Ogre Clan at first since they seemed strong (black text boxes), then I tried fighting one of them but it was tough as I was seriously underleveled (68-70 against 75-77). I later beat two more of them but I still have the rest left. I have also started on the Glitterati quest, and donating money at Kitakami Hall to restore the shrine at Loyalty Plaza. I’ll try to get it all done eventually.

I met Jacq and got a random egg from him, which was unexpected. Mine hatched into a Turtwig. It seems like you get one of the Sinnoh starters at random, which is nice. But the best thing about this is that all of the Sinnoh starters have been added to the game! I decided to send over the ones I used on my teams in L:A now that I finally could. As well as my Yanmega and Shaymin, since they have been added as well. The only one who is still dexited now is Roserade. I hope it will return in the Indigo Disk. According to the leaks/datamines, it is not coming back. Which is a shame. I really hate dexit. I hope I can send it over to some future game where it is available, so it won’t have to stay in Hisui forever.

The Kitakami Pokédex features 200 Pokémon, and I think that’s a good number for a DLC dex. It is on around the same level as the Isle of Armor and the Crown Tundra, which is good. I like how around half of the Pokémon in the Kitakami dex were new, while the other half can be found in Paldea, it is a good balance. Completing it went pretty quickly, but it was a lot of fun!

Regarding the difficulty of the DLC, I think it was fine. Like the norm for Pokémon games, it was mostly balanced and fair. There were some battles I found a bit difficult, which is good. The Loyal Three were a bit harder than expected, I didn’t think their battles would be similar to the Titan battles in the main game. I won against them, but not without issues. I also had some trouble during the final battles against Kieran and Carmine, they weren’t super tough, but I was a little underleveled and they beat some of my Pokémon during the battles.

The hardest battle was definitely against Ogerpon. I think I was underleveled, and I was not prepared to fight it four times in a row! I didn’t know its type(s) either, it was also faster than most of my team and managed to KO many of them before they could move. I had to use 3 Max Revives to win, and even so, I gambled hard in the end. If Ogerpon had beaten my Cetitan once more time, I would have lost.

I almost never used Terastal during any of the battles here. The reasons being that I often forgot about it, and I rarely needed it in order to win.

Some minor observations I made. When using fly in Paldea, the taxi is carried by Squawkabilly. In Kitakami, it is carried by Noctowl. And when you fly with the plane between the two areas, a Dragonite can be seen flying alongside it! I love small details like this.

I noticed that when Morpeko changes form, there’s a small animation showing it eating or getting hangry. I don’t think was in S/S. Never used a Morpeko there myself, but I never saw it for the ones I faced in battle (like Marnie’s). Either way, that’s another neat little detail. I wonder if the same thing happens for Cramorant? Maybe I should give it a try with the Cramorant I imported from Sword…

I really like the images which show the Pokémon in the Pokédex. One thing I noticed here is that there’s a new image for all of the Pokémon that existed in the main Paldea dex. That’s really amazing. I am definitely going to go through the entire dex and look at all of them.

In Paldea, there’s Paldean Wooper and Clodsire. But in Kitakami, there’s regular Wooper and Quagsire instead. I really like this because it showcases that they are two completely different regions.

The nurse at the Pokémon Center in Kitakami has a different design compared to the nurses in Paldea. And she has a different personality as well. She seems to be a bit more carefree as she’s always looking at her phone when she’s not healing your Pokémon. That’s another cool little detail.

After playing through the Teal Mask, I am starting to like ScaVio and Gen 9 better than S/S and Gen 8, all thanks to this DLC. Though I still like S/S a lot too. And I might be more positive towards Violet at the moment since I have played it recently, while it has been a few months since I last played Sword, and over a year since I last played it seriously. I have planned to go back to it once more later this year in order to complete some thing I never did, will see what my opinion of it will be after that. But from the looks of things right now, there’s a big chance Violet will come out on top once the Indigo Disk has been released.

Pokémon

The DLC brought back several old Pokémon, and added some new ones. Let’s talk about them.

Many of my old favorites are back! Snorlax, Ludicolo, Milotic, the Sinnoh starters, Yanmega, Mamoswine, Shaymin, Conkeldurr, Leavanny, Chandelure, Mienshao, Mandibuzz, Trevenant, Ribombee, Kommo-o and Morpeko. And some of my favorite regional variants as well, Alolan Ninetales/Sandslash/Golem and Galarian Weezing.

I want to talk about the new Pokémon a bit, so have some short words on them:

Dipplin
I never expected Applin to get a third evolution. A Grass/Dragon-type, just like the rest of the family. Unlike Flapple and Appletun, Dipplin looks very similar to Applin itself. And that’s okay. Dipplin seems to be a candy apple, while Appletun is an apple pie, Flapple is a broken apple, and Applin is just a regular apple. Apples apples apples! All with a dragon inside, of course. Or two for Dipplin.

Stat-wise, Dipplin is slow but otherwise balanced. Supersweet Syrup is a very cool signature Ability, an Intimidate which lowers Evasion instead of Attack! It’s signature move Syrup Bomb lowers the opponent’s Speed, not sure how useful that is since Dipplin is quite slow. I also learned that Eviolite works on Dipplin for some reason, which seems to suggest that it will get another evolution in the Indigo Disk? Cool but even more unexpected than Dipplin itself.

Poltchageist and Sinistcha
Convergent species of the Sinistea line. Totally unexpected just like Dipplin, but it’s all good. Just like the Sinistea line, they have two forms which are very difficult to tell apart, and one of them is extremely rare while the other is common. In some ways, they feel like the opposite of the Sinistea line, with Poltchageist being the first stage and Sinistcha the evolution.

I’m honestly pretty tired of Grass/Ghost as a typing, it feels like there have been a lot of those Pokémon ever since it was first introduced in Gen 6. Stat-wise, Sinistcha seems to be a special attacker with average speed. Unlike Polteageist, it doesn’t get Shell Smash, which is unfortunate. Hospitality might be a good Ability for Double battles, while Heatproof is pretty cool for Single (and in general), removing its weakness to Fire. Matcha Gotcha seems like a fun signature move, draining HP and having a burn chance, nice. Pretty cool Pokémon on the whole.

The Loyal Three
The villains in disguise. They all share a Poison-type, the Ability Toxic Chain, and they are all male. They also seem to wear the same kid of purple attachment, I guess this is the “Toxic Chain”?
Okidogi is a dog, but it looks more like a bear/dog/wolf hybrid or something. Pretty cool, at least as long as it doesn’t have its tongue out. A Poison/Fighting-type with high Attack and okay Speed, it seems to have a solid movepool too. I can see it being a good Physical attacker.
Munkidori is a monkey, and I while I’m not the biggest fan of monkeys, I think it has a fine design. It is a Poison/Psychic and its stat spread seems suitable for a fast Special attacker, which makes it my favorite of the three in terms of stats.
Fezandipiti is a bird, seemingly a pheasant. It has a quite neat design. Poison/Fairy, having my favorite type means I might use it on my next team, but that remains to be seen. Its stats are a bit all over the place, with the highest being Sp.def. Unlike the others, it seems to be more oriented towards defense/stall/support rather than offense.

Not sure what else to say, but I like the Loyal Three.

Ogerpon
After seeing the art for Ogerpon, it was obvious that something was hiding behind the mask, and I was wondering what it would look like. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t prepared for this. It is so adorable! Easily one of the top 10 cutest Pokémon ever. Maybe even top 5. I didn’t expect it to be female, I thought it would be genderless. Either way, Ogerpon is easily my favorite of all the new Pokémon/forms from the Teal Mask.

It starts out as a Grass-type, but it can gain an additional type depending on which mask it wears. Its Ability also changes depending on the mask, and I like how it has a unique method of Terastal, allowing it to change into a different type depending on its mask. Plus it gains a different stat boost depending on which type it changes too. The only negative is that it is locked into certain Tera types. Ivy Cudgel is a cool signature move. Its stats seem geared towards a fast Physical attacker, and I think it will be great. I will definitely use Ogerpon on a future legendary team which I’m planning to make after playing through the Indigo Disk.

Bloodmoon Ursaluna
I wasn’t expecting Ursaluna to get a new form. Not to mention a really brutal form like this! But it’s really cool. Same typing as the regular bear, but it has changed into a powerful Special attacker. Blood Moon is a Special Normal-type version of Gigaton Hammer, which is brutal. Mind's Eye seems like an amazing Ability, Ghost-types aren’t safe from the wrath of this bear! I am already using regular Ursaluna on one of my imported teams from L:A, so I probably won’t use this form, but I can’t say for sure yet.

Overall, I am a big fan of the new Pokémon and forms. They are awesome as always.

Story and characters

I want to talk a bit more in-depth about the story this time instead of just saying “I like it.” I had spoiled myself on some things before I started playing, but nothing that ruined my experience.

There are two stories this time around. I played through them one at a time, starting with the Mask Festival and then the Bloodmoon Beast afterwards. Let’s go over them one at a time.

Kitakami Mask Festival

I like the concept of going on a school trip, it feels like a good way to introduce a new area outside of Paldea. I was surprised that they sent three unnamed students to go with you instead of going with some known and named characters, but it’s somewhat paradoxically fine since these new students didn’t play any major role in the story. My guess is that they wanted to focus on the new characters for the DLC and not use any notable recurring characters from the main story.

I like how there’s only one “main” story to follow here, instead of three like in the main game. Having just one story is more suitable for the DLC. It also felt like you had to do everything in a set order instead of being able to do things however you wanted. But I actually prefer having a set order since it means you will always know where to go next, and there’s less of a risk of being over- or underleveled.

I liked the overall story of the school trip, the festival and Ogerpon. The story is first revealed on the signboards, but then it turns out that it was all lies, and the real story is the complete opposite of what the signboards told you! That was a great twist, I didn’t see it coming at all. Before I started playing, I was sure that Ogerpon would be the villain.

One recurring theme in the story is trust and judgment. At the start, the NPCs were rather hostile towards strangers. The most notable being Carmine who had a very negative attitude towards the player and the other students. The same thing happens in Ogerpon’s backstory, the villagers of the past were afraid of Ogerpon and chased it out of the village. The moral of the story is that you shouldn’t act on your prejudices and judge people (or Pokémon) by their appearance or heritage, but rather by who they actually are. That was not a subject I expected to see in this story, but I think it worked very well.

Kieran and Carmine were great characters. Kieran was mostly shy and timid, while Carmine was way more assertive and bossy. I like how both of them changed during the story. Carmine starts out as aggressive towards the player, but gets nicer as the story goes on, while Kieran is the opposite. He starts out as nice but grows colder as the story continues.

Their relation as siblings was interesting. Carmine obviously wanted to protect Kieran from danger, but she didn’t always do it in the right way. I think she was a bit too harsh towards him at times, and I can understand that she wanted to protect him by not telling him the truth about Ogerpon, but I think that might have been the wrong decision in the end. I wasn’t happy about how you were forced to lie to Kieran about Ogerpon. The boy just wanted to meet Ogerpon but didn’t get to do so until later… too late, even.

I felt sorry for Kieran on multiple occasions, especially at the end. The player and Carmine apologized to him, but he still took it pretty hard. I think he was the one who really deserved to be with Ogerpon, not the player. At least Kieran got some serious determination to get stronger, and I hope he will be stronger when we see him in the Indigo Disk. I have seen some theories about how he might become a villain or evil team leader (I hope not) or a Champion (I really hope so).

The Loyal Three were interesting. I liked the small scenes where you could see them talk with each other, making new (evil) plans to deceive people and Pokémon. They felt really evil and manipulative. I saw someone say that they are the first Pokémon in the games which are evil without any trainer influence, which is definitely a first!

One thing I noticed was that apart from Jacq, no other major characters from the main game appeared. Compare this to the Isle of Armor where Hop appears during the post-game parts of it, or the Crown Tundra where Sonia appears regarding the Swords of Justice story. I guess this is because they didn’t want the characters from the main story to interfere with the Kitakami story. If they had sent Nemona, Penny and Arven to go with you instead of the three nameless students, it might have ended up being conflicting with the main story. It might also have something to do with the fact that you need to beat both the main story and this story before doing the Indigo Disk, as that suggests some of the important characters from the main story will appear there as well. I surely hope so.

I’m not sure if I managed to express my thoughts in a good way, but to summarize, I enjoyed this story a lot.

The Bloodmoon Beast

The other story, which was considerably shorter. I started on it right after beating the Mask Festival… because I hadn’t registered 150 Pokémon in the Kitakami dex until that point.

I like how this story had many hints to Hisui, with Perrin being an obvious descendant from Adaman, she mentions that she is from Sinnoh, she has a Hisuian Growlithe and she mentions Hisui several times. I also like how music from the Sinnoh games and L:A plays at several points during this story.

I was surprised to see that the Pokémon Perrin was looking for was an Ursaluna (yet another Hisui reference). Prior to the DLC release, I saw some speculation about how the Pokémon she was looking for might be Shaymin (since it is a Sinnoh Pokémon and was confirmed to be added with the DLC), so I was fully sold on that theory before I learned the truth.

The story was short but enjoyable. I played through it quite quickly. The camera survey was really fun, and it made me realize how little I have actually used the camera function in the game. I mostly just use the screenshot button on my Switch instead. Having a photographer in the game was a good way to remind me that the camera exists, maybe that will make me use it more in the future. Perrin wasn’t quite as interesting as Kieran and Carmine, but I still like her. She got her passion for photography back in the end, and that’s great!

Overall, another fun little story.

In the end, I enjoyed both DLC stories, they were great just like the main game story and have further cemented ScaVio as the Pokémon games with the best story in the series (in my opinion).

New team

Long before the DLC was even announced, I decided that if there would be DLC for ScaVio, I would make new teams for it, just like I did for the DLCs in Sword. Since it became reality, I decided to make a new team for the Teal Mask, and I will make another one for the Indigo Disk later on. There are also a lot of Gen 9 Pokémon I want to use. Plus, it is more fun this way! Either way, I wanted to showcase the team I made for the Teal Mask and I decided to do it here instead of in the in-game team thread.

Regarding the team members, I made sure they all had good movesets, hold items, Abilities and Natures (or got Minted). I didn’t bother with EVs (though I gave them some vitamins), IVs/Hyper Training, or specific Tera Types, they had one of their STAB types just like the members of my in-game team. I wanted to focus solely on Gen 9 Pokémon, I considered new forms as well but none of them ended up on the team. I also wanted to try to use types that weren’t represented on my in-game team. And unlike my in-game team, I decided to avoid using any overlapping types this time around. I also decided to have a good balance between Physical and Special as opposed to my all-Physical in-game team.

I named the team the Magical Mystery Masked Marauders. I wanted a cool name instead of just going with “Teal Mask team” or something along those lines.

Here’s a preview:

And here are the full details:

Quaquaval (F) @ Muscle Band
Ability: Moxie
Tera type: Water
Nature: Lonely (Minted to Adamant)
- Aqua Step
- Close Combat
- Ice Spinner
- Aqua Jet

My second favorite Paldea starter, it was an obvious first member of the team. It is also a Water-type, which is nice as I didn’t use one on my in-game team. I like this dancing duck a lot.

Aqua Step was the Water move I went with, it is a cool signature move which has good enough base power and boosts Speed, which is nice since Quaquaval isn’t the fastest. Other moves like Liquidation and Wave Crash are stronger, but some signature moves are just too cool to pass up on. Close Combat for secondary STAB, it hits really hard. Ice Spinner for coverage, it is helpful against Grass- and Dragon-types. Aqua Jet for priority, it could be used to beat targets at low HP.

There are a few other alternatives. I was considering Swords Dance to boost, but I felt that Moxie would probably be enough. Another idea I had was U-Turn, but I realized that switching out wouldn’t work well together with Moxie and Aqua Step, so I scrapped it as well.

Moxie is the superior Ability since it boosts Attack after beating an enemy. When combined with Aqua Step, Quaquaval can rack up boosts and become really powerful. It works best as a Physical attacker, so I minted it to Adamant to make it hit hard. I gave it a Muscle Band to boost the power of its moves even further.

Overall, Quaquaval was really good. It was useful in many situations thanks to its high Attack and solid coverage, it could also pull off a sweep if it managed to gather enough boosts.

Espathra (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Speed Boost
Tera type: Psychic
Nature: Modest
- Stored Power
- Dazzling Gleam
- Shadow Ball
- Calm Mind

The second bird of the team is one I really wanted to use somewhere, but it didn’t end up either on my in-game or mid-game team. I decided to use it here instead. It is also a Psychic-type, which is great as I hadn’t used one anywhere before on Violet.

Stored Power is the main STAB move, it starts out weak but becomes stronger the more I boost. I was going to use Lumina Crash at first since it is a really cool signature move, but then I managed to get a Speed Boost Flittle through the GTS, which changed my mind. With Calm Mind and Speed Boost, it only takes one turn for Stored Power to reach a base power of 80, and it will only keep getting stronger from there. The only negative is that this means that it pretty much needs a boost in order to hit hard. But it was too awesome to resist, so I went with it.

Dazzling Gleam and Shadow Ball for coverage, they help against Dark-, Ghost- and opposing Psychic-types. Calm Mind since it needs to boost. It has a double purpose here, it raises Espathra’s Sp.att and increases the power of Stored Power at the same time, making it hit even harder!

Psychic and Psyshock are other alternatives for STAB, as well as Lumina Crash which I mentioned. I was considering U-Turn here as well, but just as for Quaquaval, it felt like a bad idea with Speed Boost since it would just lose all of its boosts upon switching out.

Speed Boost is the Ability of choice (and I’m happy I managed to get one), it makes Espathra super-fast and powers up Stored Power even further. A Modest Nature is the best option since it makes Espathra hit even harder, it doesn’t need Timid as Speed Boost makes it fast enough as time goes on. I gave it a Leftovers to hold since it will almost always need to use Calm Mind, meaning it will often take a hit before it can attack. After taking damage, Leftovers can help with recovering HP.

Overall, Espathra was great. If it managed to set up and boost, it could sweep opposing teams. That said, it is rather frail and not super-fast before a Speed Boost, so it often needed a good first matchup in order to win. But if it got that, it won.

Glimmora (M) @ Wise Glasses
Ability: Toxic Debris
Tera type: Rock
Nature: Lax (Minted to Modest)
- Power Gem
- Sludge Wave
- Earth Power
- Spiky Shield

Rock was another type I hadn’t used on any previous team on Violet. Out of the new ones that existed, Glimmora seemed to be the coolest one. It is similar to Nihilego since they are both Special attacking Rock/Poison-types.

Power Gem and Sludge Wave are the obvious STAB moves, Earth Power for coverage. In the last slot, I went Spiky Shield for protection. There are a few other alternatives like Dazzling Gleam, Flash Cannon and Energy Ball, but I didn’t use either of them.

Toxic Debris is Glimmora’s only non-hidden Ability. I am not a fan of entry hazards, but at least it does something, as opposed to Corrosion. I minted it to Modest since it is a Special attacker. I gave it the Wise Glasses to power up its moves a bit.

Overall, Glimmora was pretty good. It could hit hard with its moves, Toxic Debris was useful on a few occasions as well. That said, it was a bit slow and frail. Still solid though.

Bombirdier (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Rocky Payload
Tera type: Flying
Nature: Bold (Minted to Adamant)
- Brave Bird
- Knock Off
- Drill Run
- Rock Slide

Third bird of the team. I wanted to use a Flying-type somewhere. I had previously used Squawkabilly as a reserve member during my in-game playthrough, but since I only used it in one battle, it didn’t really count. It was time to use a Flying-type for real. But which one? I had used Kilowattrel on my mid-game team, and I couldn’t use Flamigo since I already had a Fighting-type in Quaquaval. That left Bombirdier as the only option. Which I’m fine with since it is a cool stork.

Brave Bird for Flying STAB, it hits hard but causes recoil. Knock Off for secondary STAB, it is the best option since Bombirdier doesn’t get Crunch or Night Slash, and Sucker Punch feels a bit unreliable. It gets Lash Out through a new TM in the DLC, but I decided to stick with Knock Off. Drill Run and Rock Slide for coverage, the latter gets a boost from Rocky Payload… which was the Ability I went with since I managed to get a HA Bombirdier from the GTS. I considered some other options like Hone Claws, U-Turn and Roost, but I made it an all-out attacker in the end.

I minted it to Adamant so it could hit harder, but Jolly might have been better since I often found Bombirdier to be quite slow. I gave it a Leftovers to hold since it would take recoil damage from Brave Bird and needed some way to recover. I considered other alternatives like Shell Bell or a Berry like Sitrus, but I ultimately decided that a classic Leftovers was the way to go. Wide Lens would also have been an alternative since Rock Slide missed a few times (as expected, and it was always annoying when it did).

Overall, Bombirdier was pretty good. It could hit hard with its moves and often tank a hit as well. That said, I noticed that it grew a lot slower than the rest of the team, it was often 1-2 levels below them. Which isn’t too strange since it is in the Slow Exp. group.

Cetitan (F) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Thick Fat
Tera type: Ice
Nature: Hardy (Minted to Adamant)
- Ice Spinner
- Earthquake
- Play Rough
- Ice Shard

Ice was another type I didn’t use on my in-game team. I ended up using Baxcalibur on my mid-game team, so that left me with Cetitan and Iron Bundle as the only choices. Since I wanted to avoid using Paradoxes unless it was absolutely necessary, I went with Cetitan.

Ice Spinner is the main STAB move. Earthquake and Play Rough for coverage, they help against Electric-, Fire- Rock-, Fighting- and Dark-types. Ice Shard for priority, it can also be used to pick off targets with low HP. I couldn’t think of any other alternatives than these four moves.

Like the other physical attackers of the team, I minted it to Adamant in order to boost its power a bit, it isn’t super-fast so Jolly wouldn’t have helped that much. Thick Fat is the superior Ability since it removes its weakness to Fire and makes it even more resistant to Ice. I gave it an Assault Vest to make it bulkier, taking advantage of its high HP. It felt like a good idea to have at least one member of the team be a bit geared towards defense since most of the team is heavy on offense.

Overall, Cetitan was great. It could hit hard with its moves, Ice Spinner in particular. It was the slowest member of the team, but also the bulkiest.

Flutter Mane @ Expert Belt
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera type: Ghost
Nature: Modest
- Shadow Ball
- Dazzling Gleam
- Power Gem
- Energy Ball

For the last member of the team, I needed a Fairy-type. But which one? There wasn’t a lot to choose from. The base game introduced 5 new fully evolved Fairy-types. I had already used Dachsbun and Tinkaton on my main game team, then I used Iron Valiant on my mid-game team. The only ones that remained were Scream Tail and Flutter Mane. And on top of everything, they were both Scarlet exclusives! The final alternative was to use something from an older generation. But I didn’t want to do that. Instead, I went with Ancient Missy. It seemed really cool. It is also a Ghost-type, which is nice as I hadn’t used one before, and Ghost is my second favorite type. I got it from the GTS for a shiny I didn’t need, then I was ready to go!

Shadow Ball and Dazzling Gleam are the obvious STAB moves, the latter will be replaced with Moonblast once it reaches level 84… talk about a late level. Power Gem and Energy Ball for coverage. It has several other alternatives like Psyshock, Mystical Fire, Dark Pulse and Thunderbolt, but I did some very serious coverage calculations, and it showed that the two moves I picked gives it the best coverage in conjunction with its STABs. It learns Calm Mind as well in order to boost, but I decided to make it an all-out attacker. Flutter is powerful enough as it is, so it didn’t really need to boost.

Protosyntesis is the only Ability it has, though it rarely came into use, the only time it happened was when I faced the Ogre Clan member with a Sunny Day-themed team. A Modest Nature is the obvious choice since it wants to hit hard, Timid isn’t necessary since it is fast enough as it is. I gave it an Expert Belt since it hits 12 out of 18 types for super effective damage.

Overall, Flutter Mane was really great. It is strong, fast, and had great coverage. Since it was traded from another game, it was also the only member of the team to get boosted Exp, making it grow faster than the others to the point that it was often 1-2 levels above them.

Just for fun, here’s the defensive synergy for the team:

I have two weaknesses to Electric, but no resistances. That’s not good. I also have three weaknesses to Steel, but only one resistance. Apart from that, it is pretty good. I have at least one resistance to all types except Electric.

Pictures

I took a lot of pictures while I played, might as well showcase some of them just for fun.

The start of a new adventure. What will we experience this time around?

Students, assemble!

The story unfolds… or does it? The true story turned out to be quite different from the one told on the signboards.

At the festival. Lots of people, Pokémon, food and activities, lots of fun!

Who’s this strange festival visitor? I don’t think anyone invited her.

During my battle against Kieran at the third signpost, this wild Morpeko just stood there and watched the entire battle. Really neat.

The Loyal Three! …more like the lying three. Or the Lousy Three, as their fan name has become.

I don’t really like being bossed around, but I guess you can’t stop Carmine from doing things her way.

During the fight against Titan Okidogi.

Excuse me… but this much cuteness is not allowed. Someone could die from a heart attack. Maybe that’s Ogerpon’s super-secret special move?

This person is totally correct.

Carmine learned an important lesson about life…

While Kieran got a lot of determination to grow stronger.

Now that would be cool to see.

I don’t think Poliwhirl is cute, but to each their own.

The Bloodmoon Beast appears!

She’s totally right.

Kitakami Dex complete!

National Dex complete… again. Until the Indigo Disk, at least.

This is not the end, but rather the prologue to another new adventure. What will it bring?

Moving on

I have completed the stories of the Teal Mask and the Kitakami Pokédex, but I am not quite done yet. There are still some things I want to do, which are the following:

- Explore some areas of Oni Mountain that I haven’t been to yet (I have explored everywhere else)
- Beat all members of the Ogre Clan
- Complete the Glitterati quest
- Donate enough money to rebuild the shrine at Loyalty Plaza (if I can afford it)
- Try to beat all levels on Ogre Outstin'
- Train my teams a bit more

And maybe more. I think all of this will go relatively fast. Once I am done, I’ll go back to playing other Switch games until the Indigo Disk releases. I should also get back to my Battle Facility project, I have unfortunately lost interest in it (again), haven’t done a lot on it lately… hopefully I can continue with it in October.

I really like how the Teal Mask has some hints towards the Indigo Disk. It feels obvious that Kieran and Carmine will return. I hope Kieran can become a hero, and that I can battle Carmine again so I can hear her amazing battle theme! Briar also mentioned Terapagos at one point in the story, and I am very curious about what “The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero” actually refers to. Guess we’ll find out eventually.

That’s my review of the Teal Mask. To summarize, I found it very enjoyable, and I’m really looking forward to the Indigo Disk when it releases!

Loved reading this and seeing how much you enjoyed the game.

I’m surprised though, I easily found the Ogre Clan the hardest battles of the DLC, and even some of the Titan Loyal 3 battles felt more difficult than Ogerpon. But I guess that all depends on team structure as well.

 

[Suspicious Derivative]

One other detail I like on this front: If you breed a Paldean Form in Kitakami, the offspring are the non-regional form, like Tauros. It's a small touch that plays well into that story bit

I had no idea that it worked for breeding as well. I tried it earlier, and got a regular Tauros! Thanks for letting me know.

Loved reading this and seeing how much you enjoyed the game.

I’m surprised though, I easily found the Ogre Clan the hardest battles of the DLC, and even some of the Titan Loyal 3 battles felt more difficult than Ogerpon. But I guess that all depends on team structure as well.

Thank you!

I haven't beaten all the Ogre Clan members yet. I beat one more today, so that makes for a total of four. While they weren't as hard as Ogerpon, they were not all easy either. The one I faced today was the one with a Rain-based team. Even if I was a bit overleveled (my team is at level 80+), it was still a bit scary to be up against Swift Swim Basculegion and Ludicolo. The trainer managed to beat my Quaquaval and damage my Bombirdier and Flutter Mane quite a lot, but I won in the end.

 

[doipy hooves]

After some initial attempts and putting it off to finish the rest of the DLC story, I finally cleared Oger Oustin' hard mode with some randoms on the game8 message board.

The number one factor to a winning run is getting a favourable map location, and you have to actually go to these locations to unlock them which is important because the best maps are not unlocked by default. The key is that a map with the 4 berry tables laid out in a square formation is much easier to play than when they are in a horizontal line like Apple Hills, because the guard can sit in the center and spam Roar to cover all sides at once without having to move, whereas the horizontal lines will inevitably cost you berries when Pokemon attack on both ends. In this run I had the Kitakami Wilds map which also has the balloon spawns pretty centralized around flat lands and some water, which gives you a good line of sight on everything to identify the next targets and you can jump between land to go for different balloons easily. On the other hand, I would say Apple Hills is the worst map to play on, because you're travelling up and downhill over long distances and you get impeded by fences constantly.

As for the strategy, the game8 comments have been naturally developing different tactics over time and today the popular copypasta was as follows:

P1 Red
P2 green
P3 blue
P4 gray
Take turns guarding.
The first one arrives guard until you see the 2nd arrives, which you then immediately took off to gather your own berries. If the 2nd sees the 3rd coming then 2nd took off.
Last 2 stage you can collect all types of berries along the way while mostly focusing on your color
Do not stay and guard camp. Leave immediately if someone closing in.
And Check first if someone coming before leaving to ensure no snorlax slipped

In the past I've also seen mentions of resetting for a proper map and variations on when to stop focusing on colours since it only really works for the first rounds when you can hold 30 of your colour at once, but overall I think this is a pretty good guideline to follow with randoms and no communication. I've seen that having one dedicated guard also works, but I think this can be more efficient if properly executed, as the changing of guards is pretty intuitive to follow and allows the old guard to start leaving as they see a player incoming to let them deposit and guard at the same time, so only one player has to be sitting at base at a given time to maximize berry gathering. This strategy also lets everyone get a fair share of the score for rewards, since the one-guard strategy will usually have the guard get much less points from balloon popping and berry placing.

There are also some general tips from experience like roaming out as far as you can between each round to start getting 30 balloons on the way back to base (ideally with everyone splitting up to cover the most ground especially in the later rounds), and also not to ram into the berry tables or else you get locked in an animation and can't deposit berries which can make a difference sometimes. I like to roam out on the far side and do my 2nd outings on the mainland nearest to the base, but I think it might also be better to have one player start there since balloons respawn after 45 seconds.

Even while you're avoiding any berry losses, there's still the requirement of gathering the right colours from random spawns, and not a lot of spare time to work with, since this run still went down to 5 seconds to spare on Stage 10. You need to collect 200 berries with 4 players, which after the initial free round of all 4 gathering 30 still leaves 80 to be gathered. Here I will show what happened in the last third of the run.

At 40 seconds, I finish my 2nd outing and arrive back to base with a full stock of berries in all varieties. There are currently 55 berries left after one player's 2nd run, but I currently have 30 to deposit so it's 25 now to be gathered among the last 2 players to return. This last part isn't too bad, but the hard part is not knowing what colours everyone else is getting and potentially having overlap, so it's a tricky balance to make. I trade off with the guard and start depositing some, but have to spam Roar before finishing.

At 17s another player drops in and I trade off the guard duty, heading to the green and blue balloons on the other side of the water in my line of sight. At this point the other players have returned as well, and they account for the rest of the berries, so my trip wasn't necessary but could have made a difference if we had any less gathered.

Overall I'm still not a big fan of the minigame being practically impossible to solo Hard and how dependent it is on RNG/map unlocks even with a full team, but the rewards are still pretty decent even for an incomplete run and there isn't a strict skill requirement to execute the plan in practice so it's not the worst to play with randoms, though there isn't any random matchmaking so it kind of leads you to play with people who are also at least invested in playing it properly. Also note that joining a Hard lobby doesn't give you the Munchlax if you don't have it unlocked on your own save already.

 

[Crimson Chris]

I have completed the Teal Mask. Time for a review.

I started playing on September 16th (I never planned to start on the release date), then I beat the Kitakami Mask Festival on September 20th and The Bloodmoon Beast story on September 22nd. I also completed the Kitakami Pokédex on September 27th. Not sure how long all of this took me in terms of in-game time, but I would estimate somewhere around 15-20 hours.

Decided to write a more serious and in-depth review this time as opposed to what I did for the main game. Contains spoilers, obviously.

Expectations and preparations

After playing through the main game of Violet, I found myself liking the game a lot, but it felt “incomplete” in some ways. My general impression was that there was lot of potential to expand on the game with DLC. I really enjoyed the DLC for S/S, and I was hoping they would make DLC for ScaVio as well. When the DLC was announced back in February, I got really excited!

For the first part of the DLC, I expected something similar to the Isle of Armor. New areas to explore, more Pokémon (new and old), some gameplay improvements, and more content. Looking back now, that’s exactly what we got, so that’s all great. But I’d say it was even better than I expected. I am a huge fan of the DLC for S/S, but I think the Teal Mask is way better than the Isle of Armor. Maybe even better than both the Isle of Armor and the Crown Tundra. The Teal Mask has convinced me even more that DLC is the right way forward for Pokémon when it comes to expanding on existing games.

I expected the DLC to be fun and enjoyable, which it was. I didn’t expect a masterpiece like the DLC for the Xenoblade games. I played through Future Redeemed when it was released earlier this year, and it was EPIC. The Teal Mask is not on the same level, but it got closer than I expected, which is a good thing.

Before I started playing the Teal Mask, I had planned and prepared a new team that I was going to use for it (details can be found further below). I had done the same thing for both DLCs in Sword, and since it was really fun to make new teams for the DLCs there, I decided to do the same thing here.

Since I didn’t want to be either over- or underleveled when I started on the Teal Mask, I only trained my new team to level 20 to start with (except one team member which was at level 60 when I got it). After the Teal Mask had been released, I learned that if you play through it after having beaten the main game, the levels of opponents would start at around level 60, similar to how it was for the Isle of Armor. Which meant that it was grinding time! I spent 3 days training the rest of the team to level 60, then I could finally start. It happened at the weekend, just as I had planned.

Gameplay and content

Upon arriving at Kitakami, I was a bit annoyed at how you couldn’t ride Miraidon until after entering the village. I thought about it and realized that they probably didn’t want you to “break” the DLC by exploring everywhere before you could start the story for real. And that’s understandable. But I could ride Miraidon once I had been to the village, which was great. One thing I liked about exploring this time around was that I could explore everywhere and anywhere right from the start since I already had all upgrades for Miraidon.

I noticed one thing about the controls in the game. When you jump into the water with Miraidon, there’s a bit of input delay. It also felt hard to control it in the water. At first, I thought this was something that happened only in Kitakami, but after checking the main game, it happens in Paldea as well. I don’t remember this from when I played through the main game (which was in December-January), but I guess it has always been this way. Not sure if they intentionally made it harder in order to make it more realistic, or if it just another example of bad game physics. Either way, I find it annoying.

The overall performance of the DLC is the same as in the main game. Bad and notable, but it doesn’t really bother me. It can feel a bit jarring since all other Switch games I have played have pretty much perfect performance. Recently, I have been playing Persona 5 Royal, and it flows perfectly 99% of the time. Violet is really bad in comparison. But even so, it is something I can live with because the game is just so much fun to play!

The DLC added some nice QoL improvements. I really like how you can now lock the mini-map so that it always has north pointing up instead of constantly rotating as you walk around. Another thing I really like is how the Pokédex now “saves” where you last looked instead of always going back to the beginning every single time you open it. This was something that really annoyed me in the base game, I’m so happy they fixed it with the DLC!

Exploring Kitakami was really fun. It feels big, a lot larger than the Isle of Armor. The environments were quite different as well, with a huge mountain, some fields, rivers, a forest and even a crystal pool. I’m very fond of Apple Hills for some reason. There are a lot of hills and slopes which meant that you go up and down a lot, which was even mentioned by an NPC. When I played, I decided to explore very thoroughly, I tried to find every single item and trainer. In comparison, I wasn’t nearly as thorough when I played through the main game. To this day, I still find random trainers I haven’t battled or items I haven’t picked up when I am in Paldea. Though I never planned to explore Paldea to 100%, and since I didn’t have all the upgrades for Miraidon right from the start, I couldn’t explore everywhere either.

The negative about exploring Kitakami was that there are many tiny Pokémon on the overworld, some are even hidden in the grass. I often got into accidental battles against them. This led to me using the Let’s Go feature a lot, even if I should have used it even more than I did. I love encountering wild Pokémon on the overworld, but I wish there was some way to avoid them completely, like using Repels or something with a similar function.

I like how there are many warp points (fly spots) on the map, it made it even easier to explore. I just wish there was one in the northeast part of the map, somewhere in the Timeless Woods. That would make it a lot easier to get there. But it still works.

Kitakami is mostly open, just like Paldea. The beginning (before you enter the village for the first time) is the only part that is locked, but once you are done with that, you can go wherever you want. After playing through the Teal Mask, I have realized that non-linearity (Kanto/Johto) doesn’t really work for Pokémon, but an open world (Paldea and Kitakami, Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra to an extent) works. Even if it should be both pointless and harmful in theory, it still works out very well in practice. Though my personal preference is still a linear open world like Hisui.

I really like how there are regular trainers in Kitakami. This was something I missed a lot in the Isle of Armor and the Crown Tundra, and the regular wild area in S/S for that matter. I’m glad to see that they have been included this time around. I hope they will exist in the Indigo Disk too. I noticed that some trainers use regional variants of Pokémon, I recall meeting one trainer who used an Alolan Sandshrew. That was pretty cool.

I liked encountering wild Pokémon that weren’t in the main Paldea dex, I caught all of the ones I met as I was planning to complete the Pokédex later on, might as well start early. I also like the high levels of the wild Pokémon. I have seen some wild Pokémon in their late 60s, some in their mid-70s, there was even a Terastal Lampent at level 86! This is amazing as it will make for some great training spots. I also like how the Exp. Charm is back, it will make all future training even easier.

I saw that new TMs have been added with the DLC, and that’s cool. I scrolled through the list but there was nothing that really caught my eye, feels like most of the useful moves from an in-game perspective already existed as TMs in the base game. Though I guess many of the new TMs will make an impact on the competitive scene, notably the return of some old fan favorites like Scald, Knock Off and Toxic.

The music is great as usual. My favorite track is Carmine’s battle theme.

It somehow reminds me of the music in the Shantae games. Not sure if it is because of the melody, the instruments or something else. Either way, I like it a lot.

I have tried the Ogre Outstin' minigame a little and I think it is pretty fun. I have beaten it on Easy, but I will try to beat it on Normal and Hard as well. I like the Mochi-items which raise or remove EVs from a Pokémon, though I kind of wish the Fresh-Start Mochi could be obtained through other means than by beating the minigame. But at least getting it this way is better than nothing.

The Teal Mask have several minor sidequests, and I think they seem pretty fun. I have started on most of them. I avoided the Ogre Clan at first since they seemed strong (black text boxes), then I tried fighting one of them but it was tough as I was seriously underleveled (68-70 against 75-77). I later beat two more of them but I still have the rest left. I have also started on the Glitterati quest, and donating money at Kitakami Hall to restore the shrine at Loyalty Plaza. I’ll try to get it all done eventually.

I met Jacq and got a random egg from him, which was unexpected. Mine hatched into a Turtwig. It seems like you get one of the Sinnoh starters at random, which is nice. But the best thing about this is that all of the Sinnoh starters have been added to the game! I decided to send over the ones I used on my teams in L:A now that I finally could. As well as my Yanmega and Shaymin, since they have been added as well. The only one who is still dexited now is Roserade. I hope it will return in the Indigo Disk. According to the leaks/datamines, it is not coming back. Which is a shame. I really hate dexit. I hope I can send it over to some future game where it is available, so it won’t have to stay in Hisui forever.

The Kitakami Pokédex features 200 Pokémon, and I think that’s a good number for a DLC dex. It is on around the same level as the Isle of Armor and the Crown Tundra, which is good. I like how around half of the Pokémon in the Kitakami dex were new, while the other half can be found in Paldea, it is a good balance. Completing it went pretty quickly, but it was a lot of fun!

Regarding the difficulty of the DLC, I think it was fine. Like the norm for Pokémon games, it was mostly balanced and fair. There were some battles I found a bit difficult, which is good. The Loyal Three were a bit harder than expected, I didn’t think their battles would be similar to the Titan battles in the main game. I won against them, but not without issues. I also had some trouble during the final battles against Kieran and Carmine, they weren’t super tough, but I was a little underleveled and they beat some of my Pokémon during the battles.

The hardest battle was definitely against Ogerpon. I think I was underleveled, and I was not prepared to fight it four times in a row! I didn’t know its type(s) either, it was also faster than most of my team and managed to KO many of them before they could move. I had to use 3 Max Revives to win, and even so, I gambled hard in the end. If Ogerpon had beaten my Cetitan once more time, I would have lost.

I almost never used Terastal during any of the battles here. The reasons being that I often forgot about it, and I rarely needed it in order to win.

Some minor observations I made. When using fly in Paldea, the taxi is carried by Squawkabilly. In Kitakami, it is carried by Noctowl. And when you fly with the plane between the two areas, a Dragonite can be seen flying alongside it! I love small details like this.

I noticed that when Morpeko changes form, there’s a small animation showing it eating or getting hangry. I don’t think was in S/S. Never used a Morpeko there myself, but I never saw it for the ones I faced in battle (like Marnie’s). Either way, that’s another neat little detail. I wonder if the same thing happens for Cramorant? Maybe I should give it a try with the Cramorant I imported from Sword…

I really like the images which show the Pokémon in the Pokédex. One thing I noticed here is that there’s a new image for all of the Pokémon that existed in the main Paldea dex. That’s really amazing. I am definitely going to go through the entire dex and look at all of them.

In Paldea, there’s Paldean Wooper and Clodsire. But in Kitakami, there’s regular Wooper and Quagsire instead. I really like this because it showcases that they are two completely different regions.

The nurse at the Pokémon Center in Kitakami has a different design compared to the nurses in Paldea. And she has a different personality as well. She seems to be a bit more carefree as she’s always looking at her phone when she’s not healing your Pokémon. That’s another cool little detail.

After playing through the Teal Mask, I am starting to like ScaVio and Gen 9 better than S/S and Gen 8, all thanks to this DLC. Though I still like S/S a lot too. And I might be more positive towards Violet at the moment since I have played it recently, while it has been a few months since I last played Sword, and over a year since I last played it seriously. I have planned to go back to it once more later this year in order to complete some thing I never did, will see what my opinion of it will be after that. But from the looks of things right now, there’s a big chance Violet will come out on top once the Indigo Disk has been released.

Pokémon

The DLC brought back several old Pokémon, and added some new ones. Let’s talk about them.

Many of my old favorites are back! Snorlax, Ludicolo, Milotic, the Sinnoh starters, Yanmega, Mamoswine, Shaymin, Conkeldurr, Leavanny, Chandelure, Mienshao, Mandibuzz, Trevenant, Ribombee, Kommo-o and Morpeko. And some of my favorite regional variants as well, Alolan Ninetales/Sandslash/Golem and Galarian Weezing.

I want to talk about the new Pokémon a bit, so have some short words on them:

Dipplin
I never expected Applin to get a third evolution. A Grass/Dragon-type, just like the rest of the family. Unlike Flapple and Appletun, Dipplin looks very similar to Applin itself. And that’s okay. Dipplin seems to be a candy apple, while Appletun is an apple pie, Flapple is a broken apple, and Applin is just a regular apple. Apples apples apples! All with a dragon inside, of course. Or two for Dipplin.

Stat-wise, Dipplin is slow but otherwise balanced. Supersweet Syrup is a very cool signature Ability, an Intimidate which lowers Evasion instead of Attack! It’s signature move Syrup Bomb lowers the opponent’s Speed, not sure how useful that is since Dipplin is quite slow. I also learned that Eviolite works on Dipplin for some reason, which seems to suggest that it will get another evolution in the Indigo Disk? Cool but even more unexpected than Dipplin itself.

Poltchageist and Sinistcha
Convergent species of the Sinistea line. Totally unexpected just like Dipplin, but it’s all good. Just like the Sinistea line, they have two forms which are very difficult to tell apart, and one of them is extremely rare while the other is common. In some ways, they feel like the opposite of the Sinistea line, with Poltchageist being the first stage and Sinistcha the evolution.

I’m honestly pretty tired of Grass/Ghost as a typing, it feels like there have been a lot of those Pokémon ever since it was first introduced in Gen 6. Stat-wise, Sinistcha seems to be a special attacker with average speed. Unlike Polteageist, it doesn’t get Shell Smash, which is unfortunate. Hospitality might be a good Ability for Double battles, while Heatproof is pretty cool for Single (and in general), removing its weakness to Fire. Matcha Gotcha seems like a fun signature move, draining HP and having a burn chance, nice. Pretty cool Pokémon on the whole.

The Loyal Three
The villains in disguise. They all share a Poison-type, the Ability Toxic Chain, and they are all male. They also seem to wear the same kid of purple attachment, I guess this is the “Toxic Chain”?
Okidogi is a dog, but it looks more like a bear/dog/wolf hybrid or something. Pretty cool, at least as long as it doesn’t have its tongue out. A Poison/Fighting-type with high Attack and okay Speed, it seems to have a solid movepool too. I can see it being a good Physical attacker.
Munkidori is a monkey, and I while I’m not the biggest fan of monkeys, I think it has a fine design. It is a Poison/Psychic and its stat spread seems suitable for a fast Special attacker, which makes it my favorite of the three in terms of stats.
Fezandipiti is a bird, seemingly a pheasant. It has a quite neat design. Poison/Fairy, having my favorite type means I might use it on my next team, but that remains to be seen. Its stats are a bit all over the place, with the highest being Sp.def. Unlike the others, it seems to be more oriented towards defense/stall/support rather than offense.

Not sure what else to say, but I like the Loyal Three.

Ogerpon
After seeing the art for Ogerpon, it was obvious that something was hiding behind the mask, and I was wondering what it would look like. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t prepared for this. It is so adorable! Easily one of the top 10 cutest Pokémon ever. Maybe even top 5. I didn’t expect it to be female, I thought it would be genderless. Either way, Ogerpon is easily my favorite of all the new Pokémon/forms from the Teal Mask.

It starts out as a Grass-type, but it can gain an additional type depending on which mask it wears. Its Ability also changes depending on the mask, and I like how it has a unique method of Terastal, allowing it to change into a different type depending on its mask. Plus it gains a different stat boost depending on which type it changes too. The only negative is that it is locked into certain Tera types. Ivy Cudgel is a cool signature move. Its stats seem geared towards a fast Physical attacker, and I think it will be great. I will definitely use Ogerpon on a future legendary team which I’m planning to make after playing through the Indigo Disk.

Bloodmoon Ursaluna
I wasn’t expecting Ursaluna to get a new form. Not to mention a really brutal form like this! But it’s really cool. Same typing as the regular bear, but it has changed into a powerful Special attacker. Blood Moon is a Special Normal-type version of Gigaton Hammer, which is brutal. Mind's Eye seems like an amazing Ability, Ghost-types aren’t safe from the wrath of this bear! I am already using regular Ursaluna on one of my imported teams from L:A, so I probably won’t use this form, but I can’t say for sure yet.

Overall, I am a big fan of the new Pokémon and forms. They are awesome as always.

Story and characters

I want to talk a bit more in-depth about the story this time instead of just saying “I like it.” I had spoiled myself on some things before I started playing, but nothing that ruined my experience.

There are two stories this time around. I played through them one at a time, starting with the Mask Festival and then the Bloodmoon Beast afterwards. Let’s go over them one at a time.

Kitakami Mask Festival

I like the concept of going on a school trip, it feels like a good way to introduce a new area outside of Paldea. I was surprised that they sent three unnamed students to go with you instead of going with some known and named characters, but it’s somewhat paradoxically fine since these new students didn’t play any major role in the story. My guess is that they wanted to focus on the new characters for the DLC and not use any notable recurring characters from the main story.

I like how there’s only one “main” story to follow here, instead of three like in the main game. Having just one story is more suitable for the DLC. It also felt like you had to do everything in a set order instead of being able to do things however you wanted. But I actually prefer having a set order since it means you will always know where to go next, and there’s less of a risk of being over- or underleveled.

I liked the overall story of the school trip, the festival and Ogerpon. The story is first revealed on the signboards, but then it turns out that it was all lies, and the real story is the complete opposite of what the signboards told you! That was a great twist, I didn’t see it coming at all. Before I started playing, I was sure that Ogerpon would be the villain.

One recurring theme in the story is trust and judgment. At the start, the NPCs were rather hostile towards strangers. The most notable being Carmine who had a very negative attitude towards the player and the other students. The same thing happens in Ogerpon’s backstory, the villagers of the past were afraid of Ogerpon and chased it out of the village. The moral of the story is that you shouldn’t act on your prejudices and judge people (or Pokémon) by their appearance or heritage, but rather by who they actually are. That was not a subject I expected to see in this story, but I think it worked very well.

Kieran and Carmine were great characters. Kieran was mostly shy and timid, while Carmine was way more assertive and bossy. I like how both of them changed during the story. Carmine starts out as aggressive towards the player, but gets nicer as the story goes on, while Kieran is the opposite. He starts out as nice but grows colder as the story continues.

Their relation as siblings was interesting. Carmine obviously wanted to protect Kieran from danger, but she didn’t always do it in the right way. I think she was a bit too harsh towards him at times, and I can understand that she wanted to protect him by not telling him the truth about Ogerpon, but I think that might have been the wrong decision in the end. I wasn’t happy about how you were forced to lie to Kieran about Ogerpon. The boy just wanted to meet Ogerpon but didn’t get to do so until later… too late, even.

I felt sorry for Kieran on multiple occasions, especially at the end. The player and Carmine apologized to him, but he still took it pretty hard. I think he was the one who really deserved to be with Ogerpon, not the player. At least Kieran got some serious determination to get stronger, and I hope he will be stronger when we see him in the Indigo Disk. I have seen some theories about how he might become a villain or evil team leader (I hope not) or a Champion (I really hope so).

The Loyal Three were interesting. I liked the small scenes where you could see them talk with each other, making new (evil) plans to deceive people and Pokémon. They felt really evil and manipulative. I saw someone say that they are the first Pokémon in the games which are evil without any trainer influence, which is definitely a first!

One thing I noticed was that apart from Jacq, no other major characters from the main game appeared. Compare this to the Isle of Armor where Hop appears during the post-game parts of it, or the Crown Tundra where Sonia appears regarding the Swords of Justice story. I guess this is because they didn’t want the characters from the main story to interfere with the Kitakami story. If they had sent Nemona, Penny and Arven to go with you instead of the three nameless students, it might have ended up being conflicting with the main story. It might also have something to do with the fact that you need to beat both the main story and this story before doing the Indigo Disk, as that suggests some of the important characters from the main story will appear there as well. I surely hope so.

I’m not sure if I managed to express my thoughts in a good way, but to summarize, I enjoyed this story a lot.

The Bloodmoon Beast

The other story, which was considerably shorter. I started on it right after beating the Mask Festival… because I hadn’t registered 150 Pokémon in the Kitakami dex until that point.

I like how this story had many hints to Hisui, with Perrin being an obvious descendant from Adaman, she mentions that she is from Sinnoh, she has a Hisuian Growlithe and she mentions Hisui several times. I also like how music from the Sinnoh games and L:A plays at several points during this story.

I was surprised to see that the Pokémon Perrin was looking for was an Ursaluna (yet another Hisui reference). Prior to the DLC release, I saw some speculation about how the Pokémon she was looking for might be Shaymin (since it is a Sinnoh Pokémon and was confirmed to be added with the DLC), so I was fully sold on that theory before I learned the truth.

The story was short but enjoyable. I played through it quite quickly. The camera survey was really fun, and it made me realize how little I have actually used the camera function in the game. I mostly just use the screenshot button on my Switch instead. Having a photographer in the game was a good way to remind me that the camera exists, maybe that will make me use it more in the future. Perrin wasn’t quite as interesting as Kieran and Carmine, but I still like her. She got her passion for photography back in the end, and that’s great!

Overall, another fun little story.

In the end, I enjoyed both DLC stories, they were great just like the main game story and have further cemented ScaVio as the Pokémon games with the best story in the series (in my opinion).

New team

Long before the DLC was even announced, I decided that if there would be DLC for ScaVio, I would make new teams for it, just like I did for the DLCs in Sword. Since it became reality, I decided to make a new team for the Teal Mask, and I will make another one for the Indigo Disk later on. There are also a lot of Gen 9 Pokémon I want to use. Plus, it is more fun this way! Either way, I wanted to showcase the team I made for the Teal Mask and I decided to do it here instead of in the in-game team thread.

Regarding the team members, I made sure they all had good movesets, hold items, Abilities and Natures (or got Minted). I didn’t bother with EVs (though I gave them some vitamins), IVs/Hyper Training, or specific Tera Types, they had one of their STAB types just like the members of my in-game team. I wanted to focus solely on Gen 9 Pokémon, I considered new forms as well but none of them ended up on the team. I also wanted to try to use types that weren’t represented on my in-game team. And unlike my in-game team, I decided to avoid using any overlapping types this time around. I also decided to have a good balance between Physical and Special as opposed to my all-Physical in-game team.

I named the team the Magical Mystery Masked Marauders. I wanted a cool name instead of just going with “Teal Mask team” or something along those lines.

Here’s a preview:

And here are the full details:

Quaquaval (F) @ Muscle Band
Ability: Moxie
Tera type: Water
Nature: Lonely (Minted to Adamant)
- Aqua Step
- Close Combat
- Ice Spinner
- Aqua Jet

My second favorite Paldea starter, it was an obvious first member of the team. It is also a Water-type, which is nice as I didn’t use one on my in-game team. I like this dancing duck a lot.

Aqua Step was the Water move I went with, it is a cool signature move which has good enough base power and boosts Speed, which is nice since Quaquaval isn’t the fastest. Other moves like Liquidation and Wave Crash are stronger, but some signature moves are just too cool to pass up on. Close Combat for secondary STAB, it hits really hard. Ice Spinner for coverage, it is helpful against Grass- and Dragon-types. Aqua Jet for priority, it could be used to beat targets at low HP.

There are a few other alternatives. I was considering Swords Dance to boost, but I felt that Moxie would probably be enough. Another idea I had was U-Turn, but I realized that switching out wouldn’t work well together with Moxie and Aqua Step, so I scrapped it as well.

Moxie is the superior Ability since it boosts Attack after beating an enemy. When combined with Aqua Step, Quaquaval can rack up boosts and become really powerful. It works best as a Physical attacker, so I minted it to Adamant to make it hit hard. I gave it a Muscle Band to boost the power of its moves even further.

Overall, Quaquaval was really good. It was useful in many situations thanks to its high Attack and solid coverage, it could also pull off a sweep if it managed to gather enough boosts.

Espathra (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Speed Boost
Tera type: Psychic
Nature: Modest
- Stored Power
- Dazzling Gleam
- Shadow Ball
- Calm Mind

The second bird of the team is one I really wanted to use somewhere, but it didn’t end up either on my in-game or mid-game team. I decided to use it here instead. It is also a Psychic-type, which is great as I hadn’t used one anywhere before on Violet.

Stored Power is the main STAB move, it starts out weak but becomes stronger the more I boost. I was going to use Lumina Crash at first since it is a really cool signature move, but then I managed to get a Speed Boost Flittle through the GTS, which changed my mind. With Calm Mind and Speed Boost, it only takes one turn for Stored Power to reach a base power of 80, and it will only keep getting stronger from there. The only negative is that this means that it pretty much needs a boost in order to hit hard. But it was too awesome to resist, so I went with it.

Dazzling Gleam and Shadow Ball for coverage, they help against Dark-, Ghost- and opposing Psychic-types. Calm Mind since it needs to boost. It has a double purpose here, it raises Espathra’s Sp.att and increases the power of Stored Power at the same time, making it hit even harder!

Psychic and Psyshock are other alternatives for STAB, as well as Lumina Crash which I mentioned. I was considering U-Turn here as well, but just as for Quaquaval, it felt like a bad idea with Speed Boost since it would just lose all of its boosts upon switching out.

Speed Boost is the Ability of choice (and I’m happy I managed to get one), it makes Espathra super-fast and powers up Stored Power even further. A Modest Nature is the best option since it makes Espathra hit even harder, it doesn’t need Timid as Speed Boost makes it fast enough as time goes on. I gave it a Leftovers to hold since it will almost always need to use Calm Mind, meaning it will often take a hit before it can attack. After taking damage, Leftovers can help with recovering HP.

Overall, Espathra was great. If it managed to set up and boost, it could sweep opposing teams. That said, it is rather frail and not super-fast before a Speed Boost, so it often needed a good first matchup in order to win. But if it got that, it won.

Glimmora (M) @ Wise Glasses
Ability: Toxic Debris
Tera type: Rock
Nature: Lax (Minted to Modest)
- Power Gem
- Sludge Wave
- Earth Power
- Spiky Shield

Rock was another type I hadn’t used on any previous team on Violet. Out of the new ones that existed, Glimmora seemed to be the coolest one. It is similar to Nihilego since they are both Special attacking Rock/Poison-types.

Power Gem and Sludge Wave are the obvious STAB moves, Earth Power for coverage. In the last slot, I went Spiky Shield for protection. There are a few other alternatives like Dazzling Gleam, Flash Cannon and Energy Ball, but I didn’t use either of them.

Toxic Debris is Glimmora’s only non-hidden Ability. I am not a fan of entry hazards, but at least it does something, as opposed to Corrosion. I minted it to Modest since it is a Special attacker. I gave it the Wise Glasses to power up its moves a bit.

Overall, Glimmora was pretty good. It could hit hard with its moves, Toxic Debris was useful on a few occasions as well. That said, it was a bit slow and frail. Still solid though.

Bombirdier (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Rocky Payload
Tera type: Flying
Nature: Bold (Minted to Adamant)
- Brave Bird
- Knock Off
- Drill Run
- Rock Slide

Third bird of the team. I wanted to use a Flying-type somewhere. I had previously used Squawkabilly as a reserve member during my in-game playthrough, but since I only used it in one battle, it didn’t really count. It was time to use a Flying-type for real. But which one? I had used Kilowattrel on my mid-game team, and I couldn’t use Flamigo since I already had a Fighting-type in Quaquaval. That left Bombirdier as the only option. Which I’m fine with since it is a cool stork.

Brave Bird for Flying STAB, it hits hard but causes recoil. Knock Off for secondary STAB, it is the best option since Bombirdier doesn’t get Crunch or Night Slash, and Sucker Punch feels a bit unreliable. It gets Lash Out through a new TM in the DLC, but I decided to stick with Knock Off. Drill Run and Rock Slide for coverage, the latter gets a boost from Rocky Payload… which was the Ability I went with since I managed to get a HA Bombirdier from the GTS. I considered some other options like Hone Claws, U-Turn and Roost, but I made it an all-out attacker in the end.

I minted it to Adamant so it could hit harder, but Jolly might have been better since I often found Bombirdier to be quite slow. I gave it a Leftovers to hold since it would take recoil damage from Brave Bird and needed some way to recover. I considered other alternatives like Shell Bell or a Berry like Sitrus, but I ultimately decided that a classic Leftovers was the way to go. Wide Lens would also have been an alternative since Rock Slide missed a few times (as expected, and it was always annoying when it did).

Overall, Bombirdier was pretty good. It could hit hard with its moves and often tank a hit as well. That said, I noticed that it grew a lot slower than the rest of the team, it was often 1-2 levels below them. Which isn’t too strange since it is in the Slow Exp. group.

Cetitan (F) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Thick Fat
Tera type: Ice
Nature: Hardy (Minted to Adamant)
- Ice Spinner
- Earthquake
- Play Rough
- Ice Shard

Ice was another type I didn’t use on my in-game team. I ended up using Baxcalibur on my mid-game team, so that left me with Cetitan and Iron Bundle as the only choices. Since I wanted to avoid using Paradoxes unless it was absolutely necessary, I went with Cetitan.

Ice Spinner is the main STAB move. Earthquake and Play Rough for coverage, they help against Electric-, Fire- Rock-, Fighting- and Dark-types. Ice Shard for priority, it can also be used to pick off targets with low HP. I couldn’t think of any other alternatives than these four moves.

Like the other physical attackers of the team, I minted it to Adamant in order to boost its power a bit, it isn’t super-fast so Jolly wouldn’t have helped that much. Thick Fat is the superior Ability since it removes its weakness to Fire and makes it even more resistant to Ice. I gave it an Assault Vest to make it bulkier, taking advantage of its high HP. It felt like a good idea to have at least one member of the team be a bit geared towards defense since most of the team is heavy on offense.

Overall, Cetitan was great. It could hit hard with its moves, Ice Spinner in particular. It was the slowest member of the team, but also the bulkiest.

Flutter Mane @ Expert Belt
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera type: Ghost
Nature: Modest
- Shadow Ball
- Dazzling Gleam
- Power Gem
- Energy Ball

For the last member of the team, I needed a Fairy-type. But which one? There wasn’t a lot to choose from. The base game introduced 5 new fully evolved Fairy-types. I had already used Dachsbun and Tinkaton on my main game team, then I used Iron Valiant on my mid-game team. The only ones that remained were Scream Tail and Flutter Mane. And on top of everything, they were both Scarlet exclusives! The final alternative was to use something from an older generation. But I didn’t want to do that. Instead, I went with Ancient Missy. It seemed really cool. It is also a Ghost-type, which is nice as I hadn’t used one before, and Ghost is my second favorite type. I got it from the GTS for a shiny I didn’t need, then I was ready to go!

Shadow Ball and Dazzling Gleam are the obvious STAB moves, the latter will be replaced with Moonblast once it reaches level 84… talk about a late level. Power Gem and Energy Ball for coverage. It has several other alternatives like Psyshock, Mystical Fire, Dark Pulse and Thunderbolt, but I did some very serious coverage calculations, and it showed that the two moves I picked gives it the best coverage in conjunction with its STABs. It learns Calm Mind as well in order to boost, but I decided to make it an all-out attacker. Flutter is powerful enough as it is, so it didn’t really need to boost.

Protosyntesis is the only Ability it has, though it rarely came into use, the only time it happened was when I faced the Ogre Clan member with a Sunny Day-themed team. A Modest Nature is the obvious choice since it wants to hit hard, Timid isn’t necessary since it is fast enough as it is. I gave it an Expert Belt since it hits 12 out of 18 types for super effective damage.

Overall, Flutter Mane was really great. It is strong, fast, and had great coverage. Since it was traded from another game, it was also the only member of the team to get boosted Exp, making it grow faster than the others to the point that it was often 1-2 levels above them.

Just for fun, here’s the defensive synergy for the team:

I have two weaknesses to Electric, but no resistances. That’s not good. I also have three weaknesses to Steel, but only one resistance. Apart from that, it is pretty good. I have at least one resistance to all types except Electric.

Pictures

I took a lot of pictures while I played, might as well showcase some of them just for fun.

The start of a new adventure. What will we experience this time around?

Students, assemble!

The story unfolds… or does it? The true story turned out to be quite different from the one told on the signboards.

At the festival. Lots of people, Pokémon, food and activities, lots of fun!

Who’s this strange festival visitor? I don’t think anyone invited her.

During my battle against Kieran at the third signpost, this wild Morpeko just stood there and watched the entire battle. Really neat.

The Loyal Three! …more like the lying three. Or the Lousy Three, as their fan name has become.

I don’t really like being bossed around, but I guess you can’t stop Carmine from doing things her way.

During the fight against Titan Okidogi.

Excuse me… but this much cuteness is not allowed. Someone could die from a heart attack. Maybe that’s Ogerpon’s super-secret special move?

This person is totally correct.

Carmine learned an important lesson about life…

While Kieran got a lot of determination to grow stronger.

Now that would be cool to see.

I don’t think Poliwhirl is cute, but to each their own.

The Bloodmoon Beast appears!

She’s totally right.

Kitakami Dex complete!

National Dex complete… again. Until the Indigo Disk, at least.

This is not the end, but rather the prologue to another new adventure. What will it bring?

Moving on

I have completed the stories of the Teal Mask and the Kitakami Pokédex, but I am not quite done yet. There are still some things I want to do, which are the following:

- Explore some areas of Oni Mountain that I haven’t been to yet (I have explored everywhere else)
- Beat all members of the Ogre Clan
- Complete the Glitterati quest
- Donate enough money to rebuild the shrine at Loyalty Plaza (if I can afford it)
- Try to beat all levels on Ogre Outstin'
- Train my teams a bit more

And maybe more. I think all of this will go relatively fast. Once I am done, I’ll go back to playing other Switch games until the Indigo Disk releases. I should also get back to my Battle Facility project, I have unfortunately lost interest in it (again), haven’t done a lot on it lately… hopefully I can continue with it in October.

I really like how the Teal Mask has some hints towards the Indigo Disk. It feels obvious that Kieran and Carmine will return. I hope Kieran can become a hero, and that I can battle Carmine again so I can hear her amazing battle theme! Briar also mentioned Terapagos at one point in the story, and I am very curious about what “The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero” actually refers to. Guess we’ll find out eventually.

That’s my review of the Teal Mask. To summarize, I found it very enjoyable, and I’m really looking forward to the Indigo Disk when it releases!

Really enjoyed reading this. I have a similar positive opinion to the Teal Mask. It really gets me hyped for Indigo Disk. So glad you also enjoyed it.

 

[bdt2002]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1703757415617835450

Pretty bad bug warning. SV currently only stores 300 records for defeated trainers and anyone defeated after that won't permanently save, so if you've cleared out enough of Paldea already then the Ogre Clan won't count as being defeated and the sidequest may be uncompleteable.

Not sure if anyone else has mentioned this here or on any other threads yet, but the patch for this (2.0.2) supposedly just went live today.

 

[doipy hooves]

Before moving onto Indigo Disk, I wanted to note that there is bonus dialogue if you attempt to take a photo of Growlithe + multiple pictures of Perrin in the photo minigame that is not very well documented yet.

How’s the survey coming along, partner?[VAR 0114(0046)]
Huh? What’s this? You got a shot of me?[VAR 0114(0046)]
Heh heh! Did you get a good shot? Hope I didn’t\nlook too stiff or anything![VAR 0114(0046)]
Wow, I’m not used to being on the other side of\na lens. It’s kind of awkward...[VAR 0114(0046)]
Gah! Stop, stop, stop! Now I’m all self-conscious\nand can’t look natural! It’s embarrassing![VAR 0114(0046)]
...OK, for real—I’m not your subject! Take photos\nof Pokémon already, would you![VAR 0114(0046)]
It’s hard to get a good shot crouched down low...
Wa-wow!
Aw, you took Growlithe for me? You sweetie!\c\nI mean, sure, it’s no help at all for the survey,\nbut I still love to see his photos![VAR 0114(0046)]

 

[Coronis]

Might’ve made lifelong friends just grinding in Ogre Oustin’ trying to get that Munchlax - took us a few times, originally having only 3 players, disconnects, bad maps, lagging when you have every berry and it won’t put them away! But it was a fun time, and now I’ve got my Shiny Munchlax, last thing I really needed to check off before Indigo Disk. Leggo.

 

[TheMantyke]

“Huh, I guess I’m just not in the mood for Pokemon lately. I guess I’ll just save the DLC for sometime over the next few months and play it sometime before the second one.”

Me realizing DLC2’s already out:

I guess I have some masks to teal huh

 

[doipy hooves]

https://www.reddit.com/r/PokemonScarletViolet/comments/18xf7f9
Ogre Oustin' has a confirmed solo Hard clear after the difficulty nerf. It is still pretty tight and largely luck based since every factor in the game has some sort of random element to it, but the post details the best you can do to make it possible.